The Key to Ranking on Amazon in 2025 | Oana Pădurariu

The Key to Ranking on Amazon in 2025 | Oana Pădurariu Speaker 1: In general, I think that you should have at least three customer personas for every product. The reason? That's what Amazon is doing. Speaker 2: They don't want to see keyword stuffing. They want short titles. Speaker 1: Amazon deleted the Q&A section because now you have Rufus replying back to you. But how is Rufus able to explain everything if you don't have that information on your listing? So this is another reason why optimizing for Cosmo equals optimizing for Rufus. Speaker 2: How can sellers align their listing and their ads with Cosmo? Our guest is the co-founder of RightClick Advisors and Stardust. She's currently part of Amazon Ads Educator Program, sharing her experience to help sellers and advertisers evaluate their strategies. She has coauthored in-depth articles, dissecting Amazon patents and science papers, offering fresh insights into systems like Cosmo, Rufus, and the truth behind the so-called honeymoon period. You know what? I screw up John Smith. No kidding. I am not even going to attempt this. I am going to attempt her first name and then she can tell you her last name when she comes on. I'm just going to say it's Oana, And that's all I'm going to say because talk about a tongue twister. Okay. So let's give a thank to our sponsors. I don't know if you know this, but these episodes, they wouldn't be around if it wasn't for our sponsors. So we really want to thank AZRank, Amazon One Step, Sophie Society, Titan Network and Connect Cash for going above and beyond and helping us be able to get this podcast out to you. So why don't we just do this? We'll bring on the lady that I can't pronounce her last name. Speaker 1: Oh, hello. And just to say, first of all, Norm, that's okay. Nobody in the industry says my last name. Speaker 2: I can't say John Smith and there's no way I'm attempting your name. Speaker 1: Hey everyone, super happy to be here. And yes, don't even worry about my family name. It's like, I'm just Oana. Speaker 2: So this topic we're talking about today, it's very interesting because everybody's hearing about Cosmo, Rufus, but do they really understand it? So I think it's important that we go through, even going right back, it's almost like a newbie question, but there's so many people that don't know what it is. So let's do that. Let's clear that up and then we'll get into some more detail. Speaker 1: I feel that the first thing that we should Kind of like discuss about is what Cosmo is not. It's not the algorithm. So it's not like they threw away everything that they had and they just went with the new algo. It's not even an algorithm. So the science paper talks clearly is a common sense knowledge graph. Now that's a full mouth of words and it's a lot, but basically it comes down to the last layer that Amazon added in terms of their system when it comes to indexing and understanding your product. And Amazon does that just because it wants to make sure that it fully understands what your product is so it can connect it to the right audience. As Amazon is evolving and we know Amazon changes constantly and they are just improving their systems. They are making everything faster, better with the customer in mind because their whole purpose at the end of the day is to sell more. They've always said it. They want to be the most customer centric. Business in the world. So all the, I would say adjustments and all the systems that they add on top, they just want to make sure that they help customers find the best product that suits them in the fastest way possible. Right? So kind of like that's what Cosmo was added about. And that's a very big deal because they take behavior. So it's the first time that Amazon started taking behavior into consideration. When you look at the foundation of how Amazon worked, they have, you know, the lexical, which is the word-to-word matching, right? You make sure that a customer searches for boxing shoes or I don't know, whatever, just came up with something from a coffee mug. You make sure that you have that in your listing and you get indexed for it. That was 2016, right? That's why keyword stuffing was so important, making sure that you are indexed, making sure that you show for relevant searches. With the adding of semantics and words, it started being more, I would say, sophisticated, right? It started understanding more the nuances around words. With the adding of Cosmo and the perfect example is the most famous example of Cosmo was the lady that was searching for shoes for pregnant women and came back with slip resistant shoes because Cosmo understood not only her intention but what she needed it for, right? So it was able to make that complex connection behind the real intent of the shopper. So that's what Cosmo is. The last layer, it doesn't mean that Amazon changed completely. The base is still there. Keywords are still important, but Cosmo gives you the edge. It's the extra in order to fully align with your customers. Speaker 2: You know, I was searching for a beard product and it just came up with cane and wheelchair. It knows me a hundred percent. Speaker 1: I was actually preparing to respond to that. It's like, you know, have you seen the actual, because I did an example on beard oil and we have this, the famous listing Amish. Speaker 2: Yep. Speaker 1: Like Amish, if you look at Amish, right, it has been selling since 2017. And the listing is what I would call the example of a non-optimized listing. But they continue to sell. Amazon has history on what the product is. So many orders since 2017, right? We can't even think of a number, but it's huge. So it understands who buys it and why they buy it because they gathered all that data over time. So if you look at Beard Oil, right, it's there, it's indexed. You would say it's not Cosmo optimized because it's not really optimized. It's a listing that is not optimized, but has been selling for a very long time. But if you go and search for more extended terminologies like long tail keywords, maybe you're just not doing a really good job on those and that is