#388 – Clicks to Conversions: Destaney Wishon’s Amazon PPC Million $ Tactics

#388 - Clicks to Conversions: Destaney Wishon's Amazon PPC Million $ Tactics Speaker 1: Welcome to episode 388 of the AM-PM Podcast. This week my guest is Destaney Wishon. Destaney is one of the top PPC experts when it comes to selling on Amazon and we dive deep on a lot of different topics. You're going to want to have a notepad ready because you're going to be taking a lot of notes on some cool strategies and tips in this episode. Enjoy this episode with Destaney. Unknown Speaker: Welcome to the AM PM podcast. Welcome to the AM PM podcast. We explore opportunities in e-commerce. We dream big and we discover what's working right now. Plus, this is the podcast for money never sleeps. Working around the clock in the AM and the PM. Are you ready for today's episode? Speaker 2: I said, are you ready? Let's do this. Let's do this. Unknown Speaker: Here's your host, Kevin King. Speaker 1: Look who it is. It's the fabulous Destiny. Well, Sean, how are you doing? I'm so excited to finally get you here on the AM PM podcast with me. Speaker 2: I am so excited to be here. I think it's always fun when we get together because we've been in the space for so long and it's great just being able to catch up. Speaker 1: I remember when I first heard your name, I don't know, it was probably five, six years ago or maybe, maybe a little bit longer. It's like, there's this girl that's doing some PPC. Her name is Destiny and it's not spelled like the way the spelling checker actually tries to make it spell. And so I listened to something that you did. I was like, Oh, that, that was pretty good. But now you're like one of the top, you've like evolved, you've come up and like you've hit the ground running. And now you're like one of the top people, if not the top and in the entire Amazon PPC world. Speaker 2: Well, thank you. I mean, it's scary up here. I'm waiting for the fall, I'm not going to lie, every single day. Speaker 1: Well, there might be one person that you said that you worship that she's speaking at BDSS with you. Speaker 2: Melissa. Is it Melissa? Speaker 1: Because I remember when you were like, I said that she's speaking, you're like, oh my God. She's like royalty when it comes to, but you're up there with her. I mean, both of you are super smart when it comes to this. Speaker 2: Women's, National Women's Appreciation Day, National Women's Day, I think was in the last week. And it was really cool seeing all of the posts and the content. But one of the reasons I loved Melissa, she had a very similar journey to I feel like what mine was, but she obviously 10x'd her journey. She started as I'm an Amazon advertising specialist, right? That's what she was fantastic for. She built her network within and then she grew into the entrepreneur that she is today. And that's kind of the area I'm trying to walk the line of like what I'm known for is PPC. Like that's all my content, all my education. I'm trying to slowly grow into the entrepreneur that doesn't Leave that network. So it's difficult trying to balance both. I mean, Amazon moves so damn quick that every single week there's something new that's rolling out and I'm like trying to dive into EOS, trying to dive into hiring and training, but also not miss any of the updates. And it's a little stressful. I'm not going to lie. Speaker 1: I love it that there's more women now coming in and out because I used to get pushback on my BDSS events like, Kevin, where's the women speakers? You got one token woman. Speaker 2: You're like, where are they? Speaker 1: They're not in the community. One event I had zero. It wasn't because I didn't try. I asked four. I think it was four or five at the time. One of them wasn't available. Two of them were like, I don't feel I'm worthy. That's a high quality stage. Speaker 2: I panicked and backed out once. Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that you might've been one of them actually. Speaker 2: You were the first person to ever ask to put me on stage because I was speaking at the virtual summit and I panicked and said no because I felt the same way. I was like, it's a high caliber mastermind. You've always done a great job of driving like specialty talent in the space. And I freaked out and I said, no. And I talked a little bit about that journey at Prosper this year. They did a women's networking event and I ended up like jumping on stage. And I was like, I was so insecure for the longest time, even to this day. I mean, there's all kinds of insecurities that drive what I do. And it's like, I'm not worthy to be on that stage. And I said, no. And here we are. Speaker 1: And now you're going to be on the stage in May with Melissa. Speaker 2: With Melissa. I am so excited. Speaker 1: Seven other women, nine women, nine out of the 14 speakers are women. Speaker 2: That's amazing. Speaker 1: I'm really proud of that because just, you know, the business is skewed to guys as it is. It's like 80% dudes. I'm 20% women. There's a lot of smart women. They just keep their head down. They're like, I'm just going to do this and I don't really want to be out there or they're intimidated by it. It's really cool to see how this is evolving. I think it's an important thing we need. It can't just be a bunch of bros and a fraternity. We need the representation. Speaker 2: Someone's got to bring a little bit of feminine energy because let me tell you, I have been in a few of those rooms and there are men out there that lead with more confidence than I have ever had in my entire life. And I'm like, you've been doing this for a tenth of what I have and yet you are 20 times more confident than I am. So it's also just different energy. I'm going to be honest, like watching a lot of what Melissa's done, it's a lot of authentic relationship building. And I felt like that was always more of my narrative. And it's definitely held me back. I mean, it's taken me six years to finally say yes to Kevin King and make sure I'm speaking on stage. And it's only after I've spoken at Prosper, Accelerate, Unbox, I'm like, I'm finally worthy just now. Speaker 1: You were worthy back then, but now you finally realized. Speaker 2: I have realized. Speaker 1: You were worthy when I asked you several years ago. Like you said, this is constantly changing. How do you stay on top of it? You're on LinkedIn, you're on Facebook, you're in the BDSS WhatsApp group. I can't even keep up with the damn thing. Anytime someone's got a PPC, you're like, You must have like a little radar. If that's someone I need to answer. Speaker 2: I love being in the groups. I truly do. It's like so much fun to me. That's the only reason I still have time for is because it brings me so much enjoyment, like helping people out. But I'm going to be honest. I don't know how brand builders do it. I don't know how generalists do it. I think that they're just much better at maybe hiring or outsourcing than I am. I still stay in ad console consistently. And I do think it's probably held me back on the entrepreneurial side, but I'm so passionate about the industry. I mean, I'm in ad console probably five times a week, still logging in, looking for new updates. And I'm not managing accounts like my team does all of that, but I'm still heavily involved in the Amazon advertising side because like all of my reputation is built on being that expert. And all of our leads are built on typically my content education. So like, I feel like I can't step out. So that's how I learned is by being hands-on keyboard. Speaker 1: No, that's awesome. I think that's so many people actually, they move on, they get, they lose touch. A lot of people that are, are teaching the so-called gurus or people that either had a failed Amazon business or they exited and they haven't, they haven't logged into Seller Central in five years. And they're telling people, this is how you do it. And I think that's super important. And