037: Tactic Tuesdays: Amazon Creator Connections and UGC

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Welcome everyone to a Brand Fortress HQ podcast On this Tactics Tuesday we're going to be discussing Amazon Connect and UGC, so I'm going to actually start out with turn it over to you, mike, and let you share a little bit about how you guys have been using Amazon Connect recently and how you've kind of changed your strategy from some of the other times or tests that you've done with Amazon Connect over the last six months.

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Yeah, so Amazon Creator Connections is for anybody who's listening and doesn't really know, because it's not like they heavily promote it.

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It's on Amazon Seller Central.

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You can log into Creator Connections.

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It's under your brand I believe it's under your brand section and it's an opportunity to connect with creators, most of whom are Amazon influencers but also have their own profiles on other platforms Instagram, tiktok, youtube, whatever.

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Some of them are not.

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Some of them are just bloggers and things like that that utilize Amazon Associates.

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So what you do is you create a campaign in Creator Connections and then Amazon puts that campaign out to their influencer network and you can filter.

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You can say that I only want creators in these categories or things like that, and then they will then respond back.

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They'll apply to the campaign and then you can connect with them so you could get UGC from them.

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Potentially, they will post.

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Generally speaking, if there are influencers that are doing video reviews, they would post those typically on Amazon, but also on their own profiles, and then it runs through an Amazon Associates link.

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But also I think there's a separation from talking to some of the influencers.

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I don't think it's all the same.

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They can run it on the influencer platform or they can run an associates link.

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I don't think they're exactly the same, from what I'm gathering, and so, but anyways, that's the idea behind Creator Connections and we've only done two campaigns.

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We ran one campaign back in August of last year and we were kind of dipping our toes.

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We didn't really know what to expect and our brand is one that's not super social media friendly, so we really haven't pushed on that side too much until this year.

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We're really kind of trying to make a push on that now.

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But so we were dipping our toes in.

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So we created a campaign, which was a very low budget.

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Like I said, a thousand dollars on the budget, and the budget is for the commission.

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So essentially, what happens in Creator Connections is you are allocating an additional commission above the Amazon Associates level commission.

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So if they're getting, you know, 2% or 3% on a sale, you would then be offering an extra.

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You know 10% or 15 or 20, you know whatever you decide so that they can stack.

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And so when you create the campaign, you say what is the bonus commission that you're going to pay?

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What's the budget?

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And the budget would be, you know.

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So if somebody sold a hundred dollar item and you were paying a 10% commission, you just spent $10.

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So if you've got a thousand dollar budget, you know $10 into a thousand that's where that budget's being allocated to, and so you would set the budget, you would set the percentage and then you set the timeframe how long does the campaign run?

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And we ran it for a month and we had five responses from creators, which was obviously not great, and the majority of those didn't end up doing anything for us.

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In fact, technically we did not have a single sale run through our creator connections campaign.

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We sold nothing, but we did have a magazine in the pool industry that connected with us and they ran a complete expose on our brand.

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We did a podcast interview.

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They're running you know affiliate links, you know to to our stuff, and we actually ended up setting them up so that they run it through our associates link.

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So they didn't do anything with creator connections.

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We set up something outside of it and that actually ended up working out really well for us and we did find one other influencer through that as well and we're also working with them not through creator connections.

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So that was our initial foray and I didn't feel like it was really much of a success.

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So I just kind of let it go and never came back to it and we just ran a new campaign which is just starting and it's actually been pretty successful so far.

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So you know I can talk some more about that.

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But you know, you guys kind of I don't know what your experience has been with the platform.

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Yeah, and I think we got really excited about this.

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We had a couple of clients come to us and wanted us to basically run some campaigns for them, which we did, and we kind of ran into the same issues.

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So a couple of them the first one was is that surprisingly at least through the Amazon connections was there wasn't as many influencers as you would think that raised their hand and were interested?

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And that was even with because the approach that we took to it, at least in the testing phase, was so two things One, we looked at, hey, what's our break even on this?

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And we were willing to give a commission that was up to our break even, because I mean, it's a win-win all the way around, at least in order to get kicked off.

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We wanted to start fairly aggressive.

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And then we had a fairly healthy budget I think, you know, $3,000, $4,000 or $5,000.

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And just, unfortunately, it didn't feel like the creators were really Either.

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They didn't understand what Amazon was doing with Amazon Connections.

