Five Steps For Successful Amazon Branding

welcome to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson a show that brings you regular interviews tips and tools for
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[Music]
hi and welcome to the ecommerce podcast with me your host matt edmondson all of this week's notes and links can
be found at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash and trust me you are going to want
them this week oh yes you are because this week we get to hear from andrew morgan's
about the five steps for successful amazon branding that he personally uses
to drive insane levels of growth on amazon so don't go anywhere
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thanks for joining us on the e-commerce podcast it is great that you are here now whether you are just starting out or
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help us start and adapt and grow online and today is no exception uh my
conversation with andrew morgans about his five steps for successful amazon branding and how you can make sure your
products are easy to find on amazon so let me tell you why you want to
listen to what drew has to say uh he is a thought leader in the amazon
branding space he is an entrepreneur with years of experience scaling brands
on amazon and if that's not enough he is also a resident mentor at umkc's
rayner institute for entrepreneurship and innovation and guest lectures at the
henry w block school of management that is a mouthful yes it is
and when he's not busy being a business and amazon genius andrew can be found on his weekly
podcast called the startup hustle let me tell you that podcast is a great podcast
and you should definitely listen to it and i'm not just saying that because i was a guest on there recently but that
has definitely maybe colored my judgment no hasn't uh in spite of me being on it should i say it's a great podcast so do
check it out uh you can also catch drew speaking at e-commerce branding and
amazon conferences and events around the us and when it comes to amazon let me tell you he is worth listening to
so let's jump in here's my fantastic conversation with drew morgan's
Interview with Drew Morgan
so drew thanks for being on the show great to have you uh welcome uh to the
ecommerce podcast thanks for having me i'm excited to be here ah it's great now we've had a
conversation before we've had a sort of a as if you're a regular listener to the show you will know we do these sort of
pre-call type things where we we run through our whole things and i really enjoyed our conversation i've i have
been really looking forward to this uh chat as we talk about all things to do with
amazon because you know uh we've had on the show some friends who some mutual friends jared
mitchell has been on the show he was the one who's waxed lyrical about you about all things amazon so you came very
highly recommended to us how did you get in this whole amazon game and why has jared made you like the
go-to expert for this whole topic well me and jerry connected years and
years and years ago um i found this you know i was someone that grew up abroad um just was always trying
to find chase and freedom uh chasing like something that i was passionate about i
i made a good employee as long as i had jobs that made sense uh if they had me doing stuff that didn't make sense i wasn't the best
employee um you know just always giving well i
found e-commerce i went to school for computer science got out of school and took a chance at a
startup um that startup was putting car parts online way before car parts were online
so we were contacting manufacturers we were bringing product over from china eventually tonal covers and trailer
hitches and trailer lights and um was comboing things for him for ebay and uh
i just really like i had been trying all these different things i grew up being kind of a techie building computers
um i'm only but i feel like my dad had me on computers when i was like six
so you know the early days of computers i was tinkering and um always confident around computers so it
was you know i find i went to school found e-commerce when it was kind of really just getting its legs
and um just loved it it was the perfect mixture of marketing and technology and that's
you know it's the name for my company marknology i just combined the words but really do believe that that it's um
technical and creative and that's a fun spot for me so i just i really leaned into that and um i was coming up with
creative ways to be to be competitors with pricing whether that was like negotiating shipping rates
or it was comboing items to you know make the shipping fall off the second and third or fourth or fifth item that
might go on a trailer package and um just finding creative ways to sail and i love that i could make a change and
within or minutes could potentially see a sale or something happen like that and that was just
that was intoxicating to me so um i the startup put me in charge of ebay and
amazon we grew sales by a million next company i went to was a step up e-commerce manager kind of an official
position same thing put me in charge of amazon we saw sales grow i was focusing on some of the stuff
we're talking about today uh branding graphics photos copy advertising um and ultimately from inside a company
as e-commerce manager you know two or three hundred people company eight retail stores four
brands i just saw what uh what really needed to be done on the amazon marketplace what you know what a company
with four brands needed to you know what hurdles they needed to get over in order to be successful um i saw
that there wasn't anyone doing it and looked to solve it and so you know i met jared on uh
elance i think maybe years ago nine years ago i don't know
um i actually got top in the world on elance in the marketing category and
then elance was bought by upwork um and that was really like you know how i just met a lot of the early clients that
i was working with was was through that platform but humbly so yeah i would just say i would say you