because it's lacking that optimization that the system will need because it's lacking all the information on the listing and I also assume on the back end of it. Speaker 2: I'm going to jump way ahead because you just talked about not being optimized. What is the trick? What is the secret that everybody's trying to do? And maybe they're overlooking things. So how do you get optimized? Speaker 1: Optimization as it stands right now, I would say we are looking at a more complex process than what we're used to. It's not just SEO at the moment. It's optimization, taking into consideration data, taking into consideration all the data points that Amazon takes into consideration to analyze behavior. The reviews, the competitors, the strengths, analyzing your unique selling points, analyzing the trends on the market, how competitors are doing and taking all of these into consideration and then We're going to be creating what I would say the customer personas, right? And I know it's not something that it's uncommon, creating customer personas, and I strongly suggest everybody should do that. In general, I think that you should have at least three customer personas for every product. Try to create at least three to understand fully your customers. The reason, that's what Amazon is doing. When it's making the connection in between who you are selling to, that's kind of like the direction where it's going so it can recommend easier specific products. So taking that into consideration, And first and foremost, understand that you need to optimize for the algorithm so that the algorithm fully understands your product and the usages and who you are selling to. And once that person buys, why they're buying it and what they're going to do with it, like the benefits behind it. Right? But also consider that right now, yes, we are optimizing for the algorithm, but at the same time, we are also optimizing for humans, right? Because your listings and your content still need to talk to people. That is why Amazon is kind of like forcing us to make the content more conversational. So it doesn't sound like a robot. It doesn't sound just QR stuff because that affects your conversion rate. Speaker 2: Yeah, so right now, in case you haven't heard, Amazon's come out with a bunch of different compliances and they don't want to see keyword stuffing. They want short titles. I've talked to so many sellers that don't want me to touch a title, you know, and it's working. Don't touch it. But you got to go to the, I think it's 150 less, less than 150 characters, and then don't repeat keywords in your bullets. You know, if there's certain phrases that you want, you can put them in the back end, but you shouldn't be repeating keywords. And that's so important, because we're all We're all brought up selling on Amazon. You go for these different keywords. So it's a whole different mindset. So it's so important that we understand that. Want more unfiltered tips from top eCommerce experts? Well, hit subscribe and you'll never miss a Lunch With Norm episode. Speaker 1: And plus people buy because of an emotional connection. I always say that. So how you present Because at the end of the day, that's what we are doing, right? We are creating listings to present our products to our audiences. And so customers can understand Why should they buy your product? What does this do for me better than all other competitors? And you will have specific strategies. So here's the thing. It depends on the type of product that you are selling because many times you look at, okay, what's the best seller in the category? And you might have a product that it's selling for $10.99, right? And you have a $50.99 product. It's like, yeah, but I want to be the best seller. That specific audience is not your audience. Your product is not exactly the same as the cheap product. And you need to make sure that you communicate that. Because if you present yourself As being exactly like the 1099, it doesn't make sense from a cost-specific standpoint. Like, why should I buy a 5099 if that's 1099, right? So make sure that you take even the pricing psychology into consideration when you analyze the market and when you analyze your target audience, even before going into creating the customer personas. Speaker 2: Yeah, so I... Oh, go ahead. Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I apologize. I was just like in the target, like, of course, it can be realistic many times to, to aim for the bestseller in specific categories, you really want to find make sure that you find your niche where you best fit that audience. Speaker 2: One of the things that we talk to our clients about is the price game. And so many new sellers, they want to just go down as low as they can to get all these sales. Well, I can see that on a launch, but don't stay with the, I call it a profit cannibals. So there's three levels I've always found on Amazon. There's you just getting in into the game, or there's a bunch of Chinese sellers or anybody who's selling, just losing money, like making a dime. And then there's the average seller, which is usually right in the middle. You'll see the, probably the, The biggest I just I did Dead Sea oil is one of the Dead Sea mud is one of the things we work with. So I know pricing is $7 to $14 at the I don't want to be in that category. The next one is 24 to 44. And there's prices in between, but the majority are in that range. So that's my second. And then my third is the top of the line. And for Dead Sea Mud, I believe it was 79 to 95. And the difference is one, the lowest price ones had eight to 16 ounces, and the most expensive one had 3.5 ounces. Crazy. Sometimes you got to be uncomfortable and play around with the pricing optimization. A lot of people don't want to do it because they're going to lose traffic, but what they don't take into consideration, less traffic, more profit. Speaker 1: Definitely comes down to even setting a specific objective when it comes to. So at RightClick, we go through that pricing strategy. It depends on like where you are, just like you said, are you just starting? You want to start getting some sales history, maybe