0:00

the sellers you work with or just from

0:03

the industry .

0:04

Yeah , I still think inventory

0:06

planning is one of the biggest ones . The

0:09

reason I mention it is because it is just so

0:11

painful when you run out of inventory . For

0:14

people that don't have like

0:16

a plan , I would say half

0:18

60 days of inventory on the side

0:20

. I know this is easy to say and

0:22

a lot of people are like yeah , it's easy for you to say

0:25

that , right , but like , where am I going to pull out like money

0:27

for 60 days of stock ? You can

0:29

use things like Wayflyer . Wayflyer

0:31

are very affordable . You can essentially

0:34

get the funding by

0:36

a PO for your products

0:38

and pay for that

0:41

funding with your profits . If

0:43

you're not profitable , it's not about you , You're not

0:45

going to get it anyways , but it's not advisable

0:47

either way to get a loan when you're not profitable

0:49

. But when you are profitable

0:51

you can use other people's money , just

0:53

so you can have an additional 60 days of

0:55

stock sitting on the side and

0:57

then just kind of run through it . So send

0:59

that 60 days to Amazon , replenish that 60

1:02

days . So , worst case scenario

1:04

, you have 30 days of stock

1:06

at Amazon at all times minimum

1:08

, bare minimum and 60 days of stock

1:11

urgency stock . I'm telling

1:13

you it may sound like a

1:15

lot , but you will lose

1:17

way more money running out of stock . So that's the first

1:19

thing , and the second thing that

1:22

I'm noticing is margins

1:24

are getting tight for a lot of brands and

1:27

I think brands are like

1:29

they're not really proactively

1:31

looking for all the ways that they can improve their margins

1:33

. I think there's a lot of ways you can

1:35

get creative . You can add variations to your listing

1:38

that have better margins to kind

1:40

of leverage existing traffic . You're

1:42

already getting those people into your listing . What

1:45

if 10 , 20% of them bought this

1:47

other thing that had a little bit more margin or this other

1:49

thing that had a little bit more margin ? So variations

1:51

are great . I think negotiating

1:54

with suppliers on better

1:56

pricing , better terms , all of that stuff

1:58

is going to help cash flow management and I

2:00

think going into 2024

2:03

, cash flow is going to be incredibly important . So

2:05

being very tight with that one

2:07

thing that I saw last or

2:09

this past year commonly , which

2:11

I'm surprised about , is a lot

2:13

of issues during manufacturing

2:15

make it to Amazon . So skipping inspections

2:18

is definitely not something I would

2:20

recommend . I did it when I first

2:22

launched on Amazon . I skipped an inspection and

2:25

60% of my first batch was

2:27

completely destroyed . I

2:30

had to message every single person that got a product

2:32

and beg for forgiveness . So I don't get like

2:34

a bunch of like one-star reviews . So I

2:37

would say quality control matters

2:40

more than anything .

2:41

What about PPC side ? I mean , I know you guys do

2:43

a lot of the advertising components for your clients

2:45

. So , like on the advertising side , advertising

2:47

has become overwhelming for me . I

2:50

used to be very hands-on with it and

2:52

now I'm like , oh my gosh , there's like

2:54

some new release like every week . So I'm

2:56

curious are there any areas where you've seen that

2:59

there's some really common mistakes that maybe

3:01

newer brands are doing , or even the experienced

3:03

ones , or ones that just are not as in tune

3:05

with their advertising ?

