016: Eddie Wheeler's Advanced Tactics for Maximizing Sales Through Amazon's Geo Ranking

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome everyone to the Brand Fortress HQ podcast Today. I'm your co-host, john Stogen. We have one of our other founders here from Brand Fortress HQ, mike Kaufman, who's joining us on this episode, and then our guest who's speaking today is Eddie Wheeler, and Eddie is the owner of Guava Listings, has been doing a lot of things in the SEO space and listing optimization, running Guava as an agency to help brands with that, those types of issues from six all the way up to eight figures. But today we're going to talk about something a little bit different that I'm really excited about, and that is geo ranking. So before we dive into geo ranking, eddie, for folks that aren't familiar with you, can you give them a little bit of your background and kind of you know how, how you're involved in the Amazon space?

Speaker 2: 0:52

Yeah, sure, thanks for having me. So yeah, about four or five years ago now, I was teaching English in Vietnam. So I haven't lived in the US for the last six years. I mean traveling all around. That's when I was first about four or five years ago I was first introduced to Amazon, launched my first product, failed once. A second product had some success with it, but through that journey I made gold listed get away from teaching English. I realized that I, you know, I had a really act of a natural copywriting and now I will all the basics of Amazon SEO. So I started offering my Amazon SEO copywriting services and that that went really well and I started getting a lot of a lot of clients, helping a lot of sellers. So the next logical step was to create bio agency, guava listings, which I didn't operate any out for the last few years. And here there's helping sellers, like you mentioned, with all things about their Amazon listing. So could the rate optimization, conversion rate optimization and, of course, seo, and not just the foundational SEO but also ongoing SEO, the long term SEO tactics. And then recently I discovered geo rank and my my partner with this. This whole thing approached me and kind of kind of tasked me with educating the Amazon worlds about Amazon geo rank and how important it is and, of course, how to track it right, because most of the or all of the major Amazon keyword trackers they don't should. They only show one rank, one reality rate. There's all different sorts of ranks throughout the country, so how to track it and then, of course, most importantly, how to influence it.

Speaker 1: 2:48

Yeah. So let's for people, because I feel like this is a topic that people probably, you know, aren't as familiar with. Can you give us an idea? Well, two things that I think are really important to double click on there. One is is that you know a lot of the keyword tracking tools out there helium 10 and that type of stuff. They, you know they do a good job, but they're they're really looking at an average of across the market. So if you're selling in the US, they're looking at your keyword rank. You know across the US, whereas really Amazon, it's much more localized. Where you might be. You know in position three in Arizona and you might be in position 10. In Colorado or something like that. Or you know a major metropolitan area. So I think that's important to know. Beyond that, you know for geo ranking, how would you explain it to? You know the brands that are listening and then also, you know why is it important to under or to understand this concept of geo ranking?

Speaker 2: 3:55

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's like you said, right it? So you know all these keyboard trackers are showing an average or just one one rank, right? So you know you might go on to helium 10 and tracking your product for its main keyword, let's say, and it shows number two. Well, you know you could be range number two in Miami, but it could be that your ranks 27 in Los Angeles, 100 New York, and so now you're not getting any of those organic sales. So in your head and you just using one of the main keyword trackers, you might think that you're doing great and you might think that you're maximizing organic sales for that keyword. But in reality it can be different. I mean, it's not just by my state, right, I think it's. It actually varying in the state as well, in different localities in states. So it could be really super, super granular. So Essentially, and anything that you already know about you know, keyword ranking it's still the same. It's just now applied to these specific localities. So, for example, right, if you've had a history of selling a lot of units in Miami, right clicks at the cards, all those things for a certain keyword, well you're, you're gonna have a higher romantic keyword rank in Miami. But if you're, whatever reason, in New York, you haven't had that same history, you're not gonna have that same organic keyword ranking. And so you know, on top of that, right, because Amazon sees, for whatever reason, that you know your product was popular in Miami, they're sending more an inventory to Miami, making a quicker for the customer to get it right. But you're in cheaper for Amazon to site, so they're gonna put the lower inventory which also and influence it even further. So all this time, for whatever reason, is more popular Miami, they're sending more and more inventory Miami. That's how they raise the rank there. But in New York you could be, you know, really, give me on page two or three, even in some cases.