even reviews in the beginning because it will be easier to get conversions at a lower price. But long term, you really need to establish like the soft spot between What am I investing in? What am I getting out of it? And does it make sense? And based on that, again, it comes down to really addressing a specific target audience. Like the very low priced people are most likely shoppers who are just interested in the pricing. When you go to the premium, of course, even your offer needs to match a premium expectation. Speaker 2: Oh, if it doesn't, you're done. Speaker 1: Exactly. And that's where you can price it, you know, at a higher price. But you need to make sure that you look premium. It's like, if not, it's just a big disconnect. And many times that happens. It's like, oh, you know, I'm the most expensive product in my niche. And yeah, but your listing looks like the cheapest. Speaker 2: So Amazon stores a ton of information about us. Kevin, Kevin King, he decided that he was gonna get his information and it was 78 pages of everything that he's ever touched. So I think they already have built a persona around you and they're just delivering right now. So if you've gone and bought, Abe, if they've gone and bought a bunch of cigar accessories, Then they know that you're a cigar smoker and it's really important to know. And you can ask for your report. So anybody on this call, you can contact Amazon and say that you want your personal data and they'll provide it. Speaker 1: What's crazy is that they create audiences, right? And based on these audience, they make the connection. So here's the thing. Cosmo is really popular and it's super important. Very few people know that last year after they launched Cosmo, they announced and afterwards implemented Merlin. Merlin is like, let's call it a little brother, right? When it comes to Cosmo, that's helping with the connection in terms of product recommendations. So it's a new system. In which it analyzes the products that you are pairing together and your shopping behavior over time and all of that feeds together. Now, at BDSS last week, I did the presentation and I pulled down all the screenshots were from the science paper from Cosmo. And I showed how Cosmo takes into consideration 30 million data points. Because it goes through analyzing the shopping behavior and looking at every shopper, just like you said, you know, 70 pages for each one of us and then connecting it together in between different audiences, going through the products that you buy together, the co-purchase and the search buy. Not to be too technical. So first of all, Cosmo analyzes the products that you pair, like what's most likely that you buy together. That is why they improve the recommendations that you get as personalizations plus the frequently bought together because that's the whole purpose about it to understand behavior and what goes with what. And then it goes in analyzing the search by meaning. It takes into consideration the keyword if you go through its additional search and which is the product that you ended up buying. And now, of course, they get data from Rufus, like what maybe was the question that you asked and what did that end up with which product that you bought it. Making a full, like a full picture of a shopper behavior and then multiplies that for each one of us buying with Amazon. Speaker 2: We've talked about at the very beginning what Cosmo's not. Let's talk about some of the hype. Why do we have to jump in? If we're not getting involved with it right now, why should we? Speaker 1: So for those of you out there who still, first of all, Cosmo is live. It's live since last year. It's not like it's coming. No, it's here. It was announced at the beginning of 2024. And that's when we were like, Cosmo is coming. But then the actual science paper came out and it's live. It's there. We saw it. And we saw even how Rufus pulls the information and how it replies back, showing us that, yes, it does take common sense into consideration and behavior and intent. But when it comes to why, it's simple. You want to make sure that you get the extra, the edge. You want to make sure that your product does show up even when customers might not specifically type in the keyword. It's easy when you type in beard oil and you expect to buy beard oil but in the case where somebody would be typing a winter blouse and you end up buying a cashmere blouse. You want to make sure that you don't leave money on the table. Speaker 2: Plus with Cosmo last week, I came number one speaker at BDSS 12. I was going to say BDSS 12, someone right here, it's either me or you, had won the contest, right? Speaker 1: Yes. That's why I have my lucky t-shirt on. I was wearing the exact same t-shirt last week. And what I showed was the importance of making sure that you do optimize for Cosmo to get the extra. If I would need to quantify it, I would say like 30 maybe to 40 percent. A lot of sellers who don't optimize for Cosmo are leaving sales behind. Why is that? If you are optimizing going for the traditional way, right, like semantics, you are indexed. I'm not saying that you are not indexed, but you will not be visible for the nuances that are created in this sophisticated understanding of Cosmo, right? When it comes to correlating products that You might want your product to be sold together, like the compliments. And I showed exactly, you know, it's easy to just look at your market basket analysis and try to understand how you can create an advertising strategy, making sure that you do target those products. Making sure that you do have visibility in that regards because Cosmo already understands it. And if you don't have data on compliments item in your market basket analysis, that can also be a red flag, by the way, because it means that Cosmo just doesn't really understand how your product may connect to other products. And that's a good opportunity for you to kind of like, okay, what am I missing here? Is it because I'm not talking about the benefits? Is it because I'm not talking who's using this or why? And what are the audiences? As a clear example, you know, in the back end, you go and put adult men, women, right? But you can be more sophisticated and you can say, you know, long shift workers for comfortable shoes. Speaker 2: Bald-headed old guys with gray beards. Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, like you can create those audiences and there are ways to leverage AI prompting and to get making sure that you give that information to Cosmo. And in the example that we talked about the beard oil, right? Amish is the perfect example because if I have it in my rank radar in data life, And I track it. And you know, if you look at the main keyword, that's okay. You're indexed. Perfect. And it's also ranking well because of the history that it has. But when you go into long failed keywords like a specific ingredient, it's not doing Because it doesn't correlate that ingredient to what it does to who would buy it specifically for that, you know, for sensitive skin, for example, anti-rash or, you know, so it really comes down to making sure that you fill in the extra information that Cosmo would need. So it feels more confident about exactly why your product matches the audiences that we talked about, you know, like the 70 pages on each one of us. Speaker 2: Probably a lot more now. Speaker 1: It will be a lot more now. Absolutely. And with Rufus, kind of like stepping up the game, because this is the whole thing. So they are not independent systems. And Rufus is built to pull information from the system, from Cosmo. It pulls from the algorithm and it's able to access all the data in terms of the customer behavior. That is why it's able to read the information on the front end and on the back end of the listing. And it's also able to go through reviews. By the way, Amazon deleted the Q&A section because now you have Rufus replying back to you For Amazon, it's like, oh, you guys don't need the Q&A section. We will just give Rufus to you and it will be able to explain everything. But how is Rufus able to explain everything if you don't have that information on your listing? It will come back with saying, I can't find that information. It will recommend other products. So this is another reason why optimizing for Cosmo equals optimizing for Rufus. Because Rufus accesses the information that Cosmo needs to fully understand your product, your audience, and connect it to them. And Rufus just is able to generate more questions and reply back using that data set. Speaker 2: Is it possible to put in an FAQ section on your A-plus? Put all that information. I work with a few non-alcoholic spirits and we put tons of recipes. So we get more and more people coming over. But what about that idea of just adding a ton? In SEO, that's what we do. Can you do that? And will it pick up by Rufus? Speaker 1: Absolutely, it will be picked up by Rufus by a ton of information. I would still balance it to, okay, this is for the algorithm with this is also for my customers, right? So just in case. People go and actually read it. It needs to make sure that it adds that extra value and it makes sense. So one thing that I would like to underline is that when you optimize for Cosmo, again, repetition doesn't matter. You don't need to repeat specific keywords. The specific time to make sure that it gets it. It already does. It's smart and it fully understands, right? And right now indexation happens like it pulls information at a root level, meaning at a single keyword level. So you don't need to make it keyword enriched in order to get that extra boost. Make sure that you use the ton of voice Based on the branding, that would be very important because you would already know who you are talking to in terms of your target audience and the brand mood, that's important. That's something that you would need to take into consideration. Because here's the thing, when Rufus will pick that information and reply back, it will use the same ton of voice that you did, right? It kind of like mimics. It replies back, but it gets pieces of information that you added over there. With this said, when optimizing for Rufus, it doesn't mean that you need to concentrate only on those questions. Rufus will get the information from the description that customers don't see which is in the backend and we'll be able to provide information from that to customers when asking about a specific topic that is explained in the backend. So when you optimize for Rufus and Cosmo, It's a whole, it's like the whole picture. It's not only those five questions in the A+, but it's the whole listing. And including the images, like including secondary images, because Rufus pulls those images whenever it finds the information that it needs to reply back. So it replies with text and also gives you the image where it found that information. The reason why Amazon started doing that is because they know images are more engaging. So make sure that your unique selling points or, you know, your strengths in terms of a product would be shown on images. So, you know, when Rufus replies back, it also pulls that image and has a higher impact. Speaker 2: That gives me, just very quickly, product opinion. If you want to see what your images are actually saying, Matt Costin has a tool. What is that called? Image... Speaker 1: I don't know. Speaker 2: Kelsey, you could find out. Unknown Speaker: Oh, I love you guys. Speaker 1: I don't remember. Speaker 2: I tried the other day when I knew you were coming on trying to figure out what the tool was, but I couldn't find it. But Kelsey, if you could find it or what we'll do is we'll put it in the show notes for you guys. Speaker 1: The API from AWS recognition, which be might a little bit more difficult to use. So the guys from ProductPinion actually give you access to something that it's Amazon directly helpful. Speaker 2: And free. Speaker 1: And free, exactly. Speaker 2: Yeah. So every, like the really great example, I have a client with a knife. And when we saw it, we thought, okay, great packaging. Everybody's going to know that this is the packaging in the background. This is a knife. What does it see? First thing, weapon. So that, okay, how do we get around that? Second thing was it said, it said