EP #324] [ENG] - How to leverage power of video to scale your brand on Amazon - Ash Rex

EP #324] [ENG] - How to leverage power of video to scale your brand on Amazon - Ash Rex Unknown Speaker: Welcome to The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy. This is the place for everything related to Amazon private label and e-commerce. Learn exactly what you need to start or scale your business. Get insights from the top industry experts who will discuss the latest trends and best practices in the world of Amazon. From choosing products and sourcing from a supplier to setting up your Amazon account and marketing your business, you will hear it here. Let's get started. Here is your host, Vincenzo Toscano. Speaker 2: Hello, guys. Welcome to another episode of The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy, the place where everything related to Amazon FBA, private label, and e-commerce. My name is Vincenzo Toscano, founder and CEO of Ecomcy, and today we bring another special guest. His name is Ash Rex and he's the founder and CEO of Seller Initiative, which is one of the top consultancies out there when it comes to helping Amazon brand succeed with video. And that's why I wanted to bring Ash today because video accounting is something that I feel a lot of people undervalue when it comes to their brands on Amazon. They don't really understand how to make a successful video. They don't understand the impact that they can have on their brand. And today we're going to be talking about some of the elements that makes a successful video. So, Ash, welcome to the show. How are you doing? Speaker 1: Very, very good. Thanks for inviting me. I'm very happy to be here. Speaker 2: Thank you. Pleasure to have you here. If I'm not mistaken, first time we met was last year in Singapore. Is that correct? Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. I was down there for the conference. It was great. But I live in Osaka, Japan right now, but I'm from Sydney, Australia myself. Speaker 2: Awesome. So tell us a little bit more about you, you know, how you got started into this space, why you decided to specialize when it comes to video, and then we can go from there. Yeah. Speaker 1: Well, the first thing I did, I actually made an Amazon channel for Amazon Japan. So we have a 1000 episode yoga TV channel on Amazon Japan called Yoga S. But what happened is the videos of our show were ranking alongside products. But we made so many yoga videos we couldn't make anymore. So I started selling products. So we started off with some computer mice. Yeah, so we did everything video first, and then we went into products. So in the last two years, lots of tools opened up for video, and we tested everything out to the extreme. But we're only doing Amazon Japan. But unfortunately, the currency collapsed. So we started looking at products outside Japan. And to our enormous surprise, we found out that most people weren't even doing anything like close to what they should be doing on video. So we started a bit of consulting and we took it from there. Speaker 2: Awesome. So I guess. Something I want to bring to the table is, at the end of the day, the first question that people ask me all the time, which is, you know, what makes a video successful when it comes to coming up with the whole idea? Because a lot of times I feel when people think about doing a video for their product, most of the time they don't really have a clear guideline about what elements they should have in a video, what kind of hook, the length, so many things that, of course, make a video successful. And I know we actually, before going live, We had this kind of conversation that it needs a lot of itineration to really find a winning kind of combination. So how do you come up with the perfect formula, we can call it? Well, that's very easy. Speaker 1: You know, it's a very interesting question because people, look, the number one most important question is what's possible? And a lot of people actually don't know what's possible. You know, I watch everyone. They focus on the photos, the text, the images, all that stuff. But with video, there's so many possibilities. On an Amazon brand store, you can have 50 carousels and every carousel can have a video. And then you can have unlimited pages. So you could have 10 pages with 50 videos. You could have 100 videos on a brand store. In Premium A Plus content, you've got 7 carousels. In each carousel, you can have a video display of up to 6 videos. So you can have like 30 videos in Premium A Plus content. On your product listing, you can have 6 videos. Then in video ad campaigns, you could have a different video ad campaign for every keyword group. I run video ad campaigns with 50 videos, not one. People have no idea what's possible, but probably the best way to explain it is You know, you're selling on Amazon. Treat a video as an asset, an asset that generates cash, okay? So don't see it as an expense. Everyone sees it as an expense, but you can actually put it on the balance sheet of your accounting. See a video as an asset. And understand that on Amazon, on anything on ecommerce, on the internet, you know, the only way the customer can really see your product is in a video. They can't hold it. They can't touch it. They can't feel it. So they don't know the quality of the materials. So that's where videos are very