The E-commerce Leader

[00:00:00] Jason: You can’t have a marketing expert that you follow. You have to have an email marketing expert you follow,
[00:00:06]
[00:00:37]
[00:01:13] INTRO: hey folks. Welcome back to the E-Commerce leader. We are talking today, we’re trying to answer the question of how to drive external traffic to an Amazon listing. In the last episode, we talked about really whether you should be doing it at all, and this time we’re talking a little bit more about use cases for that.
[00:01:30] And little bit of reality check as well as some real wins as well. This is a strategy level thing. It’s really answer to the question, should I do it in the broad picture stuff. This isn’t gonna give you the latest TikTok or Facebook ads or whatever TikTok is be, or the rage right now with Amazon sellers.
[00:01:45] If you want that, you’re probably better heading over to the 10 K collective. Podcast, which you can find in any podcast app near you where I tend to interview Amazon experts on things like that. But I hope today we’ll give you a nice overview of the topic and some views from outside of the Amazon bubble as well from Jason.
[00:02:04] So enjoy the show.
[00:02:05] Michael: So that’s a use case where I think external traffic used wisely is okay.
[00:02:09] I would say. It’s gonna be hard to just go directly from, external traffic to Amazon. I know people who do it, and I think TikTok ads sound like they are the most affordable at the moment. You may, to your point, need to pixel people and then retarget them to actually get the most out of that initial ad spend, but of course it does mean more ad spend for retargeting.
[00:02:27] , which is traditionally more effective. You’re starting to do something which is so complicated that I would say you’re starting to build towards really. Third use case, which I’ll talk about in a second. Let me just use the second use case to keep things simple, which is boosting or re ranking a product for certain keywords.
[00:02:41] So you were clearly doing that with your, your charity book, right? You were wanting to get the BSR up and then, I would say, the difficulty with that is one thing you flagged up, which is that if it’s, if the rank is where it’s gonna sit, , unless there’s a particular reason, like for PR reasons or marketing, that you can take a screenshot and we’ll say we’re number one or something, which is social proof.
[00:03:01] , unless there’s that reason, it’s often gonna be a bit fruitless to send paid traffic. Now you went to an email list, which you’ve already paid to acquire , so that was a reason to be efficient and justifiable thing to do. So I think it depends on, why you’re, . And also do you think you’re going to boost something that’s gonna keep the boosted ranking, in which case it will pay itself back?
[00:03:19] , Or is it just gonna be a temporary boost, in which case you better make sure your leads are, in this case, free with emails or very cost effect? ?
[00:03:25] Jason: ? Yeah, it’s a great question. Will it keep the boost? That’s a succinct way of saying it. If it won’t keep the boost. You got a problem with your description or your product photography, your titling, your bullet points.
[00:03:39] Like, why won’t it keep the boost? And, in books it’s a little bit more nuanced because you’re competing against very different products. But in some of these categories, you’re like, it’s like almost identical products you’re competing against. And optimizing for your on, product page, details is vital.
[00:03:56] Michael: The other thing is sometimes, and this is a more sort of general point, but it’s really important when it emerges after a lot of complex discussions sometimes, which is sometimes the market has spoken. And rather than try and. Make your listing incredible. If it’s reasonably well optimized and you’ve done your seo your keyword research and you’ve done Amazon ads and you’ve got rid of the negative keywords that, that don’t convert, then maybe that product has found its place in the marketplace and you’re better off putting the time and energy and money into developing a new product line. That’s often the case, frankly, which is one of the non-use cases, if you like, an anti-US case for external traffic.
[00:04:29] My product is selling whatever, 300 a month, and I was hoping it would get 2000 a month and. Maybe that’s not a bad result, in which case accept that and move on. So sometimes that’s frankly the, what it comes down to after a long, complex discussion. And that’s
[00:04:42] Jason: the advice for every author who’s tried to promote every book, really.