3:06

Yeah , I think the biggest thing that I

3:09

see brands do is is utilizing

3:11

like multiple ad types

3:14

just for the sake

3:16

of like utilizing them , so like sponsor product

3:18

and sponsor brand and sponsor

3:20

display . And one

3:22

of the issues of that is

3:24

you have an organic rank

3:27

like right here you put a sponsored ad

3:29

and then you know , let's

3:32

say like you were getting 100 sessions . Now

3:34

that you have a sponsored , maybe you're getting 120

3:36

sessions . You know , because it's like most of the people

3:39

are seeing both and there's

3:41

not that many more that are clicking on the

3:43

sponsored . So how much

3:45

did you spend for that ? You know sponsored rank

3:47

versus how many additional sessions

3:50

did you get ? Because that's ultimately like your potential

3:52

for making sales ? Then you add a sponsored

3:54

headline search ad on there . So now

3:56

there's another opportunity for people

3:59

to spend money . But then you go from

4:01

100 and 20 to maybe 125 sessions

4:03

. Then you add a sponsored video and

4:05

now you know you're going to 128

4:07

sessions . So you essentially created three

4:10

you know opportunities

4:12

for people to spend more money while

4:15

only adding like a very small

4:17

amount of , you know , new sessions

4:19

that are ultimately turned into sales

4:21

. So that's one thing that I've noticed . A lot

4:24

of people will come to me and say we should be utilizing

4:26

video . I'm like , how do you know that we should be

4:28

utilizing video ? And

4:30

I'm like , okay , cool , we're

4:32

not utilizing video right now . I'm going to

4:34

spend $200 a day on video . And

4:37

let's see what happens to total sales . We

4:39

spend $200 a day on video . Total

4:41

sales go up by $250

4:44

. And it's like , oh , look at the video in

4:46

campaign manager has an 8x row , as I told

4:48

you , so good idea . I'm like , are you sure this

4:50

is a good idea ? Because it looks to me

4:52

like you only made , you

4:54

know , $250 more and your profits

4:57

are actually less now . So I'm

4:59

like let's pause video . I pause video

5:01

, profits are back up and

5:04

you know this is something that a lot of people miss is

5:06

Amazon's attribution is really

5:08

bad , at least from what I'm seeing

5:10

is you can have like one

5:12

day you're increasing spend and then you

5:14

notice that your PPC sales go down , but your

5:16

total sales go up . And then you decrease spend and

5:18

you notice that your PPC sales go up , but your total sales

5:20

go down . So things don't move in the in like

5:23

directions that make sense and the only

5:25

possible explanation is that attribution is off

5:27

. And because attribution

5:29

is off , it's also off when you look at sponsored

5:31

products versus sponsored brand versus sponsored display

5:33

, because essentially the same people clicking

5:36

on organic , clicking on sponsored you know the different

5:38

types charging you money . But

5:41

when you just look at the top line you notice

5:43

that like , okay , let's correlate the

5:45

ad spend versus top line . Okay

5:47

, by adding sponsored brand , I didn't

5:49

notice that I got that much of an increase in

5:51

you know top line , and this also happens

5:53

with organic versus sponsored products . So

5:56

if you're organically ranked really high , sometimes

5:58

adding a sponsored position in there results

6:01

in you getting 10% more

6:03

more you know sessions

6:05

, but spending 30%

6:07

more , 40% more , resulting in a net

6:09

loss . So that's one thing on the

6:11

on the ad side that I've noticed very commonly and

6:14

, like you said , things are getting

6:16

more sophisticated . There's a lot more advanced

6:18

tools and I think that also

6:20

is like a double H sword . Yes , there's

6:22

new tools , things that are great , but also I feel

6:24

like it can cause a distraction to

6:26

a lot of people when the fundamentals are

6:28

the same . You know , launching campaigns

6:30

, you're essentially trying to get visibility on keywords

6:33

, identify which one of which ones

6:35

of those keywords you can spend

6:37

money on and they'll convert profitably , versus which

6:39

ones you know you shouldn't spend money on because

6:41

they're not converting profitably . You

6:43

know a lot of people just get away from that and

6:46

start leaning into more . Let's

6:48

do day parting . You know , like when

6:50

this Amazon marketing stream rolled

6:52

out , everyone was talking about day parting . And I'm like guys

6:55

, I've already tried day parting manually . I'm

6:57

telling you this stuff it's bullshit and the attribution

6:59

is off and all this stuff . And they all tried it and

7:01

no one really had any conclusive data . A

7:05

lot of people wasted money and all

7:07

these softwares obviously came out and said we'll

7:09

target the perfect time that you

7:12

can optimize and do this and that At

7:14

the end of the day , when you just look at

7:16

PPC spend and total sales and

7:18

you start looking at let me change one

7:20

factor at a time and seeing the impact

7:22

on total sales , that's when you start really making

7:24

progress , as opposed to trying to change

7:27

multiple different things and hoping

7:29

that it's just going to go up

7:31

. Your total sales are just going to go up .

