Our guest on the 15th of February, 2021, on the sellerboard show was Kirsty Verity from REAL Coaching.
We talked about common mistakes made by Amazon sellers and how to avoid them.
Watch the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXJj7dCmJpQ
0:07
Hi, everybody, welcome to the next episode of the sellerboard show. My name is Vladi Gordon, my today’s guest is Kirsty from Real Coaching. And we’re gonna talk about curses bath as a seller, and about four common mistakes Amazon sellers make, whether you’re a new seller or an experienced seller, you’re gonna learn something. This was really, really valuable. And Christy mentioned a lot of hacks and tricks. So I really hope that you’re going to be inspired, and we’ll be able to apply some of this stuff to your business. Before we start, check out our software sellerboard.com It’s our profit analytics service for Amazon sellers with a bunch of additional tools in the pricing starts at $19 a month. So make sure you check out our free trial, the link is in the description. And now let’s start the show.
1:09
Hey, Kirsty, how are you? I’m good. Thank you. How you doing? Good. Thanks. Oh, the same studio, as always, doesn’t change too much these days. So. Yeah. Thanks for joining us, Kirsty. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so I’m originally from England. And as you can probably tell by the accent, but I moved to Australia when I was kind of in my late 20s. And you know, I love Australia is an absolutely amazing place and, you know, a lot sunnier than England, he can get a lot more sun.
1:47
And I was actually at a corporate background. So I worked on brands like Sensodyne toothpaste, Aquafresh toothpaste, Durex condoms, Pedigree, and Whiskers. Lots of different brands to basically build them to household names, right. And
2:08
I love that job. I mean, I absolutely love the kind of nitty-gritty of it in terms of really understanding the customer and being able to build awesome marketing campaigns. But the problem is, as you go up the ladder in an organization, and maybe a lot of people can,
2:22
you know, relate to this who’s listening, you don’t get to do any of the cool stuff anymore, you just kind of do a lot of the middle management, right. So you’ve got an awesome team that you try to manage, and then you’ve got managers that you’re trying to manage, and you just kind of get sandwiched in the middle. And I’m the type of person that has a lot of ideas. And when I feel that we’re going in the wrong direction, I want to be able to say that freely and law corporate environments, you can have struggled in that way. So I kind of got to that point. And I was like, okay, you know, this is, this just doesn’t sit with who I want to be as a person. Also, my big passion is travel. And, you know, I just wasn’t getting to do any of it. Because I was actually, you know, stuck in this in this role that I felt like, was kind of, I had to be the one that was holding it all together, right? So I decided to just look for something different. So it took me about two, three years before I actually found Amazon. But I tried lots of different things. I tried real estate, I tried eBay, actually.
3:23
I tried, share trading. Like I’ve got no idea how still how to do that. But I tried you know about all these courses, and actually read the four-hour workweek, which I think for a lot of people is a pivotal point, right? Where I was like, oh, okay, so really to be able to do what I really wanted to do, I need to kind of design a business that’s going to help me with the lifestyle rather than how much money I’m gonna make. So that’s how I kind of started out to think, Well, how do I get a business model? That is actually going to give me that? versus what product? You know, what kind of products Am I gonna sell? What kind of services can I do? Or what kind of houses Can I flip or whatever? And so, what year was it? When did you start with? I started in 2013 or started looking in 2011 2010.
4:10
But it was 2013 when I went for the Amazon thing. So yeah, I mean, like I said, I started all those other things. I was working full time. But there was always something, there was always a problem with those models. You know, it meant that I had to be physically in the spot or it was too up and down. It was too risky. And it wasn’t going to give me a predictable income that I knew I could work with. So I then started to look at online e-commerce and I built websites I was selling Clickbank products worked to a point, but it was just before and this is showing how old I am now right? But it was just before that whole
4:47
penguin was it penguin or something like that update.
