1716 – Getting Found on Amazon with AMZ Advisers’ Mike Begg

0:28Hey there, thoughtful listener. million dollars in revenue. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We'd love to have you.

0:58with us right now it's michael beg michael you are the founder and ceo of amz advisors you're found on the web at amz advisors.com mike mike michael what do you go by i think your linkedin says michael but you're showing here as a mic you know i get that question a lot i usually go by mike i think i just need to update that a little bit but thanks for having me go with my shit it Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give us an overview. What AMZ Advisors does? So what we do is we help brands and manufacturers sell more on the Amazon platform. Essentially, we will work with brands looking to go from$1 to$10 million a year on the Amazon channel.

1:35And we'll manage everything from the advertising strategy, the merchandising positioning on the platform, the content creation, pretty much everything you need to be successful on Amazon. And I don't mean to undersell this, but you've worked with some pretty decent brands, Polaroid, I'm going through Rainier, Sun Warrior. These are pretty decent sized consumer brands that you're working with. And what do you do that would be pretty difficult or cumbersome or just way outside of their zone of genius for a typical e-com company? Or not e-com company, but just, again, consumer product. I mean, I think the main thing that we do that separates us is we set up everything on the Amazon channel for success.

2:22So the main thing being that, you know, we're going to build out your entire sales funnel, everything from bringing in people to the top into the consideration phase, and then eventually getting them just to purchase the product. So what we're doing is something that requires two, three, four, five members on your team to achieve. And we handle it all for you. So it's all optimized. Everything is generating more traffic, generating more people over time. We're building the systems that you need to get recurring customers. And essentially, we just handle it all for you instead of having to manage all the team members on your end to get it done.

2:55Are most of the clients that you work with already listed on Amazon or are they trying to do it themselves outside of it? What do you normally see? So there's usually a mix. I would definitely say that the majority of our clients are already on Amazon doing a million dollars a year or more on that platform and looking to kind of really step it up to the next level. But we do work with a lot of brands that are currently not on Amazon and have a lot of success on other channels. but similar we look for similar results you know looking to do but doing at least a million on their other e-commerce channels and then you know with the interest of being able to scale up and have the budget to invest in the advertising because at the end of the day for us to work together as a team we need to have you buying in we need to have the investment on the ad side for us to be able to deliver the results and i think that's the most important thing yeah and you know in terms of like Amazon consultants, what makes AMZ advisors unique?

3:52Or, you know, I guess, you know, USP, you know, however you want to describe that compared to, you know, someone's like, listen, all I know is, you know, we're not really hitting the targets we want, we really would like to grow it's outside of our, you know, what we, you know, our capacity, our operational capacity, Certainly, we don't know what we don't know. But how would they end up kind of deciding on AMZ versus maybe someone else who says, I'm an Amazon consultant too? Well, first of all, we're one of the oldest agencies out there. We've been around since 2015. And at that time, we were one of the few agencies doing it the right way.

4:30It seems like this day, everyone that's worked at Amazon in some capacity is spinning off in their own agency. But it doesn't mean they're going to get the results that you need. The other thing to consider is that a lot of these freelancers don't actually have experience working with the size brands that we've managed. So we've seen everything from corporate boardrooms dealing with a lot of the challenges that businesses face. And we have the solutions on how to address all of those. And when I look at it from the USP side, like how do we actually differentiate our service from the other brands?

4:59Again, it really comes down to the other agencies out there. It really comes down to the way that we approach your account. We look at each of our clients as partners. We want to win when you win. And that's exactly the way that we manage all of our engagements and why we've seen so much success with these household name brands looking to really scale up on the platform. I think really what you want is someone that knows what they're doing, someone that's been around, someone that has the track record. And we have that in spits. Yeah. Wow. Mike, do you, do you also work with brand new, like someone's like, listen, this is what we want to do.

5:36We're not currently selling any product, but we, you know, we have a supplier or we've got a manufacturer or look at, you know, now we just need a plan for getting this to market. Is that someone that you can work with? Typically we won't, we won't work with those companies. We do have a educational company, AMG courses that we do push some of those people towards. And then if they start seeing success, we'll work with them in the long run. But the reality is, no, it's too difficult for a lot of smaller businesses to, first of all, be able to afford our services. There's always people that can do it cheaper than us, but there's not many people that can do it better than us.

6:17And we can be charging way more than we're actually charging. So I think that's one of the things is like, if you're not there at the point where you're already scaling on the platform, then it's probably not going to be a fit for us to work together, unless you're looking to learn from your educational platform. Yeah. This is what you do day in, day out. For those of us who are not living in the Amazon world, what are some trends that you've been observing maybe over the past year or so? And most importantly, for anyone that's considering working with Amazon, What should you be aware of? Or, you know, again, kind of have a mind for in the months and years ahead?

6:56So there's a few different things, but I'm going to position it this way first. When we look at Amazon, you need to look at it differently than your other sales channels. It is the biggest brand discovery platform that there is. More than 70 % of online searches for products are coming through Amazon. So if your brand or your product's not there, no one's going to find you. No one's going to discover you. And understanding that that is how Amazon works helps you understand where it fits within your marketing system. It should be at the top of your funnel, acquiring as many customers as possible for you, bringing them into the brand and trying to get them to go to your other channels over time.