7:32

Yeah , definitely . I mean it definitely can feel

7:34

overwhelming . So I like that back to the basics . I

7:37

know you got your start , mina , and kind of the supplement

7:39

space . So I kind of jokingly

7:41

said at the intro of this show but I've

7:43

always stayed away from that space , just because I've seen

7:45

so many accounts that have gotten like

7:47

just dealt with , so much trouble either where

7:49

they're squeezed out of the market and they don't have the money

7:52

to spend to fight back , or they're

7:54

just getting their products taken down for claims

7:56

or something like that . So I'm

7:59

curious , like how you see the supplement world

8:01

on Amazon these days . Do you still have your

8:03

brand or I don't know if you exited that or you still

8:05

have it ?

8:05

No , it's still there . It's still there . I

8:08

had another one that I started and exited , but

8:10

my OG1 MMA Nutrition

8:12

is still there . We still run it as if it's

8:14

one of our clients and it's like

8:16

the opportunity for me

8:18

to always find every single new thing

8:20

that comes out on Amazon and

8:23

test it on that like account . So it's

8:25

been a great sandbox . Yeah , you talk

8:28

about supplements and I think

8:30

a lot of people share the kind of the same feelings

8:32

of like supplements are so competitive

8:34

and like how do

8:36

you deal with so much competition ? I

8:40

think it stems from something deeper and

8:42

the deeper thing is it's

8:45

only a lot of competition if you're not

8:47

creating that much of a better product

8:49

. But if you come up with

8:52

a solution to the problem that's better than everyone

8:54

else's solution and you

8:56

have a review strategy and you kind

8:58

of understand okay , right off the bat , I can't go

9:01

for those big keywords . I'm going to go for those longer

9:03

tail keywords . But when I do go for

9:05

those longer tail keywords which have lower

9:08

search volumes , easier cost per clicks

9:10

, not that many people , not as

9:12

many people are bidding on them , cpcs aren't

9:14

as high . You're able to

9:17

start carving out a piece of the market for yourself , especially

9:20

when you have a really good product

9:22

. And so if you're considering

9:24

like , okay , I'm in the supplement space

9:26

, or I want to get into the supplement space and

9:29

maybe you feel like it's not going to work out If

9:32

your product is definitely better than everyone else

9:34

, if the price is in line , even

9:37

if you can potentially be kind of on the lower

9:39

range of pricing , starting off , if you're

9:41

able to get reviews which , by

9:43

the way , one quick hack on

9:45

how to get reviews , because you can get like 30

9:47

reviews from Vine right , try

9:50

and get , like you know , eight different

9:52

variations from your manufacturer . You

9:55

know as like samples , like , say , hey , can you send me like

9:57

50 units of this , like slight

9:59

variation of the product , and

10:02

list them all at the same time , and

10:04

you'll initially , you know , from Vine you'll get

10:06

30 times eight , 240

10:09

reviews . So that's a way to get

10:11

reviews really fast from Vine . Use

10:13

multiple variations . You never have to reorder those variations

10:16

, or maybe they you know one or two of them

10:18

start selling well and you're like , okay

10:20

, cool , let me like reorder more of that one , but

10:23

of course , make sure that you know your main one that you

10:25

know have plenty of stock for . But

10:28

yeah , I think a big , big part of like

10:30

for me . If you go and look back

10:33

at when I launched in 2018 , I had the

10:35

ugliest listing . It was a golden

10:37

bag . It had like a sticker . Like

10:39

I'm like I don't even know why people bought

10:42

it . Like why would people buy such a cheap

10:44

product , cheap looking product

10:46

, and I think there's no more room for that

10:48

anymore . But if you do come up with a solution

10:50

that's better than everyone else , you package

10:53

it really nicely and then you follow all

10:55

like the you know right

10:57

, like fundamentals of Amazon really

10:59

good main image , really good listing , images , selling

11:01

the product through the images , things

11:04

like that you should be 100%

11:06

fine to . We're launching supplements every

11:08

day , some of them without

11:10

really big budgets maybe $100

11:12

a day , $200 a day and a lot of them

11:14

are succeeding because the products are

11:16

really good . And then some of them , I'll

11:18

talk to the founder and I'll say listen straight up , I

11:21

have no confidence in your product . I

11:23

don't see a reason why I would buy this one versus

11:25

others . And they're like no , I

11:27

think this and that I'm like fine , whatever

11:30

you want , it's your money . We give you our recommendation

11:32

and then , after months

11:34

of bleeding and bleeding and

11:37

they're like okay , fine , I think we should kill it and I'm like dude

11:40

, it's , people don't want it . People

11:43

don't want to buy a 200

11:45

review product , 100 review product . That

11:48

is just like the same as everything else , maybe

11:50

inferior , maybe slightly better

11:52

, like you need to have a much better product because

11:54

you're competing with someone who's

11:57

not as good as you but has 10,000

11:59

, 20,000 reviews .