4:53
Yeah, so I kind of bought a course that was around doing it before that and then I was like, Ah crap, so I’m gonna have to completely redo this
5:00
And then just being on someone’s list, I got a, an affiliate link for someone’s and it was actually ASM. So I was part of ASM one, which then there were no tools, there were no, you know, there was no real strategy, it was just like, Hey, we can sell some stuff on Amazon. Let’s go and do it. So that’s what I did. And I bought the course. And I was like, Okay, this makes a lot of sense because I think I tried all the other stuff. I knew what I didn’t want, right, and knew what wasn’t gonna work. But I knew the core elements of what should work. And I’d worked on products, I bought products, you know, my job,
5:36
developed products branded them, and sold them for a higher price than what I actually bought them for. Right. So I knew that kind of worked. And so I wasn’t scared of sourcing or anything like that. Because even though I’ve done it in a corporate role, and had a massive team that was doing it, that the process wasn’t scary. So it just kind of made a lot of sense. And so what I ended up doing was because I’d spent so much time thinking about this thing,
6:01
I actually ended up negotiating a what we call a redundancy from my role, and I’d been there for like 10 years. So I actually got a year’s pay. And I was on a good salary. So I was like, it gave me a nice cushion. And I was like, right, I’m just gonna do this, I’m the type of a person it’s like, if I know, I’ve got like, a foot to go back, you know, like a little toe in the water to go back to, I’m probably not gonna do it. So I’m like, I’ve just got to go on and do it. And so I took the redundancy and actually moved to Bali, to live the lifestyle that I actually wanted to lead, even though I didn’t have the lifestyle yet. You know, I mean, it was also cheaper to live. And I wanted to kind of break that momentum from, I’ve got, of course, I’ve got all my friends and everything. But I knew I’d end up probably falling back into the routine of going out with that with them, you know, talking about the same problems, blah, blah, blah. I was like, I need a total break from that I need to kind of get my brain space into something else. So that’s what I did. So I started the business. I got my first product going.
7:03
And I actually never sold the product because I was in Bali. So I just kind of picked something. I was like, yeah, that’s cool. It looks good. And off we go. And then I gave myself a goal of getting to $6,000 a month before I went back to Australia. And I did that in the first six weeks. And so I was like, Oh my God, this thing’s gonna work. Right? This is so when was it? Remember? What was it? Who knows when? When was it? What year? Was it? Yeah, it was 2013. It was October. I still remember my first sale. It was the 22nd of October 2013. Yeah, okay, nice. All right, then what was it? Can you tell us or Yeah, it was a jump rope. So what I decided to do was, because I’ve been in the branding space, and this is actually one of the core areas I think that people miss, is, there’s so much you can sell right on Amazon, there’s so much. And I think people are so freaked out or worried about what’s the product? What is the product that’s going to make me a millionaire, or what’s the product that’s going to get me what I want.
8:03
And I had the mindset of, I don’t think one product is going to get me there because I hadn’t any precedent, right? There was no, nobody stood on stage saying, hey, so I was like, Okay, I’m just gonna focus on something that I like, I’m going to build a brand around that, I’m going to focus on a customer that I could relate to.
8:22
And I’m going to look for something small, light, cheap, because I gave myself a budget of two and a half $1,000 for my first product, in terms of getting the first order in and everything. And I was like, yeah, if I lose two and a half $1,000 I’m not gonna be that bothered, right. So that’s kind of my, that was the mindset that I kind of put in place. And so I decided to go into the CrossFit niche, I was into, you know, fitness,
8:48
efficient fitness, and I kind of,
8:52
you know, enjoyed that mindset of these people will want more stuff to help them perform better. And so that’s why I built a brand around is that and so I looked again for products that would fit that ideal customer. And that what that helps you to do is right at the beginning is to filter out all the other stuff that you could sell on Amazon, right? Because there are so many people that go, there’s been years, like literally, I’ve met people that bought a course and two years later, they still haven’t picked a product because they’re like, I’m still looking. So if you narrow that search down, right from day one, you are gonna find some opportunity within that niche, right.
9:35
Do you think that still works? Because, you know, obviously things changed a lot since 2013. Yeah, absolutely. still works. We work with people every day that we do this process with.
