Amazon PPC That Works: Reducing Waste & Maximizing ROAS with George Meressa – Episode 52 of the Agency Operators Podcast

Amazon PPC That Works: Reducing Waste & Maximizing ROAS with George Meressa – Episode 52 of the Agency Operators Podcast Speaker 2: Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Agency Operators Podcast. Today, I'm joined by George Meressa of Clear Ads. How are you doing, George? Speaker 1: Hey, I'm good. Thank you for having me. Speaker 2: Awesome, glad to have you here. Always love speaking with other agency owners in the Amazon space, especially ones that are serving clients overseas, right? I speak with so many of these US sellers and I think that just in my conversations working with some UK-based sellers or EU-based sellers, people have a different way that they approach Amazon, different way they look at e-commerce. So yeah, I'm excited to get your take and also the fact that you've been an agency owner for a long time, much longer than myself. I saw on LinkedIn that you have posted that you're going on 15 years, right? Close to 15 years now. So I'd love to hear a little bit about that journey, that process. So yeah, please share a little bit about what made you decide to start Clear Ads. Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you. So I worked for a friend of mine. So he had a Google Ads agency that was straight from university. So I did that for a few years. So I started in 2009. So I kind of was introduced to pay-per-click kind of at a good time. And I just fell in love with it. I loved the idea that you could get results instantly. You can create a campaign, the next day you can see Sales come through and leads come in. There was just nothing like it before, where you see an outcome to your work so quickly. So that was quite addictive. So I really enjoyed it. I stayed in the company for a few years and picked up a good grasp of how to manage Google Ads. So I took that into my own agency, started that in 2011, just to start 2011. And again, just really enjoyed learning about the Google Ads platform, going deeper, now managing a business. I've always had kind of an entrepreneurial spark. So I kind of, from a young age, I loved the idea of, you know, gaining value from nothing or selling something. So I set up the agency and it was more A topic on the side, it wasn't kind of started off to kind of a big ambitious goals of growing it to where it is now. It was more just taking it steady and having a good lifestyle as well as kind of having a business. And then around just eight years ago, a friend of mine, Emily, she went for an interview at Amazon and they mentioned to her that they're having a real, they're really struggling for agencies to take Amazon PPC seriously. So that night, she's like, you have to do it. So that night, I created a landing page. I said, I'm an Amazon ads expert. I went on Google and I targeted the terms Amazon PPC Manager, Amazon PPC Agency. It was 50p a click for that traffic. And yeah, and people would just, the way the calls went at the moment, they called and I picked up. The tone was, I've been looking for someone like you for years. That was the tone that I started- It was crazy. So just closing deals, it was so easy. So just picked up a lot of business. And at the time, first two people I said, I'll be honest, I've never done Amazon before, but I know Google Ads very well. I'm sure it's not going to be kind of hard to learn. Took me a week. It was so basic at that time. I mean, manual campaigns- It really is. Compared to Google and so did that and then really picked up and kind of grew the company. And then I really made, I learned two years down the line, I made a big mistake and I should have been targeting US companies. I didn't touch the US market. I was just focused all over advertising in the UK. And then after that, I just kind of went really heavy on the US market because it's just so much bigger than what we had going on our end. So I did that. And then we got introduced to Amazon DSP quite early on as well. And we got our own seat. That was the year that they introduced custom audiences. So you could create custom audiences on Amazon DSP. So we were really having fun with that. And that put us in touch with a lot of really sophisticated sellers. So a lot of the brands that we worked with before that They had okay accounts, the structure could have been improved, but when we I spoke to these brands that wanted DSP because they couldn't get their own seat. They reached out to us. I mean, there are one or two accounts where I just said to my team, take a look at this one because there's nothing we can do to improve it. They have covered every area in detail and structured it so well that me looking at it firsthand could understand how to navigate through that entire account. There were really interesting accounts to kind of look at and work with when we got started with BFB. And fairly recently, well, about a year and a half, we've gone into kind of full service now. So we're optimizing images, listings to kind of improve conversion rates, getting involved with promotions and ensuring that there's a complete process in place to make use of the traffic that we paid for and out of comfort organically. And obviously I hope brands organically rank higher than Amazon and gain more market share. Speaker 2: Amazing. Love that. So it was a very natural transition. I