12:01

Yeah , love it , I mean it . Let me ask

12:03

you a question Do you like pineapple on

12:05

pizza , if you even eat pizza ?

12:07

Oh , no , no , no , no , that's a crime

12:09

.

12:09

After telling me you have a food scale , I'm worried you probably

12:11

don't eat pizza .

12:14

No , I love pizza . I love pizza . I went to Italy and

12:16

I ate pizza every day for like two and a half weeks , and

12:18

so now I don't eat pizza anymore . Maybe

12:21

for the next two years I won't eat pizza .

12:24

Okay , fair enough the reason . I ask if

12:26

you do you like pineapple on pizza , though , or does it

12:28

not have a place there ?

12:29

No , I hate it , I hate it . It's

12:32

a crime to have pineapple on pizza .

12:34

Good to know . The reason I ask is that this is

12:36

our controversial take section , so I like to ask

12:39

all of our guests what's one thing that they

12:41

might believe that other people in the industry

12:43

might not believe or might have different thinking

12:45

on . So I'm gonna ask you that question Is there anything

12:47

that's more , maybe a controversial take

12:49

that you have , or a hill you're willing to

12:52

die on ? I guess , so to speak , about

12:54

something in the Amazon world ?

12:57

Yeah , yeah , I think you

12:59

know you already kind of saw the answer right it's

13:02

Amazon PPC software , I

13:04

think you know . I think software

13:07

is good and bad , right , like anything . I

13:10

think the good of software is

13:12

that you know it is automatic

13:14

, so they can do certain things

13:16

that a human might

13:18

not catch , maybe because they're not working or

13:21

it's the weekend or something like that . So I think

13:23

PPC software can be a great guardrail

13:25

. What I hate is the way that

13:27

software companies sell PPC

13:30

software . They sell automation and AI

13:32

like it's like this real

13:34

thing when , deep down

13:36

, you know , we

13:39

know that there's like not really that much AI

13:41

, there's not really that much things

13:44

being done . A lot of it is rule-based . Even

13:46

when it is AI-based , it's

13:48

based on what it's you know . We

13:50

don't even know what it's based on . They make

13:52

it very complicated to understand what it's based

13:54

on . Or they say that it takes into account everything

13:56

. I had a conversation with software company

13:59

the other day and they're like yeah , we take into account

14:01

everything . I'm like you take into account conversion rate . They're like yeah

14:03

, we take that into account . I'm like you take into account like competition

14:05

. Yeah , we also aggregate the data . Take that into account

14:07

. I'm like , so you literally take into account everything

14:09

, how ? And it's like , yeah , you know , like the

14:12

AI is constantly learning . I'm like that's no

14:14

, tell me the truth , tell me how you're

14:16

pulling all your competitors' data . You

14:19

literally have like API scraping or

14:22

bot scraping the listings

14:24

, downloading data from Heal and Ten . Tell

14:26

me the truth . So I think

14:28

the problem is software

14:30

companies PPC software companies really

14:33

pitch the fact that this automation

14:35

is gonna is

14:37

what is gonna cause the improvement in people's

14:39

brands , when really it's

14:41

not . Because , if you think about it , let's

14:44

say that your software can make a thousand

14:46

changes a day , 2,000 changes a day . We

14:49

know that Amazon attribution is off . So

14:51

you're making these thousand changes based on

14:53

numbers that you're seeing that

14:55

are wildly fluctuating

14:58

, and an

15:00

ACOS could be today , 80%

15:02

. Three days from now , that same exact

15:05

keyword ACOS drops to 20% because

15:07

someone purchased , but maybe it

15:09

took a day for it to register or took

15:11

a day for them to purchase . So after one day

15:13

, they purchased and

15:15

so that keyword went from an 80% ACOS to 20%

15:17

ACOS . And now you just negative their pause

15:20

, they're lowered the bid on a keyword that was super profitable

15:22

. And so , because

15:24

of these things , because of changing so many things

15:26

and then trying to figure out what change

15:28

caused a positive or negative impact on

15:30

total sales . I don't think

15:33

that software like AI

15:35

automation , making all those changes daily

15:38

, real time , I don't think that has

