#510 - The Amazon Ads Mistake Costing Sellers Growth

Are you optimizing your ads for the lowest a cost but accidentally limiting your growth? Or have you ever turned off a campaign thinking it wasn't working only to realize it was driving serious revenue? Today we break down why that happens, why simple creatives are outperforming expensive ones, and how most sellers are missing new ad opportunities without even realizing it. Hello everybody and welcome to the AMN podcast. My name is Shioali Patel. My name is Carrie Miller and this is the show where we discuss all things Amazon, Tik Tok shop, and Walmart private label and how to generate reoccurring revenue streams 24 hours a day during the AM and the PM, hence the name of the show. Get it? AM podcast. And as a matter of fact, I recently took a trip up to New York for a week, and even though I was out eating pizza all day long, like that was my job, I was still making money online. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. All right. Now, this conversation was filmed live recently at the Prosper Show in Las Vegas. Amazon ads sat down with Carrie Miller and Destiny Wishon, and this was a conversation I was genuinely excited to listen in on. As a seller, knowing how to run your ads is one of the most important skill sets you can have. No one cares more about your money and your business than you, right? If you don't know who Destiny is, she's the co-founder and CMO of Better AMS, where she's managed advertising strategies for over a 100 brands and thousands of campaigns. She's got a deep understanding of what actually drives performance at scale. And Carrie, on the other hand, hopefully those of you who are listening already know who she is. She's a sevenfigure seller herself and the manager of education and strategy here at Helium 10, helping sellers bridge that gap that lies between strategy and execution. This conversation is a real discussion around what happens when you move from outsourcing your advertising to actually taking control of it. The risks, the learning curve, and what it truly takes to scale sustainably. So, let's get into it. Hello everyone. Today we are recording from Prosper Show in Vegas. Now, I'm incredibly excited to dive into Carrie and I's evolution over the last few years. >> Yeah. Carrie, everyone knows you as an evangelist for Helium 10. You are always on camera leading a ton of content, a ton of education in space, but do people do people know why you're so smart in where you've learned everything you have about marketplaces? >> I don't think so always. No, >> I I don't you don't you're not you're not the egotistical, hey, listen, look at my Ferrari seller, but you do sell. You have built a very successful brand on Amazon. >> Can you tell us a little bit about that brand? Yeah. So, it's an apparel brand, uh, mostly men's wear. I started, so my dad and I started back in 2015 or 2016, but it was kind of by accident. So, what happened was, um, our neighbor's son had a skateboard company. He didn't do too great with it. And the neighbor's dad was like, "Hey, can you help us resurrect this?" And they were selling on Amazon about $200 a month. So, I was like, "I can learn this." So, I went on YouTube and I started learning how to sell on Amazon just from YouTube. like these series I would watch like over and over and over again and then I started um I was like oh my gosh this is I'm really good at this cuz I started ranking we started selling and then I started offering services through FreeUp if you know FreeUp I was a freelancer full-time I had so much work on that uh platform and I did that but then I was starting to feel isolated so then I that's when I got got into the tech space was working at a competitor to Helium 10 and then when I quit that um I ended up started working at Helium 10 because I've been using Helium 10 for since 2017 when Manny really started taking off. So that's that is incredible. A lot of people can talk the talk and hop on and present and be, you know, a guru of any topic in the e-commerce space. But when you've hopped on, you've actually been able to spoken from a lived experience. I mean, you walk the walk and you've been since day one. I mean, 10 years of this roller coaster is insane. >> Yeah. And we didn't start the apparel business until 2018. It was really just we're like, "Oh, let's sew this." And it wasn't anything other than that. We're just like, "Let's just try it." And then people really liked that project. Then we started doing more. But um I think a lot of people were like, "Oh, were you just a multi-millionaire right away?" And I just that wasn't the case for us. It was like a gradual build, you know? So I think that that's probably been the best part of it is not it wasn't like I spiked and was like, "Oh, I'm a multi-millionaire. It's I've learned so much on how to really grow something and it's not easy and I can help people that have had the same challenges as me along the way. I think that's kind of the more common scenario than the one that sells 10 million their first year. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. >> That context is incredibly important because Carrie and I recently sat down to record a series with Helium 10 called Outsource to Optimize. And the whole context of the series is teaching a brand owner to go from outsourcing the management of their Amazon advertising to optimizing it on their own, which is often a really scary hurdle. I mean, there's a lot of acronyms in the space. There's a lot of howtos and playbooks and guides. And >> one of the first things I sat down with Carrie and said is there's not one way to do things, right? And we hopped on. And in episode one, we just chatted very high level of what are your brand goals, what direction do you want to go with the business, and we really set that context for moving forward. That being said, going into the series, what do you think was the scariest about going from an outsourced solution to managing your own ads? What were you most concerned? >> I was most concerned that the ad spend would get out of control and the tacos would just be just nowhere. And I didn't want to plummet. I it's really an important part of your whole business and I just didn't want to be responsible for just the incomplete failure of it and so there was a lot of stress there cuz you you want to maintain your tacos but you also want to grow and it's a fine line and I didn't understand kind of the nuances about things like if it was just me going in there I'd be like oh I'm going to change all this stuff but you really can't change something that fast you have to gradually change things which is what I learned from you. >> Absolutely. though. Yeah, >> it's scary. I mean, logging into ad console in general and even when you're utilizing a tech partner or a software, there's a lot of correlations that people don't quite understand. Whether it's how your spend influences your total sales, how your advertising impacts your organic rank. >> Yeah. >> Where does your CPC come from? What is the relationship between your CPC and your bid? That was an area where we had to really talk through so that way you understood what levers to actually pull to impact your total goals or your total sales. >> And I kind of when I when I think about it, I did a lot of keyword research. So I was doing a lot of optimizing listings. So I looked through so many keywords. So when I look and I I had to do some campaigns manually in in seller central and I was looking and I was like, "Okay, I know I know that this keyword is important. The click is high, but I have to have this keyword." Whereas if somebody else is managing, they might not know that that's your keyword that you really need to make sure to be present on and or if there's, you know, some that they're in there, it's like, okay, this bid has gotten too high. It's really not worth it. Um, you I am able to see that at a glance much easier, I think, than somebody managing my >> Absolutely. That's a great example. You know, oftent times when working with a partner or even brands themselves, they get caught up in one single KPI. Typically in our space, it's a cost, rorowaz, or tacos. And in Car's example, we actually opened up advertising console and we went through search terms one by one. And I would say, hey, this search term has a high CPC. It's relatively expensive, but it's really important for your organic rank. Do you want to continue spending on it or do you want to pause? And we talk through that methodology because a lot of times what I find brands are doing is they're optimizing solely for the algorithm or the algebra at this point. >> Yeah. Right. It's what is the math that's going to get me the lowest possible a cost and how do I optimize for the algorithm without zooming out and saying this keyword is actually really important for my audience >> right from a customer perspective I need to bid and I'm willing to have a higher a cost on this term and I think that was a little bit of a hurdle in the first few episodes that we really made sure to talk through >> in order to highlight >> the context that's needed to really be successful. >> Yeah, definitely. And it, you know, it's it all kind of evens out. There are some keywords that are going to be higher, but within that campaign, there's five keywords or whatever you have. >> The others aren't going to be as as high always. Um, yeah. So, I it's just so much easier now to be more confident in that. But I always had the keyword research understanding. So, if you do that from building your brand, >> yeah, exactly. So if anyone doesn't have the keyword research, you know, strategies, I think that's where you start is like understanding keywords, understanding the search volume and what it takes to rank and and once you understand that, then then it's much easier to get into that. Yeah, >> absolutely. I think the second part that we saw, it was maybe a struggle for a lot of the brands. You know, we are offering Q&As's after every single episode and a lot of brands had questions around the operational side. >> How often do I need to be optimizing? how often do I need to be doing keyword research and I think that's where the tools really come into play. I mean within ad console directly you have a lot of rulesbased systems that you can work with but with a lot of our tool providers like Helium 10 ads you have the ability to automate with controls things like bid rules you know we have multiple bid rules we have ones for maximizing profit ones for maximizing sales one for launching products being able to select the bid rules helps you do the math we also have things that allowed you to harvest keywords so we're analyzing all of those unique search terms terms that customers are finding us through, whether it's, you know, an auto campaign or an exact m or a broad match campaign, we're able to harvest those search terms and Helium gives it to you in a really nice format where you can log in once a week and say yes, no, yes, no. And I think that was something that was maybe a little bit of a misconception as a brand owner as well of if I take this on myself, how much time am I going to lose because I'm having to be in ad console every single day. >> Yeah, if you're in ad console, it's going to take you a lot longer for sure. Um, but it in within Helium 10, you do do set those rules. I would say another challenge for newer people into the ads is figuring out what bid rules to do. >> So that I think has just kind of come with a little more time. You just kind of start