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Mastering Off-Site Traffic For Amazon And E-com With Yev Marusenko - Part 1
April 30, 2021
Mastering Off-Site Traffic For Amazon And E-com With Yev Marusenko - Part 1 Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL_-nVsOULc Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuJKPTqDYl8 Things we mention in this session of Seller Round Table: Join us every Tuesday at 1:00 PM PST for Live Q&A and Bonus Content at https://sellerroundtable.com Try the greatest Amazon seller tools on the planet free for 30 days at https://sellerseo.com/
[00:00:01] spk_1: Welcome to the seller roundtable e commerce coaching and business strategies [00:00:05] spk_0: with and er not and amy Wiis, [00:00:12] spk_1: hey, what's up everybody? This is Andy or not with And this is still a round table number 89 and we have our friend, the myth, the man, the legend, you have Marceca's here. Hey, you have welcome back. Thanks for being on. [00:00:27] spk_0: Thank you. Thanks Andy, Hi Amy great to be here again. [00:00:30] spk_1: If you guys have not listened to the first episode with you have, you can go back and find it, I think it's around 20 I think episode 20. Um, but uh yeah, you have catch people up to, uh, kind of where you are now, what you're doing now, you know, maybe a little, a little, a little quick background and then where you are now, what you're doing now and uh yeah, [00:00:53] spk_0: yeah, the focus is still trying to bridge the amazon world with off amazon world. So it's with strategies and software and just overseeing a lot of brands and facebook ads spin and getting into google ad spend just seeing like what's the, what's the best thing to amplify amazon but also the diversity of strategies, just so many brands doing so many different things. So it's still being the focus there, just bridging external marketing with amazon and the, not necessarily like changing the focus, but getting into more newer stuff is, there's, there's ways you can amplify strategy. So it's me learning more about and getting more whether it's in like software, feature development or partnerships on how can you amplify that off amazon and amazon and that's through like buying brands or buying traffic asset. And then on top of that amplifying with facebook ads so it's getting into a little bit like higher level outside of just like, here's the tactic that you run so that's been kind of like more new over the past half year. [00:01:53] spk_1: Nice. And I know that um you were doing the facebook stuff, but then you also started rolling out some some google integration, right? Some Adwords stuff. [00:02:03] spk_0: Yeah, google. It's tricky. It's not as good as facebook on the um like attribution side and like the simplicity of, of integration, even though google ads like older, there's a lot of history. It's simpler. But yeah, we started it and it's one of those things that it just needs more time, more testing and there's always a small percentage of brands that like figure it out and run with it. But for it to be like a little bit more popular, it's harder just because it's not like uh it's not as generalized and applicable to how facebook is and that's more on the technical side because the way google works. [00:02:39] spk_1: Yeah, it's that that it's funny to me because um I know that and I'm welcoming you over to the dark side of the force uh in terms of ads because I know you're hard, you're hardcore facebook and I was like, what [00:02:51] spk_2: about afterwards? [00:02:53] spk_1: Um and people are finally starting to take notice with with google because um the ads are a lot cheaper and if you if you can dial it in um you know, you can get some some really great conversions uh for a lot cheaper than you can with facebook. Also in terms of, you know, I've talked about this a lot, but you know if you're selling office supplies, you know, facebook and instagram are visual platforms and to try to market, you know, printer paper on one of those would be pretty difficult unless you get creative and you know, do like a dollar shave club type video or or add, which you know, you you can get creative but most people have a pretty hard time with that. Um so welcome to the Adwords side on the Adwords side give us uh some of you know, some of the things like now that you've been digging into Edwards, what's I know you're a data guy, give me some of the data, give me some of the um you know, take a step back and from a uh kind of macro view like what are you learning uh in terms of google ads as it relates to amazon and e commerce. [00:03:53] spk_0: Yeah, first bigger picture in terms of what brand should do it or not or what amazon sellers should do it or not. You have to think about the differences between google and facebook and whether it's conceptually or strategically where google generally is more like a, not necessarily a warmer audience but more like search intent, buying intent and there's less things you can do on google compared to facebook, like facebook, it's all about creatives on google, you could say like yes, wording and copy is important what like how you're writing the ads but at the same time structure organization is more important because then you have to start testing and leveraging all the google, adwords, all of the settings, all of the options where that's almost more important, how you're targeting. So you kinda have to be like depends where you are organizations, are