useful, showing the actual quality of your product, but then also focusing on customer outcome. And letting them see or visualize the lifestyle of them actually using it themselves, right? So, when I look at videos for Amazon, I break it up into two sections. Number one, you've got the conversion videos. They're the videos that once someone comes to your listing, they look at all your conversion videos and go, okay, that's what I want and they click and buy. The other one is the traffic videos. The videos that get traffic from Amazon ads or Google ads or any other kind of ads you have. They're totally different. Right, getting a traffic video and having a conversion video is totally different because with traffic videos, you can test out a hundred videos, but with conversion videos, you only got one. So what you do over time is you test out all your traffic videos and then when you figure out what your best video is, That's the video you're using for your conversion, okay? So, you know, with a product listing, you have a minute video, but on Amazon ads, you can have 20 second, 30 second, 40 second, 45 second videos, but you can't have a minute video or two minute video. Speaker 2: Yeah. So you need to have effectively a lot of split testing sounds out of this, which I guess, I'm sure you're going to elaborate on this is like how you define the timelines to come up with this winner. Like you are later on for a week, a month, like I know it also depends on the amount of data, but how you come up with that decision making. Speaker 1: Well, it's very simple. Okay. It's not going to happen overnight. From what I've seen is a lot of video professionals, they all, they all, you know, they kind of old school, they're focused on, Hey, I'm going to make you a TV commercial. I'm the creative expert. I'm a genius. I'm going to make you the 30-second TV commercial. It's going to be the only video you need. It's perfect. Now, don't even think like that. Okay? You can test unlimited video content. So the question you have to ask is, where do you want to be one year later? Speaker 2: Okay? Speaker 1: Don't think about, oh my God, I'll make video today or tomorrow, this month, and that's it. I'm done. I'm going to change my whole business. No, you're going to ask yourself, where do you want to be one year later? And I'll tell you why I say that. You can make one new video every week for a year, and at the end of the year, you've got 52 videos. Speaker 2: Okay? Speaker 1: You can build out an asset base. But look, I want to get straight to the crunch. This is how you need to think. Imagine you have one product on Amazon America, okay? And you make 10 different videos to sell it, maybe 10 different lifestyle videos. Maybe you have a woman using your product, a man using your product, an old person, a young person, a fat person, a skinny person, healthy, unhealthy, black and white, whatever you want. You can have 10 different lifestyle examples of using a product. But then with those 10 videos, you have 10 different edits of each video. You can actually rearrange the order of your shots. Already, you're up to a hundred videos that you can use in Amazon ads to test out. There's not split testing. Split testing is what they do with photos and titles. That's A and B. Now, I'm talking, you know, one to a hundred, right? Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Speaker 1: So, if you've got a hundred videos for that one product that you can test out and then you're in ten Amazon marketplaces, you now have one thousand videos Working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, selling that one product. That's 1,000 videos. Now, if you've got 10 products, you've already got 10,000 videos. What do you got to look at? You got to look at the video, the magnifying effect of video. No one talks about this. Most people, I haven't seen anyone. I monitor every single consultant in the world. I look at every YouTube channel. No one does any of this. This is the stuff. Speaker 2: I was going to ask you actually something. About this, I'm sorry for interrupting because I think this is where people will also learn a lot about you, which is you say 1000 videos, which, of course, is a good way to come up with, you know, the best kind of piece of content that could be from a conversion and awareness point of view. But I guess before you're doing all these videos, you invest a lot of time into researching the avatar, you know, the type of person behind the product, everything. How do you usually come up with that and do that research, for example? Speaker 1: OK, so you need to understand that video production is a process. OK, there's three phases. One, you've got your pre-production, then you've got your filming, your execution and the production side, and then you've got post-production. They're three separate phases. The critical part is pre-production. Speaker 2: And I'll tell you why. Speaker 1: If you get the lighting right, you get the setting right, you get the shots right, post-production, piece of cake. You get the lighting wrong, you get the audio wrong, post-production is a nightmare, right? If you get your pre-production right, on the filming day, everything goes wrong. I remember the first day I filmed, I hired these cameramen because I didn't know how to do it myself at this stage. They turned up, they promised me they're