007: Strategies for Building and Marketing Your Amazon Brand with Destaney Wishon

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome everyone to the brand fortress HQ podcast. I'm your host, john Stogen, and today we have a destiny wish on with us. She is an absolute dynamo in the Amazon space. I'm so excited to have you here. You know you've been an amazing speaker at some of the best events involving Amazon and e-commerce Over I saw your website over nine thousand Podcasts and events, which is just incredible. I got a chance to listen to you this fall at Amazon accelerate. I think there were some amazing things that you said about brand building, so I'm excited To have you today to talk, you know, about your perspective on fortifying brands and everything that that's involved. In addition to that, you know you're growing an amazing agency at better AMS and there's some additional details that it sounds like we're gonna talk about today and how that transition continues to evolve. So I'm very excited about that, and one of the things that I'm just Really I think that is amazing is is that you're very transparent. You know, looking at things that your company has posted on LinkedIn about your agency, and you have a very clear mission, which I think is something amazing, especially in the space where I think we kind of get lost, or a lot of agencies get lost and sometimes the the dollars and cents of it With that agent. So you've done a fantastic job there and you're really just one of the leaders in building brands on Amazon through a full funnel approach and I see that in everything you do from you know branding for your own agency, along with the clients you work with. Everything from you know the jerseys I saw that your entire team had All the way down to the amazing shoes that you had that were branded, that you posted a picture of. So you know with all that I'm so excited to have you. If you would, you know kind of for people that aren't familiar with you, if you could introduce yourself and maybe give a little bit about your background.

Speaker 2: 1:52

Yeah, of course. So thank you so much for that intro. My name is destiny. Much on, see you a better AMS. And I've been in the space for going on, I think seven years now, which I feel like is a really important part of my story, because Amazon advertising is all that I know at this point. One of the first questions I always get is you know, you've been in Amazon for so long, why don't you just launch your own brand? And I'm like no, no, no, no, no, no. Ppc is enough for anyone person to keep up with. So I think it's been a lot of fun, but it's also helped build a lot of, like you said, our reputation, our stories, because we just go super, super deep with everything advertising.

Speaker 1: 2:31

Very nice and how you know. I see that it looks like you have kind of a business and marketing background originally from Going to college and, looking at your background, you graduated it looks like in like 2017 and then you started the agency in 2018. So talk to me about you know kind of what got you involved in or interested in just you know, business and e-commerce, and how did you transition that into Going straight into an agency?

Speaker 2: 2:58

Yeah. So I think like the unique part of my story was I actually graduated from the University of Arkansas with a general business degree, but it was the first time they offered a fully online program. So I was working full-time, bartending waiters, seeing paying for school out of pocket and going to school completely online. And I think that learning element is what really fueled my interest in e-commerce, because it is a brand new industry. It's a lot more flexible. I think not a lot of people had a learning track for e-com, but within that time I actually got an internship at a quick, growing agency that was based out of Rogers. So they were a bunch of you know, ex-walmart team members and we got handed a bunch of CPG accounts and we're like, hey, figure out how to make them successful on Amazon. So I did have a short stint there, which is what really helped educate me on Amazon advertising. When you're handed accounts, you're like, you know, here's a couple million dollars, figure out how to deploy it. With Amazon advertising you learn really quick. So that was my start and I love the Amazon advertising element. I realized I had like this niche skill set and Shortly after that I got connected with with Taylor Benarude, who is my now partner in the company and he was my age and talking the same language of you, know broad match, phrase, match, ams, all of the acronyms at the time and I was like you know, hey, let's, let's figure this out. If there's any time in my life to take a risk, it's now, let's go for it. We, we started kind of brands building on the content and education side with our personal brands, and then you kind of hit a point where you realize it's not a lifestyle company anymore and you start really investing in kind of the growth and I feel like that's where we're at. The last two years is we finally Were like, hey, you know, we have an opportunity here. This isn't just a fun way to travel and make money, we can build a legacy, and I think that's kind of the stage of business right now.

Speaker 1: 4:49

I that's awesome and you know we talked a little bit before we hit record. Tell me a little bit about this transition that you guys are making over the next few weeks.