know a top ten in the world but let me just say i was it was a general marketing category e-commerce had didn't
have all these niches and it was a digital marketing category and i was the only us based
service provider helping helping people on amazon i actually was helping jared with affiliate marketing before i
started helping him with amazon um yeah i was just looking for a side hustle on elance and upwork and it
turned into what it is today isn't that interesting how um how these how these things sort of start
and and sort of how they evolve and i remember the days of elance and you know and and and you you would you would go
and you'd find people literally all i mean people still do you have all these sites like now fiverr and stuff like that
um but i i thought it was a really it was a fascinating time i thought in the industry trying to mean and it's it's
it's cool that you kind of you kind of got into that you've met a few clients you've kept in relationship with them
and and that's what sort of kick-started it so have you been doing amazon then
for what it sounds like over years right yes sir wow wow and what are some of the key i
Amazon has changed in the last years
mean obviously amazon has changed in the last years um and i you know it
it feels to me like and correct me if i'm wrong here drew but it feels like
if i was going to start selling product on amazon it would be a much more complex place to sell product now than
it was years ago just like the web was you know is now a lot more complex
just in some respects it's a lot easier but in a lot of respects it's a lot more complex isn't it would that be fair to
say for amazon is is it has is that one of the key things that has changed yeah it's changed so much um honestly in
the last years and that's what my company looks to solve for is to help brands
navigate that to help brands that maybe were selling eight years ago five years ago and don't know how to do it anymore
or can't keep up they don't have staff or a team that's constantly learning all the changes and things like that you
know um it's not that it's rocket science to sell on any of these platforms but you know when you really
think about the industry amazon brought trust to e-commerce they brought two-day shipping and no hassle
returns and you know a lot of things like that that that websites people were still you know anxious about had caution about
buying sometimes you'd wait a month to get something um they did that for us you know amazon also
they went to all the big manufacturers and kind of put those products online so even if those those manufacturers didn't
have websites they were now online technically through amazon that was in the early days years ago you know it
was a human reaching out to a big brand and making an agreement to purchase items and then they were putting it on amazon well fast forward five years and
you know you have seller central release and advertising on seller central and amazon's pushing some of those big
brands that had made those retail relationships to um start handling amazon themselves
start handling that catalog themselves they were outsourcing think of it like self-checkout you know
at the grocery store and amazon was like we're gonna let you sell here but we want you to figure it out yourself um whether it was the branding whether
it was protecting the brand whether it was advertising the fulfillment methods um all of it
amazon you know first they bought trust by taking huge losses and fulfillment
massive massive losses of people people trace it back um but they were winning over customer trust
with that okay and so then they got to a point where they didn't want to lose money anymore with fulfillment um they
started pushing that back to p like i mentioned or seller central um started spending their money to invest
internationally uh and started pushing those international markets if amazon's gonna take a loss it's there now instead of in
their home ground yeah um and this just created a challenge for sellers you know there was in the early
days there were the retailers that were just sending their catalogs and excel files to amazon amazon was putting product up then there
was the in-between people that were first there was no products on amazon in a lot of categories so people could just
fill those categories with product and win essentially just by putting kind of blanket products up uh and then from
there private labels started coming over from china so people would go to alibaba and source products they started
competing with the manufacturers the big ones because the big manufacturers weren't optimizing for the catalog they
were just putting product up well the private label guys were hungry private label guys girls were hungry and so they
were optimizing their listings you know right graphics photos reviews seo doing all the little things that mattered and
then you had these in between people that were not amazon but were making relationships with with uh manufacturers or
distributors and saying hey you guys don't have the manpower to figure out amazon but i can make this a big sales channel for you and so you had people
with a lot of different motivations that aren't the brand necessarily leveraging and selling the products on
amazon i was i was in that group i was putting car parts up online these car parts didn't even have descriptions they
were they were number files in an excel sheet somewhere right in a product list so
um now i'm in the business of going back and cleaning up the branding and product
descriptions and the catalog for all these companies now that we're retroactively going and now that the brands are are taking um account not
necessarily accountability but taking ownership of their products and their brand and the way it's presented on amazon it's not going anywhere and i've
decided how do i make this part of my e-commerce uh you know some people are just wanting
to get rid of the word e-commerce altogether they think it's kind of antiquated and
um just calling it commerce again because you know the way that things really work