understanding a little bit more. >> And so that is kind of a gradual process being like, okay, I can I can do this or that. Um, but it doesn't come like right away or you know, there isn't any one set way to do it. A lot of people focus on a cost first with the rules, >> but then there's other strategies and, you know, I talked to a guy who's $100 million seller and he was he's using all kinds of other, you know, bid type of rules. So, it was it's interesting to >> it's interesting, but I think the foundation is you can have a very simple rule that's going to keep your business stable and steady. You know, there's kind of three methodologies we've seen to manage your Amazon ad bids. There's the first row, which is AI. Uh, I really recommend this kind of it's more of a blackbox solution. So if you don't want to deal with it, it's let's implement AI optimizations to our account. You give it an A cost and it hits your A cost. >> The second one is typically using bid rules or bid templates. That's what we used within Helium 10 ads because it allows us to select what avenue we want to go. Do we want a campaign focused strictly on a cost or do we want a campaign focus more on sales and how do those blend? And then the third level is creating your own unique rules. >> You can create your own unique rules within ad console. You can also create your own unique rules between Helium 10 ads and that's the one where it's really you know what you're doing and you care a lot about having maximum control. >> Yeah. >> But that's the one that's going to take a lot of time because it takes a lot of time to become an advanced user bid optimization. So it's kind of finding both the balance of what's right for you as an operator but also what's going to help you achieve the outcome that you're looking for. Something else I really liked about using Helium 10 is the the ability to filter through what uh really really quickly because you can just kind of put searches in. Hey, I want to see things where I've gotten, you know, a certain number of sales and you know, say if I have zero sales and, you know, 100 clicks, well, I want to turn that off for sure. But you can easily filter through. My favorite's the arrows. Yeah, you have a green arrow and a red arrow arrow. So, it makes it really hard to miss. It's like, wow, my a cost is terrible on this. I have a red arrow that's like you need to lower that bid ASAP and I can click a button and have it done in five minutes. >> Yes. Yeah. So, that that's been super helpful to have that. We also discovered through there um cuz I had an agency managing my uh ads that shut off really important campaigns. So, we discovered that. Um, and you can do that just basic filtering, but it was um, you know, campaigns that were shut off for quite a while that were giving me I think I I forget how many I think it was like 60,000 in sales from like January to June or something like that, which is pretty substantial over that amount of time. Um, for, you know, a campaign, but it was turned off. But the good news is when we turned those back on, it took a little bit of time. It's not automatic when you turn it off and then turn on again, but it did actually regain traction, which is really nice. And so that's something really good because, you know, if you do shut it off, it does it does it's not good to shut things off, but you can recover it. So, I was like, thank goodness. >> Absolutely. Being able to find it quickly. I didn't buy it and correct it. >> Yeah. I think the the third thing that we really dove into and that in my opinion is probably the biggest struggle as a brand owner is keeping up with all of the new things. M >> I mean if we're even looking at the last 24 months, we've had sponsored products video. We've had changes to sponsored brands that have been pretty substantial. We've had the introduction of AMC audiences. We've had more insights into hourly optimizations and things like that. As a brand owner, it can be very overwhelming keeping up with all the new things. So that was something I feel like we really dove into in the series. You know, we talked a lot about view CPM campaigns, >> which I had no idea even existed. Yes. In all the basic trainings, you know, we don't talk about that. >> Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, even sponsored brands in general, I audit hundreds of brands a year and the brands that are still missing out on things like a sponsored brand ad. It's insane. And it's because to your point, it looks really difficult to run and it sounds difficult. Yeah. >> But at the end of the day, those small things as a brand owner can make a huge difference in your account. I mean, on our end, we see sponsored brands drive usually an additional, you know, 20% in sales. So, that was something we talked about is, you know, you're in the apparel category. Sponsor brands are incredibly beneficial because one of the biggest decision-making factors in apparel is aesthetic, and it's really expensive to advertise every unique variation by color, style, and fit. And in a sponsor brand ad, you could do that easily. >> So, I think that was another hurdle that I saw. Yeah. What's interesting though, the ad campaigns that were turned off were the sponsored brand campaigns. There were two. They were really successful. >> Yeah. So, it's, you know, they're really important to do. >> They're really important, but they can be harder to manage if you're not using the right tools and technology. And because we're smaller, like you, you know, brought out that, hey, if you're looking, for example, for protein for bodybuilders, you can target that keyword with the exact creative that is for a bodybuilder. Yeah. So, and yeah, if you want to elaborate on that. >> Yeah. No, that's a fantastic call out. In