78. Unlocking Amazon Success with Vanessa Hung: From Catalog Optimization to AI Insights

78. Unlocking Amazon Success with Vanessa Hung: From Catalog Optimization to AI Insights Speaker 1: Hello, welcome to another episode of our podcast. I love having really smart people on this podcast and Vanessa is definitely one of them. Vanessa, I'm not sure if you remember, but the first time I met you, I was actually quite intimidated because you came on to the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, you had a speaking spot and like... At the time, it wasn't very easy to get that spot. So like I know Kevin does a tremendous amount of work to kind of vet the people. And at that time, especially because it was way more exclusive. So Vanessa, you came on stage. Right. And then you shared something with everyone, which is, you know, if you also optimize for Spanish words within your listing, you can start to rank for those terms, because there was quite a lot of volume of search. I was sitting next to one or two people and they searched, and they were like, holy crap, that's so true. But there is quite a lot of volume. So, and even a few days after, Kind of people will say, okay, I've done that. And actually it's working from kind of the people I was speaking to. And that was the first time I actually ever heard anyone talking about that. And then after that, everyone was talking about, oh, yeah, you should optimize. And I kind of, it came from you. And I remember when you introduced it, it was like that bombshell moment. And I was like, wow, okay, this woman is a force to be reckoned with. So that was kind of my first experience of you. And then as time went on, I kind of see the content you put on. There's a lot of very wishy-washy stuff on LinkedIn, but your posts are straight to the point and it always, always value. So I'm really excited to have you. Thank you so much, Vanessa, for joining us. Do you want to just give everyone just a bit of an introduction about you and what you're doing right now? Speaker 2: Yeah, so thank you so much for the invite and for the compliment. I really, I feel that that's been my mission in the industry and the situation of like being the person that discovers or find something or, you know, out of curiosity start creating content about a topic and then it becomes mainstream. So that's one thing that I guess is a compliment. For the work that I do and all of the things that, you know, time that I invest in taking things seriously and making sense out of the mess. So I am the founder and CEO of Online Seller Solutions. It is a troubleshooting agency for Amazon sellers or marketplace sellers. We also work a little bit with Walmart and then a community ambassador for Carbon 6. So a lot of my work for Carbon 6 is being the spoken person at events and also helping them navigate the intricacies of the platform when it comes to making decisions for next tools, next projects, things like that. So I'm like the in-house Amazon expert. And because of those two roles, I get to spend a lot of time thinkering and playing around with things. My favorite part of my job is just like I do a lot of testing. So I'm like a math scientist, like sitting down, like trying to figure out things. That's my favorite part. And then when I get into something that is interesting, I create content about it. I go to events or, you know, join podcasts like this. And then I share my content or my discoveries. And it is so funny because the one I guess more fresh right now is the Rufus situation. Rufus AI like Cosmo and all of those. And I remember that I was one of the first person speaking about it back in 2023. Then I presented for BDSS again. So I spoke at BDSS in Hawaii. And I presented about this And back in May last year, that that was kind of a hypothesis of like, Vanessa is kind of crazy, like, that is just a completely different universe that's not going to happen. And now everybody's talking about it. So I'm like, nice. I did my work that that is exactly what I feel my role in this industry is. So yeah, doing a lot of that and focusing on The other part is I like to focus on the things that people overlook. So I call it the unsexy stuff. So algorithms, backend, like platform changes. Especially the initiative that Amazon has in the back and really looking into why Amazon did what it did, like why this decision happened and where does it come from? And a lot, I think that our industry lacks that. Everybody wants like the next tip, trick, like sexy hack. But rarely they stop to think about where is Amazon as a company going and what do we think are the decisions they're going to make that are going to impact us. So I do that and I create content about that. Speaker 1: That's amazing. And now we're going to get into the nitty gritty details in a minute. But before we get into that, Vanessa, I'd love to know your introduction to e-commerce. What was it about the e-commerce space that made you fall in love with it and go into it? And what was that early stage like for you? Speaker 2: I guess I had brands back when I was living in Venezuela and I always wanted... So I knew, obviously, I guess because of our age, I know that the internet is where you sell things, right? Like I never thought like, oh, let me go to a store. Like that was never a thought. So I was doing like sales through Instagram and then I tried to figure out Amazon. I couldn't back then when I was living in Venezuela. Then when I moved to the US, When I was first opportunity presented, I started working in the Amazon world. And to me, the moment where I'm like, okay, I'm about to go into a journey that is probably going to be the next chapter of my life. It's when I started playing around with flat files. So it's so funny. It's so funny that I say this, but I remember when I started as an account manager, like I was an e-commerce manager for a brand or a business. And then they had a massive catalog. We're talking about like 8,000 hundred SKUs, like it was 800,000 SKUs, sorry. It's like crazy amount of SKUs because it's clothing and accessories and shoes and things. So back then, I was just doing everything manually. And one day I found out about this And when I opened that