Speaker 2: 5:04

Yeah. So everyone knows this is better AMS. What a lot of people don't know is that AMS is actually an Amazon owned acronym for Amazon Marketing Services. So back in the old days, when we got started with Amazon, there was two different advertising platforms one that was Native to Seller Central that was primarily sponsored products, and then there was a vendor central advertising platform that was called AMS and that's what gave you access to what used to be headline search ads and product display ads. But now it is a sponsored display, sponsored brand ad. So we really built a lot of our reputation off running those style of ads. And then, as we've scaled in this space and our visions really change, we realize, you know, we want to build something that's a little bit bigger. You know we want to continue to be Amazon advertising experts, but retail media in itself is the future of the industry, so we're wanting to build that reputation off more than just Amazon. So this will be the first podcast I've actually been on since the announcement is going to happen, but we're going to be making the full transition from better AMS to better media, but it's going to be BTR media and we're really starting to set the foundation for you know again what that legacy looks like the agency we want to build for five, 10, 15 years from now, rather than the agency that we started with, which was built off the niche Amazon advertising expertise. Okay.

Speaker 1: 6:25

And talk to me a little bit about. So you mentioned the transition. I think this is so important, especially for brands out there that are listening. Tell me a little bit more about that transition that you see happening in the e-commerce space and in retail to more of media advertising outside of. You know where we've been the last couple of years. You know very you know kind of CPC click. You know bottom funnel focus.

Speaker 2: 6:49

This is a fantastic question. So I think, like the biggest thing we're forecasting is a move away from traditional search, and what that means is on Amazon right now, if you go and you type in orange pin, you're going to see an ad for orange pin. It's very, you know, bottom of the funnel. Like you mentioned, the customers are already searching for that. Well, you only have so many placements on a page to fill an ad for one and for two. I think the introduction of a more robust AI model is making a really big transition where we're actually seeing more path to purchase insights being wrapped up into search, and what I mean by that is not only are we going to be able to show an ad for everyone who types in orange pin, but now I think Amazon's going to start integrating their past shopper history and we're going to say, hey, you know, this person historically has bought a red pin. Maybe let's show them a red pin, or maybe this person looks like they're a college student. Let's change the ad that we're showing them. Walmart just introduced, I think this week at CES, a AI model being integrated directly into their search, and we're going to see the same, I think, on Amazon, and it's going to start moving into much more brand building as well. We've seen it with, you know, streaming TV and a lot of the DSPS. That media is going to be the focus. It's no longer going to be PPC, it's going to be integrating more audience insights, more creatives that are designed specifically for the audience typing in the search term, and that's what we're trying to embrace.

Speaker 1: 8:16

Okay, and I think that that's an important thing for brands to take away is that, like you said, there's limited placements. You know, quite frankly, I feel like we've been very spoiled with the sponsored product, especially the sponsored product ad type, where we know like I said everybody everybody who's searching for yellow pins. I can pay to put my listing up at the top so it shows up first, but that and I think all brands are kind of feeling this right now that's getting a lot more expensive and so there has to be a shift. So, as we make that shift, what advice do you have for brands that are like okay, I understand that the shift is happening, I want to get ahead of the game. How do we make that transition from being, you know, click-centric to being much more, you know, targeted, towards that full funnel in this new retail advertising space?

Speaker 2: 9:11

I think there's like one thing I want to call on that we see a lot of misconceptions or maybe not misconceptions, just misunderstanding. As you mentioned, there's limited retail or limited space on the page, and something that we use to explain this concept to people is Amazon advertising and Walmart Connect advertising is just real estate. You're bidding on real estate on a page. So I used to always see the questions in the group of you know I'm bidding $3, why am I not showing up at the very top of the page? I'm like, well, it's all it is, it's real estate. You need to bid more and more and more. If you bid the most on a very relevant keyword, you're probably going to win, but that bid is also directly correlated with your ROAS. You know you bid too high. Maybe you can't afford that placement because your ROAS is too low. So when you start considering the fact that you have brands that are willing to pay $10 to $15 CPCs to be at the top of the page because in my opinion, it is one of the most valuable billboards in all of advertising, because you're showing an ad to someone that's already in your aisle, like you mentioned, I think the next lever is making sure your conversion rate can account for how expensive that placement is. Right. You wouldn't open up a retail store on 5th Ave and have dust on the floor and dirty end caps or anything like that, and yet people are trying to bid on this high traffic placement with a terrible listing. So I think the next biggest thing is making sure your listings are optimized specifically for the audience you're targeting. I think it's going back and being a little bit more niche and saying you know, maybe my demographic skews a little bit more towards this age range or this income range, and making sure you're building out a listing that accounts for that, before you ever consider putting eyeballs on that listing. Because the traffic side is easy, in my opinion. Amazon does the hard work, walmart's doing the hard work already. The visitors are there. Whether or not they convert is up to your listing and I think now that's more competitive. People are having to prioritize that conversion rate aspect because they can't afford the traffic that they used to afford three to four years ago.

