Josh Hadley  3:58 

Well, Kris, welcome to the podcast, we’re super excited to have you on. You’re doing a lot of cool things in the industry. I think that you’re an account executive at Sellozo. You’re also hosting another podcast where you’re talking to other cool sellers and the strategies that they’re implementing in their own business. And then last but not least, you’re an actual seller yourself with four brands. So you’re in the trenches, you know what’s actually going on. You’re not one of the let’s call it a fake guru that doesn’t actually sell but loves to preach what best practices should be. So Kris, tell us a little bit more about Sellozo and you being an account executive there just so people get an idea of what does that mean? What, what is Sellozo?

Kris Gramlich  4:44 

Yeah, for sure. Well, I just happen to fall into Sellozo went to a local meetup. This was back in like, early 2018. Went to a local meetup here, I’m located in Kansas City, Missouri, and it was hosted by Sellozo. Sellozo put it on and I have never heard of Sellozo ever. And I didn’t even realize they were in my backyard here. So I went to the meetup. Met a couple of people that were worked at, still work at the company, talk to other sellers. And it was kind of cool. Because at this meetup, they were going around, like, tell us how you’re doing, tell us where your businesses like, and back at the time, 2014. So I’m four years in already, by the time I get to this meetup, and like myself, and maybe one other seller, we’re having success on Amazon, a lot of other people were just getting started or just looking for products, or they just listed their product, and they’re trying to struggle with launching their product. So at the end of it, I had a whole crew around me, people talking with me and asking me questions, like, what should I do here? Should I do this, like, you probably do that there’s, it was a lot of stimulation overload like I came into this meeting, just trying to be like, sit back and kind of hang out in this listen. And it turned into like, sharing all the secrets and things that I’ve done and things that I’ve seen and things that I would suggest doing. So it was really cool. So at the time, I was out with Sellozo, I went back to my original job where I’ve been in the e-commerce space for a while. So I used to work at an e-commerce company that sold physical products on their website, like 85% of their sales were on their own website. So I got to see what it was like to have a warehouse, use inventory, do the marketing imaging videos and like see how to grow a website? Drive traffic to and stuff. So that was kind of cool. So I went back to that position. And I don’t know what happened, but the stars aligned. And they let me go shortly thereafter that my position was going to be more automated. I was a buyer at this old company. So a lot of the buying has been since automated now. So let me go. And I quickly called Sellozo, said, hey, I’d love to come join your Sellozo team. I’m a seller, I can relate to sellers, I can help sellers like I know PPC, I think that’d be a huge asset. And that’s how I got in and got in, started talking to sellers. And it’s been great. It’s been great. So that’s how I got in. Sellozo is a PPC software. So what we do is we help sellers with automating their bids, automating the transfer of keywords from one campaign to the next day parting their campaigns. That’s a big term now. So there’s a lot of different terms flying around. But there’s a lot different tools out there. Sellozo has been around since 2017. It was built by somebody who has Google background. So there’s a little bit of that built into it. Yeah, so my days consist of helping sellers, with our PPC and helping them with their own businesses. And kind of like a mentor. You mentioned in the intro, they’re like, not having a mentor. And we started around the same amount of time, there was really nothing out there, a couple of podcasts, maybe a couple YouTube channels, but there really was no, like meetups. And so I like to give back as much as I can.

Josh Hadley  8:02 

No, I love that, Kris. Yeah, I think both you and I like it was so new when we both kind of got on the Amazon, even though people started even earlier than that. But it’s definitely evolved over the years. And I think having a mentor that’s kind of been there, done that to help you, I feel like is so invaluable. And I mean, you get to do that on a day to day basis. So you’re looking under the hood of multiple businesses, you have your own brands, what are some of the biggest challenges that you’re seeing other sellers facing on Amazon right now? Maybe it’s some of your own brands? Maybe it’s some of the existing clients that you’re working with?

Kris Gramlich  8:45 

Yeah, good question. Well, CPC is arising. So cost per clicks are going through the roof, you really got to figure out what terms you want to go after what keywords you want to go after, when you’re doing bidding on your ads. I think the main thing is, and this is something I do, whenever somebody books a call and we talk with somebody is this look at their listings, like let’s see, show me your storefront like let’s see the listings, because with a bad listing with no imaging or small imaging or not optimized images, a bad title, short bullets, even like the EBC and no videos like that stuff is necessary now. When people come to your listing, you want them to convert, and if you lack that stuff, and even reviews, if you lack all that other optimization things with Title Bullets, imaging, your conversion, it’s gonna go down. So the first thing that I like to do it, especially when somebody books a call is just learn their business. I pull up the products and see what they’re doing. And a lot of the things I’m seeing right now is just like listing optimization. I think images is probably the number one thing that I would focus on. A lot of sellers love to talk to you like, just have these built on camera real quick or I just hired a fire every gig, I put the money in your images and definitely spend the money in your images. Because when people come to your listing, they’re going to scroll through images and make that decision on whether or not they’re going to buy that. That would be the thing I’m seeing currently with most accounts, people that are coming on trying to use Sellozo, and they’re just images are kind of lackluster.

Josh Hadley  8:45 

Yeah. So tell me more about that. Like, what are the mistakes that people are making with their images that you’re like, Dude, come on, well, you got to step up your game here.

Kris Gramlich  10:30

Yeah, poor Photoshop, like you can see right through it. I don’t know about you, but when I see like images in the Photoshop just does not look right, or somebody is holding like a makeup brush. And you can obviously tell that it’s not the same, like it doesn’t match up correctly. It’s just bad photoshopping so that’s just a big turnoff personally, for me, it doesn’t feel like, like a good brand, it makes me feel like something else is wrong with the product. If they didn’t spend the time to do like real lifestyle photos and give it like a good feel like a premium feel bad imaging or bad Photoshop. Another one is just not enough. They just throw a couple images in there three or four images. And I was guilty of this at the very beginning to just trying to get my feet wet. And learn this throughout the time to sell on Amazon, but just three or four images. And I think that’s enough. Another one is the font. So, infographics are great. But if they’re not zoomable, no one can read what’s going on here, especially if you have a product that has a lot of moving parts or needs instructions, your font, it has to be something can read zoomable images, something to look at. And I like to get this tip out to anybody, like, never talk to somebody, just go look it up on mobile, like go type your main keyword you want to look at on mobile, inside the app, and just see what the photos looked like there. And just kind of get an idea, like what you should be doing, there’s things you can do to like make the photo taller. So it takes up a little bit more room on the search results or make it bigger so that they can see what you’re actually selling without having to click on it. So if you do run, pay per click, you kind of cut your wasted ad spend out because people aren’t like researching it, they already know not to click on that one, because then maybe it’s not exactly what they’re looking for. So you kind of save some money there. So I think imaging gets overlooked, I would spend the money to make sure that get the correct images and in the flow of images all in on this one, like the flow of your images. Like tell the story of your images, you got the main image first, tell me a little bit about second, show me some lifestyle photos, the benefits of it, and then maybe have a video at the end of it to kind of tie it all together. That would be one quick suggestion.

