#543 - New Amazon Creator Ads, TikTok Shop Gets MCF, & Walmart Uses AI to Speed Up Delivery | WB 8/6

New sponsored product creator campaigns. Tik Tok shop now has MCF and how Walmart is using AI to increase delivery speeds. This and more on this week's episode of the weekly buzz. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the AMM podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Carrie Miller, and this is the show that is our Helium 10 weekly buzz, where we give you a rundown of all the goings on in the Amazon, Tik Tok shop, and e-commerce world. We let you know what new features Helium 10 has, and we also give you a training tip of the week. So, let's get started and see what's buzzing. All right, now let's go ahead and get into our first piece of news, and that is new sponsored product campaigns might be utilized by creators off of Amazon. I actually first spotted this on LinkedIn. Destiny Bashan actually did a post on this. Basically, what this is, and I'll go ahead little into detail and read it. It's basically um that on August 10th, sponsored product campaigns um are may begin appearing off of Amazon through creators. So, I'm going to just kind of scroll down a little bit here. Have to be in the Amazon influencer program. So, the current campaign settings, bids, and budgets actually still apply, and you don't need anything new. So basically what is happening is your products can be showcased to these creators that are in this program and then they can choose whether or not they want to kind of promote them or show them off of Amazon. Now if a click happens then basically you know you'll get charged for that click. So say they post it on like a a website like like a blog or maybe they're posting on their social media. Now, I don't actually know all of the details of where these are going to be allowed to be posted, but I'm assuming it's probably social media, blogs, tutorials, buying guides. A lot of people do a lot of buying guides, especially during, you know, Prime Day and Q4 and stuff like that. So, basically, you know, they'll be able to promote these and if there is a click, then basically be charged as if it was a sponsored product click. So, standard SP sponsored product billing applies. It's like pay-per-click just the same. Now, thing that's really good about it is that you're not actually just hiring an influencer having to negotiate content with them. So, Amazon is actually going to recommend products to them and then they're going to decide what they want to feature. It also doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, every product or campaign is going to appear through influencers. So, um it says may begin appearing. So, it's not, you know, everyone that this is going to happen to. Obviously, the the creators have to choose your product. I think one of my concerns, and I don't know if anyone actually brought this up, is that you, if you already have your campaigns dialed in, maybe you don't actually want a creator to start kind of taking away your budget by posting something and then kind of getting those clicks. So, this is kind of iffy because I would think you would want to set this up yourself and have another separate campaign just for influencers. So, I don't know how this is exactly going to work. And, you know, maybe if you have any insights to that in the comments, you could put that in there. But I think that might be one of my concerns is, you know, just it utilizing your budget where you don't want it to go or you didn't specify it to go. Yeah, that's just something to kind of think about and be aware of that this is going to start August 10th. So, you to Destiny for bringing that to our attention. All right, so up next we have that Tik Tok is entering the multi-channel fulfillment race. And so now we have the three biggest sellers of online in the online space basically Amazon, Walmart, and now Tik Tok shop. Um, and so it talks a little bit about that. Amazon has FBA, fulfillment by Amazon, and they do MCF. Walmart has Walmart fulfillment services, and Tik Tok has fulfilled by Tik Tok. All of them have different names for these programs. Amazon was really the first one. It's called MCF. And they'll fulfill your orders from your Shopify site, from Tik Tok, from Walmart, from all these different channels. Um, Walmart also has multi-channel solutions and then Tik Tok now has multiple channels fulfillment is what it's called. Now, the interesting thing about this is Amazon and Walmart both have their own warehouses. They own the real estate all over the country whereas Tik Tok, they actually don't have their own warehouses and they basically utilize other third party logistics. So, that is something that I think is a little bit iffy about FBT right now is that you're not necessarily getting a uniform, you know, product when you're, you know, shipping through Tik Tok or fulfillment by Tik Tok. So, that's something to kind of consider. I'd be curious to know any of you are using FBT right now for just your Tik Tok shop orders just to know how that that's going. I've actually received some orders off Tik Tok shop and actually the majority of them that I received, they look battered. So, I'm just, you know, wondering what that whole experience is like, you know, as a seller if you have a lot of products that arrive broken or things like that. So, that is something that's basically started now. And I think it's really going to help with some competition because maybe that'll help with pricing. And I think he mentioned, yeah, it's