and I spent what I think was hours of work, but it felt like minutes to me. And I experienced that flow. I'm like, yeah, this is it. And it's not, I guess it's not necessarily Amazon. It was never like, I'm going to go into Amazon and I'm going to be an e-commerce expert and I'm going to accomplish these things. It was never about that. It was more about, I found something that got me into the flow and I will follow this. Like for me, there was no need to keep testing other things. It's like, yeah, I found my thing. Speaker 1: That's interesting. And you are right. There is absolutely nothing attractive about flat files. This is the most unsexy thing ever. It's annoying. There's times when you just want to smash your head against the table with flat files. But yeah, this leads on nicely to my next question. I think I know the answer to it, but I just want to kind of throw this out at you for those listening. When you're kind of reviewing accounts with your business with Online Seller Solutions, what is the issue you tend to find again and again and again, like a common theme across all accounts you audit? Speaker 2: Well, unfortunately, the reason why people work with us is because they have problems, right? So they got into a point where there is a problem they cannot solve it. So there is a massive issue. And I think a lot of it is, well, probably the number one reason is that they don't know what's going on on Amazon. Like they don't, they just keep making the decisions based on their knowledge that was built on the past. Meaning this is how we've been doing business for two years. How come this is different now? So because they make a specific decision that now the system doesn't allow or doesn't get or it creates a restriction somehow, now they have a problem. And a lot of our work is to educate a little bit. It's like, hey, guys, this happened because of this and that. Because ABC changed, like you cannot keep doing the things that you were doing before. So, and honestly, to a point where Sometimes, like at the very beginning when I started, the reaction was me rolling my eyes. It's like, oh my god, how do you not know that this is happening, right? But then the more I grew the business, started talking to more people, First, when you have a business like Amazon with so many different moving pieces and so many things to think about, Amazon is the lace of your concerns. Like, sometimes you're like, yeah, I never go to the news page in Seller Central. That is not part of the rituals or habits that sellers have. They are reactive. And I understand now why and I feel that now my role as an educator and a service provider is to hold their hand instead of like, I guess, judging because at the beginning I was judging. It's like, how come? Like, I don't understand. Also, at the beginning when I started my agency, I didn't understand I was surprised that I found a niche that nobody else was in, which is solving unsexy problems. I was shocked. I'm like, nobody else is doing this. It's crazy. But now I know because everything that it takes, I know how hard it is. So part of it is that. And then the other part is just the lack of vision in how holistic Amazon is. Meaning, you cannot really separate an Amazon account in specific areas. Even though we say, like I say, that yeah, I help with catalog and inventory and account health and brand registry and things like that, those are all the same thing. So, when they make a decision in one side, let's say, For example, this happens quite often. They have inventory they want to send, but now Amazon is requiring them to send it with the label, with the FMSQ label, the Amazon label, instead of the UPC. For some reason, the regulations changed, maybe the type, the product category changed, something happened. So they're like, you know what? We're not going to do that. We don't have the labor to sticker all of our products. We're just going to send it and let Amazon do it. That is probably the worst decision that you can make because Amazon makes A hundred times more mistakes than you could make in the warehouse. So now your inventory is being labeled wrong, right? Amazon is not taking the blame or is not accountable for that mistake. They're gonna still charge you and they're gonna request you to do a removal order to take out the inventory that is mislabeled because now you have a bunch of things like commingle and a bunch of different SKUs in the same bucket or in the same bin. That's a problem, right? So, I mean, that is one, George, of millions of millions of cases that I've seen, or millions of scenarios, where it comes back from making a decision that is not aligned with what the system Right now, as I guess rules or policies, and the lack of holistically seeing the whole account or system as a as a as a piece. And I don't know if this has been your experience. I know that, you know, with Clear Ads, you do a lot of PPC, but sometimes people over focus on the sexy part, which is what you do. And then when something breaks on The other side on the management and the back end is a shock. It's like, what just have happened? And it's like, well, no, you need to oil the machine. Like the same way you put attention to PPC, you need to put attention to the other side. So I think that is the root cause of every single person reaching out to us to solve something. Speaker 1: Yeah, I can see how it can be so reactive and actually there's no depth put into flat files, reading those boring articles that Amazon put up, which are going to be quite essential. But I just want to really break it down, Vanessa. For those listening that might not be ready to use your service, outside of Amazon PPC, when you're looking at kind of your catalog, what are some of the steps that they should be doing on a weekly basis I'm here to talk to you about the best practices that anyone can do to make sure that they've got everything on their end up to scratch. Is there any few tips you can give? Speaker 2: Yeah. So as a best practice, the first thing that I'll say is understanding the catalog structure. So one thing a lot of people don't really know is when you create an ASIN or a SKU in your catalog, the first SKU that you create It is what