15:40

any value . I think the value

15:42

of software and how we've used software and

15:45

I'll shout out Scale Insights for being a great

15:47

partner and helping

15:49

us as guardrails For a lot of brands

15:52

. We set some guardrails . We say if a keyword spends

15:55

X amount of dollars and no sales , add

15:58

it as a negative . If a keyword spends

16:01

or the ACOS is X amount

16:03

, like over 80% , and has

16:06

less than two sales in the last 60 days , add

16:08

as a negative , like

16:10

things like that . You know it's just like , okay

16:12

, prevent overspending . And

16:14

then also it's not

16:16

making all of those changes that we were not

16:19

unable to , you know , figure out like . It's like okay

16:21

, it's making one type of change , two types of change , to

16:23

prevent overspending . It's not

16:25

automatically launching campaigns , it's not increasing bids

16:27

and decreasing bids and doing all of these things . And then

16:29

I'm like , okay , cool , why did my sales go

16:31

up ? I can't figure it out because I look at my

16:33

history tab and there's a thousand 500 changes

16:35

yesterday alone . So

16:39

that's kind of my topic and I

16:41

really I mean I admire what software

16:43

companies are trying to do in this space . I just hate

16:46

that their marketing is very , very

16:48

misleading and they are trying to sell people

16:50

on . It's like they're kind of very

16:52

similar to the gurus , right

16:55

? The gurus who you know , with the Lamborghinis

16:57

that are like Amazon's passive income . All

16:59

you need is one product generate 8K . You

17:02

can buy it on Alibaba for $2 , sell

17:04

it on Amazon for $30 , makes $8,000

17:06

a month . Join my course and I'll show you

17:08

how to do this . And this is how I paid for my Lamborghini

17:11

. And you know they sell

17:13

you that dream and that's what PPC Software

17:15

is doing . They're selling you that dream of plug in that software

17:17

. We're gonna , you know , look at all of these

17:19

things and we're gonna automatically change this

17:22

and that and it's gonna grow . And I'm like so

17:24

your , you know your software

17:26

does that . Just go , connect it to the stock

17:29

market and , you know

17:31

, make billions of dollars on the stock

17:33

market . If that's how good your software is , you don't

17:35

need to sell it for , you know , $100

17:38

a month to Amazon sellers . And , like

17:40

they know , I mean , I think deep down , they know , I

17:43

think software will eventually get

17:45

to a point where it's like software

17:47

is empowering people to make decisions

17:49

, but like that automation

17:51

and that like automated you know , sort of

17:53

like we take all the actions for you , we

17:55

use AI . Eventually , people are gonna find

17:58

out . I mean , every time I hop on a call with someone , they're

18:00

like yeah , we came from this software company , we

18:02

got burned . It didn't go well at all . Now

18:05

we're looking for an agency and I think , after

18:07

they churn enough people , people will

18:09

start realizing that , okay , yes

18:11

, software is cheaper , but it costs

18:13

more money in the longterm , cause you

18:16

know , it's yeah , it's just you're you'll

18:18

end up like losing more money versus and

18:20

I'm not saying I'm not endorsing that you have to use an

18:22

agency like mine , do it yourself

18:25

or , you know , have an employee or something

18:27

you know . But there needs to be that human

18:29

element of looking at the

18:31

data , interpreting the data , deciding

18:33

. Okay , what am I going to do ? I'm

18:35

gonna pick one thing , one focus

18:37

. I'm gonna , I'm gonna try and scale . So I'm gonna

18:40

launch a few new campaigns , increase a few new

18:42

bids . Okay , cool . It's a small

18:44

section of things that I did . Did that

18:46

result in an increase in revenue , yes or no ? And

18:49

it's very controlled and it's that discipline

18:51

as opposed to let's change

18:53

600 things . I heard Mina talk in this podcast

18:55

about optimizing main image , price

18:58

changes , adding subscription , and say , if this counts

19:00

, cool , let me do six things and

19:02

then see if my total sales go up or down . And

19:05

that's what I struggled with when I first started . I

19:07

essentially heard everything implemented

19:09

all at once and then I'm like , okay , I can't