Josh Hadley  12:46 

Awesome. I love that I completely agree with you. And I think that’s one of the most interesting things, you’re working with a lot of clients in PPC, right. But your very first thing like in terms of mistakes people making, it wasn’t, oh, they’re advertising on wrong keywords, or their campaigns are set up in the wrong place or whatever. Like your first thing is like, no, I look at their images. And typically, that’s where they’re going wrong. And I would completely agree with you here in the aspect of a lot of sellers to be honest with you aren’t spending the amount of time and thought that they should, with those listing images. And like you mentioned, like, it makes all the difference. It’s funny, like within our own niche, and we have different competitors that we follow. And I’m amazed that they get any sales, because some of their products like when they Photoshop it, it’s like this poster or whatever is like two times the size of a child. Like that’s not what this product is like how in the world like, I don’t even know how that passed the sniff test. Like somebody’s like, that looks good, right? Like, but I think that if you just outsource it to somebody, and you’re like, oh, well, they’re the Photoshop expert. I’m just gonna load it up. Like, I think that’s a big mess. And so I completely agree with you like doubling down on the images. And we’ve talked about this in previous episodes. But that main Image is everything. And especially when it relates to PPC. And you want to increase your click through rate you want to stand out on Amazon, and especially on mobile. I liked that you touched on mobile, because I think everybody’s working on their desktop, right? And it’s like, oh, this looks great on desktop, most consumers and gets over 66% for sure, are on mobile, right? And so they’re on the app. So go on the app, go on the mobile site and see what it looks like when you’re scrolling down. And then if you notice, like everybody looks the same, well good. Here’s your opportunity to do something different right? Either to zoom in on the image or you could test out adding like different items to the product or calling out different features in that main image. I think one of the biggest takeaways I’ve had recently from many sellers that I’ve spoken to, is that you can kind of push the boundaries a little bit more on those main images than I think people initially have been doing. And worst case scenario, Amazon just kind of suppresses that image or that listing for a little bit. It’s not like you’re getting a mark on your account per se, right?

Kris Gramlich  15:21 

Yeah, and you’ll know, quick, if it’s something they don’t like, like, if the background is not fully white you’ll be able to upload a photo. And before you even probably hit save, it’ll give you like, an invalid, like, this photo is not gonna work, change your main image type of deal. So you’ll know, pretty quick, but I do like that you mentioned you can push the envelope a little bit with your photos, for sure.

Josh Hadley  15:45 

Yeah, I think you have to right, especially with PPC, so and then optimizing for mobile. So I love that, that’s a great way to start out, I think you’ve shared a lot of value already. So what else? So you’ve looked at images, right? And you’re looking at listings, trying to optimize them? What else are you seeing kind of mistakes, easy mistakes that sellers are making that people should be aware of?

Kris Gramlich  16:09 

Yeah, you touched on a little bit there. And it’s like the structure, the structure your campaigns, everybody goes after exact match, not enough like data to try a phrase or a broad match. They have maybe all their keywords in one campaign, I like to split that out. So my personal preference is broad goes to broad phrase is phrase, and exact is exact, and just keep those keywords separate. And kind of make sure you’re optimizing the bids on each one, just to kind of get an idea of what’s working and what’s not working. So I think the structure is something that I really like harp on. So after we look at images, we then look at their structure and see what they’re doing. It’s all over the map. Some people have just a simple auto campaign, that’s all they’re doing is this auto campaigns. Exactly. We’re gonna change your life here, we’re gonna do something different than just auto campaigns, we’re gonna try some broad phrase exact, we’re gonna get you discovered more. But some other people have really extents like structures, they’ve already built, the big sellers, especially that we see a lot of that come over to Sellozo, we have a tool called campaign studio and campaign studio actually allows you like it’s a visual, I don’t know, if you’ve ever remembered and this is going back with this, you probably will. The tool miniChat, where you actually would make like flows like, it’s the same visual, but with your Amazon campaigns. So if you think about how your mini chat was set up, where you are dragging and dropping from one place to the next, we’re doing the same thing with like an auto campaign goes to your broad campaign. And what’s gonna end up happening there is when your auto campaign converts, it takes that search term and moves it to whatever broad campaign or phrase executive you have set up. So when sellers come to us with a really, really large structure, they’ve already got set up, that campaign studio is like, it takes whatever they were envisioning in their head, and it shows them on the screen and they love it. So the structure is super important. I see a lot of testing with top of search recently. We’re in q4 holidays coming up ranking for keywords, I would probably start doing that now. So that’s about time. Three weeks from now, by the time a holiday shopping starts, you’re ranked organically well already. Don’t wait now. I would do it right now. So we’re seeing a lot of top of search that top five keywords, top search multiplier really high give me aggressive bids, so that by the time holiday season comes, they’re ranked organically well at the start. So a lot of that is happening right now a lot of top a search is happening right now. And then another one is just to kind of appear on that is sponsored display. I used to hate sponsored display, I kind of still do, but it’s something that I think a lot people are leaving money behind, especially if your product is something that people rebuy again and like you can retarget them, not only on Amazon but off Amazon and I think Amazon is coming up with more features they just announced recently that sponsored display is gonna have video ads added to it. So that’s gonna be huge. So I think sponsored display needs a little bit more attention. And  we’re starting to see that inside the app here inside Sellozo that a lot people are starting to do that, especially for products where they can retarget customers.