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I think that there's still a lot of work that Amazon has to do on kind of education and communication to the creators and understanding that they're getting that extra commission and those types of things.

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And then the other thing that you mentioned where we probably made a mistake before we hit recording, which was we didn't make the timeframe long enough.

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I think we probably set a few weeks or maybe a month for the timeframe, and that's probably part of the reason why we didn't have a whole lot of interest.

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The other issue that we ran into and I'd be curious to hear, mike, what experience you have with this, or Matt, if you've got any input on this was that we didn't really feel like we had a whole lot of control over what got posted by those influencers.

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So that was a downside compared to what we ended up using, and what we currently use as a solution, which is using joint brands, has a specific campaign for posting video posting videos on Amazon, where you have influencers that have that are Amazon influencers to post directly.

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So at least at that time, that's what we've been using, but always looking at Amazon's always improving different programs like this, and so it definitely pays to give it a second chance if it hasn't worked for some reason.

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So that's kind of been my experience.

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I'd be curious, mike, to hear your or Matt, if you want to chime in here, if you've got anything to share around what kind of control you have over what gets posted or how you kind of give direction to influencers before something goes live using Amazon connections.

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Sure, have you.

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Have you, matt?

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I don't know if you've worked, if you've utilized Creator Connections or if you've got any clients that have.

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No, actually where I'm going to ask you a question is how all of this compares to a platform like Join Brands.

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But go ahead and answer John's question.

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We'll get to that.

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Sure.

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So I would say, in terms of the control that you have over content, you definitely have less control, for sure.

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Also, one drawback and it probably would if you were working with Amazon influencers through some other platform like Join Brands or something, I would imagine you still kind of run into this a little bit.

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I would imagine you still kind of run into this a little bit and that is Amazon influencers.

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One of the things that I think you need to pay attention to as a brand when you're working in this space is that the ones that know what they're doing are well in fact.

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I'll give you an example One of the creators that responded to this most recent campaign that we ran.

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They responded back to indicate that they had done some research on our brand and our listings and had determined that there was space for additional videos on our listing, and so they were interested, and we've heard that once before from another influencer that we work with who's an Amazon influencer, and so what that essentially means is there's at the top of your listing, where you've got the video carousel.

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There's only so many videos that can be highlighted there, and so if you've filled that whole carousel, whether with your own videos or with your videos plus other influencers who are posting on there, then there's no more room up there and the only way to clear space up there for an influencer would be to remove one of your own videos, because any other influencers that are already on there you have no control over them, you can't remove them, they're just there.

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So when you're doing a campaign like this, one of the things that comes into play is is there space on your listings for influencers to post?

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Because one of the things that they like to do is they want to post a video and know it's going to go right on your listing and, as long as they do a really good job with it, it's going to sell the product really well and they're going to make commissions on that.

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But the thing you have to think through is how many of those sales might you generate without that video?

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You know, like cause, cause.

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Essentially they're taking, potentially taking some of your sales and just applying a commission to it that maybe wouldn't have wouldn't have happened otherwise If it had, if it had been your video that the customer viewed and then they decided to buy.

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You don't pay the commission, but on the flip side, if they watch the influencer video, then you're going to pay that commission.

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So weigh the pros and cons of that in terms of how you see it, but that's the way that functions and so they want to be in that space.

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So understand that if your listings don't have any space up there, if you're using up all of that space, at some point you run out of opportunity for those influencers to jump on there and unless they've got really big followings off platform that they want to advertise to, you probably aren't going to get much response from them.

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But again, you don't have a lot of control over the content.

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They pretty much dictate it.

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Many of the influencers that we've spoken with they at least on the front end of it.

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They're not interested in allowing us to repurpose the content.

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So we're going to we're, we're having conversations with them to ask you know what additional?

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You know, can we pay a little additional to have access to that content and whatnot, which I do think is probably a little bit different maybe than working off platform sometimes little bit different maybe than working off platform sometimes.

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Yeah, and that's a great point, what I would say and I should clarify with join brands, what are kind of primary and secondary goals were there?

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Because I think that you know, it's not one tool is good or bad.

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I think that are just different tools for different things.

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So our primary objective with Join Brands for those clients was getting user-generated content, so getting videos that showed real people using the product, that fit the demographic and our target market and those types of things.

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So for that part of it, join Brands worked fantastic for us for a couple of different reasons.