Speaker 3: 6:02

So and okay, just to confirm and elaborate on that just a bit before we move on from it. Is that so? When I first Read about this and and started to research it, so I just opened and anybody who's listening, I encourage you to do this I opened an incognito window. You know, I just started searching Amazon and just changing my zip code in Amazon to see what my rankings were and, to be honest, I was blown away, you know, by the differential, like I mean, just as Eddie is saying. I mean there were zip codes for which we were ranked number two and for the very same keyword, there were zip codes that we were ranked number 22, 42, 52, so it was a massive difference and so number one. I've confirmed that this is actually a thing. Also, what I was able to confirm, at least anecdotally, for myself. Eddie, you were referring to what appears to be I mean you could probably describe it in a little bit of a flywheel sense because If you've had sales in a particular location, then, as you said, amazon now believes okay, that's an important region for you, so we're gonna send inventory of your products there because people want it. Now that the inventory is there, then the shipping time comes down because it's coming from a more localized warehouse than someplace else, and then, as that shipping time comes down, your rank goes up. You sell more, amazon brings in more inventory because you're selling more, so there's a flywheel. And what I was gonna say to that is, again, anecdotally. I was able to confirm that also in the sense that when I looked at those rankings the, the Regions where we had poor ranking we also had slower shift times. The delivery date was pushed out one, two, three days beyond the, the rank, the, the regions where we were ranked well, and All of the products that ranked above us in those situations had a faster shift time than we did. So you know, it's not proof positive, but anecdotally I would say my experience seems to prove this out.

Speaker 1: 8:12

Yeah, and I think that's important Some great points as far as how much that your shift time influences your ranking. So for folks that are listening, that maybe you're like, okay, great, you know, I understand that if I can ship something to a customer in a day or two, especially as Amazon really pushes towards this, essentially one day delivery now. But as a brand or a seller, you know what I, you know I ship my product in Amazon and then Amazon kind of does its own thing with the fulfillment centers. What? How can I influence, you know, my geo ranking in order to take advantage of that?

Speaker 2: 8:52

Yeah, definitely. So, really, right now it's twofold, like first, like being able to track it right and understanding where you're actually ranking in all these areas. That once right, because you know going in manually and changing all those codes, right, that's, that's super tedious and you know no one's really gonna be able to do that and especially not at scale. So being able to track it right. So my partner and I would be watching the first true geo rate tracking not very soon. Still a few bugs that we're working on where he's wearing on about the tech guy, but that should be out soon and perhaps even by the time of this episode airs that will be out. So we'll be able to track them and like truly be able to understand where you're. You know you you're weak, where your product is weak in terms of you know it's main keywords, geo rights. And once you understand that, then in just all the homes about marketing campaigns, right, you just need to generate demand in those areas. So marketing campaigns that are geo targeted. So unfortunately it works with Amazon sponsored ads. You can't geo target at this time. You know, hoping that at some point another Amazon bullet at that option, but at this point you can't do that. So you really gonna have to rely on sending kind of outside traffic and outside demand from those areas. So Facebook ads, google ads, amazon DSP can actually do geo program. So that's, that's that only one option. So anything that that you've done and you know, maybe you do have to learn Facebook or Google ads or brain agency that can do Facebook or Google ads for you. But if you already know that, if you already have been using outside traffic, you know the same stuff is working. It just needs to be geo targeted. So let's, you know, for example, right your week into New York, so you set up outside track, you know all these marketing campaigns sending outside traffic to the listing specifically in New York and of course you do have, you know, multiple localities at the same time. So it's just really all about generating demand and those to set exit codes where that you want to work on.