something completely different than packaging. I forget what it was, but it was just completely different. And so we, right now we've got the products being shot at a photographer. That we want to specifically show and that's with every one of them. So if you go down and you see that the image that you're using is not seeing what the algorithm is seeing, you better check it. Oh, Nir's on there. Oh, yeah, sure, Nir. What about me? But okay, so I do want to ask you before we go to the gift or the Wheel of Kelsey, you co-wrote a Rufus paper with Danny McMullin. Speaker 1: And Andrew Bill. Speaker 2: Oh, and Andrew. Yeah, I can't forget Andrew. At the top of the hour, we're going to give away something, a prize that's usually provided by our guests. And this week, we have an incredible prize that if you don't jump on it, you're crazy. Oana, what is it? Speaker 1: We're giving away a free StarMap audit. And of course, once that you would get to put the audit together, you would get the strategy call with me, which I would say is like the cherry on top of the cake. So you actually get two prizes, not only the audit that you can take to your team. And it's an average, like the StarMap audit. So here's the thing. Jeff Anderson, me, Anthony, and Danny McMillan came together and we built an auditing tool. It takes a lot of data. We're going through the APIs and at the end you have an audit that is around 50 pages. Now, it depends on the amount of data set that we get. We even got to 77 pages for one ASIN, which is huge because it goes all the way through from the listings, from a category analysis. It goes to your competition analysis and really looking at the market. But we also ask you for reports from your SQP and from your advertising and we come in with recommendations for PPC. All of us have, you know, our hands on PPC. So of course that had to be there. And, you know, you get a full overview of like, okay, specifically for those of you who have a team, it's like, this is a quarterly review audit that you can just like, this is what we need to work on. These are our focus split down by actually the departments. And yes, I get to hop on a call with you and a strategy and explain more and get access directly. Speaker 2: That's worth about $1,500. So it's a great prize. If you want to join, it's hashtag WillaKelsey. Tag two people, you'll get a second entry. And because we do this next week, so this week is from last week, you can enter through the newsletter. So go to lwn.news. If you get a subscription, you already get that every Monday. Next week on Wednesday, if you're live, We'll draw Oana's prize. So it's a good one. I think you should all be jumping on it. So I think that's it. Let's go to a quick commercial and then we'll be back. Hey sellers, Q4 is coming fast. Are your products ready to dominate? AZRank is your partner for accelerating sales across the most important marketplaces. Their customized campaigns boost your visibility, make your brand impossible to ignore, and give you the crucial data that you need to win. Launch new products with a surge of external traffic, Maintain top ranking and conversion rates for your best sellers and bring old listings back to life. Play it smart, prepare now and give your products the boost they deserve this Q4. Visit azrank.com and unlock your products full potential today. The links in the description. Now back to the show. I'm going to go down a different rabbit hole about Cosmo. Is it possible to use Cosmo somehow to get ranked higher on Google. So can you turn the questions, the, uh, like everything you're adding information wise and have, uh, the Google, uh, Google SEO or algorithm pick it up and rank. Speaker 1: You know what the funny part is? I'm such an Amazon geek, but when it comes to outside of Amazon, I'm like, why don't we ask a Google expert? I would need to understand how Google works to get recommended in that regard. I'm not even social media. I just had my social media up last year. That's how worse I am into science papers rather than trying to understand, you know. Google, but yeah, definitely. Uh, whenever it comes to fully optimizing your listings, um, understanding what's important for the outside traffic, I would say that in that regard, you would need to look at how recommendation system works for Google in order to then refine the search results. So that's kind of like a different beast. Speaker 2: It's something to look into. I'm sure there's a way. Right now, by the way, this is a little bit off topic. But press releases, I've been putting out press releases for our clients and within a few hours, they're ranked in every single LLM. So the way it works is you put a keyword phrase in your press release and then when it gets distributed, syndicated, within hours, it's there. It's unbelievable how quick this is and there's no trick to it. It's just a good PR that goes out there and you'll get optimized. Like I said, we- Amazon loves external traffic. Oh yeah. Speaker 1: That does not amaze me at all. Whatever you do, like email marketing specifically, everything that comes outside, that is just like feeding information because, you know, an order is an order and sales are sales. And if you can attribute that to connect that to a specific search, that definitely makes feed information into Cosmo. Absolutely. So it makes sense. Like if you were to make a press release or if you do an email marketing, all that traffic that comes back, that's absolutely, you know, gold. When it comes to Cosmo and the Amazon ranking. Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a few other tricks out there to get your Amazon, not through Cosmo that I know of, but through other strategies that you've been at all the events and you've heard us talk. But getting ranked on the first page, even number one, just by doing a variety of different things, but they all got to come together before you'll start to see your ranking change. But it's fairly quick. All right, let's talk about some practical takeaways. How can sellers just align their listing and their ads with Cosmo? Speaker 1: First thing and maybe is the most important thing that anybody listening to us can go and start just doing right after is please optimize your backend. Please don't treat it like the room that you just store stuff into. Customers do not see the back end of your listings, but Cosmo does. So make sure that you do, you know how many times I heard, Oh, I don't need a text description anymore because it's not 2017 and we have a pluses now, a premium pluses, like that's amazing. But information that you add in the description in the back end gets picked up. So why leave it empty? And there are categories in which you can add more than one section of description. So make sure that you maximize all of them, right? And go through all of the product attributes. It might be a little bit boring, but believe me, it's necessary. Feeding all that information like the special features and things like the occasion and, you know, we mentioned audiences, right? The graphics feed all that information into the backend. Like that's the number one thing that I know sellers are not focused on and I think they definitely need to start paying more attention to that. And then, of course, going and aligning with the new strategy in terms of optimizing your title and your bullet points and making sure that those are Rufus and Cosmo optimized. But the easiest win, go and just put in the attributes that are missing from your listings. Because that's information that Cosmo doesn't have. So you just put it into strengthening those signals. Speaker 2: It's pretty simple to do too. Question about images. Is Amazon still wiping out any of the metadata when you upload images? Speaker 1: So here's the thing. We went and tested a couple of times. It does take it out, but you mentioned earlier the box not being recognized by the system as being a package of the product. Now, When you go to AWS Recognition or Andree's and Matt's tools, which is the same by the way, if you are not able to get the information that you would need so the system doesn't recognize the actual type of product that you are showing, And believe me, many times you can fix that with better imagery, but if that's not fixable, within the AWS, you can create a custom label. So it's like attaching that metadata and you relabel it and that's how you kind of like I don't force the information within the image, saying like, this is a package, and this is a knife. That's the true, you know, nature of the product itself. And it is not as easy and common to do that, but there are the custom labels in AWS that work the same way. And then you add that into, you can test it afterwards, before and after, and it will be picked up. Speaker 2: Okay, so let's talk about mistakes. What are some of the mistakes? And if you have more than one, that's great. Let's talk about two, three, four, five, whatever it is. What mistakes are Amazon sellers doing that if they did it, their listing would be that much more optimized? Speaker 1: Number one mistake, they don't take relevance into consideration when they utilize even the keyword list. And I know that was, you know, when it came to SEO, a good practice was, you know, you just pull keywords and everything else, you dump it in the backend and you just leave it as it is. It doesn't matter if it's related to your product or if it's not, you just put it in there. Adding information like, you know, let's say you're selling a supplement. And you add ingredients from your competitors that your product doesn't have. Don't do that. Focus specifically on what you have and try to leverage the benefits from the formulation that you chose rather than trying to show on searches from, you know, an ingredient that you are lacking because Most likely, even if you get index and you get visibility on those keywords, the conversion rate on it, it will be super low. And especially if you run ads on it, you're just going to bleed money. It would not make sense for you to try to show up on searches. And here's the thing, specifically when you run sponsor brands advertising, because you know, sponsor brands, keyword targeting, it changed last year. Exact is not exact. Phrase is more of a broad and broad is like very Cosmo-like, right? So you would then be amazed. It's like, why am I showing up? Why am I paying for so many clicks that are not bringing in convergence? And I show up on searches that are not that relevant My product where go and take a look at what you added on your listing. What are the signals that you are showing and sending to the algorithm and then fix that. Reinforce based on relevancy first of all, because that's how you kind of like then go and tap into improving your conversion rate. Speaker 2: So at the very beginning of this episode, you mentioned something about creating multiple personas. How do you do it? Are these personas on the one listing or are they on multiple listings? Where can you put all these personas? Speaker 1: So the personas are part of what we call like a research document for each product and they only allow us to understand the percentages of shoppers that fit within a specific profile. What do I mean by that? So each product would not have only one use. There are some products out there that people buy only for a specific use but also other people would buy them because of a specific feature. For example, if I'm selling the knife that you were mentioning, for me it might be that I'm buying it because it would help me I'm specifically focused on the fact that it's easy to use and I cut it faster. But for a different persona and I'm just inventing it as I go but to make a difference, maybe it would make a difference in terms of the quality of the materials itself. So, in one, you have a specific feature like the functionality and how well it cuts down meat. The other one is focused on the long-term high-quality materials because it will not rust and I can use it for years without any issues. And the third customer persona might be, I'm buying it to give it away as a gift. So, you would try to balance and try to understand what percentage buys it for what reason so you can align that. And when you get those percentages, it will make also sense for you on what you should