and sell them flow now is a mixture of all of the channels and how they all work together so i'm
not ready to take that on just yet but you know i understand the thinking there and you know that was kind of really the
evolution i just i seen an opportunity much like you know i think part of the reason the
amazon space has been the wild west and slower to develop than some of the other areas is that the best digital marketers
were already experts at digital marketing uh when it came to web and um you know google ppc and things like that
so why would they go they didn't have the need to go take on a new challenge like the marketplace like i did yeah i
could either come in and try to compete with the experts in digital marketing and e-commerce because i was passionate about that or i could see a huge new
emerging marketplace and sink my teeth in that and so that was kind of you know my thinking
wow but it's fascinating isn't it and um
this there's a lot there drew i'm not gonna lie i'm kind of listening to you talk and watching you drink your your
coffee obviously and it's there's there's a lot going on so if i
was if i was um uh starting out an e-commerce now you know when we're we're in the pub because
it's what we do in england we go you know you all go go to starbucks and have a coffee either way uh and we're just sort of
Would you recommend Amazon
shooting the breeze would you would you recommend hey listen if you're doing online stuff
that's great you really need to think about amazon or are there some businesses that it's been perhaps not
suitable for i think yes i'm definitely not a black and white type of person i live in the
gray i exist in the grave create a business in the gray and i've i've learned business on the fly so what i
have learned is that there's a million different models to making money and uh you know it used to be more black and
white where if you're selling a certain way and i didn't believe in that i would definitely try to stir you in the direction you know steer you in the
direction i thought was more advantageous um but that was because i was trying to act in your best interest
truly you know as your consultant or your brain manager um now i'm not so sure i don't believe that so much um
there's a lot of different ways to sell so you know there's some categories that are super competitive um you know you're
calling alright we're speaking from across the ocean what might be popular
or difficult in the us might be easier in in the uk or germany or france or
spain so i would take it play by play for sure and i would say you know to the guy in the pub what are we selling and
you know how big is your goals and what are your expectations and you know for a lot of people amazon now is a
uh you know a way to test the market let's take a product to amazon where it already has massive amount of customers
if we can't get visibility and sales and positive reviews here there's no need to invest in all this other infrastructure
you know so a lot of people are still seeing amazon like that um you know it really comes down to even if
the category is tough there still could be an opportunity on amazon simply for brand protection or
for you know capturing uh your customers that are already there even if you're not trying to take some of that that
market share or simply what kind of firepower do you have so do you have a huge off amazon presence
uh you know do you have a big website do you have good social media following these are all things that can kind of change my my recommendations at the time
that's really interesting so it's not actually straightforward it's not actually black and white there are there
are these sort of nuances to think about um with amazon which i think is quite
interesting so what are some of the things that i maybe should think about then as a business owner if i'm looking
to think about amazon in if i'm looking to think about building my brand
i mean it is a i mean we could get into all kinds of things ethics aside is probably the best
thing to see you know i mean there are ethics a lot of ethical questions around amazon which i get
i don't think that's the purpose of what the today show is let's assume that we we've dealt with those and we're happy
i'm just kind of thinking one in two transactions is probably done on amazon certainly in the states uk i'm
imagining it's that sort of statistic now and the way they've got distribution sewn up
in the uk is just unbelievable you know i can order something on amazon and it will be here in three hours i mean the
uk is a tiny island so it's possible to do things like that i suppose but it's still remarkable so what are some of the things that
What should I be thinking about
maybe i should i should be thinking about well keep in mind everyone that's
listening um you know ethically i've been helping tons of small
businesses way before i ever you know escalated to larger brands in my career
helping small kansas city brands or small u.s brands get international exposure at times so you know any
marketplace any new emerging technology is going to have its flaws and its downsides its cons so to speak
but there's also amazing things happening for small brands for um for all kinds of sellers it's it's truly
amazon selling there yes but just like any other marketplace it's free trade um
yeah have changed lives on this platform so for me i still think of it very positively just like anything social social media
can be full of fear and anxiety and comparison or it can be uplifting and inspiring and
motivating you know it's how you use it's how you use it and so yeah you know what i would say to that brand is let's
say hypothetically this brand already exists meaning they are in brick and mortar but they're not on amazon that's just
like an easier scenario to think about um let's let's start with seeing if you're on amazon do you have resellers or
distributors or anyone have they already created your product and put it up on amazon if so we're going to look at that