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The first one was because working directly with influencers if it's a long-term thing, you know, recruiting good influencers, getting them to actually getting them the product and then seeing which ones actually produce good videos quite frankly is a lot more work than you would think it would be.

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So you know, kind of creating your own solution was a pretty heavy lift.

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The nice thing about join brands is they already have they basically have a curated community.

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They train the influencers how to post.

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You get a guaranteed post.

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The other thing that I really liked out of it was that, because of the way the agreement is set up when you're working with that influencer, you own that video, so so you can.

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They have all kinds of different channels, so I mean you can do TikTok, you can do Instagram, whatever they have an Amazon specific channel.

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That's what we ended up using and, yes, they post as a part of that.

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They post on Amazon, they can post on their other social media, but then you get that video.

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So if I want to make that into an you know, a video ad to use on Amazon, I can do that.

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If I want to use it as a Facebook ad, if I want to put it on my website, like, I have permissions to use that video as the brand.

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It becomes a brand asset.

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I can use it anywhere I want, right.

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So that was a huge advantage.

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When you start looking at generating high quality, user generated content at an affordable rate.

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We found it worked really well for that.

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Now, if you look at actually driving sales with it through an affiliate relationship, I would say, at least based on that wasn't our goal for it.

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So I would say that there's probably other Amazon creator connections or something along that lines might be a better tool.

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If you already have UGC, especially on your Amazon listing and you're like, hey, I want to produce more of looking for affiliate relationships to drive additional sales and be able to track that directly.

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So in joint brands.

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I mean you said that your goal was UGC.

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I know that that's how Join Brands started was UGC, but now they have this whole influencer side.

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So when you're creating your campaign and Join Brands specifically, are you able to say my goal here is UGC as opposed to my goal here is driving sales with an influencer, or is it a mixed bag of what kind of responses that you get?

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That's a great question and again, what we experienced there was that joint brands is all UGC.

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So you're supposed to be communicating, you're supposed to be working with those influencers via their platform.

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They obviously don't want you essentially sidestepping their platform because you're paying a platform fee and, quite frankly, we found they did a very good job of connecting with influencers.

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That did a good job for us across.

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We used it for 3 or 4 brands over the last 6 months and as far as generating that UGC, it did a very good job for us.

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But there wasn't really an affiliate relationship there.

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So when it comes to the affiliate piece, I don't know maybe things have changed.

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I haven't looked recently, but from what I remember, I don't think that there really is an affiliate option.

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They're really focused on UGC and different types of UGC.

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So whether that's an unboxing, whether that's an initial or showing how the product is used, there's a few other different kind of options in there that you can get for different types of UGC.

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So they do a good job with that.

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But as far as the affiliate stuff, I don't think that they really have an option for that, or at least they didn't as of a couple months ago on their platform and I'm a foot fighter that mike it feels like creator.

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Connections is far more the affiliate content.

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I'm not content creator but like the actual affiliate I'm sorry the uh the influencer part of the same things where they're promoting it to their audience they're getting a commission, is a creator connections is.

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Yeah for sure.

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So you.

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One thing about creator connections that's interesting is that you know, as opposed to most programs, that Amazon runs.

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Where they're very closed, like you're, there's all this, you know TOS, that you know that kind of clamps down on how you can operate right.

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Creator connections feels a little more open, and maybe that's just because it's a new program, you know, and they haven't really clamped down on it much yet.

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But so it is very much affiliate focused, influencer focused.

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It's not really UGC necessarily, but there is no reason that you can't negotiate with you know the influencers to have that content be UGC, that you be able to be repurposed.

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I'm nearly 100% sure that at least some of the creators that we're going to connect with here we're going to be able to get some repurposable content out of them, even if it's just, you know a little extra, you know 50 or a hundred bucks or a couple hundred bucks if it's good quality you know to use.

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I would also say that if you've got a really good customer list, then maybe that's irrelevant.

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Go to your customer list for UGC and then use the influencers for the affiliate type stuff with creator connections and whatnot.

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Getting back to the differential between the two campaigns that we ran.

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So the first campaign, of course, in one sense, was kind of a flop.

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In another sense it was useful because we did connect with, you know, the pool magazine, and we got this other influencer who's done some good work for us.

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The second campaign that we just launched the reason that we launched it honestly, was because Josh Hadley had done a presentation on utilizing creator connections.