Josh Hadley  19:25 

Awesome. I love that. I think there’s a lot of golden nuggets there. And we can dive into some of these rabbit holes. But where I kind of want to take this conversation is, we could spend all day in PPC land. I think everybody knows that, but let’s see what’s working best for sellers when they’re launching products. So you have your own brands, you have four different brands. I’m sure that as you work with clients, and even as you have on your podcast, you’ve probably heard some really cool strategies in terms of ways that people are learning matching products. So tell me from your perspective, what do you see working when it comes to launching products on Amazon now?

Kris Gramlich  20:05 

Well, it’s the tried and true method I think that more people are paying attention to. And it’s building an audience, building a list, getting like your funnel set up and having your passionate customers ready so that when you launch a new product, all you got to do is hit up your list, whether it be through messenger, or whether it be through email or whatever device you’re using. So that when you’ve launched your product, you hit that list up and they’re ready to roll and you start to get that sales velocity. So I think the strategy in person, what I’m using is just list building. That starts with a really, really nice insert card. There’s some of this may be a little bit gray area, and do what you wish read the TOS. But anytime you buy something off Amazon, normally you’re getting an insert card anyway. So yeah, just do what you want. But insert cards are being more and more advanced, I’ll say, driving people to a landing page, where they can register extended warranty, or they can learn more about your brand, getting them more involved with your community sharing, sharing your social tags and your social handles. People like to see that. So to answer your question, lots of product, I have my list built out and I’m seeing people do this, especially using Sellozo, now they have their list built out, they get that momentum built up. And as soon as the hits the inventory, as soon as Amazon gets the inventory, PPC, their start dates are turned on their list as buy in and like get that momentum going. And then there’s things you can do to the listing, obviously to help with that conversion rate. But to launch a product, it used to be easy, Josh, remember the back in the day like 99% off coupons. That was crazy. That was That was crazy. And I’m glad Amazon got rid of that because it really cleaned it up. But now I think it’s building the list and being more brand, like build a brand, right? Like don’t just sell random products, like be a brand, create a list and hit that list up and have new products.

Josh Hadley  20:14

Yeah, no, I completely agree. When we had Kevin King on the podcast, he had talked a lot about that’s what he sees being the biggest differentiating factor over the next five to 10 years is like, it’s only going to get more challenging, unless you lean into like creating a real brand. And having a brand voice and then gaining your own audience like you’re going to be left to the wayside if you don’t keep up. So I want to dive in a little bit more with how you’re building that audience with insert cards. We do the same thing with our brand. I don’t know that I necessarily see that as like, overly Gray. I mean, you look at like a box that grab some Clorox wipes, right? What’s on the product label for Clorox wipes? It’s the PNG website, right? So like, and they’re not saying like, hey, come register your warranty per se. But like they have links to their social media, right? They have their icons, they have their website on there. So like, I don’t think people need to be as scared about that. Right? But what are you seeing working really well, when it comes to product inserts?

Kris Gramlich  23:14 

Well, if a thing good at a COVID came that people were more adept to QR codes, people know what that is now. So a QR code like that just now people realize, oh, I can scan that. So a QR code insert, that has some type of messaging, like the Thank you, get your free gift. There’s things that that I’m doing now where somebody scans it, the code or a landing page, in that landing page, they give name, email address, order ID number, and that just kind of verifies that the order matches with Amazon order. So we’re not just getting spammed for free gift. And they scan it and we just get a free gift out. And all they got to do is provide us with their name and their email address. We’re thinking about adding their mailing address there, just to kind of have that for like a backup plan to do postcards. I get a random side note here but I bought something that was on like literally 60 days later I got a gift like a postcard in the mail. Have this guy know what the send me this postcard for another item. So like reverse engineering. That’s kind of fun for me. So I’m trying to figure that out. But yeah, the insert scan QR code landing page, basic information, no first name, last name, email address, and then the order ID. We’re using a tool called it’s going away from me Zapier. Zapier, however you want to pronounce that, that links up order IDs, so that when they type an order ID and matches correctly with the Order ID inside your account. And then from there, we send them a free sample. And the free sample, it’s just something to like, get them to engage with us maybe try another product that we’re thinking about launching down the road. It also just allows them to like feel a warm and fuzzy. So maybe when that review request does come, and that review request is done by Amazon, we’re not sending any more like, hey, give us a five star review. We’re just leaving it more like providing value. And whenever they get something from Amazon that says, How would you rate your experience with so and so brand? Maybe they think, hey, that was a good brand. I’ll leave a five star review. So we’re leaving that alone.

Josh Hadley  25:34 

You’re not even touching review.

Kris Gramlich  25:36 

No, don’t  even touch it. Yeah, just leave I would like to value.

Josh Hadley  25:41 

Yeah, I agree. 100% with not even touching reviews, we’ve made the same decision because we have opt in flows and all of that. And everybody’s like, why don’t you ask for review. And it’s like, I’m not even touching it with a 10 foot pole. Because that’s the one thing that like is if Amazon’s gonna suspend you overnight for something, it’s going to be review manipulations like that is something you don’t even want to cross. And I think they’re not even like suspending people. I think they’re just like shadow banning, like your products now. And it’s like, not even going to touch it. Not worth it.

Kris Gramlich  26:13 

Yeah, it’s not worth it. And plus, I think there’s enough going on in the background that Amazon does with reviews and whatnot. And the people that buy off like we’re all Amazon shoppers, we kind of get the idea that you can leave reviews, and we get those emails. And so I really just leave that alone, get a free sample, give me your email address. And when we launch a new product, we’ll let you know. And we’ll give you a discount code and you can go buy the new product. So I’m with you. I don’t I don’t touch the reviews. Let’s let that be.

Josh Hadley  26:41 

Yeah. Hey, going back to so I like the idea of using QR codes and it goes to a landing page. Number one question would be like what type of free gifts are you giving to people when they do opt in? And then secondly would be, what messaging do you have on that insert card that kind of draws people in to say, yeah, I do want this free gift? Or is it just kind of a mysterious free gift that thereafter right, and now I’m curious, like what your conversion rates are, in turn to like people actually scanning it.