9:47
Because then the next phase is not necessarily just the idea of the client, right? It’s okay, what are the numbers behind the product? And I think that’s where my background came in handy as well is because as partners
10:00
In my job, I had to present numbers that made sense to the board. That meant, yeah, we’re going to make a profit, we’re going to get cash flow from this, depending on what the objective is, right. And so when you’re first starting as a seller, you want to have something that’s going to make you a profit, you want to have something that’s going to bring your cash back quickly. So you can reinvest it back into the business. I mean, you still want that no matter what stage you’re at in the business, but you just get more different problems as you move through, right.
10:27
And you want to be able to do what needs to be within your budget, right, you don’t want to take a massive risk by the beginning, because you could end up blowing all your cash.
10:36
So you want to take the calculated risk, and you want to base it on a target, you want to base it on a sales target, not just Hey, I’m going to stick this on Amazon hope I’m going to sell 100 units because Jeff said he certainly sold 100 units over here. And so, you know, we work with tools, like, you know, Market Research Data Tools, that you can base estimates and targets off, that you can base assumptions around, that essentially gives you something to aim for, and you work in numbers out a base around the marketplace based around your competition. And so you know exactly how much money you’re going to, you’re going to make even before you’ve launched the product. And one area, I didn’t do it in the beginning, because Amazon advertising actually didn’t exist, or it was just kind of coming in.
11:22
But one thing that we really focus on now as well is what are your core keywords that you’re going to launch with? so that you can understand that if they’re too expensive or not for you to actually make, you know, make your rankings work and all that other stuff, especially when you first start out? So
11:40
yeah, that’s, you know, picking the niche helps you narrow, but then the numbers really do the work in terms of what products you’re gonna sell. So Christie, this was basically what happened since 2013 is still a seller, no or no, I know you’re a coach. So tell us a bit about this. Yeah. So within the first 810 months,
12:03
I made a million dollars, not made a million dollars, and taken out million dollars, but I got $4 million in sales on Amazon, I launched two products, which and my strategy at that point was to diversify into different marketplaces. So rather than have tons and tons of products in the market, because I think I’d worked in a global business, it just kind of made sense. I was like, Oh, well, if it sells here, it should sell over there. And so that’s what I did, I expanded quite quickly. And what that allowed us to do is actually double the business very, very easily, especially in the second year, because we were kind of launching two things all at once. Where were you selling in the US, I assume, originally in the US. And then I moved directly to the UK, and then actually got contacted by someone in Germany because they were just figuring out the German platform at that point.
12:56
And so I launched into Germany pretty quickly as well. So I had three markets going.
13:02
And then since then, I did to kind of branch out into Italy and Spain and France. But for me, specifically my business, the numbers just weren’t working out. So I’ve kind of like brought it back down. But also in Canada as well. Canada is kind of a great market right now as well. So especially with lockdowns, right, everybody buys stuff online and Amazon, like have, you know, now living in Canada, it’s really the only place you can get anything from that comes in a decent timeframe. So it’s kind of a cool place to look at in terms of expansion right now. So yeah, that was my strategy is to do that.
13:38
And, you know, since then I’ve sold over $20 million in e-commerce.
13:44
And I really work at a 20% net margin. So that’s one thing that we really focus on with our clients is to build up a business so that you’re got a very healthy net margin, which is your costs after everything in the business once you even when you build a team and your advertising costs and all that. So basically, it’s the money when which should take home, which you take out of the business and can spend, right. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, exactly. So
14:11
and that. And that’s one thing, I think because I needed to secure my income quickly because I didn’t have a job, right. I mean, I had this nice buffer.
14:21
But that’s another area that we really focus on with people now is to start with the income goal that you want. Not just I want a million dollars in the bank, or,
14:31
you know, I want to leave my job. Well, yeah, that’s a goal, but you need to figure out what’s the money you need. And then you work the product numbers back to the income that you want to make.
14:45
And you do that before you even put any money down on any product. And so you’ve got a plan before you even like, you know, fork any money out. So Christine, what’s like, what’s your focus though? Is it more about coaching or selling or both? Both really, because mine was
15:00
Business is pretty hands-off, you know, I’ve got a team there that essentially do pretty much everything I need to do.