you good on operational stuff? Like maybe you'll have more chance of success in google because that's a big advantage there just because you can't do all of the stuff with images like yes, you can getting into like Youtube and display ads and all of that. But just generally search and tent while on facebook, there's just so much variety of who is working for, not where you have like these big spenders that are spending tens of thousands of dollars per day and facebook ads and sometimes it's like, like like three or five campaigns and for some it's like 50 campaigns. So there's like this big variability of making it work and it's all about like sometimes the creative, sometimes it's the targeting or the funnel. So you have to uh first like the bigger pick you see like do you need google or facebook? And even like more importantly, you know there's all these other channels In 2021. Do you need a diversification as a way to make others effective? Not as like a protecting your Amazon brand of diversifying, but it's more about can you make your final is more effective of diversifying for that reason. So now it's a different way why you need to think about trying other channels. So that's kind of like bigger picture before getting into numbers or tactics which you uh when I get into. [00:05:53] spk_1: Yeah, absolutely. There's ah there's definitely a lot in terms of, you know, people are scared away, you know, early on was, you know, facebook now people are very scared away with google and and things like that just because you know, if you're not an ad person, uh you know, diving into those dashboards can be really overwhelming. Same thing with BBC, right? People, that's like one of the biggest um pain points with so many people on amazon. Um So in terms of that um you know, are you, are you still working with clients or you just doing software stuff? Uh exclusively. [00:06:30] spk_0: Mostly software. And you think outside of software, it's got more into like custom development because I realized that through the software, there's so many brands that are doing different things, like half of the features I've been launching over the years, most brands don't use them, only a very small percentage do, and they like take it and run with it because it's like advanced. And then uh there's there's kind of like the part about you have a software and you have to make content and get case studies and like build it out for everybody to use it. But but for me, I'm like prioritizing, we're coming out with new features and then seeing like which brands are using the different features. So I realized that kind of have to do like the broader and deeper approach. Somehow, at the same time, it's like focus versus not focused. So it's been more uh Just like taking feedback from brands but building it where I just care about what that one brand wants because they've maximized a certain feature where like you know sometimes I have like nerdy videos about getting out about something for an hour and that's where 99 of the brands, they're like, you probably actually don't even need it because just focus on the simpler stuff, but some brands, they're like this is exactly what we figured out we want to do, so how can we automate that even more or scale it up even more? So it's gotten more into like this custom stuff where that leads to like, well that's more effort, engineering resources. So then it has to make me think on a different level where you know like uh $100 per month software subscription, like that's not gonna cover when there's so much time going for one brand. So it's making me think like what like a lot of these amazon brands there, they some of them are growing like two X sandwich is growing by 10%. So what are those differences? And a lot of times it's it's either like confidence in investing in more marketing or having better processes or it's some sort of partnerships whether it's on the marketing side or financial side. So it's been kind of like forcing me to like learn those areas that I don't know is how can I like build software and like not have the brand pay anything because I'm incentivized more on like their future benefit. And there's different ways of doing that, you know, like not necessarily like equity but different like partnerships of having a brand amplify. So I'm thinking from everything from a software perspective like how things can be scaled and automated originally starting out from a manual way of doing something uniquely and then from kind of like a business perspective more about how can the brand benefit just like a win win scenario where I can connect them with another brand or traffic asset or software feature that it's like a missing piece for them and it will help them grow more like Double as opposed to just a 10 increase because the 10 increase that's just like internal slow learning over time. That's going to happen naturally. [00:09:13] spk_2: How did you discover the opportunity to work with, you know, primarily amazon sellers and helping them bridge the gap of those external ads? Like how did you discover like, hey, this would be a really great business to get into. This is the best software to build for me. Um like how did that come about? Because it doesn't seem like it's a like a natural progression. It almost seems like it's more like okay, you should be doing this and you're not doing it and you know, almost like you you have to educate people on that. I know and and I always