Speaker 1: 11:13

Yeah, that's a great point and so it's kind of a follow up to that because, with conversion and really speaking, how do you prioritize those audiences? Because I'm sure you've worked with clients and I've worked with clients where they're, like you know, here's the four kind of target audiences that we have and we want to speak to all of them with our listing. How do you think about that? Or what recommendations you have for brands that feel like they need to speak to multiple audiences at the same time?

Speaker 2: 11:40

I think the biggest thing that we back into is truly like that conversion rate aspect. So we use a lot of brand metrics from the insights and planning tab on Amazon advertising and what that gives us is actual conversion rate insights relative to the category. So we can go and say, hey, you're selling dog treats. I know you think your listings optimized for every single audience here, but your conversion rate is 20% less than category top. So that's okay, that's fine, but we're not going to be able to compete at the top of the page. Let's niche down, let's see if we can maybe come up with a stronger audience with dog treats for elderly dogs or dog treats for sensitive eaters and then, once they maximize the traffic for that niche audience that they can afford, you can then move more into a broader audience. Or if they have the investments, maybe they have more financially stable than another company and they can go ahead and go up or funnel. We can do that as well, but then we need that optimization. On the creative side, amazon advertising now gives us sponsor brands videos at the top of the page. They are now giving us a lot of amazing audience targeting insights on the DSP. So as long as we have the creative to go attract that audience and then we can follow up on the bottom of the funnel. I think it's okay, but it's just balancing what the brand can invest in and what they should invest in in that period of time.

Speaker 1: 13:01

Okay, yeah, and I want to also, just for folks that are listening, something that you mentioned there that I think is incredibly valuable are those brand metrics that are within the dashboard, and you know, this is one of those I feel like hidden gems where you know when people are like you know, how do I get you know, I feel like my tacos is getting out of control or my ACOS is flicked and you know, or I'm losing a lot of ground to my competitors I have. That's something that actually you term pointed out in some of your LinkedIn posts that I picked up on. That I've really started to pay a lot more attention to, because it's it becomes such a valuable tool, especially when you look at that conversion rate, to say, okay, you know if we're it, because it shows that average for, kind of, your subnich and then also what those top competitors look like. And if you're not at least at the average and I think you know what you mentioned there was, you know, even more aggressive than that or even better performing of within 20% of that top percentile, then you still have more work to do, it sounds like, on your conversion rate and that's what you know. It sounds like brands should really be aiming for if they want to succeed on the ad side with with the Amazon 100%.

Speaker 2: 14:20

I think another quick call out for brand metrics is that it is retail data and advertising data combined. So what that means is it's not just being skewed by your Amazon advertising. So even if you're managing your Amazon advertising in a poor fashion, it's also pulling in your organic insights. It's the first viewpoint and all of Amazon that we actually have an overlay of our advertising insights and organic insights relative to the category. So it's a huge benefit for brands who know how to use it appropriately. But I think the follow up there is again. The platform is more competitive. That's why we're having to make this push. It's no longer the days where we can get 20 per 20 cent CPCs and have a poor conversion rate but still be profitable. Once those CPCs are kind of increasing, we're having to get really, really good at making sure we're targeting the right terms, make sure our conversion rate is optimized for whatever budget we're trying to back into, and knowing those insights can really help us say hey, you know, here's what the category is doing. We have room to improve. Everyone thinks their brand is the top converted brand, trust me.