15:08
I like to keep things simple. So I just rinse and repeat what works, right? There are a lot of shiny objects that I call shiny objects out there that, you know, essentially, you can
15:21
diversify into different channels. But it’s a whole new business model, right. And, you know, maybe I want to sell the business one day. But right now what it does is it just actually brings cash flow back through to me, without me having to do very much for it. So that’s kind of my focus right now. And the coaching side, for me is more rewarding, because I’ve kind of figured out the Amazon stuff. So the coaching side is more rewarding because for us, we can get results very quickly for people we can diagnose. You know, a lot of, especially when your existing seller, you probably on the cusp of greatness, you just got a few leaky buckets in the business that you’re not aware of. And so we’re able to plug those pretty quickly. And then we’re also able to mind some of the gold that people are already sitting on.
16:12
So let’s talk about some mistakes. No, no, you’re talking about it’s some other show. So yeah, what are the typical mistakes and Amazon seller, like, which you encounter and on how to fix them? Yeah. So the first I mean, we kind of touched on it. But definitely, the first one is the product selection piece.
16:36
You have to spend too much time because you’re fearful that you, you people, it’s not going to work, are you fearful, you’re going to lose all your money, right? So number one, a lot of people don’t even start. And the reason they don’t start is that they don’t understand the numbers behind the product. Now the people that do start, they don’t take into account all the hidden costs that come with launching the product. So like we said, once you launch the product, you actually need to number one, launch it, obviously, you need to invest in that launch, right, you can’t just stick it on Amazon and hope for the best. And you need to maintain it. And so that all cost money. And also you need to be you need to understand how much it’s going to cost before you actually launch the product. And so that’s an area that we really look into, like I said, aiming for a target First of all, then make sure that you’ve got really good profit margin. Now, from that what I mean is it’s not a 20% gross margin. For us, it needs to be at least 40% gross margin, so that you’ve got 20% to play with in terms of your ad costs and things like that. So how do you do this? Like my experience is, you know, Amazon has gotten really competitive after all these years. So it’s kind of hard to pick a niche with a high margin. I mean, some, some guys are also saying, you know, we’re not going to compete on the price, we’re going to build a premium brand, right. But the problem is, so many people are trying to build a premium brand, right? So there’s a competition of premium brands as well. And so is it still possible? And how do you like find such a product? Yeah, so what we do is we have parameters. So I like to when we’re doing our first original market research piece, we’re looking for products that are doing over $20,000 a month, right in terms of sales. And so that’s kind of a parameter to aim for. Because usually the numbers kind of work out to be, we want to aim for at least $3,000 profit per product per month, right? So we’re not expecting,
18:36
you know, one product to give us $50,000 a month, we’re expecting one product to give us maybe $10,000 a month and $3,000 profit right off that $40,000 gross margin, or sorry, $4,000 gross margin, because then we know at 20%, we’re going to take to two k for ourselves. So just look at first for those types of products. And we want to be looking for something that’s not below $10, right at $10 in price. So we found a kind of sweet spot that tends to be over that $10 mark and the $30 mark between 10 and $30. Because what that means is, is that generally, the products are less expensive for you to buy.
19:16
But there’s still enough margin that you know, you can take within that price point range. And then we have a target price. So we actually work all the numbers out to a 40% margin. And then we go to our sourcing, and we actually use sourcing agents. So we use agents on the ground in China, who can negotiate better probably than what we can write.
19:36
And we say, here’s what I want. And here’s my target price. Here’s the price I want to pay for this product
19:43
landed. So they then go out and do all the hard work and do all the negotiation.