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It was I think it was a hack on maybe Kevin King's hack contest and it got me to thinking about how we ran our initial campaign and where we made the mistakes.

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And so a few of the things that he talked about was one making sure that the commission percentage is high enough.

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Now, remember that this is a bonus commission on top of what they're already earning through Amazon Associates.

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But the higher you can make that commission reasonably, the more response you're going to get from it.

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But I would say, as John kind of you know, hinted at earlier, there's a combination here you can offer a decent commission and have it still not be really very valuable to the creator mission and have it still not be really very valuable to the creator.

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You can offer a decent budget and still have it not be all that enticing to a creator if the time horizon isn't long enough.

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So if you set the campaign up for three weeks or a month or whatever it is, they can only earn commissions for that length of time.

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Well, it's just like anything else, right?

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Like why do people sell info products?

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Because you create it once and you just keep selling it.

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Well, a video that sell that, you know, a review video for a product that's affiliate based is that same way.

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It's basically an info product.

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You know.

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You created the information to review this product.

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You want to be able to sell it forever.

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You know, ultimately, because that content doesn't go away, why not keep selling on it?

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So, the longer the campaign, the more time that influencer has to reap additional benefit from the investment that they put in on the front end to create the video.

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So Josh was basically saying you know, run it for at least six months, maybe longer, and then you're going to have more creators who chime in.

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But then by doing that, you also may have to make sure that you set the budget high enough so that the influencer looks at it and says, okay.

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Well, yeah, they put it for, you know, nine months, but the budget was $3,000.

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Well, you know, I could personally maybe you know use that $3,000 in a couple of months.

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So then I don't get the rest of the benefit, like the campaign can't continue to run if the budget's used up.

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So he was just saying make it long enough, make the commission high enough and make the budget high enough.

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So the numbers that we used we did an eight month campaign, we set it at 10% commission and we set it at a $75,000 budget.

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Now we're never going to spend 75 grand.

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That's not going to happen.

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I guarantee that we're not going to come anywhere near that.

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But you're sending that signal to the influencer that you're in that you're serious.

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Sorry to interrupt, but just out of curiosity, let's say that at that commission rate, if you did spend that $75,000, are you guys?

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You're profitable on those sales.

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So even if you did.

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That'd be fantastic, because I would not complain if I spent the whole $75,000 because at a 10% commission that's profitable.

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Because I don't have to, I'm not spending on PPC, right Like it's.

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If I, if my tacos is, you know, 15 or 20%, then if I can pay a 10% commission, well geez, I'll do that all day long because it's more profitable to me than running ads.

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Right and I wanted to emphasize that.

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So that way, anybody who's listening that's like, oh my gosh, I would never set a $75,000 budget.

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That'd be crazy.

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But if you look at it and you say, okay, but if I'm setting it a 10% commission and I've got a, let's say, I've got a 20% profit margin even after giving that commission, well, you'd spend to the moon if you yeah, all day long.

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It's like any other ad platform.

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Yeah, yeah for sure.

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So crunch the numbers and see what makes sense in terms of the commission percentage.

00:21:31.906 --> 00:21:36.911
Josh's suggestion was that you try to do at least 10%, maybe 15%.

00:21:36.911 --> 00:21:40.032
You could go higher if you want and if you've got the margin to.

00:21:40.032 --> 00:21:42.474
You know, I think it's like five days, something like that.

00:21:42.474 --> 00:22:00.336
We have 26 responses from creators, whereas the initial campaign had five.

00:22:00.336 --> 00:22:02.759
Over the entire month.

00:22:02.759 --> 00:22:04.689
We never got any more than five.

00:22:04.689 --> 00:22:06.974
Most of them didn't result in anything.

00:22:06.974 --> 00:22:11.589
We did not sell anything through the initial campaign In the first five days.

00:22:12.070 --> 00:22:22.262
We have sold a thousand dollars worth of product so far, which isn't massive, but understand that the majority of the creators that we've connected with don't have any content yet.

00:22:22.262 --> 00:22:24.653
Like, I mean, we still haven't sent them samples they don't have.

00:22:24.653 --> 00:22:35.828
So essentially, those sales that we generated are only from these deal sites you know and blog sites that you know they don't have samples.

00:22:35.828 --> 00:22:38.861
Like, they just throw a products on their site all day long.

00:22:38.861 --> 00:22:41.789
Those sales that we've generated already is just from that.