the series, we gave the example of uh someone selling protein. And we started listing out all of the different people who could be consuming protein. You could have a bodybuilder. >> You could have someone who just is from a diet perspective needs supplemental protein. You could have a busy mom who's skipping breakfast every day. You could have an elderly person who needs supplemental protein. Think about the different ways you could attract that audience. And what we mentioned is utilizing those keywords as a differentiating factor, protein for bodybuilders, and making sure the creative that we're showcasing aligns with that person. A bodybuilder is probably going to want to see protein in a on a gym floor, right? >> A busy mom is going to want to see protein in a shaker in her, you know, suburban SUV. >> Yeah. The crazy thing is it doesn't have to be, you know, super fancy creative. No, I our campaigns, the videos that actually do the best are literal slideshows. We have just the the benefit to the customer in a picture of it and it goes through five different benefits. And I actually created those those slideshows I think in 2022. And >> that was before we had tools like creative studio that just >> click a button, here's your video asset. And those are the creatives test. Yeah, they they're that's those are the campaigns that have been the most successful and those are the creatives that are in there and they're super basic. But I think the reason for that is, you know, if there's a creative thing that somebody has to interpret. >> Yes. >> They're like, I don't know what this is. But if you actually just tell them flat out what it is that you're selling and what it is it's going to do for them, they're like, oh, I actually need that. And and so it makes a lot of sense to me as to why the basic >> I couldn't agree more. If I'm sitting at home on my couch watching TV, I expect to see a commercial that tells a story and captures captures my attention. Mhm. >> If I am on Amazon making a search for a product, >> Yeah. I'm not bought into the story. I don't need to see this incredible commercial. I need to see an asset that brings me >> more understanding of the product I'm looking for. Yes. Exactly. And that's that's what you were like, okay, I want this a product that's this, this, and this. >> I'm going to just go buy it. And yeah, that's exactly what it is. I I think it's pretty fascinating, but I always was like, man, my ads aren't that great. They're not as as showy as some of these other ones. But and and I actually have people ask me that all the time because I'm I work at Helium 10 with a lot of sellers and they're like, "Oh, you know, I I don't have enough money to pay $1,500 for some sort of video, but I'm like, and this is before the AI stuff, but but I was always like, no, the most simple stuff works the best." And um even a photo with your product with the background, like um for example, during um Melissa Berdick, who started pack, she was saying how how much their, you know, clicks and conversions increased when for the holidays, even just batteries. Yes, >> they would just put it with a Christmas background and they got so much more traction. >> I love that case study. It was it was utilizing a brand that sold batteries and she was talking about Micro Seasons and they added like a Christmas tree to a a battery ad. And you think about it, you look at it and you're like, "Oh, that's not going to do much." But think about all of the moms and dads that are waking up Christmas morning with technology that requires batteries. If I'm scrolling Amazon and I see a battery with a Christmas bow, I'm immediately going to be like, "Oh, I need to stock up on batteries for the holidays." And it's these really small details like that that can make a big difference. And to Car's point, she did this in a very scrappy fashion. >> Yes, Amazon identified this as a problem of, hey, a lot of people don't have the resources to potentially make this on their own. So, they rolled out Creative Studio, but also AI video builder directly in ad console. When you log in to create your sponsored brand video ad, it'll create the assets for you. >> It does. >> Now, I always have people raising hands when I'm speaking about this on stage of, "I promise you the video is not better." >> Yeah. >> And I I hear it time and time again, but I've ran so many split tests and case studies on this and relatively consistently Yeah. >> I see that look, there's the customers can't tell a difference or don't care. So, if I can produce a video for 0 versus $30,000, then there's not a big enough difference, it's >> that's the route I'm going to take. Not to mention that sponsor brands video ads are primarily a CPC model, which means you only get charged if someone clicks. >> Yeah. >> And at the end of the day, if someone sees your sponsor brand video ad and they're interested in it, then they're going to click and then they're going to potentially purchase. So, it's relatively low risk. >> Yeah. And now you can with AI you can test so much faster. It It's actually incredible what we have. >> It's incredible. Yeah. >> At the end of the day, you know, this whole series was outsourced to optimized on your own. And a big piece of that was leaning into AI from an education standpoint. Can you learn to manage your Amazon ads on your own? Also a tool standpoint of how can AI help you from an operational standpoint, a creative standpoint. Would you say season one's finished one and done? I just started recording season two. >> Exciting. Yeah. >> How do you feel after season one? Do you feel like it was a good decision and it was successful? >> Yeah. >> It was kind of for me it's different probably for this new season cuz I was I was a little panicked if you remember. >> It