19:49
You’ve got a course you still gotta test the quality of the products you still got to make sure that it’s not the can give you a price and then it falls apart. Right. So you want to get samples you want to test it you want to do all that inspect
20:00
stuff. But by having that target price already in place, making the numbers work, you can find products that will meet that target. And we don’t want anything that doesn’t meet that, that financial target. So I’ll be like, I mean, probably, there’s competition in all niches Meanwhile, right? So you’re not going to find a niche where which is really empty. So unless something that’s not selling, right,
20:28
so how do you deal with those competitors? I mean, okay, you found a product, which is doing 20 k in sales? That sounds good. But I mean,
20:38
what might happen that you launch a new one, and it just doesn’t sell and you don’t make it into this first search result. Okay, so the next Yeah, the next phase is then before you even put the product down, put the money down on the product is to then look at, well, what’s it going to take me to be able to be competitive, right? So that obviously, you know, the price we’ve already dealt with, but what are the keywords that I need to mine, if you like, to be able to get me a certain volume that meets my sales target, right. And so if, if you do it that way, what you’re doing is you’re kind of reverse engineering, the launch process, you’re going to understand the costs it takes to be able to and then you’re also going to look at your competition, and see where their gaps are, what they’re not already doing.
21:26
Like I’m basically saying, there’s always a way to launch, it’s just a question of money. Like, even if I, I wouldn’t say it’s just money, it’s also strategy. So what you’re trying to do is to find an Achilles heel, in the competition that’s already there. So, they might be doing a lot of volumes, they might be paid one for top keywords, but other any other keywords out there that they’re not ranking for, that you can rank for. But that will give you still give you decent volume that will make the numbers work, right. So they’re cheap, tend to be cheaper keywords, there tends to be less competitive space. And then once you’ve got those keywords flowing, and you’ve got enough profit margin, you can then go for the higher keywords, as long as it works with the numbers. So understanding how much those top keywords cost, then it becomes a cost game in an investment game. But as long as you understand as long as you’ve got that margin, and you’ve got that,
22:22
that free rein if you like, and you know that, then you can spend more than you competition.
22:32
What are you thinking about reviews? Actually,
22:36
I don’t worry about reviews at all anymore when a part of our launch strategy is very, very simple, right? Just go out with a red hot price, when you first start, start to get, you know, make sure that your listing stands out versus everyone else.
22:52
That’s a key area that a lot of people just feel like, yeah, I’ve done my listing. I did it based on some training that I got, but not a lot of people actually go back and review their listing, how does it look? versus the competition? How does that main image stand out versus everyone else on the page? What’s gonna draw the eye. And so we really focus hard on getting high conversion rates. And we’d like to be at least over 20% conversion. But ideally, you know, over 30% or 40% conversion rates Well,
23:21
that’s where the marketing comes in. So if you’ve got your niche, very, very clear about who you’re talking to, what they want, how do they feel? How are they going to feel when they use your product, then all that can be brought into, you know, the types of images you’re gonna create, and the types of bullet points, the types of April’s content, the types of video you might make right to stand out versus everyone else. And that’s kind of where the marketing bit comes in.
23:45
But yeah, you want to have a listing that really stands out so that people are going to click on you versus everyone else. A simple trick for that is literally, one thing we like to do is, is differentiate through color. Now people kind of get a bit freaked out. They’re like, Yeah, but all my competition is black. Right? All right, well make it what are your brand colors. So in my case, my brand colors were black, red, silver. And so I made all my products regardless of whether the customer told me they wanted one or not, I made more red, because, in the category, everything was black. And so just by making that stands out, straight away, nice. And then orienting, you know, the image if everybody’s like looking one way, you can just literally flip the image or just make it different. And then what we like to do is just take a screenshot of page one search results.
24:36
Try some different main images, and just, you know what you’re doing copy and paste it onto somebody else’s listing. So and just ask them which listing stands out on this page. And you want everyone obviously to go Yeah, that one which is yours, right and so that’s even before you’ve even put the listing up, but you can just let you do a screenshot pop the pop the different types of
25:00
images that you want to test out and see which pops. That’s an interesting idea. I’ve never heard about this approach nice. You can kind of test the conversion before you’re actually on Amazon, you can use some, some tool or Facebook poll or something like the pick for. That’s interesting. So you tell us about the next. The next mistake. Okay, we were talking about the selection.
