036: Kyle Binder's: Mastering Amazon Markets, Digital Nomadism, and Customer Conversion Secrets

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Welcome everyone to the Brand Fortress HQ podcast.

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I'm your host, Jon Stojan, and my co-host is Mike Kaufman, and we have another Brand Builder episode for you.

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If you're an Amazon seller and want to share your story, you can apply at brandfortresshqcom slash brand builder.

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Our guest today is Kyle Binder, the founder of Pet Lovers.

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Kyle, welcome to the podcast.

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Thank you, jon, thank you for being here and thank you both again for amending your schedules to accommodate time and time.

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Yeah absolutely so.

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If you hear my voice is a little bit lower than normal, it's because it's a little early in this part of the world, but that's okay, we're excited to talk to you.

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Kyle, before we kind of dive into the business end of things, tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of your e-commerce journey.

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Yeah, sure so.

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I started selling on Amazon back in May of 2017.

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So now it's going on that seven full years soon.

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Back then, let's see, I just turned 28.

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And yeah, it was right before, I guess, my 21st birthday and I had originally came into e-commerce.

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It was like a Tai Lopez ad that got me down the rabbit hole of making money online and at that time I was going to college full-time.

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I was also working pretty much full-time.

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I was working at Winn-Dixie.

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I was like a customer service manager and I just remember it's like the classic unhappy, not enjoying life, but for me I felt like I could see enough into the future to be like, okay, I'm not really enjoying school.

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I never have.

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I don't absolutely hate it, I just don't get any satisfaction from it and I don't know exactly what I want to do.

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I was kind of just going just to go.

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I was doing finance because I've always been interested in numbers, but I didn't want to be like a financial analyst, but I just I didn't know what else to do.

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So, yeah, I was just kind of plodding along and then I came across like a I think it was social media marketing agency ad and I had made like two phone calls to local restaurants and very quickly realized I don't have the confidence to be like a cold calling salesman and I wasn't really interested in social media.

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So that was like late 2016.

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And yeah, then I stumbled across one way or another selling on Amazon and I was instantly hooked.

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I just loved the whole idea of it.

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I thought it was ingenious and I moved relatively quickly.

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It was probably January or February when I stumbled across it in 2017.

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And then a couple months later I'd placed the PO for my first product, which I'm still selling today Well, not that listing, but it's Lint Rollers.

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I'm pretty open with my products.

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I understand not everyone is and I completely respect it, because it's all niche dependent and a ton of different factors.

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But, yeah, and that's the start of it Maybe very long winded, but it was.

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Things really took off in like 2019.

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The first two years just kind of plodding along.

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Maybe we're at five to like 15,000 in revenue.

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And then in early 2019, I launched like a bigger pack of the lint rollers and things just really really took off from there and thankfully, been growing nonstop since then and, yeah, bringing us up to today, with a whole lot in between.

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But I'll just I'll start with that.

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Okay, well, I think something that I saw is kind of unique was so, as we mentioned a little bit earlier, you're in Thailand right now.

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What inspired you to move from the United States to Thailand?

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Yeah, so I came here in 2019.

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And the reason why, when I was living in Tampa Florida, I was looking for other online entrepreneurs like ideally, amazon sellers, but just anyone who worked online and I was having great difficulty finding them.

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I was just looking online for meetups or just local communities and I could find literally nothing.

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I think I mean I haven't searched in a while, but I'm pretty sure a lot more exists now and then I just came across a YouTube video on Chiang Mai, which is in Northern Thailand, and it just got me thinking like I had been living in an apartment for four or five months and I was like I'm paying a month's rent and then this guy's living in this really nice place and he's paying like $400 a month and you know, I'm in my early 20s.

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I don't have anything tethering me here, like why don't I just go there?

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Because I want to meet more people working online as well, and that was kind of like the digital nomad center of Thailand and really of like Asia at the time.

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So I flew into Bangkok and I actually had the idea of hopping around country to country, but I traveled with my dog and I realized how hard that is to internationally travel with like a large dog, a Siberian Husky, and he's really the source of inspiration for the brand brand.

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He's on a lot of the packaging and the website and all that.

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So shout out to jacks, jacks the husky.

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But yeah, I just realized that it was super impractical to be going from country to country like every 60 days.

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It's possible, but it's kind of like a full-time or like a part-time job on the side of preparing for paperwork and all this nonsense.

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And it also worked out that I love Thailand.

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So I just kept saying like, oh, I'm going to extend, I'm going to extend longer.

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And then maybe after like six months, I was like, okay, I'm just going to live here indefinitely.

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Okay, very nice.

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Yeah, I think that that's awesome, that you kind of took that leap and found a community, cause I think that's you know, we've had that discussion in a couple of different episodes in the podcast and just talking about the value in building a community and in fact that's you know kind of how this got started.

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Was you know, matt, mike and myself just kind of getting together talking about, you know, issues that we're running into as far as running on building things, on Amazon and building brands and that type of stuff, and there's just so much power in having a community to go to when you have issues that might be hard to solve yourself.

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And just to jump in there.

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Go ahead, Mike.

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No, you're good, go ahead.

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You're the one we're interviewing, not me, so I was just going to say I was listening to one of your tactic Tuesdays it was on launching the podcast and I thought it was super interesting how you guys were talking about just barely cracking the top 100, which I thought was amazing Like congratulations on that achievement.

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But Mike was just talking about kind of like the idiosyncrasies of lining things up and getting them just right and if you could go back and do it again in like hindsight.

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And yeah, I think it's.

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I think it's amazing really just for such a kind of a niche topic like FBA.

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Congrats, guys.

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I appreciate that it's.

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I think it comes down to the same thing, right, like even even in business, right, for if you're selling a product or a service, whatever that is, you know, you hear it a lot, but I don't think that people pay enough attention to it when they first start a business.

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Most of the time, and that is that idea of niching down, you know and really finding where your sweet spot is, that that just right, customer, you know very specific product and and how you're going to market it.

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And if you don't niche down like that, I think it makes it much more difficult, because then you're kind of shooting at a moving target.

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You don't really know exactly who you're marketing to, you don't really know exactly what your product is, and so that niching down really makes a big difference.

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I mean, in your case, right, you sell lint rollers like this is what we do, right For pet hair.

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And it doesn't mean, of course, that down the road you can't reach out to other products, but niching down and being very specific with who you're selling to and what you're selling is very effective in the beginning.

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Oh, 100%.

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And it was lint rollers for pet hair, just to build on that.

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That really that made the difference, like specifically going after that keyword, because I remember distinctly like seven years ago the search volume for lint rollers for pet hair was like 11,000, versus lint rollers was maybe like 40 or 50,000 a month and I was like, all right, if I go after lint rollers, I'm competing against 3M and the Chinese, which are still the competitors today.

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Surprise, surprise.

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But yeah, if I brand it and go after lint rollers for pet hair and even the brand name, super, everything was really really intentional, like pet lovers, because initially I was thinking of just kind of a more generic name, like making up a name or something and that way we could sell kind of anything.

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But I was like, no, I'm going to just go all in because I love dogs Really it should be dog lovers.

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But no, I love cats and all types of pets as well.

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But yeah, I wanted to name it, ideally something that I could connect with and be much more motivated to sell whatever products we sell if I could just be stoked about the brand itself, which I think, like I said, once I added my dog on, once I added Jax on the packaging in early 2019, combined with launching a better offer, things really, really scaled, and I think that's just been the continued source of me.

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To keep going and keep pushing is just because I made it something I genuinely care about.

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And there's also the other alternative which I think is completely fine and respectable business-wise.

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It's just like I'm just going to find something to sell and then build on that, and I actually strongly recommend.

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I mean, I think now, with market dynamics changing, I would strongly recommend that you do a passion product if possible.

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However, if someone stumbles upon a new set they think looks great and maybe it's like I don't know, a set of storage spice racks in your kitchen cabinet.

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Maybe you don't need to love spices, but if you think it's a great opportunity and you're super, you got a great feeling.

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All of the metrics seem to check out and, by the way, I'm not actually recommending spice racks, it's just something that pops in my head Then go for it.

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Sure, I think knowing your audience is a big thing, so that's why I don't, on the one hand, I don't like the idea of you know, sell what you're passionate about, in the sense that I think far too many entrepreneurs aren't really that they they start doing something they like but they don't dig into the numbers, they don't do the testing, they don't do the things that make it an actual business.

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It's really more of a hobby that makes some money, and so, on the one hand, I don't like that, because sometimes if you enter into a space that you don't know, it forces you to do some of those things.

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But, on the other hand, like you said, when you're selling into that space, that you are passionate about the one thing that it does do for you, and if you're focused on this and you understand the value of it, then I think it's a very good thing, and that is, you can connect with the audience.

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If you recognize how important it is to be marketing to a very specific individual, then if you're selling in a category that you really enjoy and you're passionate about, you know who that person is, you know how they think, you know how they operate, what they get emotional about, and so as long as you're using it properly to your advantage, then it's a huge setup, and so if you can find something that you're passionate about that you want to sell in that category, I do recommend it, as long as you understand that the value of it really is mostly in you now understand your target customer extremely well, form a relationship with them, and that's going to be your bread and butter relationship with them, and that's going to be your bread and butter.