Speaker 1: 15:23

But once you actually look at the insights, you're like, oh, we got room to improve here. Okay, so what advice would you have for those brands out there that are like, hey, I really know my target audience but I still feel like my conversion rate is not where it is, because I look in that those brand metrics and you know maybe we're within 10% of the average but we're, you know, light years away from where those top performing. What areas or what advice would you give those brands that already have kind of those basic blocking and tackling but now they're looking at what's that next level?

Speaker 2: 16:02

Yeah. So let's say like everything is optimized relatively well in terms of content, imagery, price point all of that's back into. I think the next biggest thing and this kind of goes back to your earlier question of like what's the future it is doing a better job of driving awareness before the search is made, and what I mean by that is PPC is so bottom of the funnel and it was so successful, like you mentioned, that a lot of people don't realize how bottom of the funnel it is, but if someone's typing in an orange pin, they have already made the decision to buy a pin. So now you're just being compared to every other pin on the shelf. They've already walked into the Walmart. The Target went into the aisle, right. Amazon did all the hard work. So I think the next big thing we're pushing brands is how do you build awareness off the platform? How do we go back into kind of that traditional media mode where it's? We need to drive awareness and be a little bit more disruptive. You know we need to say hey, back to schools coming up. Let's go ahead and start serving an ad to every single person who purchased a pin last year. Let's remind them they may need a new pin right, and when you drive that awareness beforehand, that means when they do decide to make that search on Amazon, you're going to be more likely to convert. So you've already educated them on why your pin is better. Now I think this is where a lot of people don't make the investment because sponsored products were so successful. They go and run that streaming TV campaign or that DSP ad and they want to see immediate results. No, it's more disruptive advertising. What you want to do is you want to drive awareness. You want to run the video ad educating everyone why your pin's better, and then, a couple of weeks later, when they decide to type in orange pin on Amazon, you want to make sure your pin is top four. Or if you're not in the top four, your ad is top four and then when they click on that sponsored product ad, they're going to be a lot more likely to convert because you already did the hard work and educated them. I think that's probably the next biggest thing we're seeing is sponsored products are more expensive. How do you increase that conversion rate while you drive awareness to education before they're ever ready to make that search?

Speaker 1: 18:07

Okay. So for those brands that maybe aren't quite, for whatever reason, haven't done DSP before or quite ready for DSP, because it does take a pretty significant investments, what other tools does Amazon, or even beyond Amazon, offer in order to get some of that brand awareness that we're going to need to move our brand forward?

Speaker 2: 18:34

Well, one thing I do want to throw out is DSP minimums are actually pretty fluid, especially on the agency side, and I think that's something that does scare people away as they assume it's that 35K minimum startup cost per a cent and it's not. If you're actually running it yourself or working with an agency, you can actually get closer to five to eight K minimums for minimum audience building. Now it's not going to drive a ton of impressions relative to what is possible with DSP, but does allow you to dip your toe in in a way that helps make DSP more scalable. You want to test and learn. You don't want to just throw a bunch of money at the wall and then figure it out later. Brands can't afford that. You can test really small. So I definitely recommend starting with DSP strictly because Amazon has the search insights. They know every customer's previous searches, but they also have the audience insights that a brand gets from meta or from Google. Right, amazon knows all the demographic data of their shoppers. So when you're able to combine their search insights, like we see on PPC, with their audience insights, you can actually get way more granular than people realize. So I'll start with that, but a few other things that I think are really great. Easy intro level brand builders are investing in sponsor brands video. Sponsor brand's video allows you to go off platform as well, so that's a good opportunity. It's now under sponsored TV where you can expand to an off platform audience with minimum budget. You could start with as little as $500 if you wanted. I think we're seeing a lot off platform driven to Amazon. That's doing well. So TikTok shop, I think, is a big thing that a lot of people are talking about, like external brand building. But if you can find a way to divert that traffic to Amazon, it's just going to improve your organic rank further if you're converting well. And just general utilization of, I think, all of the opportunities we have on the content side. So Amazon post anything you have with UGC from external influencers is doing really well. I think the biggest mistake people make is one, trying to do everything and end up doing none of it well, or two, making too big of an investment upfront and they're getting burned. I think that's something we see across the board of like, oh, I spent $20,000 on influencers and it was terrible. I think the beautiful thing about the industry we're in is you can start small and scale as needed.