25:24
A little bit about standing out. So what’s the next biggest mistake? Yeah, so I think the next one is we talked about in terms of building a brand, right? So we kind of touched on that. But a lot of people tend to think, what’s the court? What’s a product that’s going to sell well, and then just go, Okay, that’s brand number one. Okay, let’s do brand number two. And then when we talk to people, we’re like, Okay, so how many products? Have you got the governor? What five brands? What? How is that, and what they’ve actually done is just launch five different products, right? But called them brands. And the problem with that is that you get overwhelmed very, very quickly, because what we’ve just been talking about in terms of standing out, you have to then understand those core clients, for each of those different types of products, you’re not actually building a real branded business, you’re just launching disparate products, that will get you some money, and it will, you know, churn, but it’s gonna be churn and burn, you’re gonna get overwhelmed. And also, if you don’t want to build a business to sell one day, most people want to buy, buy a business want to buy a branded business, yeah, also want to keep that customer. So at the end of the day, it’s gonna be a lot easier to sell to the same person with something else that you’re going to bring in that they want. Right. And so I think the core mistake is, for everything around the businesses, people are always very stuck on the short term. And they don’t start with the long term goal of what they actually want to be actually, you know, this is what happened to me when I was a seller. So I started, like one product, and obviously, you need a brand for your first product, right? And then I kind of didn’t think I should build a brand, or I wasn’t even sure I can build a brand, right?
27:14
I thought, Okay, what worked for me was just picking a product by numbers. So I’m gonna do this 20 times, and I’m gonna be a millionaire. So, but as he said, I got totally overwhelmed. So I wasn’t thinking about customers or target group or marketing. So that, you know, I was, I wasn’t even managing the suppliers, you know, because it was just too much time I had like 15 very different products, different suppliers, constantly different quality problems. And, you know, that, so this overwhelmed me completely. And the listings, I was just happy when a product was out there and didn’t ever take a look again. So yeah, I’m completely with you. And I think, at the end of the day, most of my products kind of died. You know, so some of them were profitable somewhere, or not. But, you know, in the end, I had a couple of products left, which were, which were profitable. And this was something like a brand. So all the folders had one lifter. Yeah. And it’s funny because one thing we say is because we know that people fall in love with products, right, because you have this idea, and you’re like
28:29
this, this is the thing, right? This is the one that’s going to be the one type of thing.
28:33
But then like you said, if it doesn’t work, a lot of people then are so emotionally attached, that they can’t get rid of the product. And so what we say is, you know, build your brand, fall in love with the brand, but what it stands for, who you’re serving, and then the product, if it doesn’t work out for whatever reason, it’s not hitting your targets, you can easily get rid of it, right? So we say you know, your product, your products, not like your kids, you can actually get rid of them when they’re annoying you. So you can you know, do that very, very quickly.
29:00
And another mistake we see people time and time again is they feel like they’re differentiating their products, or launching new products, by launching variations, or new colors, or, and then the classic is, you know, all my customers said I’d love it if it was in green, or I’d love it if it was in beige or whatever. But the problem is, is that if you don’t have a real reason for being for a product, then all you’re doing is diversifying the sales that would have come on that one product.
29:28
And not only are you diversifying and diluting it, you’re actually losing sales because a lot of people go on will they’ll have a look around and they don’t really know which one to choose. And so they’ll leave and just go and buy something else. It’s a lot simpler for them to make a choice right now. They’re not sat there going. This is such an awesome product and I’ve been waiting for this my whole life and I really don’t understand the core benefits between these ones and they, they’re just like, Alright, which one is better? I want too much choice. I’m gonna move on. Yeah.
29:57
So that’s another area
30:00
A lot of people come to us, they’ve, they’ve kind of tied up a lot of money in inventory on products that are not selling through.
30:07
And so it has to have a very, very core reason for being if anybody’s in this position, what you should do is look at the sales of each of your variants. And I would guarantee there’s one variant that will probably bring in 90% of the sales. So get rid of the rest, like don’t just think, yeah, but the pink ones really got none of that. Just get rid of all of them. And then usually what happens is even that one skew gets more sales because it’s not being diluted with everything else. Yeah, sure. Sometimes, like you would pick a gray one, if there’s a dark blue one, start thinking, Okay, maybe I should get this one. Yeah.