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Well, I think that the best way that I've heard this put so far is in the episode where we interviewed Bradley Sutton, because he talked about if you've seen Project X before, he does like coffin shelves, which is a little bit off the wall and what.

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I found was really interesting about that.

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When I was talking to him I was like, hey, how did you get to coffin shelves, Since I know they documented it, but I think that YouTube video is probably like five years old by now and they've got, you know, thousands out since then and what I found interesting about that is yeah, yeah.

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And what I found interesting kind of to this, this topic out of it was that you know he saw an opportunity in kind ofhic decor that actually wasn't even from data on Amazon, it was actually from a different source.

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So first of all, you know, looking at other sources I think in this case it was Etsy or Pinterest or something like that as far as doing product research.

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But then the other funny thing is is it's not like you know, Bradley had any sort of you know, super strong affinity or personal interest in, you know, in coffin shells.

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But what he did was he said, okay, well, if this is the opportunity we're going to go after, I'm going to be a world expert in coffin decor, you know, kind of gothic decor.

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And I think, whether you're passionate about a particular you know niche or brand or product, or if it's just for business purposes either, or really, at the end of the day, what matters the most is that you are an expert in that niche in order to serve your customer base, Because I think that's what's going to really set you apart, especially, like you said, with all the Chinese sellers and other overseas sellers, as things get more competitive, what your customers are really looking for is a brand or a product that really speaks their language, talks to their pain points, has some personality behind it, and you have to be an expert, in kind, of who your core audience is and who your core customers are in order to be successful in speaking to them and solving their problems.

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Completely agreed, in order to be successful in speaking to them and solving their problems.

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Completely agreed.

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Using Bradley's example, you don't need to be passionate about the gothic.

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What were they Like?

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Gothic, what was it?

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Again, I'm blanking.

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The coffin shelves.

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Coffin shelves right.

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Yeah and gothic decor, yeah, right.

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But one thing that I think is clear is he's passionate about selling on amazon, especially like in that series, right.

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So if you can be passionate about the process versus the individual product one or the other, or both, ideally but you can still get amazing results and I think that's where so many Amazon sellers connect with, like most of them, like I said, going back to the beginning or even if, whether you're just starting out or you're seasoned I'm assuming you know most of the people listening are a couple years in just that process of oh, I found a new product, and going through and doing product research and getting super excited and contacting suppliers.

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I think that's super important and maybe even more important than loving your product or the brand itself, because that's the actual operations of the business.

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So it's better to be passionate about the operations, probably, than just the idea or concept itself.

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I mean, it's hard to say but yeah Well, and speaking of kind of being passionate about the process, I mean it's hard to say but marketplaces to go into in what order and what are maybe some of the challenges that you've seen as you've expanded marketplaces?

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Sure.

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So initially, when we had first started expanding back in I want to say 2021, when we first started going into a bunch of countries, I just simply looked at all of them and sorted by revenue and it was that well, not just revenue, like I did the numbers for the actual margins, like if we were to go in at our target price let's say, in Germany, 15 pounds for this pack of lint rollers like what are the competitors doing?

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How does it look?

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And then what are the actual realities of selling?

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Because let's say, for example, amazon India, which I did look into into many years ago and even I re-looked into it recently you need to set up a separate legal entity and to set that up it's a lot of hoops to jump through and there's actually pretty decent revenue for us in India.

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But it just doesn't make sense the process of setting up that company.

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So that's not something we've done.

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So it's like, yeah, the feasibility of what are the market dynamics?

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Is there enough sales there for it to make sense to send an inventory sales and profit?

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And then number two is just how realistic?

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India you have to set up an entity.

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Brazil you have to set up an entity.

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Mexico as well, which we're selling in Mexico and we actually set one up.

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So, yeah, I think, just demand and then feasibility of actually selling there, which is usually going to be a company that you have to set up for that country, like, at least, like I just said, for those three examples of Mexico, brazil and India.

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So I'm curious for Mexico did you test?

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I always get the name wrong of what Nerf, or you know what I think is what I used to call it.

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And now it's called Remote FPA, and I'm curious if you tested that out and, if so, kind of what your experience was with that.

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So we did.

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It was automatically activated and I want to say I just saw a couple units being sold.

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There wasn't a lot and at that time I mean we didn't sell super long.

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I think it's been like a year and a half, maybe two years, probably 18 to 24 months, since we started selling in Mexico and I think Helium 10 was already showing sales data.

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It was, but it was definitely off's.

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Lint roller listing, was getting 10 reviews a month or something like that, but it was saying it was only selling like 30 units a month.

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So it's like okay, these estimates are very wrong and I think that's something that's valuable even to this day for anyone listening is.

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A lot of times Helium 10 revenue estimates in non, let's say, tier one countries, like anything outside of really us canada, I guess, would be that in europe, if you're even in japan, japan's pretty good, but like it's, it's wrong.

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Australia is to this day, very, very off.

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Mexico is very off.

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So just be careful in these smaller countries on taking that as law, because they're very often very, very underestimating.

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I'm finding in the smaller, less established countries where they have less data.

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And less history overall, because those marketplaces are still fairly new, many of them, so the historical data is difficult to come by there.

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So you can't fault them, but at the same time you've got to be careful about that data for sure.

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Yeah, it makes sense.

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So are you selling Go?

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ahead.

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Sorry, I was just going to ask.

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So you set up an entity in Mexico, so I assume you're selling directly in Mexico and you're not using remote FBA in order to sell in that market.

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Is that correct?

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That's right.

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Yeah, actually, sending in inventory to Mexico and it takes forever.

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The shipments are really slow.

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Customs clearance is a pain in Mexico and you need the reason why you need a company is you need I think it's RF, I want to say RFID number, but that's the Mexican like import entity number that you need, and I think customs clearance in Mexico takes maybe it's like two weeks, I want to say, because our shipments have been taking routinely like 75 to up to 90 days.

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I think one was like six months ago.

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It was so long that Amazon closed the shipping plan and then they couldn't deliver it and then we had to make seller support cases and it was just.

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Yeah, it was a bit of a nightmare but it's worth it because the sales are pretty solid there for us and it just takes more planning and strategizing on inventory and pricing.

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So on that front, Kyle, I guess maybe or a couple of related questions would be of the marketplaces that you've entered, which ones do you feel have been the most fraught, let's say, with those types of logistics problems or paperwork issues, know paperwork issues, or you know administrative type stuff, and and then, I guess, secondarily to that, have you found let's let's take Mexico in relationship to that.

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You said it's, it's worth it.

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How I guess what I'm trying to get at is oftentimes, I think, when we're running businesses we don't always account for the miscellaneous crap that we deal with, for certain strategies or things that we're doing within our business, that if we really step back and evaluated them more directly, we would say, actually, this strategy is not worth implementing, we shouldn't actually be doing this anymore, even though there's maybe some decent revenue there or whatnot.

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We're actually losing way more than we thought on this side, and you just stop doing that and move a different direction.

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What are your feelings on?

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that.

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Actually, mike, before we jump into that, if I could just clarify one thing because I'm curious about, because I think this is important for listeners, because Amazon really pushes remote FBA and I'm really curious.

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So my guess is based on our conversation is there's a reason why you chose to send inventory directly to Amazon Mexico as opposed to using remote FBA?

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Mike asked some great questions, but before we move on to that, do you give a little bit of background as to what drove that decision to work with Amazon Mexico directly as opposed to through remote FBA?

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Sure, yeah.

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So remote FBA think of remote FBA in our experience and I think most products as being basically out of stock, or when you're out of stock but your inventory is on the way and your listing is available and it says your products will be delivered in like three to four weeks, or sometimes it says one to two weeks.

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Whatever it says, that's kind of like the handicap that I found Like we were doing.

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I can't remember exactly, but I know it was something like 70 to 80% less sales with remote fulfillment versus as soon as we sent in inventory.

00:22:28.974 --> 00:22:36.773
And I think it makes total sense because customers don't want to wait globally, whether they're in Mexico or the States.

00:22:36.773 --> 00:22:43.472
I'd imagine the States is even more like we need it now versus Mexico, but it still applies.

00:22:43.472 --> 00:22:47.371
Someone's like I don't want to wait, you know seven days and they have to pay import tax.

00:22:47.371 --> 00:23:03.094
So even when you try and accommodate that on your price, I think they see that the psychological factor of like oh, this is being imported and I have to wait longer, versus something that's available for prime delivery immediately contributes to that.

00:23:03.094 --> 00:23:24.067
I think it would be 80% because we weren't selling much and to go into what Mike said, which I completely agree, mike, and that's why something like using India as an example I thought about like well, should I have someone set up an Indian company and is it worth it to jump through those hoops for that amount of money?

00:23:24.067 --> 00:23:32.545
And I think, ultimately, how someone should quantify it is look at the revenue forecast and try and get.