talk about external traffic and building out those external channels. Um but how did how did you get into this opportunity versus like maybe, you know, starting selling on amazon and discovering it that way? [00:10:09] spk_0: Yeah, well I like the answer would be more like when I started versus like now because these opportunities are always happening and you have to decide where you are of like what to focus on what to scale and it's two parts, there's like a business reason behind it and more like a mental or mindset reason where one you have to be ready for for a change. So originally it was doing marketing for a brand. This was for a hero clip. Like it was an internal problem where just like external marketing it was working but we were barely scaling it because of the tracking issue. So it was kind of like doing it for ourselves and like building the software is on the side. So that was more like my mental learning where like I figured out how to do it manually, we're using it inside the company it's working. But I need to like take my own risk. And I've just been part of a company where like all right, this is actually a software like it'll grow. So it's me taking the step of turning it into my own business over time relating that how now there's like more features and this has to do with interactions with amazon sellers. Like that's pretty much it it's like seeing a lot of data and talking with brand, just seeing different needs. And this is where some brands they like think like very like long term, some different short term, some are like the way they're applying different features and software. So like one from a business sense, it's making me think like which features does each brand made? So like one I always when I when I'm like, you know, there's days where like, all right, like what do I do not sure what you do? I always come back to write like for me, number one is like innovation. So let me just go to like thinking of innovate. Uh you know, there's like impact, I like impact, there's like all of these factors that decide. But for me, like Innovation number one. So I'm having like a confusing day or I'm like, not helpful or something like that. I'm like, alright, let me just think of a feature that's probably useless, but nobody has it. So let's see where it's going to go and it's always going that route. Let me come up with something that isn't out there and then as data comes in then I'll decide if it's actually useless or not or what brands are saying. So that's more from like a business standpoint where then some people start using it and then it kind of gains popularity. [00:12:09] spk_2: What would you say is the most, you know, the most common thing that you help sellers with? I think, you know, you have so much data in your brain and you have so much knowledge, but what do you think is the biggest benefit that your software offers in terms of impact to an amazon seller? [00:12:31] spk_0: Yeah, there's a number one direct, the number one indirect benefit one is just like from from Zahn Tracker feature, you see attribution. So you kind of see sales, you're you're able to attribute more the effect of your facebook ads and then there's like the G. O. Right software but that's still a lot of question marks there of how to use it, how different brands use it. But kind of talking about the attribution side, I'm just the direct effect of seeing the data and then the indirect effect is more important. This is it gives confidence for advertisers or media buyers amazon sellers to put more into their budget or to kill bad ads so you're saving budget and you're able to experiment more. So it's kind of like a confidence thing. We're like oh actually my roses a little better than I thought. So I'm okay going from $20 per day to $50 or $1,000 per day to just increasing it. So it's kind of where [00:13:23] spk_2: most of us are running facebook ads and we're like, I don't, I don't even know what that did or if it did anything. So what you're doing is allowing them to actually track if they're running facebook ads to their amazon listing, you're allowing them to actually track what is happening there and who's clicking? Where is that? Right? [00:13:45] spk_0: Uh sort of. Yeah. So it's, it's like, it's tracking that and it's essentially the purchase attribution. So regardless of what your funnel is looking like, if you're using it for Ranking campaigns or whatever is the hottest strategy of today, like using that, or just running traffic to your website and 12 of the traffic is going to school over to Amazon anyway from your website. So it's just tracking that and and and scaling it more like, right, that's the goal of a lot of the marketing or like all right, I need more ranking or more reviews are more sales or like whatever it is and almost everybody says well if it's working than my budget is limitless, right, I'll get more inventory, whatever, I'll scale it. So it's actually having that confidence and building it into your plan. Like your 30 day plan or however you're planning that actually like this is working. So now I need to scale this more and then this gets into like what I see differences between brands is well now I need to test another final or diversify the final because I have one that's like working. So now let me um you can think of it as diluting your resources but more about like diversifying where now that I'm getting sales or the ranking is working or it's like close to breathe