00:22:41.789 --> 00:22:44.356
It has nothing to do with video content or anything.

00:22:44.356 --> 00:22:47.452
So I think those sales are going to increase considerably.

00:22:47.732 --> 00:23:04.455
One of the things that we did and this is another recommendation of Josh is that within our post with the campaign description, we put a link in there for creators to apply, let's say, for our sample and support program.

00:23:04.455 --> 00:23:06.905
So essentially they can apply to the campaign.

00:23:06.905 --> 00:23:13.118
That doesn't necessarily mean that they get samples, nor does it mean that they get any support from us necessarily.

00:23:13.118 --> 00:23:26.974
They just apply and they can do whatever they want, right, they can go buy our product and review it, but if they want free samples and or support from our brand to push that forward, then they need to go register through this link and it's just a Google form.

00:23:26.974 --> 00:23:33.851
It asks them about what platforms are they on, how many followers do they have, how many video views do they have.

00:23:34.192 --> 00:23:53.295
We get their email address and their name and a few other pieces of information and so through that it not only gives us another way to connect with them so that we don't have to connect only through creator connections and then we can more easily connect with them down the road, but it also tells us more about what platforms they're on, how much influence they have.

00:23:53.555 --> 00:24:03.970
We also ask them and I think this is a useful question I think most of them are probably being pretty honest about it is we ask them how many Amazon sales did they generate in the last month?

00:24:03.970 --> 00:24:16.439
And we've had responses from creators anywhere from I sold 10 to 50 units last month to I sold 15,000 units last month on Amazon.

00:24:16.439 --> 00:24:32.778
So you know we've got a really wide range of, let's say, production capacity, you know from these creators, but I think we're going to get some good content out of it and we've probably got at least, I would say, four creators out of that really have some juice.

00:24:32.778 --> 00:24:34.991
You know that I think are going to push some sales for us.

00:24:34.991 --> 00:24:37.814
So I'm pretty happy so far with with the production of the campaign.

00:24:38.164 --> 00:24:38.707
Yeah, I'm not sure.

00:24:38.707 --> 00:24:40.133
Are you structuring that one question?

00:24:40.133 --> 00:24:46.634
So one lesson that we kind of learned when we did a bunch of testing with this last year was when you're working with creators.

00:24:46.634 --> 00:25:13.461
Well, what we found was so, rather than just sending them a free product up front, we had them order off of Amazon and then, whether they were promoting our product or whatever, for an affiliate commission or for some sort of flat rate fee, that they didn't get reimbursed for that product until the video went live.

00:25:13.461 --> 00:25:25.701
Because I can tell you you know we tried it the other way as far as, hey, you know, send you the product and I would say that probably 80% of our influencers took way longer and never posted a video.

00:25:26.162 --> 00:25:31.800
Yeah, so I'm interested to hear what I know, what my thoughts are on that.

00:25:31.800 --> 00:25:33.410
What do you think about that, matt?

00:25:33.410 --> 00:25:43.871
What's your thought as to whether you would want to do the you know buy and get a rebate you know back after the fact as long as you've done the video or just flat out give the samples up front?

00:25:43.931 --> 00:25:53.218
I think I've never used a platform like this before we have an audience, and the only thing that I've ever used really the audience for is for UGC.

00:25:53.218 --> 00:26:06.237
So you know, with the new brand that we're getting ready to launch, I'm definitely going to do it this way.

00:26:06.237 --> 00:26:12.326
And what I do know about the people that we've engaged in our group to ask them to do more, you know, not just like an unboxing video that we didn't ask for, but like to actually create something for us.

00:26:12.326 --> 00:26:14.019
You know I also dealt with that same thing where we would send them the product up front unboxing video that we didn't ask for, but like to actually create something for us.

00:26:14.019 --> 00:26:25.172
You know I also dealt with that same thing where we would send them the product up front and you know, even though it was our own audience in our group, you know about a third of them didn't respond and that was the last time I heard of them.

00:26:25.172 --> 00:26:31.335
So I can definitely see the product shipped after they created the video.

00:26:31.737 --> 00:26:38.400
That's for sure, and even I said, even in our own audience, that would have helped a lot and negated a lot of the issues that we had.

00:26:38.400 --> 00:26:46.237
You know, it's really just a matter of setting the priorities and setting it up in the front what your expectations are.