00:23:32.740 --> 00:23:44.868
Mike, you made a really good point on the miscellaneous costs, and one thing most people don't factor in is the value of their time, which is just something I can't stress enough.

00:23:44.868 --> 00:23:48.305
However, it depends on what phase you are in your business.

00:23:48.305 --> 00:24:01.326
I would say if you're at mid to high six figures, or maybe really low seven figures and you're at a point where you can still dedicate tons of time, then maybe you can set a lower value to your time.

00:24:01.326 --> 00:24:11.621
But if you're at a point in your business where it's like you have systems built out and employees and you have leverage, well then your time genuinely does have a pretty good value.

00:24:11.621 --> 00:24:24.442
So you have to factor in your time, your employees' time, like the amount of time that would be spent on the project and then the amount of sales that you think would come in, and it's a balancing factor of all three of those.

00:24:24.442 --> 00:24:32.069
But what I found with expanding Amazon is, I'm sure, as you both know, it's very front-loaded right.

00:24:32.069 --> 00:24:36.375
So it really is just thinking about, say, using Mexico.

00:24:36.434 --> 00:24:46.061
How I thought about it was okay, I think we can do.

00:24:46.061 --> 00:24:52.061
I think my initial estimate was we could do $10,000 a month in sales there and it's going to cost me, let's say, $3,000 to set up the company and then the company.

00:24:52.061 --> 00:24:55.412
You have to factor in the monthly accounting costs, the compliance, all that.

00:24:55.412 --> 00:25:07.400
I was like, let's say, all in the company to set it up and keep it running without me having to invest too much time, and the compliance would be around $6, six to like $7,000 a year.

00:25:07.400 --> 00:25:18.868
So to me I just did the math it's like, okay, $10,000 a month, 25% margins target, so like $2,500 times 12 is like 30 grand.

00:25:18.868 --> 00:25:23.020
So 30 grand, the seven grand in costs, that's just for the compliance.

00:25:23.020 --> 00:25:24.364
But then I had my time and all that.

00:25:24.364 --> 00:25:29.614
But it's not too much because it's just it's really getting that company set up.

00:25:29.614 --> 00:25:44.701
So it's not like I have to invest two months of time planning out this Mexican company when I can just hire another company to set up the business, which is ultimately what I did and what I recommend people to do.

00:25:45.363 --> 00:26:04.943
Well, I mean, my case of living abroad made it so much more complex to set up a Mexican company, so I ended up literally just buying a dormant company and getting their RFID number, the import numbers, through that entity, and that's how we did it.

00:26:04.943 --> 00:26:11.364
I would have had to get all these documents legalized and notarized, which is these like steps to go through within Thailand, which was super difficult.

00:26:11.364 --> 00:26:13.127
Signing up, just buying one, and that's.

00:26:13.127 --> 00:26:19.457
That's a tip I would give someone if they wanted to sell in Mexico and they're willing to just save that time.

00:26:19.477 --> 00:26:23.285
Because I think, even if you're not living abroad, I think it's a bit of a pain to set up a company.

00:26:23.285 --> 00:26:26.471
I think I only paid $3,000 or $4,000.

00:26:26.471 --> 00:26:37.323
So if you're in a position where it's like, oh, I might have to spend six weeks of submitting paperwork back and forth, or I can just spend four grand and literally be done with it instantly, I would strongly recommend that.

00:26:37.323 --> 00:26:38.905
But I hate paperwork.

00:26:38.905 --> 00:26:40.990
I'm horrible with it.

00:26:40.990 --> 00:26:47.321
I'll procrastinate filling out half a sheet of paper for six weeks, even if it would just take two minutes.

00:26:47.321 --> 00:26:48.404
I'm bad with it.

00:26:50.490 --> 00:26:51.833
Well, you're not the only one, Kyle.

00:26:53.842 --> 00:26:55.229
I feel like that's a lot of entrepreneurs.

00:26:55.229 --> 00:26:57.319
I'm definitely fond of it as well.

00:26:57.359 --> 00:27:02.002
My wife gets very upset at me for the number of things that I don't do that I should do on the paperwork side.

00:27:02.002 --> 00:27:03.747
She's like just get that done please.

00:27:03.747 --> 00:27:06.020
But, kyle, honestly.

00:27:06.261 --> 00:27:33.183
I mean, I would say I mean, I'm sure there's going to be plenty that we talk about that people are going to walk away with, but that actually is a big tip that you just provided to anybody who potentially is looking at moving to other marketplaces, because I would imagine that potentially that tip would apply not just to Mexico but to other countries as well, where you might have to set up these additional entities and whatnot, and that there is potentially a lot of paperwork involved.

00:27:33.665 --> 00:27:36.977
Is that purchasing a dormant company of some sort?

00:27:36.977 --> 00:27:50.055
You know, I don't know what that process looks like and I guess, john, you could decide whether we wanted to get into that a little bit, but that to me actually sounds like a really good strategy for entering into a marketplace a little faster.

00:27:50.055 --> 00:27:55.071
And you always have to take into account the lost opportunity cost.

00:27:55.071 --> 00:28:09.375
So if you're going to take two or three months to be filling out paperwork and doing all this stuff to get yourself set up so that you can actually start selling in any particular marketplace, you have to account for.

00:28:09.375 --> 00:28:20.909
How much money am I losing by not yet being able to sell in that marketplace versus buying this dormant company, which maybe speeds the process or cuts it in half and now I can be selling that much sooner.

00:28:21.520 --> 00:28:24.750
Well, and in fact, actually the other direction that I'd love to take.

00:28:24.750 --> 00:28:43.186
This, because you mentioned that you sell in Japan, mexico, all these different marketplaces is I'm really curious from a listing perspective, are you keeping that same listing across all those marketplaces, which has the advantage of, obviously you know your reviews translate over, which is a huge advantage.

00:28:43.186 --> 00:29:04.229
However, the downside of that talking with you know other sellers and experiencing some of this myself with you know brands that we work with is you know Amazon is far from perfect when you look at across marketplaces and sometimes you know things that you put into your listing for the Mexico marketplace ends up in you know the US marketplace or one of your other marketplaces.

00:29:04.229 --> 00:29:06.962
So I'm curious up in the US marketplace or one of your other marketplaces.

00:29:06.962 --> 00:29:14.486
So I'm curious can you share a little bit of maybe your experience with that and some best practices, if you have them, for how you manage that across numerous marketplaces?

00:29:14.886 --> 00:29:21.048
Yes, yeah, so this is something that we've dealt with and had issues with Our second biggest ASIN.

00:29:21.048 --> 00:29:22.332
I have a theory.

00:29:22.332 --> 00:29:45.470
So the reviews randomly stopped sharing like a year and a half ago and I think it's because we had an issue like some probably overseas sellers put in a bunch of like illicit keywords in the back end and I think that's like permanently removed one criteria like the trust authority of the listings to allow the reviews to globally share.

00:29:45.470 --> 00:29:49.824
But I'll expand on that more later.

00:29:49.824 --> 00:30:01.270
As far as dealing with, let's say, your titles change and all that, the best thing is Helium 10 has the feature to where, if any change happens on your listing, then an email is sent out.

00:30:01.270 --> 00:30:02.721
So we do utilize that.

00:30:03.275 --> 00:30:10.007
But it's also just a lot of manual checking, like we do I even myself, mostly just due to interest.

00:30:10.007 --> 00:30:21.820
I don't need to, but I just constantly will check, not not every single country like every day, but I'm constantly checking the us, like our bigger marketplaces, just out of curiosity and like market dynamics.

00:30:21.820 --> 00:30:23.305
I'm always searching like lint rollers.

00:30:23.305 --> 00:30:27.246
It must be like a thousand of those searches a month out of the whatever.

00:30:27.246 --> 00:30:28.971
It is just coming from me.

00:30:28.971 --> 00:30:36.236
But yeah, it's having those notifications set up and then manual checking as well.

00:30:36.236 --> 00:30:37.238
I would definitely.

00:30:37.238 --> 00:30:46.683
We have someone who tracks our listings and he looks through them as just like you'd go through feedback management for each country.

00:30:46.683 --> 00:31:00.817
That's also a minor tip, but I want to remind people selling internationally, even though we're FBA feedback manager, the people leave you a one star which you can actually remove easily just by requesting it.

00:31:00.817 --> 00:31:05.277
Make sure you do that in your other countries because, although we're FBA, it does matter.

00:31:05.277 --> 00:31:07.883
It is taken into account for your account health.

00:31:07.883 --> 00:31:11.019
So keep up with that each month, go through and check them all.

00:31:11.240 --> 00:31:28.108
So to clarify then, kyle so you are in other marketplaces, you are using reusing the same ASINs in those other marketplaces, and originally the review count was transferring over where the reviews were.

00:31:28.108 --> 00:31:37.775
Over time that stopped happening, and you can correct me, john, but I thought maybe I'm wrong, because we don't actually sell in other marketplaces at this point.

00:31:37.775 --> 00:31:49.137
I thought that there was a point at which that might occur anyways, once the review threshold was kind of passed in that marketplace, that they would just show those from that marketplace after a certain point.