it's calling in the catalog world the original SKU that holds the most amount of information for that product. So as a best practice, you should know which are your original SKUs and hopefully you still have your original SKUs because if not then Like if you stretch it for a long enough amount of time, then you're going to start seeing problems in the catalog. But let's say that you can pinpoint those 5, 10, 50 different original SKUs and you have something extra, maybe an FBM or maybe, you know, something that was returned and you have it in the sell and regrade program. That's amazing. But the regional SKU is important. Because you're going to treat those as impossible to delete, like you don't delete those. You never delete the original SKU. And every time you want to make changes to that listing, you use the original SKU. Just by doing that, George, I am telling you, it will prevent Maybe 50% of all of the catalog issues that I see. And catalog issues meaning I cannot change my title, I cannot change my pictures. I don't know why Amazon is not putting in the same order that I want the pictures that I want. You know, now my listing is suppressed for some reason or something like that. Because you own the content and you own the regional SKU, you hold the power to make changes to a catalog. The moment that that changes, Amazon start coming in, other people might start like trying to hijack your listing and things like that. So that is extremely important. Then another best practice is to- This is gold, just before you move on. Speaker 1: Question, what if the original SKU was in one marketplace, and now you do most of your business in another marketplace, and does that still, that original SKU in the other marketplace still hold that weight? Speaker 2: Yep, that's an amazing question. I love it. Thank you for asking that. Yeah, actually, yes. So the requirements to be a regional SKU needs to be the first one in the first marketplace, so the creator of the AC. If you created the same product and maybe sometimes it happens, I see this rarely, but sometimes in the other marketplace, Amazon assigns a different ASIN. then that SKU will hold the contributions for that marketplace. But when people have the global listings feature, which is sharing global information across all marketplaces, the original SKU from the original marketplace will be the one that holds the contributions. And obviously, let's say, for example, my original SKU is in the US, but I'm now expanding to Germany. And in Germany, obviously the content is in German, right? So you will need to do work of putting the content or the translation or whatever content you want in Germany. But sometimes, let's say that you change tomorrow, you change the I don't know the color or the scent or the style or that specific product. You need to change it in the US first and then go to Germany and do it there. You won't be able to change things in Germany. So that's where you need to care dearly for your original SKUs. That is kind of a license that you get. of contributions for the catalog. So you need to find it. You need to have them. Sometimes people tell me like, oh my god, I created that long time ago. I don't know, I forgot. Or I didn't know this information. So I deleted those original SKUs. So what happens in that scenario is two things. Imagine that you are completely oblivious about this information. You don't know anything. So you create one SKU every time you send the inventory, which this is a common practice for people that sell consumables. If that's the case, there is one and you can call seller support. Well, now with the call feature, it's kind of very impossible. You might chat with them or email them and request information for that because they are able to tell you or they're, sorry, they're able to see which is the contributor, which is the regional or yeah, the top contributor SKU for that AC. So you will say, you will open a case and say like, hey, Amazon, I have this ASIN and I have three different SKUs. I don't know which one is holding the contributions for the catalog. And they might come back and say, yeah, it's number three. And you're like, okay, cool. That you will treat it as a holy thing for the catalog. Like you don't delete it and you keep building on that skew. So next time you make a change is on that skew. And just that skew, you don't need to change it in every single skew you have. Actually, that's a terrible practice. When you have multiple SKUs for the same ASIN, changing information in all of them when you want to make a change, it is terrible because it is confusing the system on which one is the top contributor or the one that holds the contributions. One thing that I've seen though is sometimes, let's say you have three SKUs in the example, and one holds the contributions for the title, The other one holds the contributions for the third bullet point and one holds the contributions for the description. That is the people that I work with a lot of the times, because you got to a point that this is a mess now, and now we need to go back to first principles. It's like, okay, we need to pick one, start contributing there, start winning contribution points, because that's one thing that you do. Each SKU, the more you, the more, obviously the original is, it's kind of the base, right, that holds information, but after that one, You could make one being the winner by contributing to it more. But the original is the one that it will always be your, I guess, top solid contributor to the catalog. Speaker 1: This is fascinating. Speaker 2: Yeah, so the other option, right, is go back, so if you ever had that SKU and you maybe sold it, because that's one thing. Let's say that you delete it two years ago, you don't know what the SKU was named, like the taxonomy, the convention, you don't know what you use, then the only way that I have found a way to find that SKU is if you have ever sold that SKU. If you had orders coming from that SKU that is not in your inventory anymore, you can find it through the orders report. That's the only way. There is no other way. You cannot find it in the category listing report and Amazon will never give you that information. Speaker 1: I have some questions, I have like a million questions but I don't want to interrupt you as well. So one of the questions I wanted to ask you then is what if you started off selling one particular type of product in one category but then now your products are completely different, like you might have gone from like kitchen and household to now pet supplements and that original SKU is within the kitchen category and now you're on a different. Speaker 2: I mean, that means that you change the category for your product? Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: I mean, I guess that transformation is kind of tricky. Meaning, let's say, let's say you sell a bowl, right? So at the beginning, you were saying like, oh, this is a dog water bowl, like for dogs or cats or pets. And now you're saying that this is For the home and kitchen, right? Is that the type of transition that you're talking about? Speaker 1: No, I'm just thinking of those who might have started off with Amazon a few years back, and they were just testing the waters. And oh, my goodness, there's some traction here. And they found a product in Alibaba, and they started selling it. But now, they went, right, I'm really going to think about this. And I'm now going to properly launch On this particular category, and then move into a different category, does that original ASIN still have that weight with the different product category line or not? Speaker 2: No, no. Remember, or so what I'm talking about with the SKUs and the ASINs, that holds the contribution for that particular SKU and ASIN. Speaker 1: So on an account level, it's just all in an ASIN level. Okay, okay. Speaker 2: Yeah, correct. On an account level, you have other contribution. Right. It's well, I call it contribution privilege, because honestly, nowadays, nothing is a right on Amazon, like it's a privilege, we're privileged to be part of the platform. So on that account level, they obviously the original Or the seller or the account that created the SKU will hold the most amount of contributions. And this is one thing that I talk about a lot in my content is sometimes people come to us with issues that are solved. Just by updating the content in the main account. So let's say you as an agency or me as an agency, we have secondary user permissions to the account, right? Sometimes when we try to make a change and it's like, okay, this is not going anywhere, like we cannot make this change go through. One thing that we always ask, we never do it, like we never go into the main account, but we always tell our client, it's like, hey, Can you try to put this information in the title and click save and finish? And sometimes that makes the trick, right? So yeah, the original creator of the SKU holds also more points. It doesn't mean that only them can change it. It's not that how it works, but it is the most important. Right? So in that level, yes, I seen and this is one question, George, that I get so often with people that are selling their account, or, you know, or selling a specific product line or a specific brand within an account. They are like, we want to transfer brand registry. But unfortunately, the way that the system is built the way that the Amazon catalog is built. We'll always see the original SKU and the creator of that SKU as the top contributor. So let's say that I have a brand and I'll sell it to you and you can start selling in your own account and I'm not selling my account. I'm just selling my ASINs, right? You now need to start contributing to those ASINs and sometimes when you try to make changes to those ASINs you won't be able because you're new, you don't have the history, you don't have the regional SKU, you don't have the power to make the changes to the catalog. So you still are somewhat attached to me. And this is something if somebody's thinking about selling the, selling ASINs, not complete accounts, this will be a period where the buyer might require access to your account or at least access to uploading content through your account. So things get changed because the original SKU is not transferable. And I know this because I spent a lot of time trying to figure it out for an aggregator that wanted to make this happen. And Amazon said like, yeah, that's not that's not possible. Like, the only way that this is this happens is that we work a tailor specific solution for you. And that will take months and months and months. So for a regular person, You know, not an aggregator top, you know, seller in the world, you are pretty much need to play by the rules of regular catalog stuff. And, you know, make changes slowly, and eventually we'll get there. Eventually the new account will hold contribution rights, but it takes time. Speaker 1: This is gold, Vanessa. I'm really enjoying this. So thank you. We focus so much on finding the original SKU, and I felt like I interrupted you, and you had a few other golden gems to share. So outside of finding the original SKU, and you've gone into detail why it's important and how to find it, what would be the next few other things that econ brand owners can do to ensure that they've got everything in their house in order? Speaker 2: Yeah. I think a lot of it also comes from the inventory side of things. So making sure you understand what's your inventory flow and what's the state of your inventory. We get a lot of issues or a lot of people coming to us because they have inventory that is stuck, that they cannot sell or when people try to buy, it takes like two weeks to get it. That is when the state of the inventory in a specific warehouse has gone wrong. It's unfortunate because the only way to diagnose this It's by having the issue, honestly, unless you are really on top of your fulfillment and really understand your levels of inventory and how much you're sending and how fast you're selling, like that kind of delta of like how much I'm sending, how much I'm selling, how fast, so you can keep a healthy amount because the moment where, so for example, some things or some SKUs become stagnant, When you see that they're not selling or things are seasonal or stuff like that, Amazon will start putting those in complementary fulfillment centers. They're