think on one side, it's true that maybe during those early stages, targeting the US market might have been the move. But on the other hand, I mean, the UK market probably wasn't nearly as competitive at the time. It wasn't nearly as saturated. So you just kind of became like a dominant player in that field. So I mean, like you said, it was so cheap, right, to advertise. You're the guy that people would find. So that makes a lot of sense. And also just like on your comment about the DSP thing, we've noticed that Clients that know what they're doing, know what DSP is and that they actually need it, are in a completely different tier than a customer that is really just looking to kind of get started or they just need a little bit of help. Because in reality, it is, I believe, still maybe not as true as today as it was before. But if you compare the different ads platforms, Amazon is more simple in some ways than some of the other ones like Google and Facebook. Just because there's just so much more customizable features with these other platforms, right? And even though Amazon is now a big player, like they're processing millions and billions of dollars through their ad system. I mean, at some point, it's all kind of the same thing. Like you can really max out once you have all the different campaign types and different assets that you can test and, you know, it's more or less the same format. Yeah, very interesting, right? Like it was so simple that people didn't even think that they needed an agency until now there's an entire market for it. Speaker 1: Absolutely. And I think what's really interesting about Amazon compared to the other platforms is just the fact that they own the entire process. I mean, they own the customers, so they could give you more insights than any other platform can really. So, I mean, where AMC is going and the audiences are opening up on sponsored product ads, You could really go deep with the type of people you could target. I mean, you could aggressively bid for those who have already engaged with your brand. And that's everyone. It's not a few. It's everyone who's purchased from your brand you could target on Amazon. So there's still more to come, I think, in this space in terms of how deep you can go. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know, like in Seattle last year, AMC was the talk of the town. I think still I've heard, you know, I didn't go to any events this year, but I know that people are continuing to say that it's the thing that everyone's focused on. Because up until recently, It's just been like a bunch of data that you've kind of had to put together your own spreadsheets to make any sense of it. Now you have all these ad tech companies and even Amazon themselves coming out and rolling out features to use Amazon Marketing Cloud in a way that actually does paint a picture for you that is very tangible. So they start out here. What happens with this buyer journey? What's your lifetime value? What's your cost of acquisition? How does DSP play into it and all connect together? And then potentially even other sources, right? Like starting out on Google or Facebook ad and then how that converts into all the other Amazon stuff. So the external and the internal kind of come together. And now this is becoming a very powerful machine, kind of like unfolding before our eyes. Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think of AMC, it's been around for some time, but I think it's just how Amazon is now making it so much easier to use. So, you know, they're taking away barriers. So, you don't have to have the SP now to take advantage of AMC. It's just getting put into the ad console. You don't have to go through SQL. You don't have to learn SQL. You don't have to learn SQL to get the information out. And they're making it kind of easy to use, which is really helpful and handy. But I don't think many people have taken advantage of it. And I think there's still more to come from Aves. Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, I just think that so much we just it's a mindset shift that we all need to go through, where the conversation for us has been for so many years with our customers is like, what was the ACoS last month? And it's like, I think we're shifting away from that to now we have tools to actually measure growth in a totally different way and see the picture on a bigger scale. And maybe we're not so focused on month to month cost of sale. From the advertising side, we're looking at what is the cost of acquisition and what is the lifetime value of that customer. And so maybe we're paying a little bit extra for ads over here, but actually you're really like getting subscribe and save. And you know, there's all this other value that's starting to, you know, kind of, you start looking at it on a year over year scale. Speaker 1: Yeah. And then also, where is the organic growth and organic rank movement in terms of your keywords as well? So, you know, how much are you prepared to sacrifice in terms of ACOS and the profit you make for certain terms to get you organically positioned for the long run? Are they able to stick? What's your market share? I mean, just because of the amount of competition that's out there now, I've noticed that, I don't know if you have as well, Pasha, but brands have become way more sophisticated, way more intelligent now. They're thinking outside of just ACOS. And I might be cutting that down. I mean, you know, now you really have to go down to, like, your kind of your net profit. You know, are you profitable with your campaigns? What aces are profitable? What's carrying the account? And really dialing in to the data. Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. I think kind of long gone are the days of I don't see it as much like agencies promising first position rankings, left and right, like before they used to be the thing that everybody would say, like, we'll get you to first spot. But I think a lot of brands are just realizing that for many, first spot is not realistic and not profitable. Like you can get to first spot, but can you maintain it in a profitable way? For many, the answer is no. I think the influx of Chinese sellers has changed the game for that reason. They just come in with much better prices than we could ever get. So they will be the only ones who can maintain first position in a profitable way. But it's okay. You can be profitable in sixth position. That's pretty good. I think most people would be very happy with profitable at sixth versus unprofitable at first, right? Speaker 1: Yeah, but not only that, but there's also the bigger brands. So a few years ago, we noticed that a lot of the bigger brands didn't take Amazon as a serious platform. So they might do a little bit of it. But now, There's way, way more put into it in terms of ad spend. So there's a few benefits that they have that just the average seller doesn't have. One, their brand carries so much weight. So regardless, like you mentioned, regardless of them being position one or position seven, if someone's looking for a particular household brand for their laundry detergent, for example, they're going to buy, they're going to scroll until they find that brand, regardless of whether you're positioned higher. That's the first thing. The second thing is they've got all these brand searches coming into Amazon that regular brands don't have from TV commercials, just from being around for so long from such a huge consumer base. So again, that's going to have a huge impact on their sales velocity. And then lastly, the questions and the KPIs that they're looking at is very different to what a regular brand would be looking at because they're so familiar with other channels. So they're looking at market share. They're looking at how much can we tap into position higher more of the time. So it's very different to ACOS and being profitable and so on. So that's kind of As well as the Chinese have, you know, brands have that to contend with. So what I'm seeing more of now as well is there's less new brand, there's less new sellers coming in, right? Before I think, I mean, I used to speak to a bunch of people who didn't know what they're doing and they're absolutely crushing after month one, month two, but they don't know what they're doing. They just seem to find a really good pocket, a gap. Fill it, not really well, but that was enough. Now, if you do that and if you're fortunate enough to get lucky and find that right product and launch and keep it in stock and serve and get good reviews because it's a good quality product, then you're going to have to contend with all the sharp people that will be watching the tools that are out there that will show them where the biggest growth is. Where are their sales? Where is there an opportunity? And there's a few that will jump in and will be able to undercut you. It could be the Chinese manufacturers undercut you and just completely take it. So, you know, having success now is one thing, but then creating a moat around that success is, again, that's another question. Speaker 2: And if you speak with these M&A companies, the moat is exactly what they'll tell you. Like, that's all they want to talk about. That's what all these, like, because everybody, Not everybody, but a lot of people who start out on Amazon, like you have a small business, you have a small brand, whether even you're doing Amazon or not, you have some type of exit plan in mind. And so if you start talking to M&A guys, they're going to tell you what's your moat. And for many, traditionally, there was no moat. Like you find a product somewhere overseas, you slap your label on it and you sell it online. That used to be the game plan. Like you said, you know now you have to be personal very sophisticated with your tools with your team with your own knowledge to know what you're doing that so you can even Understand the value that you're getting from the people that you're hiring if you don't want to do it yourself but just secondly like what is It's not enough just to differentiate like differentiating on price has become very hard and So differentiating on quality, how do you actually do that and present yourself? Okay, content, you can make really nice content, but a lot of other people with AI coming out, a lot of people have good content now. It's not enough either. So it has to be from like a deep understanding of manufacturing, manufacturing process, doing something different, potentially going through the hurdles of getting compliance paperwork that nobody's willing to get. Manufacturing in a place that nobody else is willing to manufacture in. And then you start asking why. Well, maybe the infrastructure is not there. So you need to have all these extra steps involved with quality control and