that's, that gives you that authenticity. And that credibility, like you said, it's very, very important. And I'm sure your team is probably bringing you stuff too that you might not have, you're like, Hey, have you heard about this? You're like, no, what is that? And you go in there and you understand it and you play with it. You're like, that's pretty cool. All right. Now, now I get it. Now I can teach this or show this to others. Speaker 2: Definitely you know something i've also started to love a lot more is like content creation in terms of podcasting webinars i feel like it's almost forced me to hack. My learning curve because if i bring amazing people on my podcast i speak on podcast your. Achieving two things. You're producing content for the agency and I can, you know, redistribute that everywhere, but I'm also learning from the person I'm speaking to. So that's been a good way that I've been able to like, Hey, how can I check off the content creation for the company, but continue to learn is by just hopping on more of this style of content. Speaker 1: But as an agency too, you have a major advantage because me as a seller, and I still sell, I have three, you know, and I'm in, if I'm in there digging around in my PPC, I'm seeing what I'm doing and what my specific to my niche or my brands, but at Better than AMS, which you helped co-found, right? Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. Speaker 1: That, that you guys have, I don't know how many, but probably tens if not hundreds of accounts that you're logging into and you see this whole spectrum of stuff. So you know, This technique really only works in beauty. It doesn't work anywhere else. This works across the board. This is what we're seeing. It gives you a major advantage. Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I think this year we'll manage around $100 million worth of spend. That's across pretty much every single category, every ad type, every match type, different style of brands, whether it's product launches or more established brands. And there is a ton of differences. And I think once you get those reps in, it really helps you understand what is Something that's different per brand or what's something that you're not doing wrong? Like I still speak to so many brand owners and you get so caught up in just your own brand or the biases that you saw from managing your own brand that kind of bringing in that external perspective can be really valuable. Even if you don't end up outsourcing, just bringing in that second opinion to be like, hey, you know, this is wrong because of how it was set up, not because of the actual ad type that's running or along those lines. Speaker 1: Is that something you get from an audit? Like if I was going to approach like, okay, I've been running my PPC and I'm thinking about using ANC, but I'm not sure if I really want to do that. But what you're basically saying is like, go ahead and call up a couple of agencies and let them do an audit on your account. Cause a lot of times they'll do a free audit, right? Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1: They might actually make a suggestion or two. You're like, okay, that is that kind of what you're saying? Speaker 2: Exactly. Now, I may get some heat for this because whether or not you should offer free audits is coming up across the board. Not very scalable. We've actually changed our wording on our website instead of free audit, which we've always done. We changed to see if you qualify for an audit because I ran into that as well. I'd hop off a podcast and we'd get like 50 people reaching out. We can't provide the in-depth audit that we expected on this, but that's exactly what I mean is bring in a consultant, bring in someone, you know, when you and I got started, it was. Sponsor product auto campaigns and you would harvest them and kind of there is there was not a lot of complexity and most of it could be ran with a software. There was not a lot of strategy behind behind it. But nowadays, Amazon's giving us the ability to run TV ads directly from ad console. Like I can start a sponsored TV ad with no minimums right now. You have custom images and lifestyles and retargeting. And it's so much more strategic where you almost can't rely on a software. So even if it's not A hundred percent being outsourced, like you need that secondary opinion just to figure out like, is there anything that you're missing or is there anything that should be changed within your account? Speaker 1: What is it that, you know, people always say, Kevin, Can you recommend an agency to me, a PPC agent? I'm tired of like figuring out this math and it's just, I don't know. It's just confusing to me. Speaker 2: All the acronyms. Speaker 1: I hate it. All I'm doing is giving Amazon money and I can't figure this out. I'm going to go to an agency. I always say, in my opinion, there's a lot of good agencies out there, but it always really depends on Who the person is that you get at that agency. Every agency, they have their SOPs. They have some are better than others and they have their standard ways of teaching. But a lot of times is agency A better than agency B. Maybe not necessarily because at B, there's one good woman or guy that you got. What do you recommend when someone's trying to find an agency? What makes one better than another? How do you do that? Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think there's kind of two different areas that I would like to look at this from one brand side, of course. So as a brand, I think a lot of people forget that you get what you pay for as an agency. Right. I still hop on calls and people are trying to compare my pricing to a software pricing. And I'm like, if you want to never talk to my team, 100 percent, I'll match your software rate. If you want a strategic manager who's going to make decisions based off your business needs, you're going to have to pay for that. Now, for me personally, I have a full onshore team and I made that decision because a lot of the brands we were working with were strategic brands. Typically doing around $10 to $50 million a year, right? So they kind of need that conversation, that touch point. We typically have like bi-weekly or monthly calls where we're diving into the needs of your business. But brands would still come to me and be like, hey, I need PACVIEW Atomic Pricing if I'm going to work with you. And I'm like, no. So I think that's the biggest thing upfront to know as a brand, if you're going to work with an agency, To make sure you're able to pay for the talent that's going to be on the account. The second thing is to make sure you're talking to the people that are going to be on the account prior to ever signing a contract. You can hop on with me and I can sell you the world because I've done nothing but this for seven years and I can answer every incremental Amazon advertising question. But I'm not going to be who's managing your account. So one of the things that we do, which makes it difficult to scale is I put my account manager on the sales calls before a deal is ever closed. So that way they're aware of the sales that I'm pitching and the brand is aware of who's going to be managing and that relationships there. Again, that's not scalable. We cannot work with everyone. So if I'm switching to the agency point of view, I've had to start saying no a lot more. I want to help every brand. That's why I hop on podcasts and ask me anything in webinars because I want to make that scalable. But I cannot sign every brand because I pay onshore talent that doesn't churn. And those salaries to make sure I have great agency retention rates are pretty high. And I need to make sure that that's being reflected on the contracts or else I'm going to be out of business. So I have to say no to brands that aren't ideal for me. And that's been really difficult. I've had someone go on LinkedIn and say, better AMS is cocky and won't