not the main fulfillment center, they're complementary, meaning they fulfill the fulfillment center. When that happens and you get serious of like, oh, this is now my season, now I'm going to sell, Taking inventory out of the Secondary Fulfillment Center takes time and I'm not talking about AWD by the way. This is within the FBA network. That's one thing, making sure that you understand your cycles and where your inventory is sitting. So, you know, Amazon tells you what are the warehouses where your inventory is sitting. And there is also public record of what those warehouses, where they are and what are they, like, if this is a secondary, a complementary, or if this is the main fulfillment, or if this is a distribution center. So you kind of know If you have inventory stock, and it's funny, because even the best like number one sellers, like I've seen how they always keep like a buffer or or a thing of like 100 units, there's always 100 units, at least 100, at least 100, all the time, all the time, all the time. And, and they're not circling those 100, they're just talking in a in a fulfillment. So then when a peak comes, They run out of the circling inventory and those hundred cannot be moved because they're in a complementary warehouse. So again, I feel that this is probably one case for the inventory to go wrong, probably a rare one. But my point is, understand the cycle of your SKUs on a SKU level, because that is important. And then figure out if your inventory is properly, I guess, represented within the network. Like if it sinks because sometimes people spend or SKUs spend a lot of time in the transfer, FC transfer status. FC transfer status is funny because for us in Seller Central, it's just one thing. But in the backend, FC transfer could be, I think, five or seven different things. It could mean different things in the backend. So if you don't know what's happening, then you get to a point where you might have a problem. And then the last thing that I'll say, it comes from the compliance world. Compliance is now every day changing. It is very strict nowadays on Amazon and it takes a lot to understand what's going on. I feel that obviously one of the best ways is to Keep being educated and connected to what's happening with Amazon. But a lot of the times Amazon doesn't really tell you that they now restrict the word, I don't know, hypoallergenic for listings, and you cannot advertise and you're not showing up for the results, right? They're not sending out emails or putting out news about this. They just change it. And that's it. That's part of the game. That's the game you're playing. So you need to be very I guess strategic, if that's a word for this context, maybe, when it comes to a restriction, really understand what the root cause is. And that comes from the compliance, understanding that, okay, maybe hypoallergenic now is a term that, you know, if it's used incorrectly, it can lead to liability for Amazon, which is Ultimately, what they want to prevent when they enforce compliance. They don't want things to fire back to them of somebody that, you know, got hurt or got sick or, you know, something happened to them so they sue Amazon. So that's why they're protecting. This, I see it every single day in the supplements category. Like, God bless the guys that decided to be in the supplements category, really. Because the level of compliance complexity that comes every time because Amazon is flagging something, it's not allowing this specific keyword, it is insane. And one thing that, it's just a fresh case, I knew this, but it's always, every time that happens, it's just like, oh my God, this is so important. Back to the question that you asked me at the beginning, What if the contribution is coming from another marketplace? This happens a lot. One thing, I guess another trick, it's not outside of compliance, it has to be more with the catalog. Make sure that every so often you do the work as a private investigator to go to every single Amazon marketplace and look for your ASIN and try to find it. Because sometimes, and this is a recent case that we work on, sometimes Amazon just decides to create that ASIN. So in this case, the example, the seller had a restricted product because it was flagged as an adult, but the flag for the adult category was in Belgium. Which is one of the newest marketplaces, I believe. Or one of the little ones in Europe, at least. And they are not selling in Belgium. They don't sell in Belgium. But Amazon created AISIN. And because of the keywords that were translated, I guess to French, now there is a flag in the restriction and their sales in the US were being impacted. So, this is where the system becomes super complex and why I said at the beginning, start thinking about it more holistically. Everything is interconnected. So, have a VA or somebody do the work of going to every single marketplace, look for your AC. And if it's there, then ask yourself, like, did we create it there or somebody else did? Because if the answer is somebody else, you might eventually encounter errors in the catalog, in things like your original marketplace. So that's where, you know, this is a whole mess of unsexy stuff. Speaker 1: OK, so Vanessa, compliance. So I want to pick your brain here, like as an average Joe, average seller, what are some of the steps that they could take to be proactive, to keep up to date with compliance and make sure that they are safeguarding their brand? Speaker 2: That's a great question. And I don't think I have an answer that that will satisfy the proactiveness of of compliance, unfortunately. There is besides. So this is one thing. And we consulted a brand on this massive catalog, massive, massive, a lot of supplements, a lot of personal care. And they said to us, we don't want to deal with this anymore, because they had a few restrictions that have Cost them a lot, like six figures in revenue, like in less than two weeks, like crazy amount of money. So they're like, we're done with this. Like we want to prevent everything. Like we want to do the work to prevent it. And a lot of the prevention comes from literally making your listing kind of like written for a kid, for three year old kids. Meaning