checks and all kinds of stuff like that. I've been through some of these journeys myself in the recent years. So I can say like, there's, I realized, because I asked that question, why, why not just source in Indonesia? Why is everyone going to China? Let me try in Indonesia and that's what I got. It's just like a logistical challenge. But those are the things that you have to do to build a moat and still, like not to go too off tangent, like I thought I had a moat and I realized that I didn't because other people can file apparently patent rights to similar designs and then bullied their way I'm your host, Pasha Knish. And today, we're going to be talking about how to get your brand through you, like get you kicked off. And then they'll say, well, you're right. You probably don't have a design that's very similar to this one, but it's similar enough and you have to prove it in court to fight for your brand. And if you don't have, you know how lawyers can be very expensive, if you don't have that money or that will or that time, your stock will just kind of, you know, expire or get pushed to the side. So, like you said, kind of like the big players are taking market share or they can bully. And, you know, it's just, it's an ecosystem. It's a marketplace. So, it's what you get. Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think one of the big things I've seen in terms of a common theme with the successful brands that we've worked with or just I'm connected to is they process out most things. So there's no heavy reliance on one or two ASINs. They're constantly launching new products, constantly trying to find innovative ways of getting different products, especially if they don't have that big weight that the bigger brands have. So they're constantly testing, failing, testing, failing, testing, failing. It's those that stick with a few aces and Desperate to kind of keep going with them. Eventually, someone else will cave in, there'll be more people entering the market. But yeah, and then it's funny what you mentioned a minute ago as well. I have a few friends in Germany who all they do is they just find products that have incredibly high compliance, right? So they just are very happy to fill in all the paperwork, all the legwork. And then when they do get that stamp of approval, No one else is in there. No one else is promoting those products because it's just so difficult to get. Speaker 2: Well, that's just like a clear moat. It's not that your moat is not like some type of innovation because innovation can only get you so far. There's no guarantee. You might come up with a solution for a problem that not many people have or you are creating a solution for a problem that many people have but it's too expensive by the time you get to the solution or there's other things. Compliance paperwork is like, you know, for a fact, all these sellers have to do the same thing as you. So we have a brand like that and they have to file compliance paperwork for 50 states. So who has the time or the energy to do that? They have like a dedicated guy on their team. All he does is just renew these, you know, these papers. And so there you go, you know, no one's going to do that. So now there's like, like, you know, a hundred times less competition for you. Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And it's the behind the scenes. I mean, and there's been a number of brands that I kind of, I knew were going to be successful. And they were the ones that had distribution experience outside of Amazon. They already have their products in certain stores. And then they just decided to put it on Amazon and see what happens. And they naturally just get really good reviews with no effort. They're the kind of brands as well that like absolute crush. And on Amazon, I think that's when there's no harm in finding those who have special, you know, they specialize and understand how to get their products out there. They have the capability to scale manufacturing if needed to then allow you to get those peak periods. And so that's been kind of another area we've seen a great deal of success with their plans. Speaker 2: The thing that I see as being a really sad sight is occasionally you'd come across a brand that has a lot of exposure outside of Amazon. And so like you were saying earlier, a lot of branded search is happening. People are looking for that brand regardless of what position they're in. Whatever they are on the page, they'll just type in the brand name and they'll find it. And then you go on their listings and they suck. And so it's like they're completely like it looks as though they've just syndicated that content over from their website. It's just matched whatever format Amazon is plugging in through their API or however they did the syndication. And that's it. And so people will buy it because it's maybe a better price or it's just available. But they're not actually taking any market share from Amazon. They're just relying on Amazon to sell their product when somebody looks for it due to that convenience. So they're missing out big time. And unfortunately, there's a lot like that. I mean, you can use certain tools and find those brands. Yeah, there's a lot. And so that's the most exciting thing for me is you have that external presence. It's looking really good. So just utilize that. For most of the people that I speak to, it's the other way