good news for sellers. Competition is always good. I think it is um good that there's some competition. Maybe some are faster, maybe some are going to be less expensive. So, they're going to be competing against each other now. So hopefully we'll see some more, you know, kind of deals and things like that so that our fulfillment maybe goes down a little bit. And so that is the latest with the fulfillment by Tik Tok. All right. Next up, we actually have our new feature alert, which is Bradley is going to actually show you how to use Helium 10's new MCP connection with Amazon's recommended rank. So I'm going to go ahead and pass it off to you, Bradley. >> By far the most slept on feature of Helium 10 for the last eight years is the Amazon recommended rank feature. This is in Cerebro and still today no other major tool out there has this. Basically, it's something that tells you what is the relevancy to Amazon for any keyword for any product. This is not something that's a Helium 10 estimation. This is coming directly from Amazon's uh relevancy engine where hey, you want to know why am I not getting impressions for this keyword? Well, maybe it's because Amazon doesn't think that your product is very relevant for it. What this is in Helium 10 is in Cerebro and you'll see a column that says Amazon recommended rank, right? And if I sort that, for example, here is a a cursive grooved workbook here. I sort it by Amazon recommended rank. The number one means cursive workbook. This is the keyword that Amazon thinks is most relevant for this product, especially in the context of advertising. Doesn't mean it's the most important keyword. It just Amazon has its own internal scoring system of how it rates keywords in relation to products. We take that scoring system and put it in reverse order. In other words, the the one with the highest score is the one with the number one rank. And then usually when you look at the top 20, 30 keywords here, it paints a picture of what Amazon thinks the product is. And so many times that you're having relevancy issues. You can't rank for a keyword, you can't advertise for it. It's because Amazon might be confused about your product. And then this is what is going to tell you if that's the case. So for those of you who have never used this, by all means use this. This is nothing new. This is not the new feature alert right here. Platinum plans, diamond plans, any plan in Helium 10 has always had access to this. But if you want to start doing, you know, like mass work. I created a skill using our Helium 10 MCP that allows you to take this metric to the next level. So, first simple thing you can do with this skill in Claude is I say, hey, use the ARR skill to summarize what Amazon thinks this AS is. You know, you just want to like, hey, get get a summary. Maybe it's a new product or you just want to analyze a competitor product, whatever. You can do that for your product or your competitor product. And here it goes. It says, "Hey, Amazon reads this product as a paper meal planning and fitness tracker, journal notebook. Its most relevant keywords are uh meal planner, uh food planner, meal tracker, etc., etc." And it says, "Hey, interesting thing worth noting. Every top Amazon recommended rank keyword here is a variant of meal food fitness planner. So, Amazon's understanding is tightly focused on that niche. All right. So, pretty cool, right? Just just you can get like a summary of it. All right. You want to take it a step further? Well, here's another one. I was in Helium 10 ads. You don't have to be in Helium 10 ads for this, but for one of these meal planner products, I ran a a query here in ads. I was like, "Hey, show me what over the last 60 days I have gotten less than 200 impressions on." Right? uh like you know I should have more than 200 impressions for something I'm bidding on if my bid is reasonable. And so it gave me a list of 11 keywords here, right? Meal planning, notepad, weekly menu, etc., etc. And so I'm just wondering why am I not getting impressions for these keywords. You can see some of these have zero uh impressions even. Um, so what I did was I downloaded this and I uploaded it to Claude and I said, "Hey, here's a list of keywords I'm advertising for that don't get many if any impressions for this as use the ARR skill to tell me if it's possible I have relevancy issue with any of these keywords." And then so here here's what the results are. It pulled the list from Cerebro and then it said here here's lowrisk. Amazon already sees you as relevant. It's like hey workout journal, meal planner, and fitness tracker you're doing good. Amazon knows you're relevant. you're already ranking for it and you're in Amazon recommended rank here. Uh moderate, there's a couple keywords like weekly meal planner and grocery list. Uh it doesn't appear in Amazon recommended rank, but I am ranking lowly for it at 202. By the way, Helium 10, the only tool that's showing you where you're ranked all six pages. If you're using other tools, it's only going to show you where you're ranked in the top two pages. So, there's a advantage right there. But now, here's a list of keywords. It says these don't appear anywhere in Amazon's data. Not Amazon recommended rank. You're not ranking for it organically. You're not showing up in sponsored ads. And so, it's telling me, hey, I might have some relevancy issues with these keywords. And it gives me it gives me like a summary of what I can do and and and kind of like what the takeaway is from this. All right. Pretty