you avoid every single word that might talk about a specific medical claim or disease or hormone or things like that. But then when I said that to them, If you want to get rid of the pain of being restricted for something like this in a compliance level, you need to remove everything. And then they're like, well, but if we remove everything, we're not going to sell because those are the keywords that sell. So this is a trade-off of risk tolerance or, you know, you need to be risk tolerance if you are selling in these categories, because there is no proactive way to do it unless you literally change the whole content and make it so kosher that Amazon will never shut you down. But that means that you're missing out on the search and the volume for things that are important to your customers, right? So in that way, I don't think, I mean, that is the way, that is the way. If you want to prevent it, just remove all of the claims. But I don't think you want to do that. So the other part is just, I guess, I want to say this, and also it's, I feel it sounds horrible, but follow me on LinkedIn, right? Like, I create a lot of content for this compliance part. And a lot of the things that I say, it's because of the things that we have seen, Over and over and over again. So I guess that's the only option George. Like I don't know if I'm missing something in that sense. But Amazon is not a proactive platform. It's a reactive one. The system is built for reaction, not for. Speaker 1: Okay, so you've already given some really good insights of what to do when something happens. So let's just say one of your listings has been restricted, it's been constrained in some way, right? You said, you know, have a VA just proactively look at every marketplace to see, you know, did you create the listing or was it someone else? So that's one really useful insight. Is there any Other process that you can share with everyone of what they should do. So obviously follow you as well. You know, your content's always got some up-to-date stuff going, which is great. But like, is there any other step-by-step guides that people should look to do when they notice, okay, this particular ASIN of mine has been restricted, sales have dropped, you know, where should they go to diagnose that ASIN? Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Great. Yeah, I was gonna about to miss the most probably important maintenance backend trick that you can do is download the category listing report. And I can like this is probably the phrase that I have mentioned the most throughout my whole, you know, career in the industry is just download the category listing report. That is a Excel flag file that Amazon will give you with all of your catalog information. And that information comes from you. You will never see, let's say, Amazon change your title. If you download the category listing report at that moment when the title change, you won't see the title that Amazon put in your listing. You will see the one that you added. So again, the category listing report represents the information that you have input into your catalog, right? So that is the first thing, just as a preventive measure, you always need to have your most updated category listing report and save that. Another part is like you can upload that and, you know, make sure that every contribution is fresh and so on, but we're not going to get there. Getting into the diagnosis of what's happening to an AC. Let's say that, well, I mean, it depends on what's the restriction. Let's talk about the one where you cannot advertise, right? And normally when something happens where you cannot advertise, means that there is a claim within the listing somewhere, or maybe in your ads, that are talking about something that is restricted. So for example, I don't know, alcohol or drinking. I see this a lot in things like hangover recovery, like in that category. I have had a few people in that category come in because, oh, we cannot advertise because Amazon is saying that we promote alcohol consumption. And it's like, okay, let's go back, review. So the first thing is review. Get the notice of what happened to your listing. You normally have something in the performance notifications, something got into your email, or if you have absolutely no clue of what's going on, you open a case and you ask, right? And this is one thing that I'll mention. When you ask, if the answer doesn't make sense, which it's a lot of the times, don't settle for that answer. So it's funny because the other day Isabella reached out to me and said like, Vanessa, Amazon is making these crazy things like I cannot do this or that and they're saying that there's nothing to do. And I'm like, no, this is just a glitch. Like you need to contact the ad support and stuff and stuff. And then she did it and it worked. So that's one thing. If you find an answer that is not sufficient, that's not the answer. Okay, very important. And you need to be very, I guess, Stubborn with that, because there, there is an answer. There's always an answer. So in that case, on the, you know, hangover patches, you, they're saying that you have in your A plus content, you have a keyword for party and alcohol, and then you have a bunch of people partying and that is, you know, promoting the consumption of alcohol, which that's a level of sophistication that Amazon is Amazon has right now when analyzing listings. It's not only keywords, it's things like images and context within your images. So if that's the case, now that you know, because either the reps from the advertising support told you that's the case, or they told you like, yeah, it's because of the promotion of this or that, then you need to review your ASIN and remove that. You need to remove everything that is there. And I know this is probably the most painful part of the process, because this is where I guess the imagination of So the question of the entrepreneur or the seller comes in is like, how can I convey the exact same message with different keywords? Right. So at the beginning, I remember in the in the moment where Amazon started restricting like eco-friendly, Things that were like eco-friendly, you know, those types of like recyclable