capitalize more in terms of these features over here correlate to the person who's interested in the long-lasting quality of the product itself versus the usage that they get from utilizing it. Or you might be surprised that you have a very high percentage of people who buy them as gifts. And maybe you don't even mention that. You don't even show how great of a present that might be for somebody who is, you know, just a hobbyist that when it comes to cooking and, I don't know, cutting meat or something like that. And just, you know, I'm using the example of the product that you mentioned. And that is important to create at least those three customer personas. And that comes from the data that you pull from your account, the demographics, All the, you know, all the insights that you get from your, from your reviews. And then of course making a list in terms of features and connecting that to the specific searches. And at the end, you just look at it as like, oh, it makes sense. You know, 20% of people buy them because they are gifting it. And I never even thought about putting something about how great of, how cool of a gift this is. Speaker 2: Okay, and where would be the best place to add these personas? Speaker 1: You don't need to add them anywhere. Here's the thing. You create them as part of your strategy and that's the foundation when you look at and you say, okay, what do I need to optimize? What's missing? Maybe I'm focusing on one versus the other more. So it's more of a An internal, I would say, approach when it comes down to understanding how I need to optimize. And here's both for text as it is for the visual side, right? Because if majority of people buy it because of the quality of the material and I'm focusing it, I'm focusing, I'm showing, and I'm talking about how easy it is to cut specific things, I might want to switch that. And I will see an increased conversion rate because people coming to my list, they're actually looking for the quality of the product itself. And I'm talking about how easy it is to use it rather than telling them what it's more important for them. So when you actually put a number behind that, it's easier for you to understand even which keywords you need to purchase. Like what are the first bullet points? Right that you talk about because many times it comes down to, you know, I'm just randomly putting that but you might want to create a strategy behind the order of importance of things that you talk about. Right. And when you put numbers behind that. It's easier. It's not a guesswork anymore. You're actually quantifying what is important and what is less important for customers. And then based on that, you just correlate the keywords and the features and you present them either in the text way or in the visual side of way. Speaker 2: I think these personas probably could be in the FAQs on your A+. You put multiple personas right there. Speaker 1: You can put them over there for us internally. Again, it's like we give them a name. We create a brand story for them. We really try and understand their pain points, like how we address them. Also, when you create the audiences, not necessarily the Cosmo personas, but from the features, you build audiences. You know, like in the example, you take comfortable orthopedic shoes, you can put all the categories of people that need those features, right? And you can add them as audiences in the audience section in the backend. And again, Cosmo will see it. Speaker 2: And ChatGPT would be probably your number one tool to find out your best audiences after reviews your Amazon listing. Speaker 1: I actually have a prompt for that. So I have a system. Yes. When connecting the audiences to features and trying to really find out how to do that based on Cosmo, I worked it backwards because my thing was, okay, so we know that Cosmo connected the slip-resistant shoes to the pregnant lady, right? And that's something, oh my God, it's incredible. It is, but how do you do that as a seller? And that's what was on my mind, right? Like that's my, I told you I'm not social. Unknown Speaker: That's what I do. That's fun. Speaker 1: And it's like, how do I do that? How do I make sure that I fully understand all the audiences that Cosmo could possibly connect my product to so I can optimize for them and I can give those signals to Cosmo so the relationship between my product and my customer strengthens at the point that I don't need Cosmo to pull that data and it takes months or years to make that connection and get my product recommended in those cases. So yeah, ChatGPT definitely utilizing the list of features. And then you look at the list of features and you say, okay, based on this, what would be the audience and the occasion that you can max out from each feature of your product? And again, that's why relevancy is important. So you don't get to send mixed signals to Cosmo. Speaker 2: I'm wondering what your thoughts are, are building a network and building a community and how can that help Amazon sellers? Speaker 1: With Amazon changing as much as it does today and with having so much information out there, um, that's not always 100% true. It's easy to get lost. It's easy to constantly chase this golden hack and this thing that's promising. And you know, it gets you out of your focus. And for Amazon sellers and as an Amazon seller, I think it's very important to keep your focus and keep grounded on what is the actual purpose at the end of the day, right? And being part of a community, being in a circle where you get information from other sellers or from people out there who are trusted sources, I think it's the maybe most important thing at the moment. Speaker 2: Right, I couldn't agree more. Speaker 1: So that's really a pain point as it is. And the reason why I'm saying this, it's funny because I did the podcast with Kevin and you on the AI challenge and I showed the 15 relations of Cosmo, right? I shared how it was a gem in plain sight and how you can check if your product is Cosmo optimized using the actual science paper. And I saw people like posting on On LinkedIn about, oh my God, look what I found. And it's like. Okay, that's