and see what the quality is you know another thing to do when i say quality i mean what do the pictures look like what
is the you know do you have all the bullet points does it look the same as on your website as it does on amazon is there a huge drop off if you don't know
probably not but we're going to check for that and just see what's going on um you know the other thing is
uh what are our competitors doing so do you have active competitors is this an invention or is this you know something
we have active competitors if you're already in brick or mortar i assume you do um what are they doing on the on the marketplace what's the potential
um at the same time i've launched plenty of brands and products into categories that didn't
have a front runner didn't have a competitor and we became that that front runner because we were first so you know these
are the kind of evolution of things i would start checking almost just like an audit let's see where you're at let's see where you're going um like one of
your brands you know we talked about that on a call maybe a month ago did some research and there's some
there's some demand for it already on amazon uh people searching for it you know so that that's part of the research
that i would do initially to say hey what's the opportunity here what's the market you know we have software right now that will tell you this is what your
competitors are doing this is when they launch new product this is um you know their average sale price is their
average review count this is how much that market category has grown in the last year in the last two years so we
can get some intelligence even at this early stage in the game for what the opportunity is
from there the opportunity of the marketplace changes to what's the opportunity within the brand and the
relationship between us and the brand and so i'm looking for you know what's your what's your marketing budget you know for
advertising you have to spend you have to pay to play on amazon it's how you get data it's how you find rank um
but all those things being said even if you're not trying to grow to have a million dollar account or you just you have a brand that's in
brick and mortar you want to dabble into amazon because i think that's okay to step one foot in
and figure things out is i think brand protection and making sure that your brand
is on point is one of the number one things to do whether you plan on making it a viable channel whether you plan on
selling to resellers or distributors whether you plan on selling yourself and stocking your products
all those things um you know there's plenty of brands that they're not selling direct and we just manage their brand on amazon and so
you're like well what is what does manage the brand mean um and to me that's if someone's on your listings on amazon
do they feel just like the brand as if they they came in contact with it in brick and mortar they came in contact
with it on the website or social media that's really that feeling of of um
uniformity between the brand or cohesiveness i guess is a better word between the brand is really what we're looking for
that's really interesting that you talk about that i mean i remember um with one of our e-commerce businesses
we would buy very well-known brands we would sell them on our website but part of the
Brand control
terms and conditions that that brand would have for being able to sell their products was that i would sign a piece
of paper saying that i would not sell them on sites like amazon or ebay
um because they felt like they couldn't control the brand well enough on those
sites did you see what i mean and it was that whole kind of uh that whole kind of thing we don't
want to be seen on that we if you want to sell it on your website you have to have these colors you have
to have genuine they were they were really specific like you have to use this logo and so on and so forth and
um i guess one of the changes i've noticed in amazon over the last few years is more and more i i see amazon's
not totally customizable but i see it it it is a bit more customizable than it
used to be right and so you it it feels like maybe brand control is a little bit easier on amazon than it
used to be would that be a fair reflection yes i wouldn't say necessarily easier so much as possible
Mindset shift
and i would say in the early days in the early days there wasn't enough thought leaders um
speaking to those brands that were afraid to put their product on amazon because they didn't know how to control
it you know now i can give you you know the instruction manual on how to control your brand um and that's why i started
my business and i'm not trying to you know make this a sales pitch by any means but my point just being
i was passionate about people saying one thing and being wrong and let me show you how you can how you're wrong or not
necessarily how you're wrong but how we can solve that problem that you have or that fear that you're facing and let me
show you some solution possible solutions for that um because if we turn this negative marketplace around
for you it can be a huge huge opportunity and for many brands that were only in brick and mortar that we
helped you know in the pandemic it was a lifeline to be to being on amazon um and
save to save their business you know lots of businesses so um it's really that perspective shift which like you
didn't get me started on mindset just because you know you don't understand how many um
business owners through the last years i've spoken with that were afraid of something they didn't understand
you know and afraid of changing and evolving um and i just looked to solve those one by one you know whether that
was i understand i need to understand the problems first to be able to come up with the solutions for a lot of these
brands but um you know things like things like uh
reseller agreements like the brand you're talking about has which are strong reseller agreements that um
i'll make it so that there's not people selling on amazon the same product and all of them have control of the photos and copy and how do we get it