and things that are hypoallergenic, all of that, people started putting into their listing planet-friendly. So then planet friendly go away. And then they put like, green friendly. And then, you know, they say iteration after iteration of the exact same meaning, but with a different word that the system still haven't caught. So you know, doing the work of rewriting your listing and then applying for it again, through a case you need to most of the times these type of restrictions require you to do a case to lift the restriction like changing the information in the listing is not enough. So yeah, I think that's how you will diagnose the issue and also solve it. Yeah, unfortunately, for a lot of it, you will need the help or the guidance from seller support. Speaker 1: Okay, I want to kind of move the conversation a little bit because you seem like you're always up to scratch with what's going on, the latest thing going on. In 2025, there's so many things going on. What would you recommend What can people do to keep up with all of the updates with Rufus and AI? Is there any practical things that people could be doing within their account? Speaker 2: Oh my god, yes. Yes, I was hoping to get to this part of the conversation. Listen, first of all, and I was talking to somebody yesterday about it. It is important and I believe it's important because up to right now, I just have given you tactical approaches to solve things. Maybe in three years from now, Or six months or one month, we don't know. Everything that I just said is completely useless. Maybe because that's something that's coming. And I don't know when it's gonna happen. But something in the flat file world is changing. And now that's done with AI and things like that. So that's extremely scary, for a lot of reasons, because AI makes mistakes. I'm still super excited. I want to see what's coming. Because for a lot of people, that will be kind of like rocket science. Imagine Putting flat files and AI together, that's just insane. But on the Rufus part, this is a shift in the world. Like this is not Amazon with an AI bot. No, no, no, this is a whole global shift that's happening around AI. And what is behind that change is People are getting more comfortable and gonna start using AI for everything in their lives. The same way the internet became basically a human right, like essential for us to have, I guess, a good life. I don't know if that's proper to say, but to be connected, you need the internet, right? In the future, we might be able to say the exact same thing with AI. It's like to be connected, we need AI. AI is the foundation of our world. So, because of that, these things are happening. One thing that I challenge everybody to start thinking about or being more open to the idea is that this is the new reality and you need to start playing this game. With AI things will become multi-dimensional, multi-modal games. And I always like to think about this like Amazon is a game. You're playing this game. You decided to play this game to have a business on Amazon. So what you find or the goal for you is to win the game and for that you need to understand the rules and start playing. The AI adds a layer to this game of complexity that is really intricate because they have four different elements. You have consumer intent and behavior. Which is everything that Amazon knows about your customers and how they give answers or options based on that, which is different. It might be very different if we search for the same thing. Your results will be different from the ones that I get because of this piece. It is a tailored experience. It's a personalized shopping experience. Then you have the catalog information. So until now we have built listings based on keyword research and keyword volume and where we want to win for organic and you know where we are like spending PPC and things like that. And I think as you know, a lot of that is shifting to the audience intent and what is that the audience is looking for and specific tailored to that. So in the world of this AI shift, creating content will be for semantic purposes, meaning adding context to your listing to your product. For example, you have a dress. If you have a dress, you will say like, well, this dress is to go to the beach and to have a date night or to walk around the park. Those type of things that before were not important just because that is not a keyword that has enough volume for me to waste 50 characters in it, right? But right now that is important because it gives context to the AI bot to say, this is a perfect fit for somebody that is going to Florida on a trip This is the perfect dress, right? So that is what we want. We want to build context, right? And the third part is the advertising piece. I think advertising and probably you can say more about this than I do, or that I can, is It's shifting the difference between the PPC pay-per-click keyword world that we used to have before. It's kind of like merging with this audience level advertising, which is not new at all in e-commerce, by the way. It's new for Amazon, but it's not new for all of the other marketers in the world. They have been doing this for years and years and years. So that is kind of the three pieces of the shift. I guess advice is to start thinking about this is happening, understanding that you cannot fight it, because for a lot at the beginning when I started talking about it, everybody was like, you're just talking You know, not like this is not true type of thing, or you need to give us things that are like useful. This is not useful. And I'm like, well, I think it is useful if you start thinking about your strategy in the future. But that is one thing that is happening. So Rethinking your whole launching, I guess, optimization strategy, tailored to these changes, because they will become the priority. For Amazon and for the algorithm to rank and for customers to discover products. And I don't know if I answered that question, but... Speaker 1: No, and I've got a really good example of that. So there was, so we use an SEO tool called Ahrefs just to see what kind of questions people ask around certain products. And there was one of our clients product