Speaker 1: 20:50

Okay, yeah, and those. I think that those are some great points. As far as there's a lot of different options and even the ones that I feel like have been around for a couple of years, there's a lot of brands that aren't taking advantage of it. Something as simple as you know having Google ads on your brand name to drive them to your Amazon listings, because that traffic Amazon just loves external traffic and it gives a lot of benefits for that external traffic that you drive to your listings that, even if it's not a ton of traffic, it can really make that difference if you're on the bubble between you know, being ranked fifth versus third, which can make a big difference in your sales for your listings.

Speaker 2: 21:33

And that's a huge. So I want to circle back to something. Sorry, go ahead.

Speaker 1: 21:39

I was just going to say I was actually going to.

Speaker 2: 21:42

We have a lag.

Speaker 1: 21:47

Go ahead.

Speaker 2: 21:49

I was just going to follow up with. I think that's a huge call. That people don't often consider with Amazon is the power of your organic rank. If you tell people that they should be running Google ads on their brand name, driving to Amazon and not their store, there's always like well, my margins way higher, d to C. I need to focus on D to C, but I think the variable there for getting is the economies of scale on Amazon, where, if you improve your organic rank from number eight to number four, the traffic potential is so much higher. So, yes, your margin may be lower, but you're driving so much more volume that it's okay. So I think making sure we're considering that full funnel when we look at everything external is just an incredibly important call out, because your organic rank is what's going to drive the majority of your sales in a healthy way.

Speaker 1: 22:38

Yeah, 100% agree, and I think what trips up a lot of brands is not taking into account how exponential Amazon is. So just kind of double clicking on that from fifth to third, that third place position could have double the sales that the fifth place position does and even though there are only two positions away they're very close to each other the amount of exponential sales that you get from that. I think we like to think in just naturally in things being linear, and Amazon really challenges us to think about things. Accidentally when we look at what's the difference between first and 10. And we think it's just nine positions, when really it's probably 10, 20, or 100 times different. When we start looking at sale velocity, which has so many different benefits on Amazon.

Speaker 2: 23:34

Yeah to not agree more.

Speaker 1: 23:44

So I did want to circle back to one other point that you brought up that I think is going to really fuel helping brands make this transition, and that is what advice you have for brands out there that again they have some traction. They've done well with kind of traditional PPC. They understand that we're going to make this transition to more of a full funnel approach and providing that awareness. What advice you have for them for creating those engaging creative assets to really get that attention and build that awareness.

Speaker 2: 24:21

Yeah, I think it's really important to understand the platform you're on and the stage of the funnel you're targeting. I think a lot of people try to go too broad, as we kind of mentioned. They get caught up in the idea of we can target every single person who's ever searched for a cat toy in the last year. Let's go really broad. Let's make this general creative, because it's more efficient internally from a marketing perspective to get it all taken care of at once. But when you really niche down, I think that's where you see the most success. Right, when you're targeting someone who's a cat owner but also lives in this demographic but also is more than likely going to purchase this, I think that's where you have a lot of opportunity to scale in a successful way. You have to be lean with your budgets. Like I said, if you try to dilute across everything, you're going to be too thin, really identifying those opportunities where you have the highest conversion rate. We don't do a lot in the creative optimization side, so I'm not going to touch too much on really quick action items of hey have this style of graphic follow up with this lifestyle image not my area of expertise, but from everything we've seen, what does the best is going niche. You have the ability to target as simple as one keyword right. Let's also make sure our creatives are aligned with that. If I'm targeting elderly dog toy versus puppy dog toy, let's make sure my copy is aligned with that. Let's make sure the custom image in my sponsor brand ad is aligned with that. That's how you compete with those more expensive. Real estate is by making sure you have high alignment with the audience you're targeting and the creatives you're serving them.