Kris Gramlich  27:14 

So the free gift luckily for me, or not, I would say, when I’m been doing Amazon, I switched all my thought process from sourcing from China and overseas to sourcing here in the States. So all my products are here locally, so I can get product really quickly. One cool thing is that I talked to my supplier and I said, Look, we’re going to try something here where we’re going to do a free gift. And it’s going to be a smaller version, or a smaller quantity of what we’re going to sell in the long run. But I just want to get people to touch like a sample pack of it. Like no problem. So it maybe cost me like four or five bucks cost my cost to do that. And I am paying a little bit of shipping here, obviously, but it’s worth it when you get the email address, especially if you’re gonna launch your products, so that the gift is a product that they’re probably going to use again, or they’re probably going to buy again, or they’re gonna have interest in again come 90 days or 120 days when we fully go live with it. The messaging on the insert card is simple. It’s thank you, here’s your free gift, and the steps how to claim it. It says scan QR code for free gift, put your information in confirm your email address really is all it says. And we kind of make it brand centric, like tell our kind of our story, like how we started this and why we started this brand. When I say we are talking about my wife and I and why we started it. And so that kind of gets them in there like oh, this is like a small family business. Hopefully, that gets them to commit, they scan it. And when they get to the page, I put a video in there. So the video on the landing page is like, It’s me again, like hey, thanks for taking the time to scan the QR code. To get your free gift. Simply just fill out the form below, confirm your email address and we will get a free gift sent your way. A lot of people reply to those, like, I get personal emails back. So it’s kind of nice.

Josh Hadley  29:15 

Yeah. That’s awesome. So on the landing page, do you ever reference like what free gift they’re getting? Or is it just completely random and they’re just like, alright, let’s say you’re gonna send me.

Kris Gramlich  29:27 

Yeah, it’s random. So the products that they’re gonna get are going to be in the same niche of the product that they bought. So it’s all going to be in the same area. So it’s not like they’re gonna buy a silicone spatula and then they’re gonna get a water bottle. Like it’s all going to be within the same category. Just a smaller version. There’s a lot of different variations which makes it nice for the free gift. But the opt in rate, all you got to do is this name, email order ID. The order ID was something we just added Just to kind of prevent the spam, people just coming to the page, because once that gets out there, the page gets shared to all these freebie gifts. Next thing you know, we’re giving away a bunch of freebies. So we did the order ID to kind of verify that, but yeah, it’s super easy, super simple. And then we use MailChimp to follow up on emails, and we don’t email a lot. I don’t have like a lot of flows built. The emails are like, thank you for joining the VIP club. And then maybe two weeks later, we’ll give them an email ton about our story, why we created the brand and what we’re doing and kind of like a roadmap of products that we’re looking to promote. And just kind of keep it casual. And then when we got a new product coming out, I’ll head up that email list maybe a month before, let them know, get ready, it’s coming. I like to share like photos behind the scenes a little bit like we’re not we’re packing them up, or we’re getting ready to mail these out, kind of get them out, let them feel like they’re part of it. And they are, and then we go live. That’s the tricky part, I’m sure you’ve had to deal with this, too, is like it was all checking in, but it’s not really fully checked in. So you got to kind of like wait for it to be fully checked in. So let’s just fully checked in, we send out a blast. They purchase the item. And then we go from there. But the insert just one part of it. There’s other things I like to do outside of the insert just to kind of get the momentum going. And get those sales going. But the inserts is just part of it.

Josh Hadley  31:34 

Yeah. No, I love that. And I love the strategy that you’re employing with kind of giving somebody like a smaller version of a product with that. So is this kind of like a consumable or this is something like they’re going to like us up over time?

Kris Gramlich  31:51 

Yeah, more of a consumable Yeah, yeah. So we’re in the pet niche. I’m in the pet space. So distinct doctorates. And then now you know, okay, there’s a lot of doctorates. So there’s a lot of options. So we can go all over the map as far as samples go, that just allows, like, they get it. And if they like it, great, sometimes people are like, oh, my dog doesn’t like this, or we don’t give our dog this stuff. It’s like, no problem. We have a whole slew of other products that we can offer you, let us know what you like. And I’ll send you another free sample like, I rather send 100 samples out to one person, and hope like, to make them happy than just like, not send them anything else. So one thing I’ve learned at that e-commerce company I worked at was like, we would send out free items just out of nowhere, because people said they lost their item in shipping or the item they bought from us a week ago, all of a sudden broke out a game and they needed like, so we just sent him a free item. And so that, I had kind of lower my guard, I was like, what we’re just sending people free items, that’s like we’re losing money here. But in the long run, they’re coming back again, and again, and again. And again. And again. And again, they’re telling their friends about you, they’re coming back. So whatever. If there’s, if that sample doesn’t work, I’ll send you something different.

Josh Hadley  33:11 

Interesting, that’s very cool, I would assume because you’re kind of sending out like a little sample pack, right, of maybe some treats and whatnot, then people they’re like, hey, my dog really loved this one. So I actually want, let’s go find the full version. Right? We need the full package of that. So do you see? Are you able to track that at all to see like what that take grade is so to speak that people upgrade at all?

Kris Gramlich  33:11 

Yeah, I don’t do a good enough job using attribution, the Amazon attribution link, that’s something probably need to pay a little bit more attention to like track where that sales coming from, especially when I send out emails and use social media to promote items upon needed better, but I’m assuming it’s all assumption. But if I send him a smaller version of an item, and we later launch that item, I’m assuming that customer is going to want to take advantage of that because they’d like the free sample they got earlier. So I don’t have anything set up yet for tracking. But that is something where, when we do an email, use an attribution link, even the referral bonus so that I get 10% back when you use that link, that’s something I could do. This was so many moving parts to that that I’m sure there is. But if there was a software out there were I could display, copy this link paste in this email and be done with it. Right. There are so many moving parts.

Josh Hadley  34:37 

Yep. No, very true. But I guess, long story short, you’re sending out samples. They cost you maybe three or four, five bucks. Plus you’re paying shipping on that, but you’re making an ROI. I guess you don’t have the conclusive data on that. But I think you keep doing it because you believe you’re getting an ROI from that then correct.

Kris Gramlich  34:57 

Yeah, and a lot of my items that I’m gonna be selling are Subscribe and Save. So I kind of look at that like, are my subscriptions going up. It’s hard to correlate that to the sample. But if my Subscribe and Save numbers are going up, I’m getting more customers people are talking about the brand, or buy more or less similar, right? So that’s something I switched. When I first started on Amazon, I did just like one purchase items like they just bought one time that was it. Our first item was a, like a dog shock collar and dog training collars electric collar. And some people just bought like one time, and I would never hear from them again. And so I got out of that space for more reasons than we could discuss. Subscribe and Save is what I’m looking at. So if those numbers go up, I have a feeling that the sample and all that’s paying off?