experts, everything. They turned up, I rented a big room, it cost me a lot of money, I had everything ready. They turned up, they'd forgotten The batteries for the cameras. And I was just like, you told me you're experts. And that was my first experience. And I was like, okay, I got to take control of this myself. Otherwise, I'm going to burn through all my money. That's how I taught myself how to film. And then, you know, I ended up making my own TV channel on Amazon. We made a TV show for Reebok, a 20 episode yoga TV show that went into 11 countries on Fox Sports into 20 million homes. Our TV show was next to, you know, Wimbledon. It was next to the F1. It was next to the PGA golf. I mean, we had a fitness show across the whole planet on Fox. That was my first video project, right? You know, commercial, right? And so we started off at the top and I learned from masters and then I thought, you know what? When you're selling a product, The customer just wants to see perfection. Don't not be perfect. Make a video perfect every single second. You got a 30 second video, every second is perfect. You got audio, audio is perfect. No mistakes. Yeah, people are spending their money, right? Speaker 2: Yes, 100% 100%. In fact, something you mentioned there, which is, you know, the budget that it might take to, to accomplish some of the things. And as you mentioned, some of these can be costly. And what I'm trying to get to this is like, sometimes to make so many x quantity of video can actually be very difficult. So I guess my question to you is for People that's really trying to get into this kind of training, creating a lot of content, videos and all of that. What is your best advice to stay budget friendly but at the same time be impactful with the outcome you get? Speaker 1: Well, honestly, what I would suggest is the really advanced video strategies that I'm recommending are really, really perfect. For well-established brands who dominate, okay? So if you're dominating, if you're number one, number two or number three and you're dominating, you're making millions of dollars, you're making 100, 200 grand a month, what's your biggest fear? Competitors coming in. You don't want competitors coming in. So video is a strategy that if you've got the cash flow, if you've got the cash flow, you set your brand up to dominate for all eternity because all the smaller coming, the guys coming in who want to take a piece of your pie, They can't afford it. You can. You set yourself up to dominate, right? And then one year later, you're sitting on two or three hundred video assets. You know, they don't have the cash flow to do it, so they can never, ever, ever catch up. Two years later, you're sitting on two or three hundred videos. Everyone else coming after you, they can never catch up. It's the greatest moat, right? So, if you're a big brand, if you're a top-selling brand, number one, number two, number three, a hundred grand or ten grand a day, just invest in it. See it as an asset. Speaker 2: It's like any asset. Speaker 1: It's the assets you create and you can keep on refining it. So one year later, you've tested out hundreds and hundreds of videos. Everyone else doesn't even have the money to make one video. By the time you figure it out, you're indestructible. Speaker 2: It's compound effect. Yeah, you're creating tiny steps. Speaker 1: And the beauty of Amazon is everything you test is back-end. No one knows what you're doing. They can't see what you've tested. They only see the finished product. So your whole process is secretive. Whereas on social media, everyone monitors you to death. Speaker 2: I know. That's the thing. That's the thing. And in fact, something I wanted to ask you about this is when it comes to the videos as well, we have seen a lot of adaptation as well when it comes to, for example, embedding all the processes you are mentioning and combining with AI to move even faster when it comes to production and everything. So what is your experience with that? How you've been experiencing things with AI as well? Yeah, OK, sure. Speaker 1: That's a really good question. So basically, look, you got to think of it not from your as an owner perspective on how I can save a dollar and not pay anyone, right? Because that's not how it works. All that matters is, are you making sales, right? So you need to think through the eyes of the customer. What does a customer want to see? So, there's two kinds of video. You can have professionally made videos and then you can have what you call native videos. A native video looks like it's made by someone on social media or something. It's not perfect. The lighting's not perfect. The audio's not perfect. The shots aren't perfect. Nothing's perfect, but it sounds authentic. No one on earth wants to see an advertisement Unless it's a really expensive product and they want something more instructional. People want to see something authentic because it sounds like it's real. So let me just go through the different types of videos you have. You've got lifestyle videos where you show the video, or even not videos, shots, because you can have many types of video within one video. You've got lifestyle shots where you show people using it in different settings. That's very settings driven. Then you've got instructional videos, showing people how to use a video. An instructional video is a very powerful