Speaker 1: 26:05

Yeah, I think that that's such an important two points to connect together as one, making sure that you're niching that creative folding copy and image. And then Amazon, specifically, and I think that we think about sponsor product ads and how they get to the top. But really that headline sponsor brand ad that's been around for a long time is what takes up that first top of fold, and now we're seeing a lot more of that sponsored brand video ad really take that spot and that essentially gives you up to 45 seconds to tell your brand story, explain why your brand is better than the other alternatives that people are looking for, and there's so much you can do with that video, especially in a day when I hear what I hear a lot is there's a ton of overseas competitors that are flooding the market and that type of stuff, and the reality of it is is that, at least what I see is that most of those kind of copycat competitors will go through the effort to put that sponsored product ad there, to have a listing that looks very similar to yours, but they're not going to go through the effort to put together an amazing video that speaks to your audience and tell a brand story 100%.

Speaker 2: 27:21

I think to that point and in that position of launching me to products just throwing up a generic knockoff product. They typically win by being lowest price and that's a never ending game. So, when you think about your product and your brand, do you want to fight to race to the bottom or do you want to build a brand that can maintain positioning even at a premium price point? And that's where you have a competitive advantage Because, like you said, if you're trying to have the lowest price on the page, you're not going to invest in a video asset. You can't afford that, you don't need to. You're going to get clicks because you're the cheapest on the page. So how do you compete with that If you're not the manufacturer who can get that level of price? You build the brands, you create a listing and you create video assets that are so fantastic that people are willing to pay four to five to six dollars more for, and Amazon's giving us the opportunity to do that where they haven't in the past. Right, and brand building opportunities were never amazing on Amazon. That was always a reason. In store brands didn't want to transition over, but now, like you said, you have this high value placement at the top of the page where you can show a video, and the highest traffic, highest visibility e-commerce page and I think in all and a lot of people still get caught up. And what I'm going to shout out is your call out that it's linear. Some people aren't going to pay for that placement because they think it's too expensive and maybe it doesn't convert that well. But, to your point, shoppers are not linear either. Most shoppers don't immediately click on an ad and purchase within five minutes, like we've seen those insights through AMC. If you take the learning console, they have a call out that the average customer, I think, takes at least five days to make a decision after initial search is made. So when we start considering these aspects, you run this video knowing that a customer may not click on it because they don't want to be served an ad, but they may scroll lower on the page and then see your sponsored product ad or your organic placement lower and then end up purchasing. That video may not get credit because it's a cost per click model, right? So it's something to really consider as well when we look into brand building is that brand building is also not linear and our customers don't shop in a linear fashion. So how do we hit them at multiple points in their journey, so that way they'll convert the moment they finally do land on our listing?

Speaker 1: 29:42

Yeah, and I think that that's such an important point where I feel like, if we roll back and either off of Amazon or go back 10 years ago, kind of before Amazon existed, it was pretty much accepted knowledge that customers needed to hear from your brand somewhere between five to 10 times before there was enough brand recognition and trust and everything else there in order to purchase your product. And just to your point of what you're mentioning earlier, I feel like we got so spoiled by sponsored product ads that we thought, oh, if I just show it to them once, I'm going to get this sale. And now we're going back to, kind of going back to more of that longstanding principle that we've seen, where people really need to see that brand four, five, six, seven times before they're ready to purchase, and it may take a little bit of time. It's not that instant gratification that we're used to as sellers and brand builders.

Speaker 2: 30:46

Yep, 100%. And I think you know, historically some of the complaints about Amazon have been well, you're saying this, but is it true? Right? I think there's always been issues around attribution. There's always been issues with path to purchase and cannibalization. But for the first time ever this year, amazon's rolled out the insights we need to actually prove those theories. So AMC, I think, is a little bit inaccessible to everyone, but from an agency perspective it's been fantastic because now we can go to brands like we have one high price point product I think they're like $150. They're one of the most premium products in their category. We're able to pull their AMC insights that show, on average, the top converting customers view a sponsored product ad 20 times before purchasing 20 times. Now they are a higher price, so again, they need to get that multiple times, but we're able to prove that. And another thing we were able to back into is when they saw a streaming TV ad first and then they were served a sponsored product ad, their conversion rate was insanely higher than just a sponsored product ad and that's because the streaming TV ad did the job of educating the customer. So when they made their purchase or made their search, they're ready to purchase. So being able to have that type of power in information really helps us prove those concepts. But again, sponsored products were spoiled by because it's too easy. But let's think bigger. We now have the insights to prove that let's invest more in upper funnel.