Josh Hadley  35:52 

Yeah, no, I love that. That’s so important. I think that anybody that has replenishable or consumable products, like, oh, my goodness, like this is a great strategy to utilize like, I would definitely be leveraging free samples of some of your other products, giving people a little taste of it, and then watch those subscriptions. Right? That’s kind of what you want to be tracking on there. So no, great value shared there. Now, my question there, too, when you follow up with your email subscribers, are you trying to spread that out over a period of a couple of weeks, so that you don’t just get all the sales in one day on Amazon, right? That you’re kind of like boosting up that sales velocity over a period of time rather than just one day?

Kris Gramlich  36:37 

That’s a great question. We don’t have it separated out, I don’t have it separated out by segments, it’s just all blitz go. All systems go kind of deal. I have toyed with the idea of doing a separate variation, just for that list. And then launching a second variation. After reviews show up on the listing, again to that list. If you follow what I’m saying there, it’s basically give your list one variation of a product blasted out there. And in return, they’re kind of conditioned to leave reviews. And then the second variation with my items being local here in the States, it’s pretty simple as to switch to a new UPC code, and a new variation within the same listing, it’s the same item, maybe just changed from a six count to a seven count or a six count the five count or five different change, whatever, it’s the same item. But then now, when I launched the true item that I want to go after, and I’ve that I’m really wanting to scale up, I can then hit up that list again, it turn on PPC hit up the influencers. And now I’ve got reviews and my conversion rate is a lot higher than it would be if I didn’t have those initial reviews at the very beginning. So it’s kind of a no area to teeter on. But it’s been working.

Josh Hadley  38:04 

I love that. I think that’s a wicked smart strategy I think people can implement as well. There’s a lot of cool stuff that you can do with variations. And the nice thing is right now Amazon just merges all the variations, even if that old variation where some of those reviews came from drops off. So I think it’s a fantastic way to get some reviews and get some traction early. So let’s talk about PPC as it relates to launch. Do you believe that PPC is a big component of somebody’s launch strategy? Or should it be like you push it to later because I think we’ve heard different opinions. Some people say no, wait till you get five reviews, right? Some magical number right? Until you turn on PPC, some people and I’m in this camp, we launched PPC campaigns day one. And if that’s the case, tell us about like the structure that you use with PPC campaigns when you’re launching a new product.

Kris Gramlich  39:00 

I’m with you Josh on day one, day one launched PPC get that data going get the clicks come and get the added carts going get people to click around your listing. So, day one PPC go live do exact match. If you do really good keyword research and if you’re brand registered and got brand Analytics, you can really find the terms you want to go after I like to do exact match and I’ll play with broad and phrase as I want to spread out and find new keywords to go after at the very beginning I want Amazon to know hey look these five or 10 keywords that I’ve got in this exact match campaign my products relevant for it and I want to show up for it. So I’ll go heavy exact type of search multiplier turned on give me that up down bid strategy as well. And this outside of Sellozo, like this would be last strategy only. Up down strategy, or aggressive top of search multiplier, five or 10 keywords budget. Keep the budget kind of tight, maybe like 50 bucks or so. And then something I’d like to do is de park that campaign, meaning that that campaign won’t turn on until like, let’s call it noon central time. Yeah, the reason for that is, as we see inside the data, and as we look at PPC cost per clicks throughout the day, you know, the highest cost per click is going to be at that 12.01 when the day starts, and everybody’s bidding. So throughout the day, cost per clicks go down a little bit. Also, conversion rate goes up throughout the day. So I kind of wait let all the big players like spend their money and who knows how much budget they have, but they run out of budget, and then I come in around that noon time with that aggressive PPC strategy, hopefully run throughout the rest of the day. Get those clicks Add to carts, I think Add to Cart gets overlooked here add to cart is something that will help you rank so if people, even if they don’t even buy it, they just come here, and they buy it at a later date Add to Cart. So exact match add to cart, or use exact match to get at the carts for your PPC campaigns. And then if you do have reviews, I like video ads, if you don’t have reviews, yet, I’m kind of wishy washy on that I’m still need to test it out on my own products. But if you ever views I would definitely do video ads and sponsored brand video ads do go out for the same keywords. The reason I say that is just I feel like the video won’t perform as well. If you don’t have reviews, you can this look, maybe it looks weird, maybe that’s my own opinion. But funny looking a little bit more. But wait for some reviews, if you can to get sponsored brand video out up and running, just to kind of save some cost on the advertising budget that you’re going to need to launch products. So if you don’t have reviews, go all in on the sponsor product, get that product rank, get that organic rank up, and then transition over to some videos. And then you could try to do sponsored display and product targeting on your competitors. All this stuff’s like 60, 90 day timeframe. But I like to run personally like just to get enough data in here and get enough clicks and options and how to cars and stuff. And then I can dial it back a little bit, 90 is probably too long, I’ll probably go more to 60. I’m kind of impatient on that. I’m not bleeding too much money, right. So I’ll do 60 day and then cut out some of the losses, do some more keyword research, do some broad phrase, all that good stuff. But it’s constant learning, right? Like, just keep going. But another cool thing I like to do is on the listing itself, like, make the price. So set your price, right, and you could do your launch. And then depending on how aggressive you want to be 30 days after you do that launch, you can lower your price. And now you get this little slash through on the listing that says like lowest price in 30 days type of red badge on. So when people are scrolling through mobile, it kind of draws their attention to your listing, because now you’ve got like this little red badge on your listing that says like lowest price in 30 days. And then I also like to add the neon green coupon, especially for items that like I’m in to try and save. That just draws more people’s attention to it. Some your competitors may not use it. But just at the beginning, I’m trying to get clicks impressions, I’m taking a loss on PPC. I’m conditioned to that now. And then as we rank and as we get reviews, we start to be a little bit more profitable and dial back our PPC a little bit.

Josh Hadley  43:35 

interesting. Okay, so you’re willing to be aggressive upfront, what type of a cost should people expect when they are launching?