19:12

, I can't do anything . So I'm like , okay , fine , let

19:14

me go back , let me just implement one of those things . And

19:16

I would implement and then wait and watch the

19:18

result . I'm like , okay , cool , taking

19:20

notes , and I did that again and again and again

19:22

and again Over the course of the years . I

19:25

figured out , you know , certain things that I feel work

19:27

and I feel that don't work . But

19:29

then again , they are not truths

19:31

or laws , they're just hypotheses

19:34

and I have to , you know , test them every single

19:36

time and I say , okay , cool , we're taking over this new

19:38

account . Our hypothesis is , if

19:40

we take these keywords , you know search

19:42

terms that we found in the search term report that were profitable

19:44

, launch them in their own campaigns with a slightly

19:47

higher cost per click or a slightly higher bid than the cost

19:49

per click we should hypothetically

19:51

generate more sales . Let's test it and we

19:53

test it , monitor it . It works amazing . It

19:55

doesn't work . Okay , move on to the next thing .

19:57

Mina love it . You've got a high

20:00

energy , a lot of knowledge . I mean

20:02

, I feel like we could talk for another like two or three hours . Well

20:04

, let me just say it , I could let you talk for

20:06

another two or three hours , because you've got a lot to go

20:09

on . I want to be respectful of your time , though . So

20:11

definitely a controversial take

20:13

, by the way , it's great to hear it . I want

20:15

to turn it around to you for a second . If people want to get in touch

20:17

or learn more , where can they find

20:19

you or where's the best place to reach out to you ?

20:22

Yeah , I think my Instagram

20:24

at the Mina Elias and LinkedIn

20:26

is Mina Elias , m-i-n-a-e-l-i-a-s

20:29

. Hit me up for our

20:32

Amazon growth toolbox , which is essentially

20:34

my entire company's toolbox

20:37

of all our macros , excel spreadsheets

20:40

, keyword campaign

20:42

creation sheets , deduplication , merging

20:45

, like Cerebro , with the search group performance report

20:47

, with the search term report , identifying

20:50

profitable search terms , not profitable search

20:52

terms , adding negatives at scale , everything

20:55

, profitability calculator guides , youtube videos

20:57

, anything useful we store in that

20:59

toolbox and we give

21:01

it away for free to everyone who's trying to

21:03

succeed on their journey on Amazon . So

21:05

hit me up for the toolbox or

21:08

go visit the website . It's TriviumCocom

21:10

. We have it there too , and

21:13

if there's anything I could do to help , just let me know .

21:15

Cool , love it , man . For those of you watching

21:18

and listening , we'll put links to anything Mina just mentioned

21:20

down below in the description or show notes as

21:22

well , so you can find them there . But with that

21:24

being said , mina , thank you again for coming

21:26

on and dropping all the wisdom . We

21:28

definitely need to have you back . All right , that brings us to

21:31

the end of this episode . Thanks again to Mina of Trivium

21:33

Group for joining us today . Hope that tonight's

21:35

episode brought you some kind of insights or

21:37

strategies that you found valuable

21:40

. As always , thanks for tuning into

21:42

the Amazon Strategy Show and spending your time with

21:44

us . If you did find some kind of value in

21:46

today's discussion , we kindly request that

21:48

your rate review our podcast

21:50

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21:52

you might listen to it or on YouTube . Your

21:55

feedback definitely helps us out and it helps us reach

21:57

more e-commerce enthusiasts just like yourself

21:59

. Don't forget also to follow us on our social

22:01

media pages for updates behind the scenes content

22:03

and more . You can find the links to everything talked

22:06

about in this show , including those social links , in our description

22:08

or in the show notes . So that's it for today's

22:10

episode . Make sure to mark your calendars . We're going

22:13

to be back again next week with another captivating discussion

22:15

, and we're also going

22:17

to be bringing more expert insights , more

22:19

game-changing tips from some of our amazing guests . So

22:21

, without further ado , this has been your

22:24

host signing off and wishing you a

22:26

happy selling .