work with you if you're a small or a new seller. It's not because we're cocky. It's because we're managing strategy and I want that type of relationship. I'm not a software. New sellers probably don't need a strategic agency, right? So as an agency, again, it's like how in-depth we audit and how well we know our ideal client profile to make sure we're accommodating the pricing and the relationship that's going to be on every account. Speaker 1: I was just at a think tank actually a couple of weeks ago here in Austin and there's some agency guys that they weren't necessarily PPC but they were agency guys and four of them were just talking around. I was just a fly on the wall listening to them talk out in this courtyard and they were talking about the pricing models for agencies and they're saying, One of two of them were actually saying the other two were ended up agreeing like we're switching from from a percentage based thing to a flat rate based thing because it just becomes a hassle. We just we you know on the percentage based deal. If we're successful, it's good for us as an agency because we make more money, but then the client's like, wait a second, I'm giving you too much money. I'm going to take it to somebody else. They end up taking it to somebody else who ends up screwing it up. Then they ended up coming back going, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to leave you in the first place. Can you please fix this? They fix it and then they leave again because it becomes too much. From an agency point of view, how do you handle the flat rate or the percentage or a combination of both? Speaker 2: So for better AMS, better media, we do flexible pricing. And there's a few different things that again, I've led sales for six years. So I'm very familiar with what the industry thinks. The majority of agencies have to build in percentage of spend because the softwares are charging percentage of Percentage of spend, right? If you go to, again, take a pack view or whoever, most of them have a percentage of spend model, which means the agency that's utilizing software has to build that in on top of their pricing. What I will say is I do try to build in some form of incentive based pricing, whether it's percentage of spend, percentage of sales or renegotiation of contract, because what most brands don't realize is I deal with scope creep. Because Amazon advertising is releasing 20 different features a year and brands want me to run those features, whether it's sponsored TV or Amazon post or custom images, if my pricing doesn't change, but I'm doing more work because of Amazon, my margins are decreasing year over year. Or if a brand is launching 5 to 10 new products a year, then typically my scope is again decreasing to accommodate the brand's growth. So I'm just really transparent with the brands I work with. And I'm like, hey, we do offer flexible pricing. If you want a flat rate model, it's perfectly fine. But I'm going to build in a renegotiation period depending on How complex Amazon gets, or again, we'll do an incentive based. I do not like a percentage of profit as an agency. I'm going to be completely transparent or total revenue growth. I know that's pitched by a lot of people in the space of the ideal model, but too much is out of my control. I just manage ads. If your product absolutely tanks and your profit tanks, should I be de-incentivized because of that? Like, I don't think so, but That's obviously a hot argument in the space. Speaker 1: So you said that all your talent is onshore, meaning in the US, right? Speaker 2: All of our strategic account managers are onshore, yes. Speaker 1: So all the key talent is here, not in the Philippines or somewhere. So it's top tier and you're paying for that versus a lot of people it's jobbed off to somebody in India or Pakistan. There's some smart people there, don't get me wrong, but there's also sometimes you get what you pay for too. What is it that you're seeing when people come to you when it comes to PPC that's like, oh my God, here's another one of these? What's everybody screwing up out there that's listening that's like, you guys, come on, you got to get this right. I mean, this is a fundamental thing or this is something basic and every time when you're doing an audit, you see this happen a lot and you just wish like, could people just get this right? It would help them so much. Speaker 2: I want to get a little philosophical on expectations. But before diving into that, I'll give my top three is not expanding to all of the ad types available to them. Having misconceptions around sponsor brand, sponsor display, that's kind of first and foremost. Sponsor products should only drive around 75% of your sales if you're utilizing your other ad types appropriately. The second big one I'll throw out is not truly understanding display, whether it's sponsored display or DSP. I think Amazon did not roll out those ad types incredibly well four to five years ago or when AMG was a thing back in the days. So a lot of people have misconceptions around what DSP actually is. The third one I will say is not having a great keyword harvesting or bid management system in place. We still see that almost across the board. That's the three highest level like you can quickly go audit on your own. Philosophically, I will say Not understanding how much the platforms changed from when you and I got started, right? Amazon advertising makes up so much more of Amazon's revenue, makes up so much more of search that people are still going into it expecting to see the 2% tacos or 20% ACOS back in our days. And nowadays that's almost not possible unless you're doing a great job of building a brand off platform. It's just a lot more competitive and a lot more pay to play. And a lot of people don't realize why that matters. So those are the things that I'll throw out. I'll stop there. Speaker 1: What are you most excited about when it comes, you've mentioned like the prime TV ads, some of the things that Amazon has spent, now they're doing, you can take posts and you can make them into ads. Like you said, constantly they're testing things. What are you most excited about that nobody's paying attention to that you think they should, that maybe won't pan out, but you think like, man, this could be something real here? Speaker 2: I would say creativity in general and brand building, Amazon's giving us so much more opportunity for. Kevin, you've been an actual marketer and brand builder outside of the Amazon space prior, right? The fact that you can give sellers the opportunity to go run a national TV campaign with no minimums within their advertising console, It can be a huge opportunity if Amazon does it right, if they start giving sellers more access to data. You know, that's historically something that maybe would have cost someone $20,000 to $30,000. You can go launch a $5,000 campaign immediately and show up on Twitch or Freebie or Prime sponsored spot, right? That, I think, is going to be insanely powerful for people who understand traditional marketing mentality. I'm going to stop there because I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that. Speaker 1: What about the creative side of that? So, I mean Dish and some other people have been, they've had that where I think on Dish like 10 years ago, you could buy little ad spots that would run in front of something and Roku has done that. A few others have done it and now Amazon is doing it and it's a great opportunity but most people, you got to create in a different way. That kind of advertising is different than direct response. You can do direct response, but it's a different thing. It's a different budget, a different level of photography and everything. I think that could be a stumbling block. I think it's a great opportunity. But I think that could be a stumbling block. It's a great way to test. In the old days, you'd run an infomercial. If I'm going to sell my new