where we have brand control how do we get it where our brand is registered with amazon we have some rights so to speak with with
what happens there those were things i was looking to solve map pricing you know i've saved uh some
distributors probably companies uh in regards to you know they had distributors in the uk uh or in europe
that were selling in the us and they couldn't control map pricing because amazon has issues around map pricing depending on how what what type you're
selling um and helping them solve for that enough to just you know keep their business like those kinds of things um
are the problems we solve every day yeah uh fascinating absolutely fascinating well drew listen uh stay
where you are we're just going to take a few seconds to thank this week's show sponsors and then i'll be back with just
a few minutes where we're going to get into these five steps for successful amazon branding don't go anywhere are
Sponsor
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[Music] so i'm back with drew we are talking about the five steps for successful
Step Brand Registry
amazon branding so let's jump into that whole section drew where do we start if i want to be successful
on amazon with my brand i want to grow it out where do i start so really you start with something
called brand registry on amazon and the way that you obtain brand registry
is by submitting documents to amazon saying hey this is my brand um i have a
trademark for it which kind of creates legitimacy uh in amazon's mind and if you have a trademark you submit the
paperwork you you can get something called brand registry brand registry can be its solo identity or it can be
attached to an account um and really that's step one which is to get brand registry for an account so
let's say you know if you're an existing seller that's been selling in brick and mortar for years or have built you know
a bigger brand like that when coming to amazon typically they have trademarks already in place um
but for newer sellers or newer brands that are just trying to get their their start um
you might want to consider a trademark even from the beginning and a lot of people think trademark they immediately go to okay uspto your united states
patent and trademark office i think is that uh abbreviation um
but it's not just about protecting people copying your images or people like you know taking your products it's
it's the ability to tell amazon that you're a legitimate brand and that you want access to all of their branding um
tools that they have so you know we can get into that but you know there's it went from nine months to
obtain a trademark here in the us when i started to now you can get one for less than eight hundred dollars in two
weeks uh through through an amazon program um so because they actually have a program
to help you do that correct well okay pretty cool um
you know it's something to think about if you're launching a brand but especially if you have an invention or a product that really needs some
storytelling to get people to understand what it is you're going to need those assets no matter what because you need that extra
space on the page you need the ability to add video things like that um so yeah i would say consider a trademark if
you're a new brand or you're starting with brand registry as step one if you're an existing brand with a trademark
that's really interesting so i i what you said there which i thought was quite interesting is by being a
trademark obviously we all understand the benefits of trademarks and you know protecting your product but you made
this comment about it tells amazon you're a serious sort of company so i mean you're you're
a serious brand um so what does that afford to you by doing that i mean why
Amazon Branding Tools
do amazon treat you differently what sort of what extra do they give you i guess is my question
yeah so it's evolved over time but it used to be something that was only given to p or these retail vendor central
sellers so if you were selling to amazon direct you got access to these branding tools if you weren't sorry
and they've just changed that over the years first it was brand registry one now it's brand registry
and they give you tools like being able to add video they give you tools like within advertising a few different ad
types that aren't available unless you have brand registry more more at the top of the page and some of the ones that
can have graphics um there's something called an a plus page on amazon which if
you've ever been buying on amazon you see the kind of the great images on the left you see the price the
description or bullet points you scroll down you start if you start seeing like a almost like a magazine page or a
really beautiful infographic type of page that's called an a plus page um
and that's huge it can it can impr increase conversion rates anywhere from five to fifteen percent on a page if you're doing it right it's also one of
the only areas you can cross-sell so as a brand with multiple products on that a plus page you can kind of list your
other products in the family and and get someone to jump between your products instead of jumping to a competitor's
products or something like that or getting back to the search bar and starting all over so some huge opportunities for brands there
you can also use brand registry to protect the brand submit violations uh report competitors uh
any number of things like that you're gonna reach out to the brand registry team that would step in so it's a mixture of marketing tools and and
branding tools um all the way to brand protection like being able to submit a case against a
violator or something like that wow okay so i i get your point it's worth doing
right now yeah yeah absolutely so okay so i've gone to uh the brand registry i've
registered my brand um i've got that i've got that all sorted out uh where where do i go to next
okay so think of amazon like a different channel than you've ever sold on and try to have
the perspective of just an open mind to say okay i'm not going to try to be as cheap as possible let's remove price