00:31:49.137 --> 00:31:50.060
Maybe that's not correct.

00:31:50.060 --> 00:32:09.930
But my question though, kyle, with regards to that is how many issues do you actually deal with, let's say, over the course of a month of listings getting messed up because of something that you did in another marketplace?

00:32:09.930 --> 00:32:13.885
So you've got that, let's say, cross cross-contamination of the ASIN.

00:32:13.885 --> 00:32:17.285
Yes, because it's always this balancing game for somebody selling in another marketplace.

00:32:17.285 --> 00:32:23.663
How difficult have you found that process in terms of those back and forth issues that you run into?

00:32:23.663 --> 00:32:26.003
Is it a constant thing or is it really pretty infrequent?

00:32:26.474 --> 00:32:32.848
So I will say I think we're lucky because I've known other sellers who deal with so many more issues.

00:32:32.848 --> 00:32:43.279
The most severe issue is that backend keywords that got our listing taken down and it was one of the countries in Europe, but it is very infrequent.

00:32:43.279 --> 00:32:56.304
So the biggest issue we have is someone will go to update the title on the root seller account and it'll globally update the title in all countries, even though we have country-specific uploads.

00:32:56.304 --> 00:33:09.965
Like, whenever you just go to edit the ASIN via the regular manage inventory feature, it'll globally update in all your countries except for your country-specific countries Should be.

00:33:09.965 --> 00:33:11.681
However, sometimes it still does.

00:33:11.954 --> 00:33:14.636
So that's our biggest issue, like we have it right now.

00:33:14.636 --> 00:33:28.875
Actually we had merged, like merged a couple listings together and then the parent listing is now the title for all of the child variations in Europe and it's it's things like that.

00:33:28.875 --> 00:33:35.729
It's usually just title updates that end up being across all countries, even though they're supposed to be localized.

00:33:35.729 --> 00:33:42.375
The countries like Japan which are localized should not be affected by the global updates, but sometimes they are still.

00:33:42.375 --> 00:34:00.768
But I think we're lucky because we've only had one serious issue with having to appeal it issue with having to appeal it, and thankfully that went over relatively easily, like seller performance or seller support was reasonable, and realized that this is clearly just an attack.

00:34:01.375 --> 00:34:04.063
Okay, mike, were there other questions that you want to have?

00:34:04.063 --> 00:34:09.987
Or is now a good time to kind of pivot into the second half and talk challenges and that type of stuff?

00:34:10.414 --> 00:34:11.961
Yeah, no, I think this is a good pivot point.

00:34:16.295 --> 00:34:16.375
Okay.

00:34:16.375 --> 00:34:28.119
So, kyle, what we'll do is we'll pivot into the second half of the podcast episode and then you know, if you want to share maybe some of the challenges you have right now or questions that you have, anything that we can do in order to help you kind of move you know the brand or your Amazon side of things forward.

00:34:28.338 --> 00:34:43.896
Sure, yeah, Well, the biggest one, which would be a tough one, which has been our sort of multi-year problem, which is how do you meaning or sustainably get external traffic to convert on lint rollers?

00:34:43.896 --> 00:34:58.934
It's a tough question because I've talked to so many, let's say, Facebook ad experts, like, specifically, experts within the pet niche for Amazon companies and D2C companies.

00:34:58.934 --> 00:35:02.704
I've talked to so many people and tried so many different ways.

00:35:02.704 --> 00:35:03.786
You know Facebook ads.

00:35:03.786 --> 00:35:08.545
We did social media and we got a couple sales from that, but we were always going for.

00:35:09.295 --> 00:35:13.976
My plan was for engagement, so we didn't even really mention products all that often.

00:35:13.976 --> 00:35:24.980
We still made a couple sales, but my strategy long term was to build up a passionate audience and then be able to sell it to them Lint Rollers or anything else just because they are connected with the brand.

00:35:24.980 --> 00:35:32.864
Ultimately, I had to stop doing that, not to make it too much of a tangent just because I was using my dogs and it became too intertwined with my personal life.

00:35:32.864 --> 00:35:33.925
It was smashing it.

00:35:33.925 --> 00:35:46.121
We got millions and millions of views, but I just shut it down cold turkey because it was not worth it on my personal life with that setup, but I kind of lost my train of thought.

00:35:46.121 --> 00:35:48.505
What was the original question there?

00:35:48.505 --> 00:35:54.092
That social media took me off the rails well, let's so so.

00:35:54.193 --> 00:35:56.436
So I like let's go ahead and dig into that.

00:35:56.436 --> 00:36:09.177
So the idea there was we need external traffic, we know that it would be useful to build out an audience and be able to sell to that audience, and then, of course, obviously, that's, that's all external.

00:36:09.177 --> 00:36:13.291
So you went through that process of utilizing social.

00:36:13.291 --> 00:36:20.797
It would be interesting to know which platforms were performing for you and which platforms you were attempting to use.

00:36:20.797 --> 00:36:41.601
But your suggestion is is that, whatever that was, you were generating millions of views, but it really wasn't generating much traffic or sales in relationship to that number of views, and so you shut that down, partly because it wasn't generating and partly because it was just overrunning your personal life.

00:36:41.601 --> 00:36:43.445
Where were you marketing?

00:36:43.445 --> 00:36:45.068
What platforms were you using?

00:36:45.068 --> 00:36:51.208
And then what were you doing specifically to try and convert that traffic into sales?

00:36:54.755 --> 00:36:55.978
doing specifically to try and convert that traffic into sales.

00:36:55.978 --> 00:36:57.262
Yeah, so I will say it was purely just the personal life Like I.

00:36:57.262 --> 00:37:00.835
I literally said we're not going to push anything for like at least a year.

00:37:00.835 --> 00:37:08.666
We're not even going to show lint rollers or our products, we're just going to make videos of, like, my dog's getting a bath, and that's what we did and it was working extremely well.

00:37:08.666 --> 00:37:12.791
And just have the brand mentioned Like was always, I still am.

00:37:12.791 --> 00:37:14.739
I always wear like the t-shirt.

00:37:14.739 --> 00:37:18.007
I have branded t-shirts and that's just what I wear.

00:37:19.251 --> 00:37:30.699
That was a strategy just to get awareness right, but what we focused on was short form content and the reason why so primarily tiktok, and that is what worked best.

00:37:30.699 --> 00:37:41.518
I had hired someone in Thailand who is a social media influencer himself and he had just come across the job post and he was super interested in the idea of it.

00:37:41.518 --> 00:37:54.088
He liked the brand and so I lucked out in that regard, because usually people who are ultra successful in social media are not going to be applying for a social media job.

00:37:54.088 --> 00:38:06.476
But it was a really unique case because he's living in Thailand as well, so he knew TikTok extremely well and I think that's the primary factor of it working so well, as he was really good at creating short form content.

00:38:06.476 --> 00:38:30.597
And that's a great tip I can give to the audience is when I see I've looked at tons of brands, social media an expert in that but just from an observatory perspective, it's so easy to tell who has paid someone like outsourced it to a cheap agency and then who has someone who's actually turned on with social media.

00:38:30.597 --> 00:38:40.681
I would say find someone who genuinely loves to create videos to do your social media, because it's going to show and it's going to reflect in the quality of the content and, I think, the actual output.

00:38:40.681 --> 00:38:54.934
But yeah, so, since we weren't ever really pushing products like we were getting probably a viral video like every few weeks and probably one to two million views a month on TikTok.

00:38:55.295 --> 00:39:15.358
But I just to answer the question about sales, we had just put a like a link tree up and we just listed links to our products and there was I mean, we're talking maybe like a couple hundred dollars of sales a month, but that's without even mentioning I'm just putting the links up a month, but that's without even mentioning them, just putting the links up.

00:39:15.358 --> 00:39:22.219
So my plan was to start doing ads to the viewers, the longtime viewers, based on the percentage of watch time and who has been watching the longest.

00:39:22.219 --> 00:39:25.976
That was going to be my way to monetize it and actually make it sustainable.

00:39:25.976 --> 00:39:38.458
And the reason why I want to take such a long path is because it's like, well, we're selling Lint Rollers and we've sold other products, and we have other products which are successful, but the core has always been lint rollers and that's still.

00:39:38.458 --> 00:39:40.884
It's what keeps growing, it's what keeps us going.

00:39:40.884 --> 00:39:44.099
So I was like that's the best way to sell.

00:39:44.099 --> 00:39:46.385
It's like trying to sell a pack of screws.

00:39:46.385 --> 00:39:55.217
It'd be pretty difficult to make a Facebook ad like use my screws next time you need to make a carpentry project.

00:39:55.217 --> 00:40:07.688
So I wanted to just build a real connection and build loyalty with the audience and then make the ads with my dogs and, like I said, it just wasn't really working out.

00:40:07.688 --> 00:40:11.663
But I think for anyone listening, it totally is possible.

00:40:11.663 --> 00:40:12.023
Possible.

00:40:12.023 --> 00:40:13.487
That's one thing I want to say.

00:40:13.588 --> 00:40:18.965
I had, I had a serious doubt from the start of like I'm not really a social media person.