Kris Gramlich  43:43 

This is always the goal. And I get this all the time, especially during calls with sellers, like, what should a cost be? I’m like, look, I see a cost from like 200% to 300% at the very beginning, especially when their products, and this is in the supplement niche. So a lot of the sellers I’m working with are being really competitive niches, and I’m doing it myself, I’m going really high a costs. And I say this just because you tell a tool or you’re willing to go to a 200% a cost doesn’t mean that the tool that you’re using is going to get there, that just means that your ceiling of like strategy or your ceiling of risk is higher, it doesn’t mean that you’re actually going to have a 200% a cost. Whereas if you set your a costs too low, let’s say 50% or 20%, you’ve kind of capped out how high your bid can be, and maybe losing impressions and you may be losing clicks where if you have a little bit higher a cost target that you can swallow at the very beginning, you could have got some more sales and maybe a little bit more reviews. So I’m really aggressive on PPC. It may not be for everybody for that. But I’m trying to get data I’m trying to get ranked on page one, let Amazon know that these are the keywords I want to go after. And then if those keywords don’t work for me in the future, maybe do some more longtail stuff, but at least I’m ranked for it, or at least I got ranked for it and get some sales organically.

Josh Hadley  45:06 

Awesome. Awesome. Makes a lot of sense with your exact match keywords, are you putting them into just one campaign? Or do you try to set up single keyword campaigns exact match so you have more control over that top of search, right? Because top of search, you can’t control at a keyword level, you can only do it at a campaign level, right?

Kris Gramlich  45:26 

Yeah, I’ll actually separate it by search volume. So like my top five are going to be in one campaign together. I have my opinion. I don’t know if it’s true or not. But I have a feeling like campaign history and like campaign relevancy and how well you that campaign converts has something to do with where you rank at as far as we bid on keywords. So like having a really good campaign data, like bunch together that are relevant for your keywords, I have a feeling that has something to do with where you rank it. It’s just my opinion again, but who knows, but I’ll break them up in like search volunteer. So like no less than 10,000 go here, more than 10,000 go there more than 20,000 go here. And each one will have their own budget. And then I can set different target a cost goals on each one of them. Because I know like hey, this one I want to go really aggressive after. But if I rank for this really highly searched term, it’s also going to benefit on this longtail one as well. So I don’t really need to be that aggressive on these longtail ones because these higher ones are going to help and vice versa as well. Like it’d be really aggressive on a longtail one and maybe the one that gets searched the most I can’t become profitable on it just not gonna work. So I’ll go really heavy on a longtail one knowing that it’s going to help the higher one as well rank organically as well. So this is why we look at the data. You got to look at the data and see what’s going on. It’s just not a set and forget it.

Josh Hadley  46:55 

Yep. Man, I think we could spend a whole another hour just talking about different ways to set up your campaigns for launches, for us, what we do is we do break it into single keyword campaigns. And we only activate it on what we term we break our keywords into four different kinds of buckets of keywords, you have your shop keywords, typically your longer tail keywords, but sometimes they’re super high volume keywords that when you search for that product, like it is only your competitors that show up for that listing, right. You’re not seeing like, lunch boxes, and then a water bottle like a bunch of hodgepodge, so to speak, you want to make sure that those keywords are like hyper relevant to like, your product, right. That’s what we turned on first. And it’s only those, and then we also will turn on product targeting. Because I think to your point there, Amazon likes the Add to carts. And what I think is if you can put in some of the top sellers that are already generating traffic, and if you can do product targeting on their pages specifically. And if you steal a sale from them, I think Amazon boosts kind of your ranking juice so to speak. It’s like oh, they came to this guy who was the number one seller, and then they ended up converting on this new product. Maybe I should give this new product a little bit more love. So we go very aggressively to begin with, like product targeting our top competitors, saying, hey, we’re all in we want to steal sales from these guys. Have you seen that working at all in terms of product targeting?

Kris Gramlich  48:31

Yeah, and sometimes it helps to have some reviews, obviously, for that product targeting for that conversion rate to be a little bit better. But I like to test it out separately, just like you mentioned, like to product targeting, see how it performs. Especially if you have an item, especially at launch, when your item is priced cheaper than your competitor. Maybe you have a coupon added to it. So it kind of shows up a little bit. You could potentially, I love doing especially in the niche I’m in is like, you may have somebody who’s always bought brand X, and you just keep targeting Brand X. And if it takes $20 or whatever your customer acquisition cost is I like to watch Shark Tank. And that’s always one of the questions I ask is like, what’s your customer acquisition costs? I like to figure that out like so if you know your customer acquisition costs, you could probably spend 30 $40 to get that customer another subscriber. I was in this kind of a tangent, but I was looking at my there’s a tool out there that shows you like customer repeat purchases, like the lifetime value. Yeah, yeah. And there’s a guy that is bought from us for like four or five years straight, never talked to him. Never like have any idea never knew about it. It’s like how did I get that customer is what I keep asking myself how’d that guy find me? Like why did he find this product and he’s been buying it for four years. He’s never said anything. He’s never seen any Mail, he’s never complained about anything I don’t even know if he’s left to review. So I went in and just send them a new order like this is when they had shipping history. And there’s a way to find shipping history, and just ship them a whole bunch of product. And I don’t know what happened. But like, that kind of stuff as far as like, if you know what you’re willing to spend to get a new customer, you may have that customer for four or five years or life. Who knows?

Josh Hadley  50:26 

Yep. So being able to understand what your lifetime value is for your customers, then you can backtrack and say, okay, my lifetime value of a customers 100 bucks, well, okay, and what profit, right? What’s your margin on that? Then you can say, all right, well, you can spend up to, that’s what your customer acquisition cost should end up being right. So it might not be profitable on the front end. But you know you’re going to make those sales on the back end, especially if you have subscription products. So completely agree with you there. Do you know the name of the tool that helps you figure out the lifetime value or like repeat purchases and like, tie it to previous orders?

Kris Gramlich  51:07 

It’s a newer tool that I’ve been playing around nozzle. I think it’s nozzle.ai. You can go in there, and you can see, they’ll show you like what your true tacos, like a true target a cost should be. It’s really good for like finite or customer lifetime value, knowing what your a cost needs to be for sellers. I do like it. It’s got a lot of information in here that I haven’t seen any other tool have.

Josh Hadley  51:37

That’s amazing. I love it. nozzle.ai how do you spell that?

Kris Gramlich  51:43 

NOZZLE.ai. They got a trial. I’m not even affiliated with him. I just found it and used it. Nothing here, but definitely do a demo with them. It’s pretty cool.