from the thinking as a seller and just think about it sorry just to riff off that a little bit that's a really
interesting point because one of the things that um i don't know if it's the same in the states but certainly in the uk one of
the things that the british people have in their heads over the years associated with amazon is amazon will be the
cheapest now i don't believe that it is when you do comparison but there is this belief that amazon is
quick and cheap and what you said there is it sort of flies in the face of that a
little bit do you know i mean and i i'm curious as to why you i'm sorry i was just riffing off what
The European Market
you said i'm curious now why why why you said that so i want to answer that in two ways one is because the european
market is behind the u.s market on amazon and so right now what you have is a bunch of the wholesalers and
distributors selling on amazon versus the brands and manufacturers selling and controlling it themselves so you have
the distributors just like the distributors are just competing with other distributors if that makes sense there might be five
or six in in europe they're selling the same things they're putting the price up on amazon and the only thing that they
can control because they're not the brand of manufacturer is the price and so it becomes a price war uh in the in
the fast is just because that's amazon's fulfillment system but what has yet to happen is for brands to come to the
european marketplace in a big way and start creating product and branding and storytelling that will sell the product
regardless of price so what happens you know i so i can say that um
you know we've worked with plus brands since i've started which is a lot um i've seen a little bit of everything
and and i've i've have multiple number one bestsellers on amazon that are double the competition's price um after
years of selling it's not just like a one time grabbed it and then lost it no it's we maintain the number one position
with higher priced items um i personally am an advocate of of
selling higher priced items um you just have to do a much better job of branding and storytelling so the guys that don't
know how to do branding and storytelling resort to just lowering price and putting product up and they're just
moving tons of volume because they don't understand the branding and storytelling and conversion game if you understand
that game you can actually level up to the next level charge more price make more margin
but you have to do a better job of speaking to the customers and so it requires a different level of expertise
than simply putting it on amazon um does that make sense yeah it does
The Future of the European Market
totally i'm curious to know then do you think that the european market will become
like the us market where it will stop being distributors sort of fighting each other on a brand
on a price differentium differentiation basis and it will be more the main
guys and manufacturers doing direct consumer sales they will start to do amazon better they'll start to do their
brand better on amazon and then they'll sell direct at a higher price do you do you think that's where it will go i really do um
i've just seen it you know the private label guys they've done their best they've created graphics they've got you know they've
got they've got uh products commodities they're selling creating brand is difficult um so that's where they're
looking for help they figured it out basically to here and now they're like okay now these big manufacturers and brands are coming in with actual stories
and actual branding uh what are we gonna do okay let's expand internationally uh so
the you know the brands that don't have super strong branding are now looking to expand internationally and take over those marketplaces um i've seen it
happen in the us already i just uh i can only fix so many catalogs at the same time
so uh you know it's um a lot of the us brands though that are now getting their their self set up on the us in a strong
way and understanding the value of it um that's what takes time is them understanding the power and the it's
something they have to learn um and then i think the european manufacturers will
adjust as well right now they want to sell in the us market because it's it's a bigger marketplace and their product's not there but once it's there they're
gonna they're gonna understand hey it's gonna make sense to sell to our to our own market as well um our own customers
and i think they'll start paying attention um you know there's a lot lower cost of
acquisition in your own market than there is to go into a new one and that's something to be said um i've worked with
a lot of canadian brands and manufacturers um and they're always looking to the us i typically convince
them to sell in canada as well since we're at it and um you know it's usually a big opportunity for us
yeah that's really interesting very good okay so i've got my trademark i'm not selling at a cheap price um okay we're
The Value of Great Content
back to three i need to jump in here because what i what i wanted to say was you know i wish that i had learned the
value of of great content uh before um i did it took me a long time i think
it was a little bit of an insecurity as a consultant as well to track down great
graphic designers great photographers convince brands to spend money on there when they're just not you know convinced
on the platform in general um you know brands put put photos up on amazon
like it's the same as their website or the same as their catalog whatever else they're doing and it's simply not it's
like uh it's just you're playing the wrong game uh and it's you know it's essentially
you're filling some gaps in some white space on the listing but you're not doing anything worthwhile and so there
really is this storytelling aspect to amazon that is available and i think because amazon
didn't give us the tools at the beginning we had to be very creative with the way that we did this and now the tools are coming about it's uh