George Foreman grill, people always would start with Indiana. There's like 10 cities around the US that were I'm a demographically representative of the US. They would go into these 10 cities, spend $20,000, $50,000 and test and run late night commercials or on Saturdays or weekends and see what worked. If they worked, they knew they could scale it. They're like, okay, if it worked in this city in Indiana and it worked here in Phoenix and worked wherever, we can scale this nationally and we know exactly how much this is going to make. If it didn't work, we know, okay, go back to the board and redo the commercial or just cancel this product. You're just hoping that people were tuned in. Now with Prime and everything, they can target it specifically. These are the 5,000 people. It's not like, okay, here's an audience of 5,000. Let's see how many of them like your commercial. These are the 5,000 people that should like your commercial, every single one of them. They can layer on. It's a powerful direct marketing thing that I don't think a lot of people fully understand. Going in and actually spending a little money on proper creative for that, And doing a little testing, it might be a little trial and error at first, figuring out what you got to do. But I think it's major for the people that are serious players and have the budget to do that. And it doesn't take the budget, like you said. In the past, to run a good DR campaign, it might cost you $300,000 without a celebrity. If you had a celebrity, you're paying them royalties. You're paying them a fee. By the time you shoot it, produce it, edit it, now you can do the same thing for $5, $10, $15, maybe $20. You can go overboard, but I think that's the barrier. Those type of things can't just be what you do for Instagram. Speaker 2: I completely agree. I will say I think creative is something that has been unlocked for the general population just due to small things like having access to an iPhone. I mean we've seen all the influencers who have built 20 million followers. Doing content off their phone at home. So I think that's where it's up to a brand to get creative on who they're connecting with. Like you no longer have to connect with maybe George Foreman or all of your traditional celebrities who you needed to work really hard to get in contact with. Now you have that accessible. You can reach out to the right influencers who are going to do video for you at a much cheaper rate. But again, it's still a barrier. I think that traditional selling model is really scrappy, really lean, and this is where AI is going to be advantageous. Being able to connect with people is a lot more advantageous, but no longer like the me too products, what's going to be successful. Amazon wants to see true brand builders that are connecting with that audience. And I think the data they're unlocking to your point of how granular you can get with that targeting is also a major advantage that I'm excited about in this year. AMC, I know it's like a major buzzword and not appropriate for everyone, but why I'm so excited about AMC is because Amazon's giving us data that they've never given us before. No, it's probably not best for every single brand or anyone spending less than, you know, 50 grand a month, but Amazon's unlocking that and they've never given us those types of insights before. Speaker 1: It scared a lot of other media companies. When Amazon announced that, that you can start doing like Prime TV, there's a lot of people on Madison Avenue that were like, this is, they were excited, but at the same time, like, Oh, wait, wait a second. They can they got some massive data that they can blow us out of the woods and other networks. You know, NBC can't compete with that. So that you know, someone like a NBC is going to be shoot. Maybe we need to buy Timu or something. We need we need this kind of data because everything is moving. The entertainment and shopping are moving together with TikTok shop. I mean on social with Amazon now doing like the Black Friday football game and then doing Doing all that and they just, what was it, Paramount paid $120 million to broadcast one NFL game and tried to get subscriptions to 599 a month subscriptions and they claim it worked. I don't know if it sold that many, but it's evolving for online and offline or merging. We're merging and I think a lot of people are still stuck, like you said, in this little sponsored ads thing and that's PPC. Speaker 2: I mean, just think about it, being able to run a commercial and say, hey, I want to target everyone who in the last 365 days Purchased cat food and is between the ages of 25 and 30 and also makes this amount of money. Amazon has all of that shopper history combined with all the audience data you would get from a meta or Google. And then you layer in the media company that they're growing into. It's going to be crazy. If you have the right creative, you're going to be able to serve an ad to someone directly within their path to purchase that's customized for them. Speaker 1: You can even go down to that cat example. Amazon probably even knows what color the hair of the cat is. Unknown Speaker: Yes, they do. Speaker 1: You can make sure you don't have a black cat because this is targeting all the people that have gray cats or brown cats or whatever. Speaker 2: No Procter & Gamble, no Johnson & Johnson, no General Mills is going to have the turnaround time to accommodate that. They have to have every commercial or creative approved by a legal department, by a marketing department from a risk perspective. I think it typically takes, for some of those brands that we work with, a three-month turnaround on creative. Versus a seller can get that done within 48 hours if they really wanted to. I mean, it'd be a fast turnaround. But the approval speeds, that is the advantage of a seller is being able to go to market with a lot more granular targeting than a large enterprise company who's traditionally bought national media campaigns that are a broad shotgun approach. Speaker 1: But is this for the guy who's doing a million dollars a year on Amazon, or is this above his pay grade? Is this more for the big brands and the big eight-figure, nine-figure sellers, or is this something that some guys selling board games at a million, million and a half dollars a year could do? Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say the key differentiator is a brand's builder. Even a small brand could go and run that if you tell me you want a legitimate brand, right? Maybe you're in a boutique store. Maybe you've done a little bit D2C and you're only doing a million a year. If you can go all in cost, maybe $20,000, it's an opportunity to build a brand for sure. But if you're a seller and you're just wanting to sell products and not build a brand, then no, it's 100% not for you. Speaker 1: So on Prime TV, do you have to drive any direct response back to Amazon or can I run something for my brand, say it's available on Amazon, also get it locally in Walmart? Or do I have to drive everything back to Amazon? Speaker 2: So you don't have to drive back to Amazon, but Amazon is tracking branded search metrics. Don't think they're going to let you drive to Walmart. I'm not 100% sure on that approval process, actually. But you run the general campaign and then the Amazon data they're giving you is whether or not a customer then goes to Amazon and types in your brand name. That's kind of the key metric that they're giving you. AMC gives you a little bit more. But I'm pretty sure you could run a general campaign, not driven directly to Amazon, just a general commercial. And you will see a lift externally on your in-store sales or your D2C store sales. Speaker 1: What about now, you know, for launching? It used to be we had search, find, buy. We had, you know, giveaway services. We had all that stuff. But a lot of people are saying now the way to launch is to actually use PPC. What are, get