cool, right? So, now I can go back and maybe it's I'm not indexed for it or or maybe I need to add the keywords to add some relevancy, etc. All right. Here is another use case. Here's a product on this account that's, you know, doing okay. You know, it's selling like, I don't know, 30, 40 units a month. Uh, but then look at this product in the same niche. It is doing like 6,000 units a month, you know, which is pretty crazy. So, obviously, my first thing is, hey, let me run Cerebro on this. Where is that product getting sales from? Where they're ranked in the top 10, and I'm not ranked at all. And then the next step is obviously I would want to do advertising for that keyword, right? So what I here's what I I prompted Helium 10 MCP to do or Claude I should say. I said use Cerebro to compare my product with this competitor. Give me the keywords that at least 500 search volume that I'm not ranking for but that the competitors organically ranked in top 10. But before I start advertising for these keywords, let me know uh with the ARR skill if I have any potential relevancy issues. All right? So I don't just like start blindly advertising and I'm going to get no impressions. Let me see if there's something I can do about it to to help me a little bit. So, it pulled out all the keywords. As you can see, it said there's 34 keywords. Here's the relevancy read. Here's the ones that are green light. Hey, go advertise. Amazon already thinks you're relevant. Like, here it is. Kids handwriting practice book. It's in the Amazon recommended rank. I'm not even organically ranked at all, but my competitors in the top 10. Hey, let me go ahead and start a campaign on these keywords right away. But then here it says here yellow alert probably probably fine but relevancy thin. All right. So there there are some keywords here where it's not really showing up very highly in Amazon recommended rank or at all. Here it tells me hey you know what skip these terms entirely. These are you know competitor brand names potentially. And then it gives me the pattern. All right based on this Amazon recommended rank. It's like, you know what? According to what you're showing up for, Amazon clearly sees you as a handwriting practice book, but doesn't associate you with some of these keywords that other people are getting sales from, like tracing uh or age specific uh phrasing. And so, what what does this mean? This means that hey be maybe before I go start going after these like keywords here I need to work on my listing to convince Amazon's relevancy engine that I that hey that these product these keywords are relevant because you know Amazon's all about relevancy. Amazon wants to get sales right so it is not going to show products even if somebody advertises for it if it thinks that it's completely not relevant to the customer. All right, Amazon's relevancy engine is kind of geared towards the customer. And so it makes sense that that hey, before I start advertising for it, if I really want to have a good chance for Amazon to pick me up or to start ranking organically or even in sponsored, I need to convince Amazon's algorithm that, hey, my product does have to do with tracing. Otherwise, I could just throw a $4 bid out there and doesn't mean that Amazon is going to accept it if it's like, no, I don't want to I don't want to look like a fool and and show this product that has nothing to do with what the customer is searching for. All right. So guys, this this is a super cool metric. Again, the the base Amazon recommended rank. You can do a lot of this stuff. It will just take you a long time in Helium 10 today, even with a even if you have a platinum plan. But if you want to start doing this kind of like in bulk, take a look at this skill. Um just comment uh ARR skill and we'll slide into your DMs whether you're watching this on Instagram or or YouTube or somewhere else and we will give you the uh download link for this skill. Thank you so much, Bradley, for that new feature alert. Okay, so this next piece of news is about how Walmart is using AI models to increase delivery speeds. Now, I know you know all of these retailers now have their own fulfillment or their kind of multi-channel fulfillment stuff, but now Walmart is also using AI to get the fastest delivery. I think that is really important for Walmart. It really has been since the beginning. Um, so they're actually using the models and in this article, Walmart is using what it's called intelligence layers, which sit at the heart of its AI models to better predict what customers are going to order and when, and put the right product in the right part of its supply chain so it gets to people faster. So, it's really kind of just understanding the customers in certain areas. And that that does make sense with different seasonal things. Maybe, you know, when it's snowing, you're going to have different different types of products for the snow. Or maybe if you're near the beach, you're going to have more beachy type items. Further goes on to say, "What AI is enabling them to do is have a better understanding of who their customers are, where they are, and anticipating what they're going to buy." So, this is actually really cool. And I wonder how fast exactly this shipping is going to be, whether it's, you know, like less than an hour or, you know, and and how accurate this is going to be with, you know, stocking certain products cuz I know a lot of times when I do want to order something through the website on Walmart, it does actually take a few days. So, it'd be really