00:26:46.237 --> 00:26:47.655
We didn't do a very good job of that.

00:26:47.655 --> 00:26:58.123
I don't think these platforms, I feel like, do a much better job of setting the expectations of what you're expecting as the brand owner and what the influencer slash content creator is supposed to do.

00:26:59.084 --> 00:27:10.839
Yeah, mike, before we move on from that, there is one other question that I had to one of the things that you said, which was you talked about that 10% to 15% commission.

00:27:10.839 --> 00:27:17.467
Now, your average kind of product, I think, is fairly expensive.

00:27:17.467 --> 00:27:19.278
It's $50 to $100.

00:27:19.278 --> 00:27:24.782
So their commission, doing some public math, is probably like $5 on that product.

00:27:24.782 --> 00:27:30.051
I'm curious, did Josh say anything about it, or what are your thoughts, actually, either one of you?

00:27:30.051 --> 00:27:33.277
If hey, maybe I've got a product that's only 20 bucks.

00:27:33.277 --> 00:27:39.065
Is 10% enough if they're only getting a $2 commission on that product?

00:27:40.130 --> 00:27:47.497
So my thoughts on that and some of this comes back again different in terms of how you're going to end up setting this up.

00:27:47.497 --> 00:28:06.143
So, for instance, like on the free sample issue, we have a number of products in our line that are all used together.

00:28:06.143 --> 00:28:08.978
Right, we've got a pool pole and then we've got a bunch of tools.

00:28:08.978 --> 00:28:12.808
The tools are useless without the pole, the pole is useless without the tools.

00:28:12.808 --> 00:28:17.615
Now, technically, a pool owner could have their own pole so they don't have to buy our pole.

00:28:17.615 --> 00:28:20.599
They could buy our tools and attach it to their pole and vice versa.

00:28:20.599 --> 00:28:25.890
But because all of our products are kind of used together, it makes a lot of sense.

00:28:25.890 --> 00:28:34.319
If I'm going to have somebody do a review of a net, then I want them to also have the pole, because then the person gets to see both the poll and the net.

00:28:34.319 --> 00:28:35.655
Otherwise they're not seeing our poll.

00:28:35.655 --> 00:28:41.121
So it's to our benefit to have them using both products together versus individually.

00:28:41.121 --> 00:28:54.851
And so part of it is, if we require them to purchase the product on the front end, many of them A are going to go with our lesser priced products because they don't want to get stuck with.

00:28:54.851 --> 00:28:56.416
Like, our pool pole is 200 bucks.

00:28:56.416 --> 00:28:58.517
They don't want to get stuck with a $200 item.

00:28:58.517 --> 00:29:01.679
Now, granted, it's Amazon, they can return it.

00:29:01.679 --> 00:29:09.634
You know, like I mean there's a lot of that in there, but still there's a little bit of a fear factor there Like what if I get hung with this product?

00:29:09.634 --> 00:29:21.378
So if your product is a lower priced item, then there's a lower threshold there, so you probably get more easily get away with by the product and we'll refund it after the fact.

00:29:21.378 --> 00:29:28.882
When you give us a video, I don't know that we can get away with that quite as easily, especially if we want them to be using the poll in conjunction with at least one of our other products.

00:29:28.882 --> 00:29:30.432
So we kind of don't have it.

00:29:30.432 --> 00:29:32.695
I don't feel like we have a choice in that area.

00:29:32.695 --> 00:29:38.236
I think other brands that maybe are selling lower price items probably could get away with going the other route.

00:29:38.236 --> 00:29:44.076
The other thing I was going to say with Matt is you know you said you had maybe a third that didn't do the video.

00:29:44.549 --> 00:30:00.423
One of the things I think that a brand should consider is can we afford for a certain percentage of the free samples that we go out to not result in anything if the ones that we do get something from generate enough sales for us Like, is it in the end?

00:30:00.423 --> 00:30:01.192
Is it going to be better?

00:30:01.192 --> 00:30:10.630
Are we going to get more content because we'll get more creators respond if we just say we're going to give the free product, now investigate, don't just give it to everybody Like.

00:30:10.630 --> 00:30:19.854
That's why we do, that's why we've got the form to you know to apply for free samples and support, because then we can ask questions, we can get you know.

00:30:19.854 --> 00:30:21.173
What are your other platforms?