selling tool because people can actually see how it's used but that's also selling it at the same time. So don't underestimate instructional videos. You've got unboxing videos. I personally find those a little bit redundant because they're kind of boring. They don't add much value to the client. And then you've got testimonial videos. Testimonial videos are really big. I really invest, if I was going to start out on anything, I'd go straight to testimonial videos, right? They're not social media videos. They're not influencers. Influencer videos cost a fortune because you got somebody with a giant user base and they're making you pay for it. Testimonial videos is people have actually used your product and filmed themselves using it. Okay, then you've got review videos. People can do a 15 second review, right? So you want to be doing that whole spectrum of videos, okay? The big one is the product listing video. If you have six videos, they'll never watch the second, third, fourth or fifth. They'll never even watch it. They'll watch the first video. That's your master video. That's your one-minute video that shows the best of the best shots. So if you've got 30 shots, each one's two seconds, that's just 30 shots. You've got to really think about those 30 shots. Or maybe you just have 10 three-second shots or 23-second shots. What are the best 23-second shots that will make someone go, okay, this is exactly what I want? Click and buy. That master video, that's your last video. You test out everything over months and months and then you finally piece together, okay, these are the best 23 second shots. Here's my one minute product listing video, right? Speaker 2: That's your goal. Speaker 1: Cool. Speaker 2: Now, I was going to ask you something. You know, on Amazon, I get this question a lot. You usually will have a list, a video dice for your listing, a video dice for your A+, your video dice for a PPC. And I'm confident that, you know, this video has to be different because all of them serve different purposes, right? The one in the list is more meant to educate the client. The one from a PPC perspective is more to drive the click. So is there any clear kind of guidelines or maybe elements from your experience that each of these videos have to achieve this functionality based on the question? Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. So with Amazon Video Ads, it's very simple. Never, ever, ever assume you know what people want to see. You have no idea. Just assume you're always wrong. Don't ever think you're right. The minute you get eager and you go, I know what people want to see, I guarantee you're wrong. Just go in blind. Just think, you know what? I'm just going to keep testing videos for a year. I'll figure out, you know, I don't know. You don't know. Maybe a woman needs to wear a yellow dress or a red dress. I don't know. Maybe, you know, maybe some comedy, maybe something funny. Just remember, with video ads, 92% of people don't even turn the audio on. I see so many people trying to do audio or they're standing there talking. I'm like, why would you even stand talking in a video? It's so stupid. They don't even look at the basic data of Amazon to figure out how to make the optimal video. Bottom line is with video ads, you're trying to get people's attention. So you got to do something a little bit crazy. I had a client and we made him 50 videos in two days and they were all comedy driven. We had 10 different videos. Each one had five versions and in five weeks, We made him $475,000 in five weeks, right? It was crazy. And we were spending up to two grand a day on ads and stuff. But we found that out of the 50 videos, it was only like three or four videos that drove all the sales. So you don't know. Speaker 2: You have no idea. Speaker 1: It's a process. Like I said, you got to ask yourself, where do you want to be one year from now? Do you want to be indestructible? Do you want to be the only brand that exists on Amazon and no one has any chance whatsoever taking out your place? That's the goal. Your goal is to totally dominate everyone with video. And if you've got that edge, if you've got something in niche, I had another client, I filmed him at 120 videos in seven days. It quadrupled his sales. It actually dropped his ad spend three times because the videos had a much higher conversion rate and we just went after every single niche. We were targeting 1,000 keywords for the videos. So we found anyone who saw the video who were interested in the product, Oh, that's what I want. Speaker 2: They clicked on it. Speaker 1: So we actually broadened, we massively expanded our reach with video because most people say, oh, let's narrow it down, let's get the top 10 keywords. No, no, no, no. I want people to see the video and anyone who sees the videos is interested in my product, yeah, come and check out my product. So it actually totally flips over your whole approach to Amazon ads. This video can actually create demand for your product on Amazon. Now, it's very hard to create demand on Amazon, but you can do it. Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, something I wanted to ask out of this is the frequency at which once we reach success with these videos. We might potentially keep revising them because I know even if I'm successful videos that start generating sales and everything, I heard sometimes it's recommended to keep refreshing, you know, the piece of content you put out there. But sometimes people are confused if I should do this every six months, every year or so. And I get that this question can be very significant from brand to brand. From your experience and the clients you're working with, once you find like the perfect formula to come up with videos, then how frequent would you maybe try to revise some of these videos to make it even better? Like what is your formula around that? Speaker 1: It completely depends on your product. It depends on the quality of the product and it depends on your client. If you're selling a product for 200 US dollars, And it's a really high, you know, big spend for a client and they, you know, something really advanced technology or something like $1,000 or $2,000. Man, you want to be using cinema grade cameras to show. The quality of your product is worth $2,000. You're not going to do a low quality video for a $20,000 car or a $50,000 car, are you? So it all comes down to the quality of your product. If you're selling a $30, $40 product, well, you probably don't need to refresh it that much, right? I mean, it depends if you're doing lifestyle content. I think there's no limit to how many testimonies you can do. I think that's, like I said, that's just where to start. I mean, you could probably get people quite cheap for that depending on your country. And Testimonial videos, the unique thing about that is it's really country-dependent. If you're selling in Amazon Japan, you want a Japanese person to do a testimonial video. Then you want a British person for me, so it's a little bit more. Speaker 2: I was gonna mention that, localization. Yeah, how you handle localization because I'm sure some of your brands are global, so how you make sure the video that's successful in Japan is so successful in the UK or USA. Do you have to start from scratch or use some of the winning kind of elements from Japan to replicate it in the US? What do you usually do? Speaker 1: Well, you know, if you're going to do testimonial videos, it's very simple. Pay to play. Pay people to make testimonials, okay? But you don't let them say whatever they want. You don't ever tell people what to say because Everyone has an ear for it. If people, if it sounds like a script, everyone always knows. It's like a sixth sense in your ear. It's got to be authentic. So, you know, you let people use it and say, make your own video, make whatever you want. But you give some basic guidelines of these are the main features and these are the benefits and these are the problems we've overcome. Let them come up with whatever they want. It's always going to be better than what you think, try and tell them to do, right? Because then it's forced and controlled. So something, the more authentic it is, the better. If it comes down to instructional videos or really high close-ups of the product in use, well, you want to get that as high as possible, right? So you got the generic shots. You get the generic product shots that can go universal. Speaker 2: Yeah, now you mentioned something there, going back to the quality of video that, you know, for some type of product you need like high production. For other products you can go more like, you know, more informal. But I have heard multiple times from other people that it seems that lately the videos that behave the best are the ones that are less commercial kind of, from my perspective, like the ones that are not like TV commercials and all of that, right? So what is your experience with that as well? Speaker 1: What also depends on what you're selling. For example, I've done a lot of video production for food. Now just think about, you always got to think, what is it for myself, right? If I want to buy food, how do you decide what you want to eat? Man, it's just got to look good. It's got to look good. You can't smell it. You can't taste it. It's just got to look good. Speaker 2: You have to eat with your eyes. Speaker 1: If you want someone to buy your food, man, I'd be using a cinema grade 12-bit color camera with a super expensive lens close up to make it look ridiculously delicious. I've got some examples of that on my website. Speaker 2: You can have a look. Speaker 1: But then other products, it might be just walking outside or just doing stuff outside. Yeah, you could probably even use an iPhone 15 or iPhone 16 Pro. They're very, very good cameras, the iPhone. The thing is, you've just got to get your lighting right. If you're a complete amateur, Just film early in the morning after the sun's risen or one hour before the sun goes down. The best time to shoot is if it's overcast or maybe shoot inside with the sun coming through the window. Never have direct sunlight on you. It always looks bad every time. And if it's dark, if there's not enough light, just never film, ever. So, you know, there are some simple hacks like that. But, you know, that stuff, you can just go onto YouTube and find that out in seconds. Speaker 2: Cool. Now, to start coming to To a closure, I guess usually the question I try to ask all my guests is like, what are some of the mistakes people should avoid when making videos? Like we'll be talking about tips, strategies and all that, but I guess something I want to quickly go is like, what is non-negotiable? Like, please don't do this ever