30:43
Cuz that we actually went to the guy who’s doing really well, I mean, he was doing 150,000, a year, sorry, a month.
30:50
And he was, he had two colors of each of his products. And I was like, Okay, well, how much do you actually, you know, tighten up in that, like, let’s just add it up? How much are you spending each month on these products, and also, he’s getting long term storage fees because one wasn’t selling as well as the other one. So we just kind of added up the opportunity cost of getting rid of it. And then or keeping it. So we did that. And then what he did was say, well, let’s just take that money. And you can probably launch another four products, with the cash that you’ve got tied up in those products. And that’s what he did. And he kind of doubled his business in, you know, in six months, because he was able to have the cash flow. It was already and that’s what I mean about the hidden gems in your business that you’re probably aware of.
31:34
Because just sell out the product, don’t order anymore, get that cash out and launch products with actual core benefits, and then differences. Cool. I’ve never actually, it was never clear to me never talked about this to anybody on this pocket. So guys don’t watch too many variants, you know, think? Yeah.
31:56
Unless he’s got a core reason like it sizing, right. But another key thing to do with sizing is to go Can I make something that’s adjustable, which can obviously lower your costs, but then also, it’s different, right? For everyone else, it makes the choice a lot simpler. Yeah, I can get one for me and I can adjust stay doesn’t matter if it’s a perfect size or not.
32:17
I know this because I’ve done it myself, I’ve got a white belt, and it’s I’ve launched different sizes, and then I get a bad review. If they pick the wrong size. Now it’s kind of the customer’s fault, right? they’ve picked the wrong size for them. But then they just give you a one-star review because it didn’t fit. And so you kind of like open yourself up to all these
32:36
bad review prospects if you like, because, and it’s no fault of the product is just the choice. You’re making it harder right for them?
32:45
Well, yeah, you’re right. Of course, sometimes, you know, no, size needs, right. So yeah. Interesting. Okay, so what’s the next one? I would say? I mean, we again, we touched on this, but in terms of conversion rates now, you’d be amazed at how many people don’t even know what a conversion rate is. So if you actually go on to your seller central dashboard, it’s unit session percentage, right? So if people are sitting there going, what is my conversion rate? I don’t know, I was actually talking to someone the other day, they have five products, and they didn’t know what a conversion rate was. So I was like, Okay, let’s have a look at that. And if your conversion rate is definitely less than 20%, start there first, before you even worry about Amazon sponsored ads or anything like that, right? Because you can double your business, if you’ve got a 10% conversion rate, and you doubled it to 20%. You’ve literally doubled your business, right? So a conversion rate means anyone landing on your listing? Are they going to buy it or not? How many people buy it. And so for that, what you need to do is really focus on your images. And one thing we like to do is you’ve got your ideal clients already know who they are, you’ve got the product.
33:54
What, what makes that product?
33:57
Why do they want to buy your product over everyone else? How do they feel when they use your product, and come up with the core benefits around that? Right? So a lot of people tend to focus on the feature of the product. So like, there’s this got, you know, three, three cameras in the back and a very hard glass surface, right? That’s a feature bar, does that mean? Well, I’m a total klutz. And Mr. And literally, this is my other phone, which has got like a massive crack in it. And, you know, I’ve basically, I think I’ve changed this screen on this four times, right? So it’s like, stop spending money on broken screens, right? That would be a benefit of the feature. And so the more you get really focused on this, the easier it’s going to be to sell people because people don’t want to buy features they want to buy what’s How is it gonna make my life better? Write those things down, and then literally storyboard out what an image would look like for each of those benefits. And you’ll find that customers, they don’t have to think they’re literally looking at your listing. They don’t have to scan it and they’re like, yeah,
35:00
That’s the one they’re talking to me, right. And so your listing is like an ad, it’s like you watch TV ads, you want to see magazine ads, you see online ads, whatever. It’s literally an ad that you’re putting in front of a customer. So the more time you spend there, the more effective your ad campaigns are going to be right? Because the more relevant traffic you’re going to bring in, the more they’re going to convert on that traffic, rather than shoving a load of traffic to your listing that doesn’t convert. So always look at your metrics. Where is the problem in my sales right now? Is it a conversion problem? So the unit sessions percentage, or is it a traffic problem, which is a sessions
35:40
a number of sessions per day, and look at it per day, and then look at it per month? Don’t look at it over the next the last 12 months, that’s not going to tell you anything, right. And so
35:49
by focusing on those two call metrics, conversion, first, get the Get your listing, right, then you can look at sessions. And we’d like to aim for at least 100 sessions a day.