[00:04:47] Okay. At some point it’s am I gonna make this book a New York Times number one bestseller? There’s a window of opportunity for that. And obviously if you. Into the work of people who really are focused on the selling of their books and the marketing of their books. They say, Stick with it. Lean into it harder.
[00:05:03] But many authors are like, this didn’t work as good as I’d hoped, but I’ve got another idea. Here comes in my next book. I see myself in that. I fall into that camp.
[00:05:11] Michael: It depends whether it’s your magnum opus, right? And books, as you say, books are rather different type of product.
[00:05:16] But you have sleeper hits with books and films and more cultural artifacts than with physical products. I don’t really come across it. It’s possible that you get that, but most people wouldn’t. Do that because the economics of it can be pretty horrible because you’re hanging onto a lot of cash tied up in stock, right?
[00:05:31] I guess your book development costs are very upfront weighted costs. So once you’ve built it, you know there’s less, less cost in keeping it in stock. Let
[00:05:38] Jason: me just dig into that for one second. And I know it’s a little bit of a product nerd out moment here in this conversation about Amazon traffic strategies, but I would just say this, that, the question about.
[00:05:50] Product in its niche and in its, competitive rank and collection is a whole universe of discussion that will influence whether your traffic strategy work or not. And if you’re not the leader, you need to position yourself against the leader with the opposites, a. They’re tried and true branding, positioning strategies for products.
[00:06:09] So you’ve gotta do something different if you’re not the leader. You also have to realize where the product is in its own development life cycle. I read an article recently about a guy who’s making a killing online, and you know what? He sells three and a half inch floppy dis drives because he’s the only guy on the planet that still has three and a half inch floppy dis drive.
[00:06:31] As it happens, there’s still some use case somehow for those. That’s an example. That’s absurd, but it’s an nearly obsolete product that’s not actually obsolete. And that’s very different than a brands bank and new product that everybody wants anything that’s out there. And I think that’s an important consideration when you talk about traffic.
[00:06:49] If you’re in Covid 19 lockdown and you’re trying to sell dumbbells and every single one of the planet is sold out, cuz everyone wanted workout. Then any traffic you send will work in any, to any product that you have listed. And I think that’s an important consideration. So sorry to go on a rabbit trail, but.
[00:07:09] Michael: I think you’re absolutely, I don’t think it’s Rubel. I think you’re absolutely right. This is, this whole external traffic discussion is really a subset of overall strategy. And I guess to put it in really simple terms, if you’re trying to sell a really generic product that’s the same as everything else, that’s the problem.
[00:07:24] , whatever else you do, demand isn’t changing that. It’s a m not gonna really change that. Yeah. There’s a certain demand for generic type products. If you could convey a very beautiful one or very differentiated or very retro or very hipster, interesting point about things that come back around three and a half f fluff, floppy dishes extreme.
[00:07:38] Hadn’t heard of that, but I’ve certainly . I know some had some clients in the vinyl market, so vinyl related products, vinyl records have done it very well. Much better than their other product lines because things come back around. So the product lifestyle isn’t always, It gets adopted early adopters, late adopters, late, big majority, late majority, and then lag guards and then it’s over.
[00:07:56] Sometimes it comes back around for a second time. , It’s a good point. But yes, you’re absolutely right about that. So the most positive scenario that I can paint for external traffic, and this is really comes more into your world really, Jason, with a more holistic view of, of traffic in buildings business that one tends to get with, your.
[00:08:13] The store that you control yourself, so Shopify based or WooCommerce or whatever, is this really a great use for external traffic, even for an Amazon seller, is building an audience such that you can later upsell them, downsell them, and cross sell them. So you can increase average order value and do repeat purchase, which is when you can start to balance the equation that you.
[00:08:31] Kind of referenced it indirectly earlier, which is like if you’ve got a really profitable product, or a great order value, even if the percentage is modest. But if you have a $500 order value, you can respond to spend an awful lot of money on advertising or indeed, any other form of traffic.