Speaker 1: 32:16

Yeah, that's such a great example and I love that it's on that. I feel like these fringe cases really do a good job of showing those, really those principles in action, as far as your product may not be five times or 10 times more expensive than your competitors, like the case that you're talking about but the same principle applies where maybe it's not 20 different impressions that you need, but you probably are going to need more than one in most cases. So for brands that are listening and they're like, okay, I get it. I understand that kind of this sponsored product, instant gratification isn't going to last forever. I'm into really catching the attention of my audience and building out that entire funnel. What are some of the metrics that they should be looking at to say, hey, this is actually working for me and what does success look like in that process?

Speaker 2: 33:26

Well, I think for one, I'm going to shout out that accelerate session you mentioned earlier today, because I think we get really granular with ad type expansion and the different ways we were able to view slowly moving up the funnel in a way that again was a test and learn mindset. So we should probably link that here because I think it's a good way to get more insight, specifically when it comes to Amazon. But I think the going back to our first principles, in general, there's a few different things that we look at and really push with our team. One, it's making sure that you're viewing everything, probably in a more fluid fashion, right? So whether you're spending on search, dsp, instagram, anything like that, viewing everything holistically, right? I love when people are like I've never spent on DSP or search in my life and I'm successful on Amazon. I'm like, well, okay, where were you spending? And they're like, oh, we spent $200,000 on influencers last month. I'm like, okay, so that is improving and influencing your Amazon business. It's not because you're not spending on PPC, right, it's a give or take model. So we really try to look at everything holistically when we're working with brands. It's like what are you investing in externally and how is that going to influence your on platform performance? I think other big things as well is making sure you're considering your organic rank on the page. This is why tacos is a decent metric If you increase your ad spin or your total sales increasing. That's something we really try to work into. And then also just add type expansion. For, being honest, I've been preaching it for so long that I think sometimes I forget that expanding to sponsor brands and sponsor display is still difficult for people. It is a lot more complex to run in terms of setup, but you can drive an additional 20 to 30% of advertising sales just from fully investing in sponsor brands and sponsor display. And even though they're more brands, building with creative and targeting performance is still typically pretty in line with sponsor products. We rarely see five to 10% difference in ROAS or ACOS when we expand to those ad types, but it's a great way to again build your brands rather than focusing strictly on bottom of the funnel.

Speaker 1: 35:32

Yeah, and I think that something that's really important there as well is that, to bring it back to the creative piece, is that where maybe it's and do you feel like this is where it's a little bit different is? Is that because now there's a creative involved in it? We're so used to? Okay, if it's a sponsored product ad, either it works in that keyword or it doesn't, Whereas with sponsor brand and sponsor display, now we're working with two major variables One, am I targeting the right keywords and two, is my creative performing in catching that audience's attention and really showing them the benefits and converting the way I want to in that process.

Speaker 2: 36:13

Yeah, I think that's spot on. It's just more complicated to set up. And another thing that influences that is we typically see people go too broad. I think they get caught up in the name, sponsored brands or display and they're like, okay, let's just target a really large audience in a wide net. Let's take all of my keywords that have ever been successful before and throw them into this one campaign. So then you lose the ability of utilizing budget to optimize efficiently and then you lose the ability to really start breaking out into copy and imagery. That's maybe more aligned just because it is a complex model, but at the end of the day it's still keyword research and still bid management. Those are the two most important principles for any Amazon advertising. Ppc success is good bid management and good keyword research. So that is why I always say it should perform pretty in line with your sponsored product ads. If your sponsored product ads are a $4 ROAS, your sponsored brand ads probably should be as well, unless you start pushing into awareness and only investing on top of search. All those variables. But, like from a general optimization standpoint, optimization levers are the exact same for the most part. So when you start layering in a creative element and audience targeting and everything else with a landing page, custom imagery video. I think people get lost in the confusion of that.

Speaker 1: 37:34

Yeah, and I think, quite frankly, they're intimidated by the, by the creative, as opposed to looking at it like you would. Keywords, like we're so comfortable with keywords but the same thing applies to creative is and I just want to double click on something you said which is hey, the keywords are working in your sponsored product ads are going to work 90% of the time in your sponsor brand and sponsor display ads. So if you're having success with those same keywords and you're targeting your sponsor display and sponsor brand, look at your creative and test out different creative there, just like you would test different keywords to find that right combination.