some buying reviews and then use PPC. Try to get a few buying reviews so you have a little bit of traction and then use PPC and just understand that you're going to be paying through the nose in the beginning because you don't have reviews, you don't have feedback, you don't have whatever. What are your thoughts about that? Is that a legitimate strategy? And if so, what's the best way to go about it? Speaker 2: I feel pretty confident that I coined this strategy in this space. I'm not going to lie. And the reason I came up with it is because I worked in the search find by days. When I first got started working with Amazon sellers, I was personally running their Facebook campaigns that were driving to like a canonical URL landing page. That would, you know, cycle through four to five keywords. So we, at the time we would do a 90% off Facebook ad to a really wide audience. And since it was a 90% off product, everyone would click on the landing page. And then we had search fine pie of, Hey, go type in women's college in here. And I set up that funnel. And obviously there was a bunch of terms of service changes. My role changed where now I'm working with a little bit more established brands who can't risk walking that line. So I was thinking of like, hey, why did a search find by work? And it was like, well, I drove a bunch of volume to a keyword, which sent a really strong signal to Amazon that that keyword is relevant for that product. But it's not just volume. The secondary part of that was the 90% off. And the 90% off inflated conversion rates. And I think a lot of people maybe missed that step in that Amazon advertising or Amazon in general is driven by data. So you need high amount of sales to prove that that keyword is relevant and conversion rate. Amazon doesn't want a bad customer experience. They want everyone who clicks on a product to more than likely buy the product. It's mutually beneficial for everyone. So I was thinking of like, wait, what's the highest conversion traffic? And it's really sponsored product ads when you look at relative to the other markets. And then how do you get really precise with the keywords that you're inflating? Also PPC exact match. So we started building out these campaigns and I ran a case study almost two and a half years ago where we took $60,000 and spent $60,000 on one term in like a 48 hour period. And we were able to increase our organic rank from number eight to number three, which is a huge jump on the page because that puts you above the fold. You're now above the video ad and the sponsor product carousel. And that was like the most eye opening case study. Now, our advertising conversion rate was 35 percent. Most brands don't have that, but it really proved the concept. You drive high volume to a keyword and you have an amazing conversion rate. Amazon will improve your organic rank in stock. Speaker 1: Do you need to do that now that you can't do 90% off coupons like that? Do you need to do that with a lower price to boost that conversion? If my target is $19.95, should I put it at break even or even at a loss as a loss leader to get it at $9.95 just so it's such an incredible deal that even though it doesn't have reviews, what's $10 to the customer? I'll take a chance for $10. Speaker 2: I won't say specifically on like lowering your prices, but I think the philosophy you hit on is perfectly spot on. You have to convert better than the category. And if your listing doesn't offer a competitive advantage better than the rest of your competitors, then you're going to have to commoditize your product and compete on price. So 100% lowering your price is an option to inflate conversion rates. But at the end of the day, I'm a believer, just produce a better product. Create a better listing than everyone else and then pay to drive that money. So you don't have to race to the bottom on pricing, but that's a more of a philosophical debate and within a tactic. Speaker 1: No, I agree. People always ask me, Kevin, how do I get more reviews? I say to have a good product. Sell more. Increase the odds because there's a certain number there and have a good product. Yeah, but how do I get more reviews? I just told you. Speaker 2: Exactly. And that timing, that's another important part that why, you know, you mentioned the loss leader aspect and it's so important because Time is a huge variable. It is a flywheel, right? The more volume you're driving, the more likely someone's going to leave a review because you're driving more units. The more reviews you get, the better your conversion rate, the better conversion rate, the more volume you're going to drive. And that's kind of the mentality that we're looking at when we run these rank campaigns. If you can't afford to drive $100,000 in one month, okay, let's drive $10,000 over 10 months. And it's going to take you a lot longer to rank, right? That's the part that I think people also forget. They just want to inflate All of that traffic in a short period of time, it doesn't really work like that. It's a flywheel that takes time. Speaker 1: Some of those people are the people that were around when we started and you can rank in two days. Speaker 2: I'm still breaking past those days. I'm telling you that. Speaker 1: Time blast and viral launch and like, okay, I'm going to be ranked number one two days from now and I'm good. Speaker 2: Yeah. I am thankful I've been in this space. I cannot imagine a new marketer hopping in and hopping on a call and being like, I used to do this. Can you do this? And like so much has changed. Speaker 1: And a lot of those people back then, you know, some of them exited their companies that started 2014, 2015 when it was easy. They exit their companies during the aggregator rush and some of them have tried to do it again and they don't know what they're doing and they fail miserably. I've seen that over and over and over with a lot of people. It comes back to the fundamentals and like you said, it's a patience game. Are you building a brand? Are you willing to wait this out? This is not a get rich quick. It's not a quit your job next month because you start selling on Amazon. This is a process and it takes time to build a true brand and to build momentum. What's your philosophy when you're starting with a new product? Do you target the big keywords or do you start small and target the really long tails and then work your way up to the big keywords? Speaker 2: I think it depends on budget, if we're being honest, and whether or not they can compete on the big keywords. Everyone thinks they can compete on the big keywords. And then you look at their conversion rate data, and it's like, you cannot. So we recommend going long tail if you can justify that longer game mentality. If someone comes to me, they're like, hey, I need to be at $300,000 a month in sales on this brand new launch, then we're going to go really aggressive on some of those more aggressive sales driving keywords. In general, long tail always has the better conversion rate because it's more precise and it's typically much cheaper so it's easier to rank well organically. But then you're going to get a trade-off in lower volume. But again, that's okay because lower volume is fine if it's more profitable in the beginning. Speaker 1: I think it was Aaron Cordova that showed a little video on, was it LinkedIn or somewhere? I think I featured it. Speaker 2: Brand metrics. Yeah. Speaker 1: You mentioned it earlier about How to know how you compare to the industry. If your conversion rate is lower and a lot of people don't know that, can you explain how to do that? Where am I now compared to industry? If I'm not equal to or greater than them, I'm going to have a hard time on my PPC. Speaker 2: Yeah, I've actually spoken with the product team who built this product. I flew out to Amazon and helped discuss kind of what the roadmap looks like because in my opinion, it's one of the biggest missing pieces in