interesting to see how well this predicts, you know, what people are actually going to buy in different areas. All right, up next, um, Amazon actually released some more answers to questions people have had about their title and item highlights updates. It's basically saying, you know, how is this update going to affect search and discoverability of products in Amazon stores? So, they said your search and discoverability are unchanged. Item name and item highlights are both inputs for search and one isn't prioritized over the other. So, there's going to be, you know, the main title that's 75 characters, and then you have more characters in the item highlights that kind of give you a space where you can give more details about the actual product. And some of them already show. I have noticed that not all the products are showing this yet, but it'll show the item highlights right underneath the title. And I've only seen it on the mobile app, but they say um it's actually going to also be in the web app. And I think it says it right down here. It says effective August 10th. Item highlights will display beneath the item name across desktop and mobile. The number of characters that are visible on screen may vary depending on screen size or preconfigured display settings. Um, it says also, can I update my listings in bulk? Now, I actually tried to do this and I have had some challenges with updating my title because of kind of like ownership, I guess, of my listings themselves. And so, Amazon's given me a lot of difficulty and I did download my category listing report and I uploaded again and it just did not work to actually change the titles. So, I ended up having to use Helium 10's tool. And there is a tool that Helium 10 has that it's basically our bulk title update. It's in the listing builder tool and you can basically push um through the API the title that you want it to change to and it works this way. This is the only way I was able to get it to work. I'm actually going to be meeting with um a seller support at Amazon Accelerate to try to figure out why I can't update my titles easily. You should most of you should be able to do this through the category listing report as long as you keep that title, you know, to 75 characters or less and then the item highlights within the characters. But um that's one way of doing it. Where do I put my brand name or other key product details? Says, "With this update, you'll still have 200 characters to list your important product information. Those characters will be split between item name and item highlights. Based on our best practices, we recommend that you keep your brand name in the item name." So that's in the main title. And all other important details can be distributed across um the fields. And then should I add variating attributes in item name or in item highlights? It says, "We recommend that you include the most important variating attributes in the item name. If the 75 character limit prevents you from including all attributes in the item name, you can retain the most important attributes there and move the others to the item highlights." So, that's kind of what I did. I actually had kind of like the basic title, the main things, and then I have some extra information in the item highlights as well. If you had those kinds of questions, those hopefully answered a lot of your questions for the updates to the titles. And again, if you need some help with updating this and it's not working with the category listing report or your bulk uploads, what you can do is use Helium 10's um sync through our, you know, our title update tool that we actually just came out with and it does work cuz it's pushed directly through the API and it kind of overrides even what it would do on um the spreadsheet or it's basically better. So, I would try that out if that is if the category listing report isn't working for you. Okay, up next we have another article from seller central and it's understanding why you're not getting the featured offer or the buy box. So, they now have a seller assistant here that helps you to understand why you're not getting the buy box. So, if you're having trouble getting the buy box and this has been a problem for you, you can actually take a look at these things. Um, it says through the seller assistant. So basically the seller assistant can now diagnose and recommend fixes for the following offer viability issues such as missing inventory, listing blocks, missing information or other offer issues with steps to fix them. Then pricing eligibility and gaps between your offer and the current featured offer. Um with guidance that could help you off your offer become featured. Deliver and basically like win the buy box. Um, delivery gap speeds, including how your delivery promise compares to the current buy box and offer and whether adjusting it could help you become the main buy box owner or winner. Regional coverage gaps where your offer isn't shippable with recommend recommendations to expand your reach. So, if you're having trouble with the buy box, then now there is a seller assistant that can help help you figure out why you're not getting the buy box. Next up, you can now report brand violations faster with one guided experience. So there is a new report violation tool in Amazon brand registry. So you can report IP infringement, store policy violations and reg regulatory compliance concerns all in one place. So this article and it'll be linked below in our description, but this is going to show you basically how to report