amazing. Share the content, share the information that's important. But they were, this person specifically was calling Cosmo as being the algorithm and giving like all these, you know, just filled in words because ChatGPT wrote his post. It's like, that's so wrong. You know, don't trust. And you know, somebody actually typed in, oh, but Cosmo is coming, he's not here. He's like, oh my God. What community are you guys in? Speaker 2: Yeah, and I love when I hear it's the new A10. That's beautiful. Speaker 1: That's a blast. When you say it's like A10, it's like, yo, you're so from a different planet. So actually choosing your people, it's super important. And it's kind of like changed my life as well. So here's the thing. When I first met Jeff Anderson, I was not into Amazon science papers. I was really trying to figure out, I was very data oriented. I focus on advertising and how it works. And, you know, after getting to know Jeff a little bit more, he was like, you know, you should take a look at Amazon science. After a week, I came back. He's like, Jeff, this changed my life. And looking back now, it literally did, because that's when I started I'm trying to understand how the system actually works and not only just explaining how it works, but how you can apply that to your listing. Like the example, the honeymoon period, and then it came with Avon. And from the fact that I knew Amazon, it's not a myth that it sees your product and it sees not only the text on your product, the OCRs, but it also sees the objects on the product themselves. You can optimize to make sure that you do have the correct information on your listing images and that's how I went into the AWS recognition. So it kind of just started from there. That's how I started geeking out with Dan and McMillan and we ended up writing the science paper on Cosmo and then on Rufus with Andrew breaking down the patents You mentioned in the beginning just being in the room with mind-like people, that's where you want to make sure that you share information and you get sources so you do not get lost. That's also right-click ended up being. You know, it was me, Abe and Jeff, and we were kind of just doing our own thing. And then Jeff comes in and is like, you know, we would need help for these clients. And we kind of started consulting. And before we knew it, we had like five, six people that we were already consulting for. It's like, why don't we actually do that? Why don't we create a community and help people where they get access to us as a consultant, but not only, they get to support one to each other because maybe more than six people would need it. And it was insane because we just didn't even start it. So I think that just making sure that you are in those rooms, it's very important because it will help you just get access to the right information, the most updated, because let's be honest, you know, we are talking about Cosmo today. We don't know what Amazon is going to launch tomorrow. We have no idea if something else comes up and we need to optimize for that and we need to first understanding and then come back and just make sure that we update the way that we see it, our data and how we process it. Speaker 2: Okay. So, Oana, how do people get a hold of you? Speaker 1: LinkedIn is my go-to place. So, definitely there. Yeah. Reach out. If you have any questions or you would like to geek out, definitely over there. I would say it's my go-to place or to the right big advisors. And, you know, you actually get to book a call in case you would be interested in more geeking strategy stuff. Let's call it like that. Speaker 2: Okay, perfect. So let's go to a sponsor and then we'll come over to the wheel of Kelsey. Did you know Amazon profit is more than revenue minus ads? Seller board calculates your true profitability, factoring in every fee, return, shipping cost, and even cost of goods using FIFO logic. That's first in, first out logic. Plus they automate your PPC, forecast inventory and avoid stockouts, reclaim money with Amazon reimbursements, set FBM shipping by period, and track Walmart profits with the same dashboard. And you don't even have to have an Amazon account. You can try it for free for two months. Seller board, know your numbers, scale your business. Okay, we're back. Kelsey, let's do the wheel. All right. And what's this for, Kels? Unknown Speaker: This is for Zach Frommsen, our episode last week. And this is going to be for a free auditing growth report for email marketing. So I'm going to send it up here. And if you are the winner, please email me k at lunch with norm.com. And looks like Jason B is the winner. Speaker 2: All right, Jason. Congrats. Unknown Speaker: Congratulations. This is not Oana's giveaway, so that giveaway is happening next week. Speaker 2: Okay. That's it, Oana. Thank you so much. Speaker 1: It was great. Thank you for having me and you know, I'm happy to, to, you know, get more into the Cosmo and why is it important to just make sure that you don't forget about your backend specifically. Like just one thing, if you would want to take one thing from this podcast, make sure that you don't ignore your backend anymore. Speaker 2: And also in the comments, if you want to get the paper we were talking about, the Rufus paper that Oana co-wrote, there's a link and there'll also be a link in when we publish this edited version, it'll be in the show notes. All right. Well, thank you so much. It was really great catching up. Now this is two times in a row that I got to talk to you. So perfect. Yesterday and today. Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 2: Okay. So thanks a lot. And like I said earlier on to the sponsors, we couldn't do this without you and also our community. Community is so important and we couldn't, we wouldn't do the podcast if we didn't have this community. So thanks a lot for everything. If you're interested in our newsletter, which is a little bit different than other newsletters, uh, I tell a personal story, then we, uh, rack it up to a business lesson and then there's all the updates for the week. So thank you everybody. And we'll see you next Wednesday.