like break even or whatever your thresholds are like now I can actually experiment more um think about more like long term ranking amazon effect where I don't need to like do a giveaway or 100% off or rebates or whatever because yes I need some of that to get some momentum going but because something is working and I'm trying to get even better now, I can try some of the strategies that are way harder to do maybe their content marketing related, but there are more long term so I can start having confidence, putting resources into that [00:15:23] spk_2: and I know Andy and I always get questions like what external traffic channels should I choose? You know that's one of the biggest questions that we get. Do I use google ads? Should I get on facebook, what should I do, Pinterest? What external traffic strategy should I use? What would you be your best piece of advice for a brand that's on amazon, Looking to kind of start getting off of amazon, start getting to that advertising going, is there a progression? Is there somewhere they should start? Is their strategy behind that? [00:15:56] spk_0: Absolutely. And this is where first you have to, you have, you need iterations where this is more dependent on the seller and your goal is like, do you wanna go like Have a big goal in reverse engineer, how to do that, reverse engineer that. For example, like I need to have $1 million $500 per day on Facebook ads. So that's kind of like top down or the other way we're like, all right, I'm gonna start with $20 per day, see the effect and increase it. So that's kind of like you have more or less confidence on you want to start more aggressively or less aggressively. And this may be decided by your product if you're like a very aggressive category or like you always have to go like uh like uh you don't worry about long tail keyword, you're just like I have to get to the top are not there. You may be more comfortable with a more aggressive strategy. And this is where you either go for the low hanging fruit. It's like set up, retargeting everything where it's kind of like the middle and bottom of the funnel conversion is making sure that like you're just getting extra sales from somewhere from, from any channel, like facebook ads because like targeting like it's working and it's like more visual. We're targeting ads work really well on on facebook is a great starting point and you're gonna get a low volume of sales, but it's working and then it's scalable as long as it's working first or the other way where like, you know, like most of my audiences on Pinterest, for whatever reason they're they're more than on facebook. And and so I reverse engineered the goal and I'm gonna commit spending $10,000 this month. So I can actually uh like have a goal where if experimentation is failing, it's not a failure because you're learning towards like that goal where you're expecting The 1st 25 of it to be lost in just learning and then it's going to optimize. So that's kind of like the thought, the thought behind it, like in 2021, this is, it's definitely different. I would focus on diversification a lot more for all kinds of reasons. So I would probably answer that differently than how I just did deciding where I'm more comfortable facebook ads because my experience, I would say started with facebook ads. Yes, it's like the most popular and there's a lot of people that can help with that, you can start with it. It's effective like the low hanging fruit. So facebook ads is a great way to start with. Would [00:18:13] spk_2: you say facebook ads always going through your own website first? Or would you say running? What, what kind of, what should that funnel looks like for facebook ads when someone is just getting started there just kind of taking, taking it off of amazon? [00:18:29] spk_0: Yeah, it's just starting. The most effective is to warmer audience and uh just kind of getting traction going because if you're starting up with cold audiences and regardless of where you're sending traffic, you're gonna need a lot of testing before anything works. So it's like mentally it's gonna suck if you do something that's not working, like alright, I'm done with facebook ads, so starting off with warmer audience and whatever that means. You know, if you're somehow pulling data from amazon which like, they don't like that you're like running out to that like yeah, it's gonna work a lot better. Um it's more risky but it's working and that's what a lot of brands do and that's kind of like low hanging fruit or you're starting off with cold audiences, but quickly some cold audiences become warmer right away and you're focusing the the ads on that, It's like who engage with the video, who engaged with your piece of content, your chatbots flow or they're clicking in and taking action so that you want to make sure you have follow up ads. That's like the easiest way that most brands aren't doing. Like beginners is from the amazon perspective is you have roads ads running at a second layer of retargeting or engaging of whoever engaged to some degree with the, with the first level of the ads. [00:19:44] spk_2: Retargeting is one of the biggest missed opportunities. A lot of people. It's the same with even PPC, you know, when you're not optimizing your PPC, it's the same thing. You're losing those potential opportunities for sales. [00:19:59] spk_0: So [00:20:00] spk_2: taking that cold audience or [00:20:01] spk_0: that we're [00:20:03] spk_2: warmed up audience