7:30That being said, the platform has gotten more and more competitive from an advertising standpoint. The costs per click are going up. The costs per acquisitions are going up. the amount of ad inventory that Amazon is displaying has also increased because they are trying to push more and more ads. I don't know. Maybe you've noticed if you go to Amazon, the first 10 results now are ads on some pages. So if you're not - I've noticed that. I've noticed that recently. It's interesting. There was actually an article that came out today about the FTC potentially going after Amazon for that, but that's a different story.

8:06But if you're not in that game, you're not investing in the ads, you're not going to be found. So again, it's about brand awareness. It's about positioning. It's about having your products out there and having the money to invest in the ad side. Hmm. Yeah. What are some things that so I'm a very, very avid Amazon customer? What are some things that that I might notice? I'm wondering if you have, and I don't, I don't know if you can think of anything off the top of your head. But like, if I'm a really active Amazon consumer and shopper, what are some things that I might be noticing that I don't really understand what's going on behind the scenes?

8:43Or like, for example, like, you know, just like, you know, I was just shopping for I needed to replace an amplifier. And, you know, so obviously I'm paying attention to, you know, the results. There's a now a popular brand pick. I'm seeing those for the first time. Of course, Amazon Choice, Best Seller. I really pay attention to those. That catches my eye. But are there any other things kind of within the Amazon ecosystem that might be interesting for someone like me? I mean, I think in general, one of the interesting things to consider is that no two people have the same shopping experience on Amazon.

9:22They're constantly split testing different features within the platform. So you and I can buy the same product. We may have found it in different ways. We may have seen it in different placements. There's constantly different things going on on the backside that we don't know about for Amazon trying to find out the best way to get customers to convert. At the end of the day, that's what they want. They want people to buy. So the badges, the placements, editor picks or recommendations or all these things are all different ways for them to try to influence customer decisions. so when it comes to like the work we do and how we help the brands get into all these placements it's us constantly focused on a few things obviously maximizing the number of conversions that our clients are getting from the customers coming to their page maximizing the number of social engagement or social proof that they're getting on their listings in the form of reviews because at this point everyone at least checks the reviews on amazon or sees how many reviews it has at a minimum before making a purchase decision uh and then looking at other ways that we can take advantage of programs that we are able to get brands into.

10:24You know, we're one of Amazon's advanced partners. We've spent, we're one of the top 5 % of all agencies out there when it comes to the advertising side. So we have access to a lot of programs that other brands can't get into. So I think that's really what you're not seeing is happening on the front end. Yeah. Interesting. And then for someone that is like, you were talking about reviews and they're like, yeah, man, how do we get more reviews? These people, we put these nice little index cards in there saying, give us five stars and they're not doing it. And then another thing that I've been seeing is where they, you know, so I get my Amazon package and it's like, we're going to give you a$20 gift card.

11:06If you leave a five-star review and post it and send it to us and prove that you did it. And I've heard, you're not supposed to do that. Yes. Yeah. You're definitely not supposed to do that. That is against Amazon's terms of service. If they catch you, they will throw you off the platform. So most brands should avoid doing that. When it comes to actually how do you generate more reviews, it's all about the customer experience. There are other ways to put those inserts that do not incentivize the review. You could potentially ask politely for them to consider leaving one. That's one aspect. But at the end of the day, it's all trafficking.

11:40The more people you get to your listings, the more purchases you get, the more opportunities you're going to get to convert reviews. And that is probably the most important aspect. On the backend side, I mean, what we can do is we can request the reviews for you through the Amazon platform to try to get more engagement. But I mean, playing within the rules or playing within the lines, so you're not stepping foul of Amazon is usually the best way to go about getting reviews. Yeah. All right. AMZadvisors.com, someone that's been listening to our conversation and maybe part of their research is they're listening to this episode because it came up in their search results.

12:13And now they've heard our conversation. What's the next step if they're, first off, can you just make sure that, because we talked about who would be a little too early, what would be those indicators that they are perfect for you? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, I would start by saying that doing at least a million dollars a year on the platform. So about$80 ,000 a month,$83 ,000 a month is extremely important. Having somewhere between five to$10 ,000 a month in advertising budget to start with is another really important aspect. category wise, we're pretty agnostic, but the categories that we see the most success in are usually cosmetics, supplements, pet supplies, baby products, toys, and home goods.

12:54So if you fit any of those criteria, you know, I'm always glad to have a conversation about it and see this fit. And on your website, AMZ Advisors, what would you recommend they click on and do? Yeah. If you want to learn more about the programs we offer, we offer three different ones. One is the launch, getting started on Amazon. Again, these are for brands that are already doing a million dollars on other channels. The accelerator. And you call that getting started. Getting started. I mean, that's how we get you started on Amazon. Got to be doing sales somewhere else for us to have the money to invest, as I said.

13:29Yeah, that's right. But the accelerator program for brands looking to go from one to 10, that's one to 10 million. That would be that one. and then global expansion. A lot of brands looking to go into new marketplaces. We do a lot of work in the European marketplaces, UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy. And we also do a lot of work in Latin America and Mexico and Brazil. So if you're looking to get into any of those, all the programs are available on the website for you to check out and to schedule a call with us. Mike Begg, again, founder, CEO of AMZ Advisors, your website, amzadvisors.com. To our friend that's listening to our conversations, click around in your podcast app, click on the little information button.

14:07We've got show notes, a direct link, Mike, to your website. Click on the button that says talk to your experts, have a conversation, see if AMZ Advisors would be a great partner for you. Mike, again, it's been fantastic having you. Mike Beggs, founder and CEO of AMZ Advisors. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you again for having me, Josh. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today.

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