again. Speaker 1: Number one mistake is don't have video. Number two mistake is assume you know what people want to see. You're probably wrong. I'd probably say 99% of the time you're wrong. Don't assume. Just film it all the time. The other one is, okay, this is probably the big one, all right? So many people make this mistake with their listings as well, with their photos, their titles, and their bullet points. They focus on features and benefits. But you know what? No one walks into a shop and say, what are all the features and benefits of this product? No, they visualize themselves using it and what the outcome is for them. So when you make video, focus 100% on customer outcome. What do I mean by that? So, you know, if I got a screen cleaner, right, I could say all the benefits of the screen cleaner and all the chemical formulas. I can say, you know, you do this and that. Or what's the outcome? Hey, My screen, I watch a better video. The color's nicer. The outcome is I enjoy the movie more, enjoy movies more because my screen is clean. Or I could focus on the size of the cloth, the chemical formula, all that kind of stuff. No. Speaker 2: What's the outcome? Speaker 1: The outcome is I enjoy movies more. So, if you visually show that, don't try and tell people. With video, with movies, you know, the big famous movies with Clint Eastwood, he would say like 10 lines in the whole movie. Because with video, you show people, you don't tell them. That's probably the mistake. You're trying to tell people as opposed to show people. Speaker 2: Good. Awesome, Ash. So it's been a pleasure to have you. And I know we're only, you know, scratching the surface with this. There's so much more when it comes to video. And that's why I'm sure some people might want to reach out because As I said, videos have been so impactful lately, especially with, you know, how the Amazon space is changing in the sense that, you know, as you mentioned, people, at the end of the day, cannot touch the product, cannot smell it, cannot engage. The only thing that you can do is essentially make them fall in love with what they see through the screen. And that's where video can definitely make a huge difference. So how people can find you and work with you, Ash? Speaker 1: Okay, well, I've got my website sellerinitiative.com. I offer select people. I have limited spots. I select people, a one-hour free consult at the start. Look, there's three services I can offer and that's pre-production, production and post-production. With actual filming though, it depends on your setting. If you don't have access to the settings, you can't film it, right? So often I have to knock clients back because I simply just can't film it. But what I can always offer is pre-production. So that means I do a full video audit of your business. I can go and look at all your business, think about all the videos we can make. We can do keyword search results to see all the video ads of all your competitors. We can review competitors. We can look at all the keywords inside out and see exactly what people are searching for. And then we can actually decide, make a master list of every single possible video that you should or could produce for your brand, right? Then for each video, we can break down shot by shot, every single shot that you should have in that video. And that's your pre-production. Then with that pre-production, if I can't film it for you, you can find a cameraman and you don't waste a single second of your time or $1 of your time By engaging them, you just tell them, I want all these shots. Can you please make it for me? On the other side, if you already have a bunch of video content, and I've had quite a lot of people come to me with their brands and they don't know what to do, and they've actually got quite a bit of video content, but whoever filmed it for them had never bought anything or sold anything on Amazon, so they have no idea how to use it, or they've never used all the systems of Amazon. They might supply me with all the video content and I can sit down and just edit it up and get it launched what you already have. So there's three things I can offer and that is pre-production, And that can be done remotely because it's all just analysis and design and decisions. Two, actually filming, if I've got access to the setting for your product. Or three, I can do post-production if you've already got video content. So please visit me at sellinitiative.com. I can give one hour free consult. Speaker 2: Book me in. Speaker 1: I'm more happy to talk to anyone who's selling on Amazon. Speaker 2: Thank you, Ash. It's been definitely a pleasure. I'm sure people are going to find so much value by reaching out to you. In the meantime, wish you all the best and hopefully see you soon at some of the upcoming events. Thank you for coming. Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. Take care. Unknown Speaker: Thanks for listening to The Ecommerce Lab By Ecomcy. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. While you are at it, we would appreciate it if you could leave an honest rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. That will make it easier for others to find out about the show and benefit from it. Want more? Visit our website at www.ecomc.com where you can get your first consultation for free. 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