Amazon advertising console is connecting your organic insights with your advertising insights. Like all the sellers speak the language of tacos. Amazon does not. They don't necessarily realize because their teams are so siloed. Speaker 1: They speak bananas, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, they throw it out there. So. If you go into Amazon advertising console in the top left hand corner, you're going to see a tab that it's either insights or planning or brand metrics. I think it's insights and planning now. You're going to click on insights and planning, and then you're going to click on brand metrics. And it's going to show you a dashboard that looks a little overwhelming, but there's going to be a little blue link that says, see more detailed metrics. You click on that and you can actually change your subcategory to get pretty niche. So like, let's say I'm selling vitamin C supplements. I can click on vitamin C supplements. And what it's going to show me is my conversion rate compared to category median in category top, which is amazing. And why this is valuable is it's showing your organic data and your advertising data combined. A lot of people think it's just advertising. It's not. It's retail insights and advertising insights. And this lets you know if you're actually selling a product that's up to par compared to the category. If your conversion rate's lower, you should not be running ads because people are not converting. If your conversion rate's higher, you should be spending more money than the category because you're doing better than everyone else. Other small call outs is this page also shows you detailed page views relative to the category. So maybe you think you're doing better than everyone else. Go look at your detailed page views. If they're lower than the category, it means someone else is driving a lot more traffic and a lot more opportunity than you. There's also like lifetime value a little bit. It gives you a subscribe and save insights, add to cart insights and branded search insights, but I'll keep it short. Speaker 1: What do you think about spending money on outside traffic? You're an expert on Amazon and within the Amazon ecosystem, but Google drives about 25% of Amazon's outside traffic. And now TikTok, a lot of people are trying to spend ads and boost posts and stuff there. Just get that branded search. Not so much link back, but go search for brand plus keyword. Kind of like the old search, find, buy in a way. And there's some people having great success there. What are your thoughts on outside advertising on Amazon? Speaker 2: Big, big fan. What I always tell people is it really depends on like what that overall cost per acquisition is. I mean, I work in supplements and we see $40 cost per clicks on all of the top keywords. Speaker 1: Cost per clicks, not for sale. Just to clarify. Cost per click. With what kind of conversion rate? Speaker 2: Top brands will see a 40 to 50% conversion rate, but that means they're automatically taking a loss. Speaker 1: So 80 bucks on a top, on like the number one best performing, it's costing them $80 to get a sale in PPC on Amazon. Wow. Speaker 2: Now, little tiny asterisk, supplement brands do pay a repeat purchase LTV game, right? So if you buy the product four times, it makes sense. But when you're dealing with those CPCs, there's nothing you can do at the end of the day. The competitors are setting the market for those costs. So either bid lower and get a lot less traffic or you bid high and take a loss, right? So when we're dealing with that, we start having the conversation of maybe we should be spending more money off platform and driving it to Amazon if it's cheaper. Now, almost across the board, conversion rates are a lot lower. I mean, upwards of half, because if they're on Amazon, they're planning on buying. So if they click on your ad, they're planning on buying. If they're on Google and then driven to Amazon, they could still be in a research phase. So you're sacrificing conversion rate by going off platform. But if your cost per click is so much cheaper off platform, you can drive the same amount of traffic for the same cost. So understanding your cost per acquisition on both platforms is really important because Amazon is driving external traffic. They can't put any more ads on the page. So Amazon wants you to continue driving traffic off platform because at the end of the day, they're still driving the sell and they're benefiting. Speaker 1: So what category, some people say supplements and pets are the most brutal when it comes to advertising. Would you agree with that or is there another category we should add to that mix that's like just brutal cost per clicks? Speaker 2: Supplements and pets are brutal, but you do have lifetime value. I almost think like tech is more brutal because you don't have the lifetime values like iPhone cases or cell phone accessories. You see the high CPCs because you're competing against everyone else or it's a commoditized and you're competing directly against manufacturers who can I produce for a lot cheaper than you, but you don't get the lifetime value of the repeat purchases. Speaker 1: When a client comes to you and they say they're a supplement client, they say, we want to go balls to the wall. We're willing to spend whatever. And your next question, you said, okay, we can do this, you know, $40 per click. Yeah, no problem. But what's your LTV? And they're like, I'm not sure. How do you advise people to actually figure out an LTV on Amazon? It's easy to do on Shopify. But how do you, what are, do you have any tips or suggestions on how, I know there's like nozzle.ai, there's a few tools, but what would you, what would you suggest to someone? We're like, well, how do I actually figure that out? Speaker 2: Yeah, I think almost across the board, if you're willing to spend that much money, you should know this off platform because Amazon doesn't give you a lot of insights. But at that point, you can unlock some AMC insights or DSP insights to start backing into your information. I think AMC in general does give us lifetime value access because we can pull all of the hashed audiences on the organic side and figure it out. It's pretty complex. But the same thing can be said, like if you're just running DSP, you can figure out your subscribe and save repeat purchases and then isolate that audience and figure out what your kind of averages are. Not a great answer, I would say. Probably not my best answer. Speaker 1: What about some of the new stuff like you can now target people that abandoned their carts? Yeah. There's several new things like that that have come out recently. How are those performing? Speaker 2: I pitched this idea to Melissa to start diving into at Billion Dollar Seller Summit actually because You know, working with the seller audience, the questions I used to always get like around DSP was around attribution, like Amazon's lying about my attribution and taking credit for things they shouldn't or accessibility and ads. And I think that's something Amazon's really opened up. So with AMC, as you mentioned, we can now say, I want to target everyone who added my product to cart in the last 365 days but did not purchase. And that's not just advertising. That is organic data. Every person organically who added to cart and did not purchase, let me build an audience for that I can turn into a DSP targeting type. And that's powerful. Same thing with subscribe and save. Same thing with high frequency audiences. Let me go ahead and negate every audience who has seen my ad five times and not purchased. We have the ability to create a targeting type for that. Speaker 1: Can I create a targeting type for people that have added my competitor's product to the cart and did not buy? So I can come back to them and say, I know you're looking, I don't know, you have to word it in such a way, but I know you're looking at this. We