00:40:18.965 --> 00:40:20.615
Like you know, I love.

00:40:20.615 --> 00:40:22.300
I love being behind the scenes.

00:40:22.300 --> 00:40:24.126
Can we even do this?

00:40:24.126 --> 00:40:25.931
And it's like it is.

00:40:26.192 --> 00:40:28.599
It is possible even if you're not a social media person.

00:40:28.599 --> 00:40:30.807
If you have the right person doing the creative, so that's the lesson there is like it needs.

00:40:30.807 --> 00:40:33.275
But if you don't like person doing the creative, so that's the lesson there is like it needs.

00:40:33.275 --> 00:40:41.847
But if you don't like it and then you hire someone else who really doesn't like it and they're just doing it for their job and it's outsourced, you're probably not gonna get results.

00:40:41.847 --> 00:40:43.983
That's what I've seen time and time and time again.

00:40:43.983 --> 00:41:03.907
When there's brands that are doing well in social media, it's usually because the creators are's like genuine buy-in to the success of the videos and the production process, or they have an extremely good, expensive agency it's like one or the other and most amazon sellers aren't going to want to pay that.

00:41:03.907 --> 00:41:08.402
You know like twenty thirty thousand dollars a month for social media, and it doesn't.

00:41:08.402 --> 00:41:11.757
I wouldn't recommend that either what does for lint roller?

00:41:11.818 --> 00:41:14.456
I mean, what do you see from your customers in the sense of I guess I don't.

00:41:14.456 --> 00:41:18.146
I mean, we have a cat and a lint roller.

00:41:18.146 --> 00:41:20.081
It's pretty much my experience with that.

00:41:20.081 --> 00:41:26.835
So I'm just curious, like, do you see a lot of repeat orders from people?

00:41:26.835 --> 00:41:31.565
Or is this pretty much like hey, I buy one and I'm good for you know three years?

00:41:31.565 --> 00:41:34.338
Or is it like hey, I buy one every three months?

00:41:35.822 --> 00:41:37.965
So there is a good amount of repeat orders.

00:41:37.965 --> 00:41:44.103
It's frustrating that brand analytics data is so wrong, like pretty much all Amazon data.

00:41:44.103 --> 00:41:52.487
But it's roughly like via reverse engineering the sales on our packs of refills which are heavily brand searched.

00:41:52.487 --> 00:42:06.909
Engineering the sales on our packs of refills which are heavily brand searched and let's say they sell like 4,000 units a month and like half of those come from search and then you take the overall units and divide it, do all the math, it's roughly like 7% to 10% repeat sales out of our.

00:42:07.094 --> 00:42:24.786
So it's not massive, but we have almost, say, like 15,000 people in subscribe and save and just building that up through time has been huge and only in the last couple months has that growth slowed.

00:42:24.786 --> 00:42:29.447
So I'm making that point because most people seem to stay on it for years.

00:42:29.447 --> 00:42:31.380
But it's also hard.

00:42:31.380 --> 00:42:36.425
It's hard to have exact numbers because Amazon doesn't really give enough data, in my opinion, on subscribe and save.

00:42:36.425 --> 00:42:43.947
Like I can't see there's no report, at least to my knowledge, that see how long a customer has been on subscribe and save.

00:42:43.947 --> 00:42:48.646
We can only do it by just seeing the growth month over month and tracking that through time.

00:42:49.576 --> 00:42:52.423
So sorry, John, I thought you were going to say something.

00:42:52.724 --> 00:42:53.467
Well, I was just curious.

00:42:53.467 --> 00:43:06.702
So right now, are you using any sort of insert in your product or any sort of process in order to collect, kind of you know, an email address or something like that, so you can have more of a relationship with customers?

00:43:07.063 --> 00:43:10.235
Yeah, so we've done a couple of methods.

00:43:10.235 --> 00:43:12.402
Right now, we have a really like boring insert.

00:43:12.402 --> 00:43:13.443
So we've done a couple of methods.

00:43:13.443 --> 00:43:14.764
Right now we have a really like boring insert.

00:43:14.764 --> 00:43:24.387
It's just a typical like 25% off scan here to get your coupon and then like a cute picture of my dog and like a on the back I have like a handwritten message, but it's still.

00:43:24.387 --> 00:43:28.829
It's still printing like a standard insert and the scan rate is not great.

00:43:28.829 --> 00:43:35.192
It's like probably I think I just checked the other day and it was like maybe half a percent or one percent.

00:43:35.192 --> 00:43:40.353
But prior to that, do you have a method that I want to share?

00:43:40.353 --> 00:43:48.704
That's, it's actually completely white hat, but amazon would view it as black hat because it's it offers something free, but there's no exchange of anything.

00:43:48.704 --> 00:43:50.690
I've been thinking heavily.

00:43:50.690 --> 00:43:57.306
I really want to re-implement it because it works so well, but it was a tip I got from someone.

00:43:57.306 --> 00:44:04.083
His name is Anthony and I met him at an Amazon event in 2019, the first one I went to.

00:44:04.083 --> 00:44:09.396
So shout out to Anthony Thank you, offer a free item in exchange for their information.

00:44:09.596 --> 00:44:18.061
There's a, let's say, like a form that they would fill out on your website and at the end, after they filled out their information.

00:44:18.061 --> 00:44:27.128
We were offering a free it was either a dog or a cat toy and we just drop shipped them off of AliExpress until it got to be like 1000 people a month and like 1500.

00:44:27.128 --> 00:44:36.786
And then doing 1500 orders a month on AliExpress is not good and then payments kept getting blocked so we had switched to a 3PL in China to be able to fulfill them.

00:44:36.786 --> 00:44:41.166
But anyways, back to the offer.

00:44:41.166 --> 00:44:46.014
You offer a free gift and it's in exchange for their information, really, but to them it's just free.

00:44:46.014 --> 00:44:49.284
And at the end we would ask will you leave us a review?

00:44:49.284 --> 00:44:53.697
But it's not required, unlike most of the free inserts.

00:44:53.697 --> 00:44:55.101
That's like free gift card, whatever.

00:44:55.101 --> 00:44:58.447
But give us your order ID and a screenshot of your review.

00:44:58.447 --> 00:45:00.960
It wasn't required at all and most people didn't.

00:45:01.221 --> 00:45:10.717
Actually, the stats were like 77% of people said yes, but actually almost no one ended up doing it, even though the next click took them to leave a review.

00:45:10.717 --> 00:45:20.338
But that worked extremely well from a standpoint of actually collecting customer information and the scan rate was like, I want to say like 3%.

00:45:20.338 --> 00:45:24.675
Maybe it was even higher Because at that time we were getting, I think, at peak.

00:45:24.675 --> 00:45:31.264
We got maybe 1,200, 1,400 people in a month and our sales sales.

00:45:31.264 --> 00:45:37.077
We probably only did 25, maybe 30 000 units in that month, probably 20 actually.

00:45:37.679 --> 00:45:46.143
But yeah, like it was, it was quite good and the cost for that free item was about two and a half to three bucks.

00:45:46.143 --> 00:46:03.327
So, considering it was increasing review rate, like I said, it wasn't super effective in that regard, but it's a multi-faceted thing, because you get someone's information, which we still get sales off of those customers via email marketing, now information and you increase your review rate.

00:46:03.327 --> 00:46:17.905
However, you're offering something for free, which I think now, actually with amazon's revised 2s, no matter what, would be incentivizing reviews and even even but to me, if you're not requiring it and and you're still directing them off of Amazon on your own website as well.

00:46:18.237 --> 00:46:25.400
My, my biggest suggestion with that, kyle, is that you know, going back to what you just said, which is, you know, incentivizing reviews.

00:46:25.400 --> 00:46:48.708
Right, that's the point at which there has to be, in my mind, the biggest, the biggest thing that you could do, in that that would push the needle in the direction, let's say, of being entirely white hat is just set a really big space between those two functionally within the process.

00:46:48.708 --> 00:47:06.217
Within the process, I wouldn't ask for that review until I'm X number of months down the road, however long it is.

00:47:06.217 --> 00:47:10.465
My guess would be that you have some numbers to gauge how long most customers have a lint roller before they need a new.

00:47:10.465 --> 00:47:13.472
You would, you would want to be asking for that review down the road.

00:47:13.472 --> 00:47:14.454
You've got their information.

00:47:14.635 --> 00:47:26.242
As long as you're continuing to follow up with whether it's you know useful information about how to you know care for your pets or whether it's pushing them towards social media, where you're, you know you've got, you know the content, whatever.

00:47:26.242 --> 00:47:45.956
That is just just creating that extra space, because, at the end of the day, this is your business, it's not Amazon's business, and the best thing that you can do for your business is to make sure that your customers are your customers, and so if you had something that was working, don't throw the baby out to the bathwater.

00:47:45.956 --> 00:48:04.239
Figure out a way to make that as white hat as possible, even in Amazon's eyes, and so I think the biggest thing there that you have to pay attention to is you had to collect their physical address because you're sending them a free product.