Josh Hadley  51:57 

Awesome. I love that. Thanks for sharing a new tool. I’m excited to go check that one out myself. Kris, you also mentioned briefly with your launch strategy that like maybe there’s some influencers involved? Is that something you actively do? Have you seen success with that? What are some ins and outs about influencer marketing that people should be aware of?

Kris Gramlich  52:21 

Yeah, I think it’s something that people are going to need to have like in their tool bucket or the tool chest moving forward. No matter what I think everybody’s gonna be somebody thinks they’re an influencer. There’s social media everywhere. Tik Tok is working like crazy. Instagram reels like, you just got to be there. So we do have an influencer type of set up. We just Googled, like, pet niche, influencer, like company, and we found a website. Yeah, like, we found a website that, like, organizes all this, and you basically apply to be a brand on this website. And then these influencers, note apply to get your product. And you either pay them, 20 bucks, 50 bucks, or they just send them a free item. And in return, all that we ever ask is just tag us. So that we know that you tagged us and we can just share to our audience. But the main reason we’re doing is obviously like to get the user generated content like so like on our images, like we mentioned on this episode, like having proof of concept. And like, oh, these people buy it. So what we’ve done is when we get a lot of influencers that buy our product, or they posted about it, we asked them if we could get those images, like the raw file of it. And then I really liked Canva. I’ve played with Canva for years, but I feel like I’m getting better at it. So I’ll just take those images, I’ll put it into Canva make some type of like photo collage, and name like trusted by hundreds of dogs or 1000s of dogs. That’s cool. I’ll make that like my last image before the video shows up. Just to kind of like go through that storytelling of like, here’s the item. Here’s what it does. Here’s the benefits of it. Oh, yeah, here’s proof of concept. Like, here’s why people love it. And then here’s our video talking about our brand. So we do that just for the content. And then we do give a code out, like share this code, people can buy and here’s a code you can use. And we kind of just track that through that code. Something again, like I mentioned earlier is I don’t use attribution enough. I would love to, if there’s a tool out there where everybody like every influencer gets on attribution link, put my referral link in there and then and now I can just without me really having to do all this setup because it seems kind of a lot of work at the very beginning, like mainly do all these links, put your attribution link in there and then send them all out. If an influencer could just apply, they get their link, and I put my referral bonus in it. And then that’s the link they use, then we could be able to track like where that’s coming from. So that’s what we’re playing around with but yeah influence, I think it’s something you’re gonna need to do. If your product has a good vibe to it, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the video, but there was maybe a couple years ago or a year and a half ago, there was this like this gel bead, water gun type tool like gel beads that shoots these little like beads that are filled with water in this little like gun. Gel blaster I think is what it was called. But that thing went crazy. Like on TikTok people start seeing these kids having fun with these guns shooting around and it took off on Amazon. So I think this if you have a product that has a good story behind it and is shareable and has good content, you got to have some type of influencer, backing it and social media strategy.

Josh Hadley  55:46 

Yeah. So are you paying for like Instagram posts or whatever? Like, how are you compensating these influencers? And what have you found to be the most successful?

Kris Gramlich  55:57 

I try first to say free item? Like, we’ll give you a free item. Normally, that’s good. Normally, that’s like perfect. No problem. Here’s my shipping address. I’ll send it to them. And I’ll give them a coupon code when they get there. Normally, that’s fine. And so far, it’s been working really well just on that. But I do get some people are like, I’ll do it for $20. I’ll do $50 I’ve had some outrageous ones like 1800 two grand. I just, I feel like there’s a lot of other smaller fish I can go play with. Don’t need to worry about the higher ticket ones. I rather have like 200 Micro influencers, smaller influencers than just one big massive one. This is my opinion. But yeah, some of them are just like free items good. And that works great and have no pushback. And I do get some that say we’ll do it plus $20 or plus $50. And normally, I’m just like, that’s fine. We’ll just do it. I don’t mind paying 50 bucks or $100, just to get the content.

Josh Hadley  56:56 

Interesting. Interesting. But you’ve seen I know you give him some coupon codes, right. So you have seen sales then come from the influencer marketing, I would assume and that’s why you continue to go that route. Is that correct?

Kris Gramlich  57:09 

Yeah. And I’m experimenting now on a product that I’m not using PPC on. So I’m not using PPC on this item, just to see how much traction I can get from social media and no paid ads. I mean, I guess social media is paid out. But no Amazon paid ads. I’m not doing any ads on Amazon with this product. I’m just doing social media blasts. And I get a few like three, four or five sales a day through. The link I give them though is the if you go into mobile, and if you look at your product to the right, of your images that that will share a link, I get that link and I share that to the influencers. I just share this link. But I’m going to try that link to see if that has any boost.

Josh Hadley  57:53 

I love that. I’ve heard of that. That kind of hack, so to speak, that think Amazon does like that like sharing feature. Right? So adds that social virality.

Kris Gramlich  58:04 

Is the closest like white hat thing. Like the links in there? It’s coming from Amazon. You put it there. I’m gonna use it.

Josh Hadley  58:12 

Yeah, you’re not doing anything shady. Yeah, I’m a big believer in like, go white hat all the way. So I love that that strategy. Love it. Well said. I think that’s a lot of value. You’ve shared a lot of value. Kris, I think I could keep asking you question after question here. And you have so much experience. And you’ve seen not only in your own brands, but with other people that you’re looking under the hood of their businesses as you consult for them. So thank you for all the actionable strategies that you’ve shared today. I do have some final questions that I want to ask you. But before we get to those, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode. Here are the three takeaways that I noted Kris, let me know if you think I’m missing something. So to begin with, we started our conversation with listing images. So my actionable item for everybody should be to go take a look at your listing images. And if you are not having a professional, whether it be a graphic designer working on them or a professional photographer, working on them or doing 3d renderings, like that’s honestly where you should probably start your focus. And then we kind of layered on to that like focusing on that main image. How do you make your main image stand out compared to everything else that you see? So when you scroll on mobile, if you see everything’s kind of looking the same, you’ve got to start coming up with creative ways to maybe push the envelope a little, add a few extra features to your product to make it stand out right zooming in on a product or zooming out adding, if it comes with multiple items like adding more items or taking away a few items sold that you just want people to click in to that listing, that’s action item number one. Action item number two, I would say is, you’ve got to start building that audience, right. And so if you are not figuring out a way or have a strategy to obtain people’s email addresses, their phone numbers so that you can text them, I’m a big fan of text message marketing, the opt in rates are good. And the click through rates are even better than what you see an email because everybody knows their email inbox is just completely full. So figuring out a strategy of how you’re going to attract people, there would be another item. And I think kind of a bonus add on to that would be, if you have subscription related products, consider sending out sample packages of those other products that you have, in the hopes that those people are going to return, they’re going to upgrade to the actual product itself. And then they’re going to become a Subscribe and Save customer of yours. So I think that’s a fantastic, like free gift to be giving people and it’s just a ton of value, like who’s going to complain about receiving extra freebies in the mail. And then last but not least, when it comes to launching new products on Amazon, I think there’s three strategies that you can quickly implement is number one, reaching out to an audience. Number two, activating PPC from day one. And then action item number three would be incorporating some influencer marketing. And on that, note, I think you mentioned Kris, I wish there was like a software tool that could like give attribution links to all of these affiliates or influencers. When I was at the sell and scale summit, I ran into Refersion. And I’m actually working to get the CEO of Refersion on the podcast. But so far, they are the only ones that are claiming that they can give like kind of these affiliate links using your attribution link to influencers. So I need to do my due diligence on that a little bit more. But that’s a new thing, new software that I’ve come across that hopefully well.