Speaker 3: 11:11

So a couple of things in regards to that, eddie. So, as far as the so you were talking about the app that's going to be coming out and one of the things that it does, which, again, you could manually do this, but it would be a very time consuming process. Now I would say for some listeners, if you have particular areas or regions where you know you should have good sales like I mean you you know your customers, you know where they're located certain products you know, like we sell pool tools and we sell a very premium pool tool. So in essence, we can kind of gauge where we should have good sales, generally in the south and in those high income areas where, if it's hot and you've got money, you have a pool. So you know we can kind of suss that out a little bit and so we could focus on specific zip codes. A lot of other products that's not true. You could sell anywhere, you know. So you can't really dial that back. So doing it at scale is tough. But the thing I was going to say was that, if so, when you? What's the best way for me to say this? One thing that you can do in terms of this external traffic and kind of realizing, is that? And I want to ask you this if this is true, so it has been said, and this makes sense, that external traffic coming into Amazon, amazon really doesn't pay attention to conversion rate of that external traffic, partly because then you could get targeted by some other competitors sending a bunch of low conversion rate traffic. So for geo ranking, have you found that also be to the case? So like, if I target a specific zip code but I'm getting a really low conversion rate for my external traffic, does that matter in terms of sending that signal to Amazon so they'll start sending your inventory there?

Speaker 2: 13:03

Yeah, I'm not sure if we actually have any data on whether the higher local virtual rate actually affects that at this point. Yeah, so I couldn't speak that specifically because I just don't think my partner has done any of that granular testing. But I do know, right, it kind of goes back to what I'm helping with. And while you want to just always have that super highly optimized listing, you know stringable driver listing, so your conversion rate is always high, so that's when you are sending these outside traffic that you know it shouldn't be something that you have to worry about too much. And, of course, even if you get a active car and it doesn't wind up diverting like that's still a signal to Amazon to write, you know, for foray.

Speaker 1: 14:01

So I guess you know. One question that pops into my mind is you know, it's great that we have this kind of what you're talking about in order to be able to target specific geo, different geographies, based on you know how you're ranking, and to be able to, like you said, boost, you know, maybe, instead of being on page two, to boost that number up if it's you know, New York or Los Angeles, somewhere where it's a big market for you. But just to take a step back, you know, what processes do you recommend? Or is there a good process for brands to identify, Like you know, where are those best markets for them, where customers are already buying their product and they're going to get the best kind of bang for their buck for, you know, boosting that geo rank.

Speaker 2: 14:46

Yeah, definitely. So, yeah, I think the best strategy is like again, like you know, once you're able to track it with this, with this app that's coming out, or how it would be best to like to focus on places that you know. Maybe you know you're not, you're not focusing on places that your ranked 100 or your product is ranked 100. Because that's going to take a lot of effort and time. Maybe you can come back to that at some point. But if you want to really get the most bang for your buck, you know, look at places that your rates maybe on the bottom of page one already, right. So you know, let's say that I identify Houston, and in Miami and in Tucson, Arizona, or whatever, we're doing pretty good, but we're still not in those that top five or that top 10 for most of these keywords. Let's focus on these first. Let's use the marketing budget for these first. Get no, elevate those the top five, the top 10, you know, start getting the return on a destined for that. And then, okay, now we can focus on, hey, Los Angeles, we're ranked, you know, 30 to 40. Now we can start allocating marketing budget to try to boost that out, which is obviously going to take longer and probably going to take a more marketing budget.

Speaker 3: 16:10

Have you and your or your partner been able to determine, from any of the data that you're pulling and you know case studies that you're running, have you been able to determine whether so, in terms of this geo ranking phenomenon? Let's say, obviously we know that one factor seems to be that if you have inventory that's close to that region and so therefore you have short shipping times, that does seem to give you a boost in your rank. So that's thing one. But is there a secondary component, or is it just that these two things are related? That is, that Amazon, if you're, let's say, you're, doing external traffic and you're geo targeting that traffic, so I, let's say, I blitz a bunch of ads to Miami and so I get a bunch of added cards, I get, you know, quite a few sales that come through. Amazon now knows that. You know, miami is a place where people buy our products and that want our products. Is that enough for them to just know that Miami people want our product? Like, for instance, if we don't have inventory there, you know, like, would Amazon still rank us even though our delivery times might not be quite as good as everybody else? Could we actually still get a boost just because Amazon knows those people want our product.