and setting up those ads and then revisiting retargeting those ads now. Of the new people that you're working with. Are they running ads through their website with the pixel or are they going straight to amazon? What does that look like? Can they do either or both? [00:20:27] spk_0: Yeah. Most are still going directly to amazon from the facebook ad and it's still the most ineffective thing you can do it. What happens is that it always works initially because there's external traffic that amazon census. So it gives like this false hope, this like false positive signal to sell is like oh it's working. I actually had an increase in sales. I noticed that which it may not have been directly from the ad. It would it could have been from other data that amazon receives that. Oh there's traffic, there was like a two cards and engagement so let's boost the rank a little bit and the sale comes in and then the seller does that. It's like oh and it's the easiest thing, you just create an ad and directed to amazon. That's it. It's less work right when you Compared to having a landing page or a chat about kicking an email marketing off of Amazon. So like that's a lot more work and that's just way more effective. This is where I'm just like other presentations I've done where your conversion rates are just like 10-100 times higher when you're having some sort of funnel in the process that customer journey is extended before somebody goes to amazon and this is across industries, even in just like boarding products or like non like viral type of product that go viral or like impulse purchase. Like there's ways you can, the funnel isn't necessarily for the customer journey is for the facebook algorithm, you have to create that funnel for the facebook algorithm to favor you. And then the customer journey is that it's kind of like the conversion factor. So at first you have to do some things to increase your chance of success versus other facebook advertisers. And that's like where you're sending them, having a couple of extra steps in your chat flow or on your website. Even if it's like an amazon focus landing page builder, where it's like, yes, it's very simple, fairly automated building and like someone has taken an action that's already a warmer audience. Um That's kind of like helping the facebook algorithm were like, yes, there's engagement, we know who's doing something on the website or in the final taking steps while everybody else bounces. So like facebook knows like All right, good. That's like the bad audience that they weren't engaging on the, [00:22:31] spk_2: Well I hadn't even thought about it that way in terms, I guess if I put myself in the customer's shoes and I clicked on a facebook ad and it just took me straight to amazon, I'd be like, uh okay, okay, wait a minute. So where I know when I've clicked on the other ads, where it takes me at least to a landing page to give me a little bit more information or even into a chat bots and says something fun. It does warm me up a little bit more versus like I'll shop on amazon later, you know, like, yeah, I don't really need this right now. So and then not to mention, like you said on the side of the facebook algorithm, the facebook algorithms going okay, they're not just clicking the link and then we lose everything. We actually can give you more data because they went to this chap pot or they went to this landing page and now we can utilize that data to effectively retarget them to figure out where they fell out of the funnel or what happened or whether they converted. Um And so you have more steps to track and therefore your ads can become even more optimized and even more effective. Am I on track there? [00:23:35] spk_0: Yeah, exactly. Uh let me mention like a more advanced chip for whoever is on the call that's like already has experienced more advanced based on what you were saying and this is you were saying like, you know if you're like on facebook and you click in your an amazon right away, there are brands, these are the advanced ones that have figured that out and that's profitable and they're spending like tens of thousands of dollars per day on facebook ads. But you have to understand they spend so much money to get to the point of finding those ads that do that. And it's not always wicked thing where it's like all right, here's the product image going to amazon and that's it. There's a lot of psychological and customer journey stuff happening within the ad. Like process of seeing the ad and like clicking it and going to the amazon and buying like just that journey and that consistency and the social proof and the offer and then the plant and then the amazon product listing pages like perfect. There's so many things that are in there. You have to spend so much before you get to that point where amazon sellers that spend $100 or $1000 directly going to amazon like yeah I've had like no hundreds of clicks because you can get cheap cost per clicks and like not purchases like well that's actually very common. so like you just need to test a lot. So so the the advanced sellers but the advanced chip for that is retargeting on top of that will amplify that even more. And even the advanced amazon sellers that have figured out like aren't doing that. So you just start adding like segmenting out your campaigns where even with that engagement there's still like ways that you can build lookalike audiences and kind of get even warmer audiences based on like