00:48:04.239 --> 00:48:12.123
Nobody says you can't send them a free product, I mean that would be ridiculous to suggest that you can't provide free product to your customers.

00:48:12.344 --> 00:48:15.769
That would be ridiculous to suggest that you can't provide free product to your customers.

00:48:15.769 --> 00:48:17.253
They're going to like that.

00:48:17.253 --> 00:48:18.215
It's good customer service.

00:48:18.215 --> 00:48:21.536
It's just that separation of the review from that process.

00:48:21.536 --> 00:48:36.708
If you can create months of space, or at least weeks of space, between those two events, it would be difficult for Amazon to really say too much, especially if, at the point where you are asking for a review Again, you're just asking for a review, you're not asking for a five-star.

00:48:36.748 --> 00:48:41.041
You don't say anything about a positive review, it's just would you leave a review?

00:48:41.041 --> 00:48:45.577
You would have a lot of ammunition for an appeal if Amazon ever said anything.

00:48:45.677 --> 00:49:09.867
Well, and I would just also add to that in the process and we talked about this in the free course that we offer on After Purchase Funnel that I think is often overlooked but really powerful, which is, yes, it's nice to ask for reviews, but even before that, starting with that first interaction to say, hey, did you, everything arrived as expected?

00:49:09.867 --> 00:49:11.391
Is the product working the way?

00:49:11.391 --> 00:49:12.554
You were expecting?

00:49:12.554 --> 00:49:13.135
That type of thing.

00:49:13.135 --> 00:49:18.648
Now, I imagine with lint rollers your return rate is probably fairly low.

00:49:18.648 --> 00:49:24.152
But even starting out with that, now I mean you're doing two things.

00:49:24.152 --> 00:49:38.942
One, you're providing good customer service because if they did have an issue where maybe it was a manufacturing issue or something else that unanticipated, that 1% that have a problem that normally would just leave a one-star review, cause you know it's a pain in the butt to have to return it.

00:49:38.942 --> 00:49:47.579
And now you were expecting to have it and you, you know you're, you're going on vacation or whatever it happens to be with your pet, and now you can't pack the lint roller, you've got to go buy a different one.

00:49:47.579 --> 00:49:54.871
So providing better customer service but then, on top of it, really addressing those issues to prevent those one-star reviews.

00:49:54.871 --> 00:50:02.384
You're not manipulating reviews, you're just providing really good customer service, so I think that that can be really powerful.

00:50:02.384 --> 00:50:07.324
Yes, it's great to get five-star reviews, but it's even more powerful actually to prevent one-star reviews.

00:50:07.686 --> 00:50:12.057
Yeah, for sure, because every one-star review is I mean, that's 10 five-stars.

00:50:12.057 --> 00:50:20.963
You need so many five-star reviews to be able to outweigh a one-star review, and it might be 20 or 30 to really avoid that.

00:50:20.963 --> 00:50:23.706
So avoiding them is really a big deal.

00:50:23.706 --> 00:50:32.871
I would definitely return to that strategy and iterate that you can't not do that because you know it works.

00:50:32.871 --> 00:50:33.932
You can't throw them away.

00:50:34.655 --> 00:50:38.264
And then I would also just basically describe what you described, kyle.

00:50:38.264 --> 00:50:44.713
Something else that I wanted to mention real quick was giving products for free is very powerful.

00:50:44.713 --> 00:50:52.257
Everybody loves getting something for free, and especially if you pay X number of dollars and you're expecting to get this product, but then you also get a bonus product.

00:50:52.257 --> 00:50:53.418
Customers love that.

00:50:53.418 --> 00:51:21.635
Another way to think about that well, really, two things to think about that you may have already tried by Be Curious is the first is, instead of a free product for every customer, doing a giveaway and making a larger prize pack, so that way it's less expensive for you, because I mean, you could give away a year's worth of lint rollers once a month to customers, and it's going to cost you way less than if you're giving a free product to each one of those customers.

00:51:21.635 --> 00:51:23.320
And it doesn't have to be.

00:51:23.320 --> 00:51:26.235
You did a great example of providing it doesn't have to be a lint roller.

00:51:26.235 --> 00:51:31.867
It could be the ultimate pet lovers toy package or whatever it happens to be.

00:51:36.114 --> 00:51:39.331
The other thing is, I think that there could be a great opportunity for you to find some partnerships within your niche for products that are complimentary.

00:51:39.351 --> 00:51:58.570
There's a ton of different pet products out there, and I just wonder if you know you put together a bundle partnering with a few different companies with different products to say you know that you're not directly competing with and have no interest in directly competing with, but just say, hey, we've got X number of customers you know that we have on our list and that come in, buy our product every month.

00:51:58.570 --> 00:52:01.259
We'd love to have you, you know, donate on a monthly basis.

00:52:01.259 --> 00:52:12.610
We're doing this, giveaway X amount of product and you could easily put together, you know, a few hundred dollars or even a thousand dollars worth of product from you know, between you, and kind of the brands that you partner with.

00:52:12.610 --> 00:52:30.623
That provides a ton of value to your customers, doesn't really cost you anything and then helps you kind of build some partnerships in order to get that off Amazon traffic piece that you were originally looking for, without having to spend a ton of money or a ton of effort in order to develop that channel.

00:52:30.623 --> 00:52:31.085
I love that.

00:52:31.514 --> 00:52:36.744
Honestly, I love all the suggestions, different ways, suggestions genuinely going back to.

00:52:36.744 --> 00:52:47.016
Well, just starting with what you just said, john, I knew split testing a big giveaway is something we need to do and I kind of forgot about it.

00:52:47.016 --> 00:52:56.280
So I'm glad you brought that up because I totally agree, we've yet to do it, but we totally should, just because if you don't test then you don't know.

00:52:56.280 --> 00:52:58.565
And we have such a large volume.

00:52:58.565 --> 00:53:05.688
That's why, especially for us, we should be testing, since it's probably like 40,000 orders a month.

00:53:05.688 --> 00:53:17.581
So with that amount of volume it's much easier to test compared with if we're only selling 1,000 units a month and scan rate is relatively low of 1%.

00:53:17.581 --> 00:53:18.704
It's just not much data.

00:53:18.704 --> 00:53:20.956
But since we have the volume, we can truly test.

00:53:21.458 --> 00:53:30.827
And it's just not being lazy, because it's a bit much logistically to change all the inserts on all the products and especially where we have them localized in certain countries.

00:53:30.827 --> 00:53:44.503
However, at the end of the day, it's not that much work and we totally need to do it because I've heard some great success stories on people who would spend like $250 but get emails at like.

00:53:44.503 --> 00:53:46.201
It was a case study I read once.

00:53:46.201 --> 00:53:48.123
I can't remember what they did.

00:53:48.123 --> 00:53:54.485
I think it was like a camping, some sort of camping package, and their cost per email ended up being like 40 cents or something.

00:53:54.485 --> 00:53:59.802
It's like a 250 or maybe a $500 giveaway, and they got tons of emails.

00:54:00.083 --> 00:54:02.538
Oh yeah, giveaways I mean really they're terrific.

00:54:02.538 --> 00:54:14.940
And, like John was saying, if you can find a good partner who maybe has a fairly expensive let's say an expensive product with really good margin, that you know, maybe they can give some sort of a giveaway.

00:54:14.940 --> 00:54:27.228
That's a smaller version or something else, but but you both get the customer data, so they have the benefit, right, like they're not just going to give you that, you know, without something in return, so you both get the customer data.

00:54:27.228 --> 00:54:29.199
Well, now they can market to them.

00:54:29.199 --> 00:54:36.898
As long as it's a good company, you've got to be careful with the partnership that you make, but those giveaways are terrific in that sense.

00:54:36.898 --> 00:54:41.989
The other thing I was going to get at was you know, when you're what's the best way to say this?

00:54:41.989 --> 00:54:46.643
Well, okay, so let's back up A more important part of this piece that I wanted to ask you about.

00:54:47.034 --> 00:54:49.503
You said that you were using, that you're using, an insert.

00:54:49.503 --> 00:54:55.177
How are you doing that with your lint rollers?

00:54:55.177 --> 00:55:10.248
Because one of the things that I know we found with our insert process was that we really spiked the engagement rate in terms of scans of the QR code by switching over to a different mechanism.

00:55:10.248 --> 00:55:14.762
Let's say that they had to interact, so we sell pool tools.

00:55:14.762 --> 00:55:16.565
Anybody who listens to our brand knows that.

00:55:17.507 --> 00:55:26.717
And in the past we had just put in an insert.

00:55:26.717 --> 00:55:28.706
It just was in the box with the product and we had a certain level of scan rate which was not bad.

00:55:28.706 --> 00:55:31.356
I mean, to be honest, it was actually quite good for most Amazon sellers.

00:55:31.356 --> 00:55:34.762
I think it was because of our warranty and the giveaway that we did.

00:55:34.762 --> 00:55:39.036
But we were maybe in that 10% range, something like that.

00:55:39.036 --> 00:55:39.838
Maybe it was a little more.