around. They're really eager to have a great listing, have great ads, but they're starting from zero or they don't have any, maybe they're not starting from zero, zero. They want to get from six figures to seven figures, but they don't have anything going on on the social side, external side, no influencers, no brick and mortar, nothing. So they're only relying on the traffic that's on Amazon. Speaker 1: Yeah, and that is interesting. I've noticed that too. So there's a couple of big brands I've seen that they did what you said where they just migrated everything from their website to Amazon, but there's no descriptions in the images. You don't know what you're getting. There's nothing that sells the product. Those who know Amazon well, that's what they do well. They can really help you understand the product just looking at Amazon and not having to seek any more information. And these other brands, they keep their title short. They don't really make it easy to understand what they're getting unless you know what the brand is. So there's still kind of some untapped opportunity for those bigger brands. And this smaller guys are taking advantage of. Speaker 2: They're not doing parent-child variation families. These easy, low-hanging fruits that us as people who speak the Amazon language, we see that right away. It's just extremely obvious. You'd be surprised how for some brands who are really proficient in what they do, maybe on D2C or on social, they have no idea. There's just literally money on the table just lying there for a day's worth of work by any person. To just, you know, put together some child, parent, variation families, get a designer to put together some infographics, upload some A+. I mean, you're right there. You're already just getting more out of that juice that you're getting from the branded search rank that you're generating. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: There's so many opportunities that we see. I mean, like, yeah, there's, yeah. Speaker 2: With regards to PPC, you know, I'm curious. In 2025, is there anything that is really standing out for you with regards to, you know, just efficiency with Prime Day or any of these promotional events? Because the thing, once you get to a certain stage, like you kind of check all the boxes and then it's like deals. You know, that's what bigger brands want to see is just like running promotion, running inventory, doing these deals. Is that the same format that you think is working this year? Or is there something that is maybe changing because of some of this like, I don't know, Cosmo or Rufus stuff that's coming out with this AI algorithm? Anything that's really kind of like standing out to you for this year that sellers should pay attention to? Speaker 1: Yeah, I think putting a good amount of time to really describe your products well is important now more than ever. So not only talk about the benefits of your product, but talk about who your product is tailored for, the avatars, because Amazon is becoming more personalized as well. They can understand the kind of people that buy certain products and the more information you can help them to aid that, that's going to be crucial. So that's one area. I think a big place that I've seen that just goes untapped is tailored promotions. So not many people take advantage of kind of brand tailored promotions that's out there. You've paid for the traffic to get to your listing. You could target those who have added your product to a cart and haven't purchased with a 10% coupon, 20% coupon. Right. And that's just an added bit of sales that you can easily win. So that's a big win. Like targeting B2B customers. So you can have business pricing in place. This is just quick wins. It's just adding a set price for businesses, adding placements now, which you can do to target B2B customers who are likely to buy in bulk, who are likely to buy more often. So there are a few things you could do. And then what's really interesting as well is there's now API access To search query performance data. So just watch this space with the tools that are out there because I know a lot of SaaS companies, they've been waiting for ages to get their hands on that. Now, you know, there's going to be sophisticated ways to bid and optimize your campaigns going off where you have the highest conversion rates. And with that information, you know, You'll be able to make better decisions quickly and see improvements in organic rank. So that's something that is really interesting. I mean, Scan Insights, we've been dabbling with them and they've really taken this in and you can see this incorporated. Speaker 2: Amazing. George, if somebody wanted to reach out and talk to you, how can they find you? Speaker 1: Yeah. So, best way is just search my name, George Meressa, on LinkedIn. I'm the only George Meressa. It's because of my unusual last name. So, you'll find me. You could reach out there. Or you could go to my website, clearadsagency.com and reach out. It will either be me or another chap called George that will reach out. Speaker 2: Awesome. Well, I really enjoyed this conversation, George. I appreciate the nuggets of gold that you brought onto the show today. Speaker 1: Always, my friend. Thank you so much for having me. Speaker 2: All right. Thanks, everyone, for watching. Catch you on the next one. Speaker 1: Take care. Speaker 2: Goodbye for now.