Speaker 2: 17:28

Yeah, and that is actually like that's the primary driver. I think it actually some previous podcasts that I've done, I made and seen more like that inventory was the main inventory place, what was the main thing? And that's not actually true. Right, it is really like those first quarter, other quarter ranking impact. So these added cards, these, you know, buying sales, right, that is the primary driver. Right, it's just like again, like just localize as opposed to like pre-2018, all of it is just kind of like across the board. But now you know nowadays again, right, it's all those things still flying, but it's just localize. So once Amazon starts recognizing, right, that you know you're getting sales, you're getting added cards in that area, you will see the ranks start to rise up and then the inventory placement is just kind of like that icing on the cake.

Speaker 3: 18:29

So then, as a follow up to that one thing that seems relevant here. So it seems like essentially what you're saying is, again, this would flywheel a little bit. So if you geotarget to a particular area, let's stick with Miami. Now you've given Amazon the signal that Miami people want your product, so your ranking starts to improve just simply from those signals nothing to do with inventory or ship times or anything. However, now Amazon is going to prioritize getting inventory to that area, and it does strike me that a portion of Amazon's algorithm does seem to relate to shipping time. So therefore, once the inventory does show up there and your shipping times improve, that that would simply I don't know if I want to say exponentially improve, but what? It would be a multiplying factor in terms of your ranking, in addition to the signals that you sent georank wise. But that leads me to another question, which is regarding how much inventory should you be giving Amazon so that they can properly distribute it everywhere that you want to distribute it? And I think people, of course they try to keep their inventory narrow because they don't want to fail out in storage and you can pay less storage in a staging warehouse or something Would you be better off having more inventory at Amazon, paying a little bit more for your storage, but giving them more inventory to distribute.

Speaker 2: 19:51

Yeah, I believe so, because you know, obviously you don't want to go too crazy on it, but especially as you start to see, you know, as you start to increase your legal georams, right, you're going to be seeing more sales. And so, yeah, setting some more inventory is probably a good idea because, yeah, you just want to be able to, like you know, have those fast shipping times and all. Of course, like you know, you're spending all this money on these marketing campaigns to send outside traffic. You know, paying a little bit more in storage fees, I think is worth how many more organic sales that you'll be experiencing once you kind of you know have hired you right yeah and I think we're seeing Amazon send us that signal.

Speaker 1: 20:36

You know, recently they've added the minimum inventory, where I think that they're, you know, kind of trying to nudge well, not really nudge, they're pushing sellers in this direction in order to make sure that there is enough inventory coverage in those areas where they're selling well, because they recognize that. What impact it has on conversion. I'm curious, from either one of you, any recommendations for you know, sellers or brands that are listening and saying okay, you know, from a cash flow perspective, I understand keeping as limited inventory as possible, but if I'm looking at it from a trying to increase my sales and conversion based on the geo ranking conversation that we're having today, is there, you know, some guidelines that you would give on the number of days worth of inventory that you should have in stock at Amazon for a product?

Speaker 2: 21:36

You're on me.