00:30:21.173 --> 00:30:24.816
You know we can go look and see what kind of engagement do they get you know?

00:30:24.816 --> 00:30:26.717
So we're doing our homework.

00:30:26.717 --> 00:30:33.719
I'm not just going to send them without having them buy them first.

00:30:33.719 --> 00:30:36.299
Then I'm going to research them really well.

00:30:36.819 --> 00:30:45.503
But I do think, then, coming back to your question, john, in terms of like, well, what if you got a $20 product versus you've got a $100 product, in terms of the commissions and whatnot?

00:30:45.503 --> 00:30:46.723
Do you offer a 10%?

00:30:46.723 --> 00:30:47.924
Do you offer a 5%?

00:30:47.924 --> 00:30:49.065
Do you offer a 20%?

00:30:49.065 --> 00:30:50.826
Where do you fall in that?

00:30:50.826 --> 00:30:58.108
A lot of that comes down to also, what is the size of the audience that they can sell to?

00:30:58.108 --> 00:31:03.782
So, for instance, a number of the creators that have come to us, again, we sell pool products.

00:31:03.782 --> 00:31:23.143
There's only a certain percentage of households that actually have a pool in the US, like so, no matter what, unless we're connecting with an influencer that only does pool products, and so therefore, their audience is all pool owners we have to take into account.

00:31:23.143 --> 00:31:27.121
There's only a small percentage of their audience that actually has any use for our product.

00:31:27.121 --> 00:31:28.575
So we've got a lot.

00:31:28.575 --> 00:31:34.740
In fact, every single influencer that we're working with, we're going to work with here, it isn't a pool audience.

00:31:34.740 --> 00:31:37.180
They just have an audience of users that trust them.

00:31:37.642 --> 00:31:44.118
But they own a pool and a certain percentage of their audience owns a pool, and so, therefore, a certain percentage of their audience is useful to us.

00:31:44.118 --> 00:31:53.474
But we have to take that into account and say, okay, you know what you know, maybe only 5% of their audience owns a pool.

00:31:53.474 --> 00:31:56.171
What you know?

00:31:56.171 --> 00:31:57.492
Maybe only 5% of their audience owns a pool.

00:31:57.492 --> 00:32:02.250
Well, if they have a pretty small audience, then is it worth my time and giving them samples and whatnot to walk forward with that?

00:32:02.250 --> 00:32:02.932
Probably not.

00:32:02.932 --> 00:32:11.761
But if they've got a million followers on these other platforms and stuff, even if only 5% of them own pools, that's still big enough for us.

00:32:11.761 --> 00:32:14.337
The same thing is true from the influencer side.

00:32:14.337 --> 00:32:25.990
So if you're so in terms of your percentage, if if virtually every person that they that that watches their videos could potentially use this product like it's a kitchen gadget, right.

00:32:25.990 --> 00:32:30.631
Like it's a silicone spatula right, everybody's got a kitchen, everybody cooks food.

00:32:30.631 --> 00:32:32.616
Everybody could use a spatula, probably.

00:32:33.077 --> 00:32:57.021
So if that's what I'm promoting in my video, I don't need quite as big of a percentage or quite as much dollar amount per sale if I can potentially sell to the entire audience of people that are watching my videos, whereas if I'm doing a pool product, I might need that dollar amount per sale to be high, because only 5% of my audience is going to potentially buy that product.

00:32:57.021 --> 00:32:58.994
So I think that's where you have to think through.

00:32:58.994 --> 00:33:01.382
You know, do I have a higher price product?

00:33:01.382 --> 00:33:06.622
Could I offer a lesser percentage and it still be okay because the dollar amount is high enough?

00:33:06.622 --> 00:33:08.857
Or do I have a lesser price product?

00:33:08.857 --> 00:33:12.031
Maybe I need a higher percentage, but it's going to be high volume, so maybe I don't.

00:33:12.031 --> 00:33:16.935
There's a lot of calculation going on there and you're probably not going to know unless you just test it.

00:33:16.935 --> 00:33:18.856
But I will start lower.

00:33:18.856 --> 00:33:22.519
Don't start at a high percentage, because then you don't know.

00:33:22.519 --> 00:33:25.300
Start at a lower percentage and see what kind of response rate you get.

00:33:26.321 --> 00:33:41.461
Yeah, I think that's a great point that you do need to have different tools in the toolbox and how you approach this depending on you know what product you're using for this and what your brand's focus is and kind of where that price point is.