was a big panic. It was more so of me having to look and say you're not on fire. We got this. >> And I don't even think we recorded some of those conversations behind this. I wish we had some behind the To be honest, I would be like >> I would tell I'd be telling you cuz we also during this time I had so many crazy things happen in the business. Like we had tariffs last year. We had an entire truckload stolen and then our ads were plummeting. So it was I was freaking out behind the scenes and Destiny was like you're not on fire. Actually, this is a really good business you built. It was almost like I needed reassurance. >> You got this. I promise. >> Yes. So it was really really >> Destiny was Sean life coach. >> Yes. >> Yes. Exactly. >> Well, I absolutely love it. One of the most beneficial things of this series, in my opinion, was again getting that actual brand owner perspective. So, for everyone listening in who's tired of listening to me speak about hypotheticals, I think it's a good opportunity to hear Carrie's perspective and her actually do this and implement it. I think we're >> over 6 months past the series and she's still doing it. >> Yeah, we had our biggest month ever in December. Obviously, it was the holidays, but um you know, it could have been not that way. So, we had a very big month in December. Maybe we can do like some catchup series. I think we might do that. >> We should add a little bonus. But >> yeah, some bonuses to see how it's going and things I've learned over over time. >> Amazing. Well, I will call that a success and thank you so much for hopping on today to share with everyone else. >> Thank you. Thank you for your help and for your life coaching. This honest conversation is a beautiful reminder that growth does not always have to come from doing or launching more. Sometimes it comes with understanding the ins and outs of your ads more. By not having to outsource, you can save yourself some expenses, cut wasted ad spend, and take back control on one of the most important levers of your business. Really guys, take a look at which keywords matter, which campaigns are driving your revenue, why, and which decisions should be intentional versus reactive. Now, what's interesting is that this perspective isn't isolated. While we were at Prosper, I also spoke with a few other sellers across different stages and categories to get a broader pulse on what is actually happening in the space right now. So, next, let's take a look at a few of those conversations. What's one PPC mistake that costs you real money? >> Um, overpaying for top of search, like if you don't have the conversion data would be one. And then the second one would be thinking that you can change your ads or run more ads before changing your listing around. If you don't change your listing first before trying to do an ad experiment or pushing ads, that can uh cost you a lot of money. >> All right. What is the biggest risk to your business in the next 24 months? Well, uh, we actually were able to find a niche that year, um, didn't have a lot of competition early on and once we found a little bit of success, uh, it seems that other companies have tried to follow suit and are making very similar products. So, we have to figure out a way to ensure that our product remains strong and that we're also marketing to the right audiences, that we utilize um positive customer experiences so they can tell their user stories so that people really know that ours um is the best out there and was was original and that while people are trying to emulate a lot of what we're doing, we also have to be mindful of iterations that approve upon what we're doing. make sure that we're staying strong in the market and that other uh companies don't pass us by with with what our product um is intended to do. So, we're really um hoping to make sure that we hold off other customer or other um comp competitors who are really trying to make the same products that that we're making. >> All right, Colin, what sort of operational upgrades are necessary to reach seven figures in your opinion? All right. So what we have done is basically the most important thing is like a SQP data right now we taken that information to the four and mix that one with like your PPC and also with your ranking. So there is a one secret what we recently found out when you have like a click impression when your click share it's a greater than your impression share then you can able to rank keywords much better way actually. So what you can do in a weekly basis you can able to check if your click share is like great if your click share is greater than impression share optimize that keyword and then put that as like exact match close match and everything and you can able to make sure being able to rank that keyword much better. So you can every week you are like doing a continuous improvement on those keywords. So it'll like get like a better relevancy on doll. So you can also able to show it in roofers much better way when you're like a top position. So that's a one operational things what we have done in a weekly basis. Look at that SQ data and optimize your listing and images in a proper way. That way we were able to like increase 10%age of gain every single week. >> Thank you so much. >> You're welcome. >> And that's a wrap on today's episode. I hope this episode is the catalyst that you needed to take a deeper look at our ads academy at outsource to optimize and most importantly at your own ads. Perhaps you found some new perspective to take you to some new heights. If you found this valuable, make sure you're subscribed because we're going to keep bringing you conversations like this. Real insights from real people who are actively building the space. As always, see you in the next one.