00:55:39.838 --> 00:55:52.797
But we virtually doubled our response rate overnight when we switched from an insert to a hang tag, because we forced the customer to interact.

00:55:52.898 --> 00:55:56.018
If it's an insert insert, a lot of times it falls into the bottom of the box.

00:55:56.018 --> 00:56:00.657
Somebody doesn't see it, they throw it away, whatever when we switch to a hang tag.

00:56:00.657 --> 00:56:03.744
So with our tool you've got a pole and you got a tool and they have to be.

00:56:03.744 --> 00:56:05.416
You know they have to be made it together.

00:56:05.416 --> 00:56:11.480
In order to do that, they had to remove the hang tag because it was a plastic loop that goes through the end.

00:56:11.480 --> 00:56:12.784
And then we've got a hang tag on the end.

00:56:12.784 --> 00:56:18.467
They can't insert the tool into the pole, nor can they attach the pole to a tool without removing it.

00:56:18.467 --> 00:56:22.503
So they had to interact and we literally doubled our response rate on that.

00:56:23.155 --> 00:56:30.364
The other thing that's nice about a hang tag is that you can split test very easily, because you never know which side of that hang tag the customer is going to see first.

00:56:30.364 --> 00:56:37.836
So you can put two different versions of the same message on that hang tag on either side and then you just look at the scan rate whatever.

00:56:37.836 --> 00:56:41.744
Whichever one gets the better scan rate becomes the new control and then you iterate against that.

00:56:41.744 --> 00:56:43.568
So it makes split testing very easy.

00:56:43.568 --> 00:56:55.802
But in your case the question I guess that I would ask is was the insert something that they had to interact with, or was it something that could easily get lost in the bottom of the package?

00:56:55.802 --> 00:56:58.112
And maybe that was part of the reason you weren't getting good scan rates?

00:56:59.436 --> 00:57:07.043
No, it wasn't something they had to interact with, and that's an excellent idea and I'll answer that just quickly.

00:57:07.043 --> 00:57:12.206
I did want to say I really appreciate your idea on lengthening the space between the reviews.

00:57:12.206 --> 00:57:16.891
Just because I've been wait is I've lost video.

00:57:16.891 --> 00:57:17.572
Can you guys hear me?

00:57:18.096 --> 00:57:23.637
Yep, we can still hear you, yeah, and I actually still see you at the moment, so okay, okay, I didn't know if I had disconnected.

00:57:24.239 --> 00:57:24.639
Anyways, I've.

00:57:24.639 --> 00:57:34.306
I've been terrified to jeopardize our reviews because I want to exit within the next year, ideally, so I don't want to mess around with anything that has any risk of like.

00:57:34.306 --> 00:57:39.188
If we were to get our reviews wiped on our big listing, it'd just be like, you know, the sky is falling.

00:57:39.188 --> 00:57:42.050
So I definitely want to avoid that.

00:57:42.050 --> 00:57:45.739
But so, thank you, because I'm probably going to very likely do that.

00:57:45.739 --> 00:57:50.702
I do want to get back to it and I've been thinking how I can safely reimplement it, and I think that's the way, because I also don't.

00:57:50.702 --> 00:57:53.177
We don't really need to optimize reviews as much now.

00:57:53.177 --> 00:57:54.039
We have tons.

00:57:54.039 --> 00:57:55.864
Back to the insert.

00:57:55.923 --> 00:58:10.331
So we did test a bunch of different inserts, probably three, probably five different, but three major types, which is, you start off with the typical rectangular square one that kind of everyone starts off with or at least did five, six years ago.

00:58:10.331 --> 00:58:14.545
And then we switched to a credit card and we tried different types of credit cards.

00:58:14.545 --> 00:58:18.735
We found that did increase the scan rate, but it still wasn't sufficient.

00:58:18.735 --> 00:58:29.503
Maybe it brought us from sub 1% to to one and a half percent, probably not even two percent, and then we switched to a customized.

00:58:29.503 --> 00:58:34.240
It was the shape of a paw, like a cat paw, and that had a much better scan rate.

00:58:34.240 --> 00:58:46.322
But, like you saying, attaching it to the product, like we could maybe put the lint roller through the cat paw or something and that way they have to like take it off, like I think that think that's a really great idea and that's something we could implement.

00:58:46.755 --> 00:58:47.498
Yeah, just make it.

00:58:47.498 --> 00:58:53.300
I mean it really as long as it's something that they don't really have any choice but to interact with.

00:58:53.300 --> 00:59:16.304
And I would also say that consider the way in which they're interacting with it and how can you best position the messaging so that the most important aspect of that message you know, the thing that you think is most likely to get them to actually do something is front and center at that point of interaction.

00:59:16.304 --> 00:59:20.503
You know, those are the things that I would really play around with, because I think it's going.

00:59:20.503 --> 00:59:25.217
I think I think it'll make a big impact on the scan rate that you're getting from that.

00:59:25.217 --> 00:59:35.306
The other thing to pay attention to as well, just logistically on that, is when you're doing your, when you're setting up your QR code and stuff.

00:59:35.927 --> 00:59:47.393
One thing that people they'll they'll use services, that they run those QR codes through this so that they can make them dynamic, so they can change where they direct and do things of that nature, which is great.

00:59:47.393 --> 00:59:56.565
Except then you're locked into that service, right, until all of your inserts are gone, you have to keep using that service, even if you decide you don't like it or you're not using the other aspects of the service.

00:59:56.565 --> 01:00:03.666
Something that I would recommend is there's a tool called Switchy that right now it's on AppSumo.

01:00:03.666 --> 01:00:22.244
I don't know how long they'll be on there, but if you can purchase it through AppSumo, where it's a single purchase, switchy is nice because not only does it give you a lot of flexibility in terms of creating pixeled links, kind of like PixelMe's service, it also allows for the creation of QR codes.

01:00:22.335 --> 01:00:23.521
You can do split testing.

01:00:23.521 --> 01:00:27.246
You can change the location that the QR code is directed to.

01:00:27.246 --> 01:00:37.844
So there's a lot of things that you can do, and it's a one-time purchase, but I would definitely create a scenario where those QR codes can be redirected so you can change the landing page.

01:00:37.844 --> 01:00:42.090
You know, or you can split test the landing page or you can send them someplace else.

01:00:42.090 --> 01:00:45.514
Or you can split test the landing page or you can send them someplace else.

01:00:45.514 --> 01:00:48.775
Give yourself as much flexibility as you can with those inserts, because it gives you just more opportunities to iterate on that.

01:00:48.775 --> 01:00:52.146
Even with the same inserts you know that haven't changed in your package.

01:00:52.514 --> 01:00:57.045
Yeah, and yeah, and I think the other thing I want to come back to is you know, Mike, you made a good point.

01:00:57.655 --> 01:01:02.007
Sorry, I think me being in Thailand does lead to an exaggerated audio delay.

01:01:02.007 --> 01:01:06.003
Yeah, yeah, I was just saying that.

01:01:06.242 --> 01:01:07.358
I don't know if we lost him or not.

01:01:07.398 --> 01:01:09.920
I think we might have lost him, let's try this.

01:01:09.940 --> 01:01:11.920
I'm going to turn off my camera and see if that.

01:01:12.081 --> 01:01:12.583
Likewise.

01:01:12.583 --> 01:01:13.940
Are you able to hear me?

01:01:13.940 --> 01:01:15.719
Yes, I lost the video feed.

01:01:16.141 --> 01:01:23.342
Yep, I did too, so I think we lost him unfortunately, but I think that there was good conversation around building up those inserts.

01:01:23.342 --> 01:01:24.005
How do you get people in?

01:01:24.005 --> 01:01:26.420
You guys coming across broken.

01:01:26.420 --> 01:01:29.922
You guys can't hear me, so I actually can hear you now.

01:01:29.922 --> 01:01:32.059
We broke up there for a couple of minutes.

01:01:32.059 --> 01:01:32.960
Okay, is it clear?

01:01:33.021 --> 01:01:33.702
now, or is it?

01:01:33.702 --> 01:01:35.166
It's clear now.

01:01:36.456 --> 01:01:39.985
We don't have video, but maybe if we can just maintain your audio, maybe we'll be good.

01:01:40.286 --> 01:01:45.778
Yeah, I figured I'll try disabling my video to give more stability to it.

01:01:45.778 --> 01:01:46.961
Maybe the wi-fi is being not great.

01:01:46.961 --> 01:02:00.215
But what I was saying, mike, was we are using I can't remember the name, but it's dynamic qr codes so we can change it, but you can't split test or anything like that, and I love the idea of it, so that way we could have three different landing pages.

01:02:01.036 --> 01:02:05.911
So I've definitely noted that well and switchy also is useful because of that whole pixel.

01:02:05.911 --> 01:02:19.219
You know the the pixeling feature, because then everybody that you go through that scan code, yes, you receive their contact information and whatnot and so you could technically set up an audience on on some platform or lookalike audiences stuff.

01:02:19.219 --> 01:02:25.288
But it does simplify it if you can just pixel them, because then you can run those campaigns without having to go through too much hassle.