sales. Nail polish, right? And then one of the biggest, when we put nail polish into the search bar, one of the biggest questions that was asked is how to remove nail polish, easiest way to remove nail polish. That within itself got about 30,000 searches a month. So taking that information, you know, we included an infographic of this is an easy to remove nail polish remover. And then, you know, within the question and answers, we made sure that they will answer those questions We met and answered. So I can see what you're coming from here now, like providing context to the product, making sure that it's really fleshed out, because you're right, you know, we're moving more from just searching for a product to now asking more questions and allowing Rufus to kind of answer those questions. This has been really, really insightful, Vanessa. The last question I want to ask you is, is there anything that you think we should have discussed during this podcast that we missed that you think is really important for people to know? Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just gonna wanted to say one last thing about the previous topic on an AI. And I like to compare this to historical things that have happened. But remember, when back in the day, I guess doves probably not my gen or our generations, probably our parents generation where they wanted to learn about something, and they needed to go to a library. Find a book, try to like read through the book to find really the answer, right? Like that was the way to answer how to remove nail polish, right? It's like you need to go to a library and get the book or you need to ask to somebody that is older than you that may know the answer, but it's kind of difficult. Then the internet came and now you just type on Google how to remove things and now you get a YouTube video and then you get the answers. So we're shifting to that, but by the time when you have the question and then you go to Google, you already know what you want. And this is something that I talk at the event, I don't know if you saw my presentation in London, I talk about this where before People were seeking information. They were seeking information in Google or search bars like or search engines like Amazon. They were seeking that or seeking solutions to their problem, but they already knew the problem. They already did the discovery of, okay, I need a gel nail removal. Like I know that I need that. So I'm looking for it. I'm seeking it. With AI, We are being served. Like the information is served to you even before you know that you need it. So in the case of somebody that is using gel nail polish, they will say like, oh yeah, I'm buying this. I just got my nails done. It's so pretty, blah, blah, blah. Or the AI knows somehow. And then it's like, I need to remove it, right? Back now at that point where they need to remove it, the system, the AI will serve them with the solution and the product. And that is what's changing from the model that we now have or what we know, which is going to Google and find for the thing. Because sometimes you might be doing the discovery part on Google, because you still don't know what's the solution to your problem. AI knows the solution to your problem, and it will serve it to you. So that is the part where this is the shift. This is where if you understand that that's happening, your next question or what you should be thinking about is how are you serving your customers based on the main triggers to buy your product? And I talk a lot, I guess this could be another podcast about audiences, but People don't really know who their audience is, nor they know what is the signal, what is the trigger, or what happens in the life of their customer that makes them buy the product. So for example, in the gel or the nail polish removal, they need to know that, well, she got the nails done or he got the nails done. So that is the trigger, right? Like you want to remove it. But this is not for everybody, because a lot of people if you ask the seller, who's your target audience, they will say like, oh, women between 15 and 35 that get the nails done in the salon, but they want to remove it in their house because they are they're very busy, something like that. It's like, yeah, maybe ultimately, that's your demographic. But the reality is that people that want to remove it. Right, like that is what's happened to your audience that they want to do that. Or maybe it's the people that work at the salon and want to, you know, buy supplies for that. So those are completely different frameworks to think about product development or product optimization, I should say. That we are completely or not trained to do because that's not the way that we have done it for so long. So yeah, it's interesting times to be in this industry. Speaker 1: I'm excited. This is great. And just so you guys are listening, it's Vanessa Hung. You have to follow her on LinkedIn. She's always got gold positions. So as well as connecting with you on LinkedIn, Vanessa, what are some other ways people can reach out to you? Speaker 2: Sure, so social media, yeah, LinkedIn is my favorite. I'm on Instagram as well. It's Vanessa Hung. Email Vanessa at Online Seller Solutions. That is the place like if you want to Nerd out about problems or algorithms or things like that. That is the place. And the website for the agency is Online Seller Solutions. And of course, make sure to check out the Carbon 6 website for all of the solutions that we have for e-commerce sellers. And one thing that I'm very excited about, we're starting a series of community calls within Carbon 6. And that's going to be fun because it's going to be Very interesting topics. And we're going to, you know, make these virtual events, virtual webinars. Yeah, it's going to be very exciting. So stay tuned for that. Speaker 1: Perfect. And it's onlinesellersolutions.com? Speaker 2: Dot com. Yeah. Speaker 1: Brilliant. OK, just wanted to confirm. Vanessa, it's been an absolute delight. Thank you so much for joining us. And I know to all the listeners, they probably appreciate what you've done. Thank you for joining us. And for those listening, I'll see you in the next one. Speaker 2: Thank you.