[00:08:45] If you’re paying somebody to write blog articles, for example, and. , if you, capture traffic into an email list as you said, we are totally in agreement on that. The email list is the number one, the oldest, the best, I think, form of asset to have in the marketing game. Then you have an opportunity on.
[00:09:00] even if you sell your products on Amazon, to do what other people can do on their direct to consumer own site. , which is upsell, cross sell down, sell to increase average order values, and then repeat purchase. If you have a big catalog of products, of course. That’s the main caveat there is that a lot of Amazon sellers try and do the external traffic play when they can only play with the external traffic cost.
[00:09:21] Whatever that may be, but they have so little of a catalog that they can only sell them two things, which means the average or the value that’s possible, or the life customer value is tiny. That’s an equation that’s hard to solve. Once you got a catalog, then it becomes much more of a solvable equation, in my opinion.
[00:09:36] Jason: Yeah, I totally agree. And your catalog should include something that’s free, which is the ethical bribe that you can use to build your list and require your audience. I just, just to camp on the whole email marketing thing for a moment, I think it can never be understated how big a deal emails were as the internet’s.
[00:09:57] What you call tool, it was like a nuclear explosion on this planet. Think of it like that, like the energy generated from the launch of this idea of people having email addresses. It’s such a, super powerful explosion that the energy coming off of that sucker is still alive. Vibrantly today.
[00:10:18] It’s not declining very quickly. That’s the thing about it. Okay, think about this. Hey, NFTs were such an awesome thing. Those things were over in a week and a half, Like that was literally like a firecracker of like energy, but email. As a tool is just not declining. And yes, text and SMS marketing is its own huge explosion of energy.
[00:10:41] But, email marketing is still so incredibly powerful. I just can’t understate, overstated it. If you don’t have an email list right now and you’re an operator of any selling system at all, Your highest and best activities would be to get yourself an email list. And I just, so to me, I started to go like nerd out over this, be on a soapbox and sermonize it, but it’s just, you just have to prioritize that effort.
[00:11:07] In any and every way you can, in my view, social media, TikTok, Instagram, look, I wrote the book on Instagram. It’s translated in languages around the world, Korean and Fari. And, it’s the number one book on, on, Instagram, on Amazon right now, still after, multiple printings.
[00:11:24] And I’m telling you, I would not spend one minute on Instagram if I didn’t have an email list. It’s just, you’ve gotta prioritize email and I know it’s not. Sexy anymore and all that. Man, it’s so powerful. It’s just so powerful. There you go. Sorry. Camped on it. Too hard, I’m sure. But
[00:11:41] Michael: no, I don’t think so.
[00:11:42] Absolutely. With you. I was gonna say that the next thing that I was gonna come to is implementation of external traffic, assuming that you’ve found that there’s a use case for, is just a quick reminder that I think for me, that I’ve seen that the sensible use case is to boost a launch. That is, you’re trying to get market share so you’re not so worried about profit, it’s just you’ve gotta afford the loss, boosting or re ranking a product.
[00:12:03] It to the point we made. If the problem is lack of visibility, then this will help. If it’s got visibility and people don’t want to buy it beyond a certain degree, then it won’t help simply as you said. And then the third one, I think the best thing is building an audience. So I would say there’s two kind of starting points for me, which could be the best value in the long term, or the simplest and the most immediate money hit.
[00:12:25] And I know my Amazon sellers, I know which one they’re gonna plump for. So the first thing I’d say is somebody, Probably gonna actually use it to get an immediate result. Cause I know Amazon sellers are addicted to that. So we put money into an advertising thing now and we get sales next week. Use it for an ex using external traffic to boost a launch Caveat, as you said.
[00:12:41] Absolutely rightly, I think then Jason, that you’ve maximized the Amazon system and most people haven’t. So for most people they should focus on the Amazon system. But if you have, maximize That’s a good place to use external traffic and maybe it’s aggressive paid stuff like Google Ads, maybe even TikTok ads.