01:02:25.288 --> 01:02:27.737
You can run remarketing on them almost immediately.

01:02:28.237 --> 01:02:31.686
When I want to come back to something, mike, that you said, and as far as partner.

01:02:31.686 --> 01:02:35.869
So one piece was yes, if somebody has a really high-priced item.

01:02:35.869 --> 01:02:39.199
But the other thing for Kyle that I think might be good to look at is consumables.

01:02:39.199 --> 01:02:40.661
So in the pet space there's food at is consumables.

01:02:40.661 --> 01:02:50.197
So in the pet space there's, you know, food, there's, you know, supplements, there's a lot of consumables where you know.

01:02:50.197 --> 01:02:56.519
Maybe he finds that right partner that's willing to send out a sample size in order to, you know, get that customer contact information that essentially he can do it for free.

01:02:56.519 --> 01:03:00.737
So that's the other thing that I just wanted to add real quick as we're having this conversation.

01:03:00.737 --> 01:03:01.639
I think might be helpful.

01:03:02.521 --> 01:03:41.003
Well, and one of the things that we talked about previously, john, in regards to a situation like that is and maybe this would be useful for you, kyle because obviously, on Amazon, one of the things that you're always trying to do is increase your click-through rate and increase your conversion rate, and one of the things with a partnership like that and you could do it with your own product, but sometimes partnerships are nice in this regard is that, let's say, you go to let's just take an example, let's say it's a pet right or a pet treat or something like that, and they're willing to give a sample to your customers in order to get that customer data and, you know, have more people trying their product, that sort of thing.

01:03:41.003 --> 01:03:55.509
What you can do, then and this is a way that you can advertise it or market it to this partner brand is you could actually put that free item on your listing because it is a free item, it's accessible, right?

01:03:55.509 --> 01:04:07.983
So you set up with this pet company that does a pet treat and then you could say, okay, lint roller plus, whatever the free item is, whatever that sample is, you can actually put it into the listing.

01:04:07.983 --> 01:04:11.277
You could put a bullet point that says free, whatever.

01:04:12.340 --> 01:04:22.721
The beauty is for the partner is that they don't only receive the benefit of the customer data on the backend for those individuals who actually buy or actually take advantage of it.

01:04:22.721 --> 01:04:26.137
They also receive impressions on your listing.

01:04:26.137 --> 01:04:32.398
So their brand is getting exposure and you get way more impressions on your listing than you actually get sales.

01:04:32.398 --> 01:04:43.563
So if you market that properly to your partner, then you can basically you're essentially selling to them brand impressions, you know.

01:04:43.563 --> 01:04:46.367
So it really is an opportunity where you can.

01:04:46.367 --> 01:04:52.826
You have more leverage there, let's say, to get yourself a really good partner on that side, because they get a lot of brand exposure on your listing.

01:04:52.826 --> 01:05:05.786
So something to think about, because then again you know getting that extra free product on there, it's almost impossible for you not to get better click-through rate if you advertise it properly, and probably better conversion rate as well, which is going to spike your sales.

01:05:06.215 --> 01:05:08.079
Yeah, I think it's an excellent suggestion.

01:05:08.079 --> 01:05:21.057
My only concern on that would be if you advertise it on the listing and then they have to go through a process to get it, I could see a large amount of people being like then they have the expectation, maybe, that it would be in the box.

01:05:21.057 --> 01:05:29.653
Or were you saying to actually include, let's say, something physically in the package rather than it being like shipped to them separately?

01:05:29.673 --> 01:05:30.916
you could test it both ways.

01:05:30.916 --> 01:05:34.003
Yeah you, you could test it both ways.

01:05:34.003 --> 01:05:52.403
You don't obviously get the customer data if it's included in the package, but you do still potentially spike your click-through and your conversion rate and because they're putting that sample in the hands of an actual pet customer, then there's an opportunity, of course, for that partner to receive sales from that.

01:05:52.403 --> 01:05:57.420
So the only drawback is you're not getting that customer data.

01:05:57.420 --> 01:06:10.728
I would say that there are certainly sellers out there that are using this strategy and that do advertise it on their listing and that do request the actual physical address of the customer to ship that out.

01:06:10.728 --> 01:06:16.126
I don't think you would likely run into a problem with it because it is accessible to them.

01:06:16.608 --> 01:06:18.780
But that's something that you'd have to weigh on your own.

01:06:18.780 --> 01:06:23.641
Some brands will decide not to do it that way because they're afraid to do that, and I respect that.

01:06:23.641 --> 01:06:27.489
Other brands are going to be willing to push that envelope a little bit further to get that customer data.

01:06:27.996 --> 01:06:29.302
Well, I think it's how you frame it too.

01:06:29.302 --> 01:06:36.746
You know, if you frame it as a bonus item, for example, I think customers are much more understanding that process as opposed to saying like, hey, these two items come together.

01:06:36.746 --> 01:06:51.945
So if you kind of frame that as a bonus item, or you know some sort of language similar to that, I think you set the right expectations that customers understand.

01:06:51.945 --> 01:06:57.139
Oh, this is in addition to, and so when they have to put in their shipping address or whatever it happens to be that they'll be more understanding of that if you frame it properly.

01:06:58.081 --> 01:07:01.208
I also think there might be a psychological aspect to that too.

01:07:01.208 --> 01:07:08.815
If it's a partner brand versus your own brand, there may be somewhat more of an expectation that that makes sense because the partner has to ship it.

01:07:08.815 --> 01:07:11.721
You know, again, framing is is is useful.

01:07:11.721 --> 01:07:43.266
So if on the listing it's advertising it as a brand partner of some sort and they're getting their branding on there and then when it comes time that the scan code and the and the landing page, all of that is hey, our partner is going to ship whatever to you, right, then I think again you're presenting that in a way that makes it less likely that somebody is going to so I apologize, gentlemen, and I enjoy this conversation, but I do need to wrap up here in the next minute or two, kyle, any other kind of questions or follow-ups that you want to cover before we wrap up here.

01:07:43.628 --> 01:07:44.891
No, I think that's a great ending point.

01:07:44.891 --> 01:07:46.775
Other kind of questions or follow-ups that you want to cover before we wrap up here?

01:07:46.775 --> 01:07:49.197
No, I think that's a great ending point.

01:07:49.197 --> 01:08:17.782
But I want to say I've actually noted down both suggestions with the context on each of Mike's asking for the review later just not including it all in that funnel and then John revisiting the giveaways, as I think that's super powerful and I think it's our most reliable way to continue getting data from customers at scale, aside from getting like a viral social media ad, but something that can consistently bring in people in a sustainable way.

01:08:17.782 --> 01:08:21.635
That's our power play moving forward.

01:08:21.635 --> 01:08:24.939
So we need to be utilizing it more and we're just not in.

01:08:24.939 --> 01:08:26.926
Both of those suggestions are super valuable.

01:08:27.295 --> 01:08:43.377
Well, and I think also something to pay attention to the fact that you're looking at an exit is that customer data has a lot of value, and also having a process in place that gains that customer data, because it takes time to iterate on that and actually get that right.

01:08:43.377 --> 01:09:04.707
A lot of companies don't do that very effectively, and so if you're looking for an exit knowing a you know when they come in that they're receiving all of this customer data and not just an Amazon profile on which they can sell right, but then also they are receiving the process by which you get that data and they can just keep it or, you know, keep utilizing that.

01:09:04.707 --> 01:09:06.212
There's a lot of value there too.

01:09:06.212 --> 01:09:15.243
So, in terms of your exit value, I think it's going to change things in a very positive direction that you have the data and that you have a process that you can hand over to them to procure it.

01:09:15.543 --> 01:09:18.837
Yeah, completely agree, and it makes a difference, dad, to that.

01:09:18.837 --> 01:09:19.338
Like we've.

01:09:19.338 --> 01:09:25.940
We've only recently started really email marketing, maybe three or four months ago, and we don't have too big of a list.

01:09:25.940 --> 01:09:33.805
It's about 5,000 people and our last email did $1,000 in sales and that's on lint rollers, so it's not like we're pushing again.

01:09:33.805 --> 01:09:45.618
I constantly say that because there's a big difference between selling an exciting product or even a more high ticket product, like you, mike, like pool supplies, more functional, let's say it's a bit harder of a sell.

01:09:45.618 --> 01:09:52.762
So it's definitely a real thing and I would encourage everyone to not be lazy about their inserts and to really push that.

01:09:52.922 --> 01:09:59.896
Yeah, and I think we've covered a lot here and giving folks an idea of different things that they can try, depending on what works for their brand.

01:09:59.896 --> 01:10:22.265
And then, kyle, I just want to thank you again for being on the podcast and our earlier conversation about different marketplaces and everything that's involved in there and some of the other conversations we had Really appreciate you being on the podcast and providing some good background and understanding for folks that maybe are looking at expanding into other marketplaces and understanding what those challenges look like.

01:10:22.595 --> 01:10:24.595
Thanks a lot, kyle, appreciate having you on.

01:10:24.935 --> 01:10:26.451
Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.