Speaker 3: 21:43

You muted, mike. Yeah, sorry about that. I've got dings and notifications going off over here and I don't know if my mic's picking them up. So I was going to say was. And, eddie, feel free to critique me on this if you think maybe this is incorrect and there's a little subjectivity here, but I will say that, as we once we saw this trend in terms of the rank and our deliverability timeframes, we made a conscious decision. We haven't yet started geo targeting our ads yet. That is coming soon. But the first thing that we did, which was the easiest thing, was that we already had inventory here in the States in the staging warehouse. It was ready to go to Amazon. We were just waiting, because normally we keep about 45 days of inventory at Amazon. We've been edging that up a little bit just because we've been having some troubles with delivery. But once we saw that, then basically my thought was I already have an inventory. Why don't I just give Amazon more inventory? Let's see how they distribute it and let's see if it changes our delivery times and our ranks. And what I will say is sending in more inventory did change things. Our sales volume went up, we did have some ranking changes and there was some change in distribution. Now again, this is all anecdotal, it's very early stages. I don't want anybody to hang their hat on that and say this is a thing. But we raised our inventory in Amazon from 45 days to 75 days. We're actually going to increase that again just to see if we get even better distribution and if that changes things.

Speaker 2: 23:26

But that's what we did and so if that gives anybody any at least helpful insight, yeah, what I would add to that is I'm not super in-danced with inventory management or anything like that, but what I would say, it is possible to have high GEO ranks across the entire country. It's not like something like, well, you're only giving well-in-mining focus on the work finale and that's going to make other GEO ranks necessarily go down.

Speaker 3: 23:59

You can, you know, over time, pretty much have high GEO ranks across the entire country, which definitely would require more inventory to the house, and it's probably also valuable to point out that you can know, for instance, let's say, somebody were to get your application once it goes live and it indicates hey, you've got low rankings in these cities and maybe there's 50 out. You should be able to look at those. Knowing your product, knowing your customer avatar, and hopefully you know that you should know who you're selling your product to right Specifically. But knowing those two pieces of information, you should be able to look at those cities where you're not ranking well and say, okay, look, some of these are very high population areas. Some of them are not very high population areas and we know that our customers reside there. So let's focus on the high density population areas that we know our customers are there. Let's pinpoint that as our starting point. We can always move out and target some of those smaller areas, but start with the high density places first. The other thing that I was going to say was it strikes me that your service actually would be helpful in another way, because correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand your service is that once somebody is using it, not only will it indicate for them where they're not ranking well, but it will also indicate for them where they do and don't have very much inventory.

Speaker 2: 25:41

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 25:43

So one valuable piece that I can see there is that if you're looking at a region where you have good inventory levels but you're still not ranking well, then you know there's something else going on, like either you need to target. It would strike me that if Amazon has inventory there, they believe there's demand for your product in that area, and so maybe I'm wrong, maybe it's just because that's one of the default places that Amazon keeps inventory, but it just strikes me that it gives you more information because you can start looking at okay, is there some other factor? Or is it primarily that Amazon doesn't believe that's a high density area of interest in our product? So we need to geotarget that. Or maybe there's some other factor going on?

Speaker 2: 26:31

Yeah, and then there definitely be some other factors. It might just be as simple as like this is one of their main distribution centers, so they have a lot there for whatever reason. So, yeah, again, that could actually be a strategy. So I mean, we're releasing this tool and we don't know what every single application is going to be right, so people are going to think of different things like this we're launching the tool, we're trying to educate people as much as we can different ways to use it, but there's going to be probably 100 different ways that people will be able to use this data. So that might be something right. It might be because there's already inventory there and now you geotarget those locations, generate that demand, and now there's already inventory there. Again, inventory placement. It does have an effect of not as much as an effect as these magic arts and units ordered in that area, but that could. Just because there's already inventory there, you might get high back in the rankings even quicker because of just all the effects.

Speaker 1: 27:45

Yeah, well, and I think a couple of things and I mean for people to be aware, because I know a lot of brands and sellers do this where they'll have like a backup FBM skew, which is better than you know, better than nothing, but I think it's important you know, based on this conversation, just understanding how Amazon ranks in certain areas is that, yes, you can still sell your product, but your conversion rate is going to be a lot less than if you were selling through you know FBA and you had product you know nearby in that warehouse to be able to fulfill within that you know day or two that most Amazon customers are expecting.