actually, have you considered ours? Because ours is actually pretty cool and it's a little bit cheaper and it works a little bit better than the one you were considering before. Speaker 2: I don't think we can do add to cart, but what we can do is everyone who viewed my competitor's page, And then we can negate the audience of people who purchased within that category, which tells me they're still in market because they're viewing that direct competitor, my number one competitor. Maybe they sell a microphone. Let's target everyone who viewed this microphone, but did not purchase a mic in general in the last 365 days. That's insanely, insanely granular. Let's throw out a caveat here of the downside of this strategy is it's a small audience if you're not doing big numbers or don't have a big budget, right? And that's where people struggle with DSP. They want to run this granularity and then it's $2,000 a month and they don't see a top line sales increase. So they're like, ah, DSP is not working for me. It's like, well, you got to spend $50,000 and have enough views to really see that type of power. Speaker 1: What are you seeing on product targeting where you're targeting your competitors? Maybe you have a better review rating, a little bit cheaper price. Are you seeing a lot of success for people like, let me go or, you know, one of the things I've told people in the past is target the new launchers because new launchers have zero reviews. A lot of times they're spending a lot of money on social or something driving traffic to it. I'll just go sit on their listing with my 255, 4.7 star reviews. And so when someone comes there, oh, this one's actually a little bit better. And I mentioned that at an event one time as a little hack, and I actually had someone come up to me and complain. It's like, that's not fair to us new sellers. That's like stealing. You're robbing from us. I'm like, hey, this is business. Speaker 2: Truly, truly. That's spot on. So we typically recommend five different product targeting strategies. Now we break these out into their own campaigns because performance is really dependent on the style of strategy. We'll do one targeting everyone with a higher price point than us. So that one's really easy to scrape either through a tool or an ad console. So we'll create a campaign only targeting higher price point products. We'll create a campaign targeting everyone with worse reviews than us. So maybe like less than four stars, new product launches, lower reviews than us, audience targeting. So we'll go a little bit more broad and target everyone within our audience and then retargeting. And there's a kind of a custom strategy we do on top of that and that's like Frequently Bought Together, which is another probably like throwback to six to seven years ago when people used to hack the Frequently Bought Together placement. Unknown Speaker: Yeah, I used to do that. Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll run a product targeting strategy similar. Like let's say I'm selling diapers. Let me target everyone who's viewing baby wipes or prenatals. Like that's another strategy, but that one's a little bit more difficult to drive a conversion on. Speaker 1: What do you think about all this buzz around Amazon changing to an AI type of search? Rufus is getting panned right now as a joke by the people that have actually been able to use it. I'm sure they're going to improve it. It's going to come around. But then you had the stuff about Cosmo, which some people are freaking out about. Then other people like Bradley at Helium 10 says, oh, that was written by interns. They actually now work for the company and they were hired. They're smart enough to get hired. I've always said that I think we are moving to an AI world on search. It's still early, but Amazon's not going to do a damn thing with this rollout. I'm AI. That was a quarter, sorry. I think that was in a quarter, last quarter. So it's a hundred plus billion dollar a year industry. It's like number two. I think only Meta has more, or Google and Meta. It's number two or number three. Where do you see AI affecting what you do, either from a software point of view, or are you taking the place of some of your onshore talent? We're just going to supplement, make them more efficient. What do you see on both sides, from an agency side and managing the PPC and from the customer side? Speaker 2: Well, for one, I would say I'm not naive that it's going to greatly impact my personal business, which is a big reason we actually went through a rebrand. Historically, we've been better AMS. AMS was Amazon Marketing Services and it was heavily search-based. Better Media is the new company and the new long-term vision and that's because we're... Speaker 1: Oh, that's the VTR. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: I was like, I've been like, okay, is that just the first better ATM? BTR. I've been calling you the wrong name this entire time. Speaker 2: It was a recent switch, Kevin. Most people probably don't know. Speaker 1: I'm supposed to be on top of things here. Now I'm embarrassed. Speaker 2: But you're spot on. It's going to be less search based, right? And it's going to be a lot more, I think, general media, more programmatic, more AI, more creative, which was the rebrands. But speaking specifically about Amazon, Let's say I'm selling chapstick. Right now, a customer types in chapstick, someone bids on chapstick and shows up. There's a relevancy filter, right? Amazon's not going to allow someone to bid on chapstick if they're selling a permanent marker. The next step of that, in my opinion, is if someone types in chapstick, the advertising auction is going to say, okay, these 10 people are bidding on chapstick. But this customer previously bought peppermint chapstick five times. So instead of just showing them the highest bidder, let's also show them the chapstick that most aligns with the person's prior search history. So the peppermint chapstick is going to win that auction, right? It's going to be AI influence based off individual purchase habits. So we're not going to be able to necessarily influence that. And like one of my favorite topics in this space is when people are like, Amazon's just trying to steal your money. That's why they want $40 CPCs. I'm like, no. Amazon's vision is 10 to 15 years from now. Amazon's building a media behemoth. They want to have more aligned advertising and I think that's where AI is going to come into play. So I think it's going to be a lot less search based. My team's going to be doing a lot less work with keywords and a lot more work with creatives and audiences. So that's what we're building within our team. Speaker 1: Awesome. I agree with you. It's going to be more on the intent and audience based than it is going to be on specific. Specific keywords and how can you game the system to rank when someone else is not ranking? But part of that's gonna take a rebuild. I think that's part of the reason that Rufus is not working now because the data. Everything on Amazon is not matching what they're trying to do. It's going to take a whole, some of the under workings need to change to actually make that effective. And that might be a challenge to get, what is there, I don't know what the number is, millions of active listings on Amazon. That's got to be either, so it may be if, and they may have to come out and say, we're switching to this. If you haven't updated, completely updated your listing to this no format, you're not, you're going to be de-indexed period. We're something along those lines and now with looking at images and analyzing images, not just the metadata on the images, but actually what's in this picture. I think it's going to get to the point where if you're selling that peppermint chapstick and your picture doesn't show a peppermint chapstick, it says peppermint across it showing You know, the Spearmint version, you may not actually show up. They're