[00:12:55] I’m not the expert in that. I probably should interview some people on the podcast for that, but I have to say that I’m with you the longest, The highest long term value is probably number one email list building, and I would say the second highest value, which is. You can’t compare apples to apples here cuz it’s the top of the funnel play is Google seo.
[00:13:10] So getting Google SEO working, you work once and over time produces a big flow of traffic across the lifetime of that ranking of that article. It can be years sometimes. Yeah. And then convert those vistas into email. That in my opinion is the kind of gold standard. And that’s really where there’s the oldest tools in the book, Google SEO and email, and I.
[00:13:31] I’m a believer in those is the best value. Even if you just saw on Amazon, I don’t have your own direct consumer site,
[00:13:37] Jason: here’s just the, my 2 cents on the battle of her, primacy email versus seo email wins in my view for my way of thinking because it’s simpler. To set up and get, you with one amazing, free, ebook or whatever it might be.
[00:13:55] You know what, whatever your freebie is, you can build a list even without a website. You can do this just through, social media organically and. And a MailChimp will give you a free, email system for up to 2000 names for totally free. You don’t even need a website to do it.
[00:14:10] To do SEO work at scale, you’ve really gotta have, expertise on long form blogging and the website itself and the H one tags. And there are a whole set of things that are like the precursors to. With, with Google organic ranked, articles and website pages. So to me the, it’s hands down easier for just get getting yourself a list.
[00:14:35] The process steps are just so much easier. So that’s why I think, emails better. But I totally agree with you. If you install a few webpages as the number one or in the top couple search results on Google organically, that is an incredibly powerful source of traffic as well.
[00:14:51] And very well worth doing once you’re into the whole traffic getting game,
[00:14:55] Michael: absolutely. Yes, to your point about email, and I probably over completed this over the decades myself, I guess it comes down to, again, the conversion rate optimization. In this case, we’d be trying to converser rate optimize for the number of people who land on a webpage somewhere and the percentage of people that give you their email address. And yeah, you are absolutely right that if you focus on an amazing offer, then you know, whatever traffic you can generate in whatever form. Like social media’s probably simplest. You’re right. Then is gonna convert. So that absolutely is true.
[00:15:22] And you’re right, Google SEO is hard. I’ve been fighting battles ever getting better on this. I’m not good at Google SEO yet, but I’m less rubbish than I was. I have to say, if you’re gonna do that, this rings you really to the next thing, which is if you’re doing stuff that’s new, get help. Don’t be cheap.
[00:15:35] Skate about getting consultants in because even. If you pay, if you only cover your consultant’s fees the first time you do a launch like this, the first time is a trial, is a learning curve. Anyway, yeah, I think that’s a good win cuz then next time you’ll know what you’re doing. If you’re looking at external traffics, Amazon particularly focus on seo, which as you say is complex.
[00:15:52] I found that Ashley Pierce, who’s been a client for several years, and they. They must mind now also running an external traffic agency at over at I’ll remember it in a second, what the name of it is. Sure. Yeah. Future State Media. They’re really good people to check out. They may or may not be the right thing for you or affordable.
[00:16:07] That brings me to the second thing, which is you can use an agency, but be really clear on what you want and be realistic on the outcomes. And also do your sums if their cost is, a thousand dollars to set things up plus ad spend. If you’re doing external ads, for example, you really gonna have to have a lot of profit to wipe that out.
[00:16:23] And you just need to do your sums and see, is this even on paper, a possibility that
[00:16:27] Jason: it works? Yeah. No, I totally agree with this advice. And the thing I would just say is that for all of us who’ve been around for a while on internet marketing, the. The thing that’s happening in the industry, I think is that the bigger the game gets on the internet for e-commerce and online selling, the more niche and specialized the gurus have to become.
[00:16:47] And, and so that, what that means is. As business owners, you can’t have a marketing expert that you follow. You have to have an email marketing expert you follow, or a TikTok marketing expert you follow, or a, whatever it is, a Google AdWords expert, you follow, you, you have to get granular.