Speaker 2: 28:25

Yeah, and if you are an FBM seller for whatever reason, I mean determine that that's the best way for your business to operate. You can use the geo rank tracker and, like the fact geo rank for you know me just focus on areas that are closer to you or are closer to your warehouse, so then you can reduce shipping costs and shipping times yourself. So if your warehouse is New York, maybe you just focus on the Northeast, because you know you're going to be able to get it there quickly and cheaply.

Speaker 3: 28:56

Which is a really good point, because up until now it really there was no effective way for you to evaluate and most people didn't even know that they should. I certainly didn't that you should be evaluating multiple zip codes within that region. So if you are an FBM seller, you know maybe you rank really well in New York City, but maybe Schenectady or you know Buffalo or something, maybe you don't have good rank but you can get products of those people in a day or two, you know. So you should dial in on those because you can get good ship times there and good customer satisfaction out of that, but you don't have the rank. So, yeah, that's a good point.

Speaker 1: 29:31

Yeah, I think that so we've got this idea of geo ranking, which is fantastic, Eddie, that you've really kind of walked us through. So what would you say, or is there anything else that we haven't covered about geo ranking that you think it's important for listeners to know?

Speaker 2: 29:52

Yeah, I think we covered. You know all the basics. I think there's again, there's all these applications, right, if you're like Mike and you're kind of, you have like a more seasonal product, right, you have pools. You know you might want to use this to only focus, you know, to focus on the hotter areas, right? So there's so many ways that I think that you know. Once you've had the geo rate data, you understand where you're ranking. There's so many different ways that it's going to be applied, like people that we don't even know yet. And, yeah, but I do have a geo rate newsletter. So you know, as we launch this, as we start talking to people who are using it and different applications and you know more case studies about it, like I will be sending out that information via that newsletter. So I do believe that the sign up link will be on the episode, but you can always go to guadalistingscom there's also a sign up link and yeah, and that's all the all the information will be on my website.

Speaker 1: 30:55

Yeah, absolutely, we'll make sure that that link is in the show notes. So I you know, I think really the first thing for anybody's listening to this if they're interested in geo ranking and how it can help move their business and their brand forward is really to get on that newsletter and, at least you know, start tracking and understanding your geo rank so that way you can make some decisions, because this is one of those areas that I feel like you know it's still blue ocean. You know there's a lot of things on Amazon that have gotten very competitive ads in a lot of other areas where you have a lot of brands out there, both in the United States and overseas, brands that are doing all the blocking and tackling and more on those subjects. And you know geo ranking is one of these couple of opportunities a year that I feel like the pop up that are kind of unique and really blue ocean right now. So I think this is a great time for people that are interested in geo ranking to learn more about it and at least start tracking that so that way they can have some data to start making some decisions.

Speaker 3: 32:01

I think, something that they should do too. Honestly, anybody who's listening to this, like I would. It is not difficult to take and sit down for an hour and jump into incognito mode and just start searching Amazon in terms of these high population density zip codes and see how you rank, because I can almost guarantee you you don't rank as well as you think you do and maybe you rank better than you think you do in certain zip codes, you know. But you need to take a look at this because, honestly, if it's true and I believe it is I think once you do this search, you're going to find that it is. You're going to be seeking any out, you know, to get the software, because then it's going to give you a way to do this at scale that there's no way you could do. You know any other way. So, as an action point, I honestly believe everybody who's listening to this if you're selling on Amazon, take an hour and just check your rankings. I guarantee you're going to find the very same thing that I did.

Speaker 1: 32:56

Well, here you go. That's perfect, mike. That's a great takeaway for folks. Eddie, thank you so much for being on the podcast and, you know, walking us through geo ranking and giving some great action items. I'm really excited to see the newsletter and see the software as it comes out. Like you said, you know this data. There's going to be a lot of different ways in where you use this data and I'm excited to see how brands and sellers can leverage this concept in order to move their brands forward.

Speaker 2: 33:26

Thanks for having me on, yeah thanks, Eddie.