Kris Gramlich  1:02:17 

I’m glad you mentioned that walked by their booth as well. I worked by their booth as well as they do here. Like what’s going on here? And I’m glad you brought that up. Yeah, that could be a good tool. If they could do all that. The referral link and bonus and all that good stuff. That’d be nice.

Josh Hadley  1:02:34 

Yeah. So we’ll see fingers crossed. Right. Maybe it’s on the roadmap down the road. So Kris, I kind of summed things up there. Is there anything that you feel like I was missing that our listeners should definitely pay attention to?

Kris Gramlich  1:02:52 

No, I think you hit a lot there, a lot of good stuff. I think you got it in there. That’s pretty good. Impressive. I’m definitely taking mental notes here on how you’re running this podcast.

Josh Hadley  1:03:03 

Well, I need to do this on the receiving side any a join your podcast and be on the opposite side. So I’ll take my own tips away. All right. So Kris, let’s dive into kind of the final questions here. Number one, what has been the most influential book that you’ve read? And why?

Kris Gramlich  1:03:21 

Yeah, and I put it back here, because all this question it’s Built To Sell is the book that I read most recently that I really got involved with. I tried to read some of these books. And it’s more like, here’s what I did. And here’s what I used to do. But this one is like it’s a made up story. It tells about a guy that has an advertising firm, and how his mentor told him like, don’t just be like a big advertising firm, find one spot within the advertising world that you like, and be the best at that one. And people will come to you and pay more, because you’re the expert with postcards, or whatever. So that was kind of cool like that really got me into it. And that kind of shifted my mind. Like don’t just be a generic Amazon seller, go be the best buy dog treat company you can be and be the best and be all in on it. So Built To Sell. Definitely, definitely a good book, quick read something I would definitely recommend.

Josh Hadley  1:04:20 

Awesome. Love that. I’m gonna have to go check that one out. I like that advice there. All right, next question here. What is your favorite productivity tool or resource?

Kris Gramlich  1:04:29 

So I think this one is pretty generic. I like Google Docs, Google Docs I use for most everything. Sharing stuff with VA sharing stuff with potential like investment or whatever it is, but like Google Docs is an easier way to store data I recently had. So the reason I’m in love with Google Docs now is because I had a bad experience with not using Google Docs. In my laptop. I lost all of it. Because nothing was shared in my Google doc drive. I lost all of it, so every bit of on my computer, so I had to redo it all. So now I’m like, Okay, we’re using Google Docs move forward. Everything is in here. Spreadsheets are in here, photos are in here. That way, if somebody’s computer burst and dies, you don’t lose that data anymore. So I think Google Docs is one that gets overlooked.

Josh Hadley  1:05:17 

Backing everything up to the cloud. I agree. I agree. Because we have like a lot of design files. And it’s the same thing for us. It’s like, we’ve got to have multiple backups. I cannot imagine what would happen if that just disappears one day, right? All right. Last question here, who is someone that you admire the most in the e-commerce space and that other sellers should be paying attention to?

Kris Gramlich  1:05:46 

This is a tough one. I saw that question. I like this stuff. Because I’m constantly like learning from other sellers. And like other people in the space, like to watch a lot of YouTube videos. One that has come to the top of my mind right now is he’s Heist on YouTube. And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen, he goes by Adam Heist on YouTube, he doesn’t even know if all which is great, because I don’t even know if it’s kind of funny, right? Like, and then there’s a couple on Instagram that like to follow the guy handle The Genius Company. He created a lot of good supplements that are in the supplement space. Big, big dollar. But he’s like 30 years old, 20 million and earnings. Like to follow him. There’s like not a set one, because they all bring different things to the table. Like, Adam Heist on YouTube, he brings like really good strategy and really good, like with things to do with keyword research. And then this newer guy I’m following on Instagram, he’s more like mental, like, get your mind right and this hard. I don’t really have like a set mentor, I would just say, find somebody like and to stick with them and follow their path. There’s a lot of other fake mentors out there. And a lot of them are teaching because they couldn’t sell. And so be careful what you watch out there.

Josh Hadley  1:07:03 

Yep, totally agree. Well, I think you’ve dropped a lot of knowledge today, Kris, and I appreciate your time. And if people want to follow up with you, they want to learn more. Maybe they’re interested in Sellozo. Tell us where they can find you. I think you also have like a free gift you wanted to offer our audience and tell us where to go.

Kris Gramlich  1:07:22 

Yeah, so sellozo.com. There’s a button on there. It says like request a demo. It doesn’t have to be a demo, it can just be a call. And we can just chat about whatever. As you can tell, I’m pretty passionate about the space. So that’s easy spot to get me if you want to talk to me personally, LinkedIn, Kris Gramlich, I’m on LinkedIn, you can always send me a private message. Happy to help a lot of talking shop. So if you need depth questions, I’d love to help out.

Josh Hadley  1:07:56 

Awesome. Well, Kris, thank you so much for joining us today. We’ll hope to chat again and see even more strategies as the years evolve and move on. So thanks for joining us.

Kris Gramlich  1:08:08 

Josh. Thank you. You’re great.

Outro  1:08:10 

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