00:33:41.480 --> 00:34:02.183
Because the other thing that I would add to that as well is is that you know if you have a consumable product, you might want to be super aggressive with that because you know you could offer a 50% commission upfront on that first order and if your average you know lifetime customer orders your product 10, 20 times, well, that's a great deal for you as a brand.

00:34:02.183 --> 00:34:32.657
So, take into account you know what your your brand and your price point and also think about it from like and I think that's a great point, mike, you know think about it from that influencer's perspective too, because you want it to be, you know win-win relationship together that it makes sense to promote that product, because the more that they see the benefits of that and they see the cash coming into their account, that's huge motivation for them to continue to support your brand.

00:34:33.157 --> 00:34:34.641
Yeah, and that's a big deal right.

00:34:34.641 --> 00:34:45.192
Like I mean, once you you form this relationship, why not form a relationship that you're going to be able to continue with and get additional UGC down the road and maybe do some additional promotions and things like that?

00:34:45.192 --> 00:34:49.711
Like I mean, this could be a long-term relationship that produces a lot of sales for you over time.

00:34:49.711 --> 00:34:54.639
Make sure that you build that relationship right from the start, you know, and move it in the right direction.

00:34:54.639 --> 00:34:55.699
Yeah.

00:34:56.541 --> 00:34:57.463
Well, I think that's a.

00:34:57.463 --> 00:35:08.974
We talked a lot about kind of UGC and influencers and and given some, I think, some really great insight into you know, and some ideas of how to make Amazon creator connections work.

00:35:08.974 --> 00:35:24.353
With that, maybe, matt or Mike, you want to leave one tip for our listeners that are, you know, looking at either you know finding influencers for affiliates or want to get more user generated content.

00:35:24.673 --> 00:35:25.936
Well, I'll give Matt the last word.

00:35:25.936 --> 00:35:34.731
So I guess all the biggest thing that I would say is don't give up on it If you tested some of these platforms and you didn't really have good result.

00:35:34.731 --> 00:35:44.858
We say this all the time, but don't make the assumption that just because you tried it once and it failed, that it's not of any value to you.

00:35:44.858 --> 00:35:49.213
Take the time to be introspective about it and evaluate.

00:35:49.213 --> 00:35:50.456
Why did it fail?

00:35:50.456 --> 00:35:53.501
Did it fail because your product isn't a good fit for this?

00:35:53.501 --> 00:35:57.244
Did it fail because you were advertising to the wrong influencer base?

00:35:57.244 --> 00:36:04.882
Did it fail because you didn't offer a big enough budget, a long enough time horizon to make money, a large enough commission?

00:36:05.851 --> 00:36:15.413
There's a million reasons why it might've failed, and most of them are probably something that you could fix and rerun the campaign and do much better, and I mean we're a prime example of that.

00:36:15.413 --> 00:36:24.760
I mean we're at the early stages of this latest campaign, but already I would consider it relatively a success versus the first one, and we didn't really change a whole lot.

00:36:24.760 --> 00:36:29.523
You know, we just made a few tweaks to it and I think it's going to prove very useful for us.

00:36:29.523 --> 00:36:31.483
So that'd be my recommendation is just don't give up on it.

00:36:31.664 --> 00:36:36.487
Well, what I'll say is what I hope that audience does after every tactics Tuesday.

00:36:36.487 --> 00:36:40.813
I'm going to go try this.

00:36:40.813 --> 00:36:44.668
I'm going to go create a creator connections campaign and I'm going to see how it works out for a brand that I'm working with right now.

00:36:44.668 --> 00:36:57.679
So by the next time we talk, I'm excited to sidestep a lot of the things that Mike did wrong in his first campaign from the tips that we gave in this Tactics Tuesday.

00:36:57.679 --> 00:37:00.614
So I'm going to go try it and I hope that our audience does too.

00:37:00.996 --> 00:37:01.518
Fantastic.

00:37:01.518 --> 00:37:10.291
Yeah, and I think that that's a great challenge to our listeners that if you have tried Amazon Creator Connections in the past and it didn't work out for you.

00:37:10.291 --> 00:37:22.197
I think there's some great tips here and I encourage you to either, either, if you've never used it, go get a shot, set up that campaign and if you you know, or if you have tried in the past and didn't work out for you, give it another shot.