Speaker 2: 38:13

Yep, exactly 100%. And again, it's a paper click model. If they clicked on your ad, there was some level of interest. If they didn't convert, it was due to your listing typically. I think that's a really important principle that needs to be pushed in our model of when it comes to optimization. It really comes down to your bid management and whatever that creative or that conversion rate is behind that.

Speaker 1: 38:47

Yeah Well, like you said, kind of those principles around bid management and having the right keywords, and I think I don't want to lose sight of something you said, which was if, for those people that maybe haven't quite made that transition where they put their toes in the water and sponsored brand and sponsored display, but really haven't put some effort into it An additional 20% of PPC may not sound like a lot, but think about it from the perspective of, again, that flywheel effect and what we see on Amazon. What I feel like is very unique about Amazon is that if I get an additional 20% of my PPC, I'm probably going to see a somewhat similar lift on the organic side. So I'm seeing a significant 30, 40% increase in revenue is a huge win for any brand just by taking advantage of tools that are already there, and that's without even getting into the realm of external traffic on other platforms or DSP or some of these more advanced opportunities that are out there. This is just kind of the blocking and tackling, if you will, within the Amazon ad platform.

Speaker 2: 40:14

Yep 100% cannot agree more.

Speaker 1: 40:19

Awesome. So we've talked a lot about kind of full funnel and brand building and those types of things. What is one action item that you would have for people that are listening, if they're like, okay, I want to take advantage of these things? What's one area that you think maybe is a great place to start, or a place that often gets overlooked, that they can implement right away?

Speaker 2: 40:49

Yeah, I would say, just based off the conversation we've had, I think one of the first things to do is look at your ad type utilization and make sure you are expanding into sponsor brands, sponsor display and or DSP. Now, before that, I do recommend making sure your sponsor products are performing incredibly well and in the manner that you think they are. So as a kind of a quick shout as well to the targeting tab on Amazon. So for everyone who's historically pulled a search term report and filtered and edited all of your campaigns through that, amazon now has what's called the targeting tab, which shows you all of your targets. So it's still not quite as deep a search terms, but all of your targets in one page and this allows you to pull your conversion rate as well within those targets, which has been a huge miss within the ad console. So I think definitely recommend opening up that tab, filtering top down by spend last 30 days and figuring out where all of your spend is going. I speak to brands all the time that don't realize all their spins going to branded terms or auto campaigns or some crazy broad match term. But this is a major viewpoint which allows you to see that for sponsored products, so you can make sure you're fully optimized there and then you can layer in ad type expansion Once you know you're in a good spot in your sponsor products.

Speaker 1: 42:07

Nice yeah, and I think that that targeting tab is fairly new, or at least that they've expanded quite a bit of the capability. So anybody who hasn't looked at that recently, there is just a treasure trove of fantastic data there. Even if you use, you know, another software in order to manage your ads, which I think a lot of people do, this is probably one of those tabs that you want to actually log into the console and at least take a look at from time to time. Like you said, there's so much good information there. Well, destiny, you've given us giving me you know just some fantastic information for people that want to learn more about you and kind of you know, your agency and that type of stuff. Where is a good place for them to go?

Speaker 2: 42:53

Yeah, I think most people probably throw in their company website at this point, but for us, I would say, one of the best places just to continue learning and to really connect with our team is LinkedIn. We post a ton of content out there. We're really focused on just you know, all the newest rollouts, newest strategies being first to market on the content and education side. So we recommend starting there to learn from us first, and then, if you're ever interested in working with us, you can go to our website, which will be better media.

Speaker 1: 43:22

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I think that again, there's a ton of takeaways for people as we look at that transition from, you know, kind of sponsored products to more of a holistic brand approach and really horrifying your brand as you build it on Amazon and beyond over the next couple of years and being successful. So, thank you so much again for being on the podcast and it was just a delight to have you.

Speaker 2: 43:50

Amazing. Thank you so much, John. This was fantastic and can't wait for it to be published.