35:59
If you’re not getting that, then there’s either a problem with your main image, there’s probably a problem maybe with your pricing, are you more expensive than everybody else in the category? And also you’re not driving?
36:13
traffic through, say Amazon sponsored ads, right? So but get your conversion rate first before you before you spend any more money on ads. So you mentioned 20%, right? Can you talk more about this? What’s bad? I thought like 10% is a normal conversion. But like what types it might be normal, but it’s not. You can easily get 20% conversion by just making a few tweaks like I talked about there, right. That’s our benchmark. Tony said. Anything over that? Is freakin amazing. Right? But you know, you can definitely get that I have products that do 50% 60% conversion. A lot of people do as well. Yeah. Because the reason for go right back to when I first started, the reason I probably focused on that was that I didn’t understand Amazon ads, I didn’t really understand ranking, right? I was like, Okay, what do I know, I know the customer. And I just need to get a sale. So if I can put my effort into that I don’t need to outsource anything, I just need to focus on the core conversion factors. So number one, obviously, we talked about the listing, but also your pricing is a great conversion factor. Because especially when you first start out. And then also your reviews, as you said, if you’ve got anything less than a four-star, then in your category, if everybody’s got 4.5, and you’ve got four, you’ve got a conversion problem, you’ll have a conversion.
37:37
If you’re $30 more expensive than anyone else, and you can’t demonstrate why you’re that more expensive, then you’ll have a conversion problem as well. Right. So you have to think about all those core elements within the conversion, conversion factor. So pricing, I definitely understand like reviews, agree on pictures, probably this is the most important part of the listing. So do you feel like there’s anything else in the listing, which is important? Because when I’m shopping on Amazon, I normally don’t read, I never actually read the description unless it’s something super technical. But your title and pictures and reviews and prices? This is this is it. But did you feel like there’s
38:21
make sense to optimize something else bullets, I still think it’s great to optimize your bullets because even as a process, it gets you clear on what the comment is. And then you can translate that into images. So there’s going to be some people out there that are like you. And I’m like that as well. I’m a visual person, I just to show me what it is and awesome. But there are also people that are very more detail-focused. And so they want to read every little line, right? And then also your April’s content, I think it’s important to stand out versus your competition to look like a high-level brand. Right? So even more people go Yeah, but I’m just like rebranding this from China. So what that is the majority of products out in the marketplace, that’s what massive brands do. You know, they don’t make new stuff, really.
39:15
So that’s how you have to think of yourself a big brand, how do I want my brand to look to my ideal client. And so it’s like putting on a like a bowl game right? Or like getting dressed up to go out for dinner, versus the person that’s just going to rock up in the shorts and T-shirts, right? That’s the kind of thing that you’re comparing yourself to. So just think best dressed, best benefits Connect well with the customer. And then I think another area is it is hard to do it on Amazon, right because we’re limited in terms of customer service, but just giving an awesome experience to the customer on the back end.
39:51
Just send that one email like have, make sure that you’ve got a great tone of voice talk to the customer how they want to be talked to not like a marketer.
40:00
Not business owner, hey, you know, I’ve seen emails where, where they’re like, I’m starting my own business, and I’m doing this and I’m doing that. So make sure you give me a review. Well, they don’t care if you’re a small business owner or not, right? It’s like, what’s in it for them? So whenever you feel like you’re writing copy, or you’re writing things, and it’s I, we, it’s changed, it’s to you. And that helps you connect with who the customer is.