those violations. I'm hoping this will make it easier for you to kind of deal with, you know, infringements or things like that. But um yeah, they're trying to make it a bit easier for you to report the violation. Now, what how fast they work on making sure that it's taken care of. I don't know about that, but um at least they are making some improvements with the speed that you can report the violation. Next up, we have Shioali with our strategy of the week. So, take it away, Shioali. How to see what your profitability might be on Tik Tok shop. Maybe you're somebody who hasn't quite started selling on Tik Tok shop, but you're curious about it. Obviously, there are some things to consider. For example, is your product Tik Tokable? Is it demonstrable? Is it at a good price point? And these are things that only you can determine for your niche or maybe through Helium 10 Education. But let's say you've gone ahead and decided that yes, this is a good product for Tik Tok shop. How do you determine whether it's something that's actually profitable? Is it going to make you money? Because that's the whole reason you're in business, right? And how can you tell what's the difference in profitability if you are going to fulfill that product through fulfilled by Tik Tok through your own shipping or multi-channel fulfillment? Well, my friends, there is a way to figure that out. We've got the Chrome extension and our Helium 10 Chrome extension lets you go in and play around with the numbers to see whether or not that product is a good idea on Tik Tok shop. Let's go ahead and have a look. Go to your listing on Amazon. and I'm taking a look at the Cursive Groove handwriting product. Go ahead and select the Helium 10 profitability calculator. In doing so, you're going to find that there's an FBA and FBM profitability calculator tab. I want you to go ahead and select the tab that says Tik Tok shop. As you can see, based on the size and price of your product, you can figure out whether or not you want to keep the price the same. Let's just say for the sake of this example, you choose to keep it the same as Amazon. What will your margin actually be? If I use fulfilled by Tik Tok and my product stays one month in storage, then this is my margin. It's about 38%. What if I use Amazon multi-channel fulfillment instead? Maybe you don't have inventory at your place or you don't want to give Tik Tok shop a try through Fulfilled by Tik Tok. Instead, you want to use the inventory you've got at FBA. That's totally plausible. How much would it cost you to just use your FBA inventory? It's a little bit more expensive, but you don't have to keep the inventory at Tik Tok, which is the perk. So I can see that instead of 38% it's 27% margins. Maybe I want to calculate in about 15% for advertising budget. So now I can see that the margins go down to 14%. What if I'm going to ship it myself? I know I can use these flat rate envelopes that cost about $10 each. So if I put in $10 and look at that, my margin is only going to be 13%. So maybe I don't want to go this route. This is a great way for you to get a quick and rough estimate of what profitability might look like if you were to transition those products from Amazon over to Tik Tok shop. And this is the only Chrome extension out there that lets you figure out what's going on with not just your listings, but also your competitor's listings and figure it out on a completely different platform for different kinds of fulfillment methods, by the way. So, go check this out. And if it is something that you decide to run with, make sure you take a look at Helium 10's listing converter tool because you might have tons of SKs. You might not know where all of your images even are, but you don't have to worry about that because you can actually go in and bulk convert those listings over. Helium 10 through the listing converter will actually create drafts for you that you can either choose to manually approve or automatically approve. And there you have it. It's all good to go within minutes. Thank you so much, Shioali, for that strategy of the week. All right, last but not least is Amazon's Labor Day sale. Now, Amazon doesn't usually push this a whole lot, but um it is a good potential for you to boost your sales during Labor Day and maybe clear out some inventory so you can get in that inventory for Q4. This Labor Day sale is from August 28th to September 7th. And basically what they're saying is, you know, drive these sales before um you know, Q4 starts to get rid of that excess inventory. Now, if you have some products that haven't been moving, there are some ways that you can clear out your inventory. Um, one is with Amazon outlet and the deadline is August 14th for all of these deals. Um, you can also use promotions, Prime exclusive discounts, lightning deals, best deals, and coupons that again those deadlines are August 14th. And then you can also start advertising early is what they're saying. And then also improve your inventory health score so that you can start, you know, increasing that storage for Q4. So this is kind of a prep for Q4, but also a way to help boost sales. So, if you are interested in this, um, you know, there's more information in the link in our description that you can follow to figure out, you know, what deals would work best for you. So, that is all I have for this week's episode of the weekly buzz. I hope this was very helpful. We had a lot of interesting news this week. So, we will see you again next week to see what's buzzing. Bye, everyone.