going to analyze the pictures. I believe it's going to get to, this is probably a little ways off, but I think it's going to get to that point. Or if you're selling an umbrella and someone types in an umbrella for the beach and your lifestyle pictures don't show an umbrella on the beach, they show people walking through the rain or whatever, you're not going to show up. Speaker 2: A hundred percent. There's just so much technical capabilities that we never had. It's a whole change in mindset, in my opinion, where 20 to 50 years ago, it was all about mass manufacturing and finding the one product that everyone wanted. And now we're going to see a transition into finding the perfect product that everyone wants. Our ad creatives are going to need to be perfectly built for that custom audience. Because of what tech and supply chain has enabled us to unlock. Speaker 1: This has been an awesome conversation. I think a lot of people are going to get a lot of this. That's why you're in the Dream 100. That's why, you know, this is why I said you're one of the top minds in this space. You know, when you go to Accelerate in Seattle and you go into, you know, Jeff Cohen is hosting. I got Destaney in my room talking PPC. I remember getting pissed off last year in Seattle because I wanted to come hear you talk. I get up to the room and I'm like, sorry, you can't enter. No, it's you. You were in there too. You can't enter the rooms full. I was like, do you know who I am? No, I didn't. But no, I was like, damn it. So I came back like five minutes later and tried to get in again. Like, sorry, I saw somebody leave. No, sorry, the room was full. So this is why like you wanted the top in the space and you got some stuff coming in the freedom ticket as well that you're doing for the brand new freedom ticket that's coming out. So those of you There's a Freedom Ticket 4.0. About to come out that we reshot the entire thing from scratch. And you're doing, uh, I'm like, I can talk a little bit about the basics of PPC. I can say, okay, this is what an ACOST is. This is what a spur, but when it comes to the details, I, no, that's not me. You can run circles around me. And so like, we've got to bring in the best. So destiny's, uh, taking care of that side of it. So make sure you check that out. Make sure if you need an agency too, you check out BTR. Is it, what's the website now? Speaker 2: Bettermedia.com. Speaker 1: Bettermedia.com. If you're not coming to Hawaii for BDSS, you're going to be missing out. If PPC is something you need help with or it is your bag, you got two of the smartest minds or probably the two smartest minds in the entire space going to be together competing against each other on stage in a way. I can see it now. I don't know who's speaking first, but let's say Melissa goes first. Destiny's going to be watching her going, damn it. All right. Kevin, I got new slides. Speaker 2: I did reach out to Melissa on topics to make sure we're fully encompassing everything you all need to know with two different topics. Speaker 1: Yeah, I think she's good. She says she might, she is still deciding, but she might talk about like what the Chinese are doing or something. Some crazy like, Like White Hat, not Black Hat stuff, but some crazy techniques and things that they're doing that we don't quite understand here that's crushing it. It's going to be awesome. What are you looking forward to most about Hawaii? Speaker 2: I've never been. I think that's the biggest thing. I'm insanely excited. You do a fantastic job of putting together a really clean audience. We just came off Prosper Show. I'm an advisor. One of the things that we struggle with is it's such a broad audience. You don't know who you're selling tickets to. You never have that problem. You do a fantastic job of curating the people that are in a room and the speakers that they want to hear. So I'm really, really excited about that. Speaker 1: And you guys did a better job. I know I put something out on Prosper this year. I jumped the chart because it has gone down since it sold in 2019. And every year I'm like, this is a way. There's always a couple of good speakers. There are, I mean, in fairness, there's always a couple of people that But a lot of us it was became corporate shilling and this year I think in part because you're on the board and a few other people are you giving a little more guidance and the feedback that I got from people like it was better and a lot of people like okay, they're honing it in and it was definitely better. I know the attendance was up like 50% or something like that and the next year they're moving to the convention center. So it's I'm actually having to move my BDSS event next year. I was going to do it at the end of March. It's in Iceland next year. And so, damn, now I got to move it to the first week of April. Speaker 2: I need to start seeing like the five-year vision. Speaker 1: You can pick and choose which one you want to go to. Let's see if you win this one, if you win first or second, you get automatically invited to the next one. Speaker 2: I'm going to be honest. I feel like I'm always at a disadvantage with Amazon advertising because it's the least fun topic to discuss. Maybe that's just me. Maybe that's my speaking. Speaker 1: You know what, Matt Altman, he's done well with it. At BDSS, the Get the Votes, it's about the content, but it's also about stage presence. Someone like Janelle, she goes up there and just wears her shorts and kicks off her flip-flops and just sits on the stage and just makes fun of herself and just talks. There's ways, and I've seen you do it, where you make it interesting. You made this podcast. A topic that's boring for a lot of people, it was actually interesting. So that's part of it. And the other thing you're going to see in Hawaii is, you know, a lot of times you go to an event and all you see is the hotel or all you see is the venue. In Hawaii, one day, we're doing an amazing race, like the TV show. Unknown Speaker: You're doing such a good job. Speaker 2: I mean, your party last year at CellarCon, I've told my whole team, I'm like, Kevin, better do the most amazing Halloween party for Unboxed. I'm already planning outfits with everyone. Unknown Speaker: You're doing such a great job. Speaker 1: Yeah, we did one for Christmas that we stuffed that one up. I think you missed that one. Then when I saw Unboxed is coming, New York's coming to Austin, I'm like, all right, we're on it. Speaker 2: Listen, the unbox community is not going to know how to handle a Kevin King event, if I'm being honest, and I can't wait. Speaker 1: We have a bigger budget for this one. It's about $120,000 budget. And we have some really cool ideas of what we're going to do. It's costume. We'll be announcing it soon. But yeah, it's going to be a night, people. It's the first night, so we're making sure it's after the welcome thing. And it's going to be a really cool, cool event. Yeah, it's going to be awesome. Speaker 2: I can't wait. I'm excited. Thank you so much for having me on here as well. Speaker 1: I appreciate it. It's been great. We'll see you soon in Hawaii. Speaker 2: We're counting down. I can't wait. Thank you, Kevin. Speaker 1: All right. Thanks. As you can see, Destaney is just full of massive knowledge. You might have to go back and rewind. A little bit here and play back some of this episode because there's just a lot of really good stuff that we covered. Destaney is also in the Freedom Ticket 4.0 that's maybe out when you're listening to this or it's coming out soon if it depending on when you're listening to this. A totally revamped Freedom Ticket. Be sure to actually check out that and Destaney is teaching the PPC material in Freedom Ticket 4.0. We'll be back again next week with another Great episode, but before we leave, I just got to leave you with some words of wisdom. Consistency enlarges ability. Consistency enlarges ability. See you again next week.