[00:17:05] In your, in your identification and, learning from, experts or gurus or consultants or that kind of thing, because the game has just gotten so big and so complex in so many ways, you just can’t keep up. Nobody can keep up with all the nuance of all of the various traffic, platforms and strategies.
[00:17:21] And because, what happens is, Singularly obsess over some of these and they get really insanely good at it. And these people who have, let’s say for example, an irrational, emphasis on this one thing, they just totally get obsessed with it. In my case, that’s been Shopify for the last.
[00:17:39] Almost 10 years, that people get good at what they obsess over. And so you wanna find the person who’s not a jack of all trades per se, but who would be your go-to person for this one traffic strategy you’re trying to implement. And I think that’s the way to approach this, and I’ve written, I wrote Pinterest Power.
[00:17:56] 10 years ago. I’m not a Pinterest marketing expert, I just wrote a book. Cause it was interesting to me. And I was early adopter. I wrote Instagram Power, for the same reason. It was just an early adopter and it was fascinating to me as a marketing, tool. But people come along, and really nerd out over these things and build whole businesses and, build their.
[00:18:13] Trade craft and their service packages around just delivering ex, expertise and outcomes on those one, particular elements, of traffic. And, those are the people you need to find and work with. So it’s getting complicated, I guess all that to say.
[00:18:26] Michael: Yeah, you are absolutely right.
[00:18:27] I would say there’s a little nuance, which hopefully today’s conversations help with, which is the first question is to always come back to very simple question that people just skip over all the time. For some reason, and I do it as well, it’s easily done. What am I trying to achieve here, actually?
[00:18:40] , is it revenue? If so, what and why? Is it really profit? Even though you just told me what revenue? But when you dig into that conversation, two steps down, it’s profit. Okay. Then have that conversation. With somebody, in a mastermind with a coach, with your business partner, with your wife or husband, who may have some common sense that you parked at the door when you started marketing.
[00:18:57] I don’t know, whoever it is. And then the other thing is then to make that strategy level decision of which form of marketing are you gonna use in what way? So hopefully today’s conversations helped that, And yeah, then. To your point, you’re a hundred percent you’re ready to go and find a person who’s nerded out about a particular thing for years.
[00:19:13] For example, email marketing. I’ve had several email marketing experts on the podcast and people make terrible assumptions just cuz it’s written in English. And they can also write English that they know how to do email marketing. , I really, the more I speak to experts in this area, you write the all, I think you need to get an expert involved.
[00:19:27] Even. You’re just gonna learn from them and then do it yourself. So you’re absolutely bang on there. Yeah. If people want to learn more about, Shopify from you guys do much broader things than that these days. Omni rocket.com is your place. Just tell us briefly what sort of things people can get from you if they
[00:19:42] Jason: find Absolutely.
[00:19:44] Yeah, we focus on helping, Shopify sellers with their, strategies conversion rate. We have services that we offer to people including consulting, but also, done for use site building and, and other services. We have a package of services we only extend to our coaching clients, so we use coaching as our, initial relationship building and then to the extent we can add more value.
[00:20:06] Running people Shopify sites, running their email, marketing clavio, that kind of thing. We’re happy to do that as well. And then we also have a set of tools for Amazon sellers and, that’s been the business we bolted on a year and a half ago. And we’re eagerly, engaged in new.
[00:20:22] E-commerce sellers in that regard with our, sourcing app, which is the number one sourcing app for retail arbitrage folks, which is called Omni Rocket sourcing. And so we kind of work in those two worlds and Kyle leads the way on the Amazon side and I lead the way on the Shopify side. So it’s fun stuff, great
[00:20:39] Michael: stuff.
[00:20:39] Of mine, it’s been great to talk about, good stuff from you today, thought provoking and hopefully useful to Amazon sellers and indeed everyone else who’s thinking about this stuff as well. Thanks a lot for listening folks. And Jason, thanks for your time as ever, man. Always a pleasure.
[00:20:51]