purchase values and the higher tiers of your audience and targeting to amplify that even more. So that's kinda like on the advance side to see from a beginner side like where you go. Is [00:25:18] spk_2: there is there a way to automate that with traffic? Sorry, with software, is that automated? Like you're always kind of focused on the software that you can build for that. Is there a way to automate that or is that more of a like No you need to really get into it and and figure it out. [00:25:37] spk_0: Yeah. That's fully automate herbal. It's more of you have to have the process first of setting it up so you know what that automation is and the automation is more on the facebook side it's knowing who is seeing the ad at what time frame. It's like seeing a certain at the first seven days testing like not a discount offer like a high quality audience type of opera where it could be just a testimonial is like the first or the second ad while most brands like show a discount right away. That's the ad that's shown seven days later. While first you're getting the warmer audience just from a testimonial or social proof type of ad or like a lifestyle type of ad. So like so you have to set those automation like who's saying what and you have to know what ad is shown when and testing the ads to know what that is working. So there's like process behind it. But once you figure out then it's just settings in facebook that like who is seeing what and then on top of that software automation, whether it's through is on track or using a combination of other tools of like getting your audiences into facebook and having that data feedback back to facebook just so technically it's like automated and then facebook does the actual like targeting and delivery of the ad of like showing the add to the right person at the right time that's like all automated by that you kinda have to get get to that. So let's start simple getting a conversion and then this is coming back, I'm like full circle the other way to the beginner. Is that first get a conversion going? Don't think about scaling get and the conversion means is like what is that customer journey for some brands you like? And he was saying like you might want to run ads to from google first to your website, that's like the hot uh the hottest keywords, something you know someone's gonna buy and then on facebook retargeting because the retargeting is probably going to be way cheaper on the facebook site. But the top of the funnel is going to start off much warmer from coming from google because somebody already type what they want. It's not just like, oh I have a facebook interest in dogs, which is like half of the people on facebook, so that's not that helpful. So you either like combined channels And it could be a very small small spend, right? Just like $10 here, $10 there. But it's the perfect combination of ads of this journey plus this journey. And the transaction happens after like the second touch point, not the first one, so like don't stop at the first one when it's like or being upset, like you can get the purchase and then you stop there and make sure that happens or it's on the ad side, we're like, all right, stick to lunch one platform, just facebook, adding like a cold audience type of ad and then the warmer audience at and then expect the conversions to be like at that second or third level because in most cases this is coming back to the data side that that I see that the return on ad spend Roses, like usually under one top of funnel for most brands, even the ones that are spending like $50,000 per day on Facebook ads, it's because they figured out the rest that it just brings up the average and they have a higher percentage of ads ad spend towards the middle and bottom funnel where like it maybe like 40 of the ad spend like 40-30%. So that row as that's like barely break even depending are you thinking of like one point or you know, after colleagues like your break even is like 1.5 or whatever that may be, is that the retargeting is when it's profitable and the conversion happens and the top of funnel is what's scalable or not because that's like cold audience, you can add more interest, just more creatives, test more stuff, but it has to convert on the middle and bottom funnel. So for beginners, just think about like just customer centric perspective of just one person seeing the perfect like add and then the follow up ad and and the offer but don't think of the offer always as a discount like the offer maybe ah just making the micro commitment so it's not necessarily Biggest discount of one unit. The offer maybe like more units at you know at a discount. So the offer I mean this is this has to be tested for different categories more or than the offers is just um other things that you have complimentary um You know just like e books, just a simple example like may or may not work probably won't work in most cases because it's so overdone. But other examples of just different offers that will work from like straight up like initial ad. [00:30:02] spk_1: Thanks for tuning in to part one of this episode, join us every Tuesday at one PM, pacific standard time for live Q and A. And bonus content after the recording [00:30:11] spk_0: at cellar round Table [00:30:12] spk_1: dot com, sponsored by the ultimate software tool [00:30:15] spk_0: for amazon sales [00:30:16] spk_1: and growth seller [00:30:17] spk_0: s c o dot com and [00:30:19] spk_1: Amazing at home dot com.