it's it's easier and more accessible and we're taking the same things we learned the hard way and putting them into play
you know now that it's more customizable um but it's simple things like
brands will have amazing like social media content or lifestyle images and be like these photos are beautiful let's
put them up on amazon and if the photo you know a lot of a lot of searches happen on the mobile device
people aren't reading the content even if the search algorithm is and they're saying what are these photos
telling me and if the photo is not in one word in one sentence and one read telling you exactly what the customer
needs to get out of that photo it's not doing its job and so many times brands have these beautiful lifestyle photos or
different versions of the box pictures of the box uh you know and it's not calling out any value it's not
calling out any of the value in the products it's not calling out our main keywords our main call to actions you know so
it's a matter of taking that brand guide like you were talking about whenever you're selling on
your website from those brands saying okay this is the look and feel of this brand whether it's your own or whether it's one you're selling and you've been
giving stewardship of it um and you're saying okay how do i get this
this amazon page to reflect the same feeling as their website or their social content and maybe that doesn't exist at
all but let's say that it does trying to create cohesiveness um you're trying to cross-sell your products um you're
trying to make it where if someone just reads the copy they will buy if they just read the if they just look at the photos they'll buy
um if they just read the reviews they'll buy and you're looking at all these different areas um and trying to solve for them you know
branding can also be branding can also be responding the reviews or um you know
responding with uh to customers concerns about products and questions and answers and and being a responsive brand as well
if you're responsive in person if customer service is at the top of your list as a brand and you don't have any
customer service or personal touch on amazon you're dropping the ball right there's a there's a misconnect so i'll
pause there there's so many things you can do but really it's um thinking about amazon as its own channel investing in it enough to say
hey i'm if i'm gonna do this channel i'm gonna sell on this channel i'm gonna do it the right way uh and not
cut corners um i think you'll give yourself the highest chance of success and your brand will also look amazing
along the way you know so whether you're exiting whether whatever it's all part of it yeah yeah no and i i
The Marketology Effect
i get that and i guess the question that that's in my head drew at the moment is
does typically speaking um the the brand look and feel i nee it
needs to sort of look and feel the same on amazon as it does on my website um but do i
is it is it often the case that actually the messaging on amazon needs to be tailored for amazon or
if i've got can i use the messaging that's already on my website you see what i mean is there you treated like as a separate
marketplace a separate channel does that mean it's a slightly different language a slightly different way of presenting
information a slightly different way of telling the story and so it's not a case of copy and paste
really i need to think about it in a slightly different way correct i would say you're right it's a
slight it's slight differences like i'm not reinventing the will in regards to our amazon methodology for selling uh we
call it the marketology effect it's really just a little tweaks the little subtle differences between traditional
website seo or social media content versus like what amazon's giving us amazon has released
amazon posts it's very similar to instagram right now it puts free posts on your listings you get tons of free
traffic right now it's not pay to play very similar to instagram so there's like small tweaks like that um but think
of it like this you know if you're on if you're on um let's say an apparel company apparel
store okay you're on their website you're browsing you typed in i like a streetwear brand in new york called kith
okay so you're on kit.com you know you're on kit.com because i clicked on kit.com or
i searched it or i'm there i'm on their website if i go to a jacket um
you know i'm looking through men's collections new arrivals bestsellers men's uh
men's button ups maybe you know that category like that i click on it i'm looking through the options i click on the black jacket
stay with me i click on the black jacket and the description is going to be black jacket comes in extra small
through double xl uh insulated for warmth uh button up you know buttons up the front uh draw string
around the hood you know those are like that's the content on the listing maybe you have a video of a guy twirling in it
or something you know like view of the product um yeah you have similar products related
to this item none of those none of that content there for example like the seo
or the descriptors or anything that a customer on amazon would search
okay so kit might not be the best example but essentially no one's typing in drawstring closure around the hood or no
one's typing in front button blazer uh you know like front button zips um
so you're really thinking like how is the customer searching the men's the customer is probably searching men's black blazer or men's button up black
blazer and so if you just took that copy that was on the website and put it on amazon it would never match up with someone's
search unless they typed in kith yeah okay so you can capture your branded searches by making sure like
your brand name is in your titles and capturing like that but if you want to grab new customers which is the point of
being on amazon you have to optimize your copy for a search algorithm like like uh like
on amazon you're sent you're essentially lined up with everyone else these search terms are what pull you out the
difference and so that's a subtle example it's a silly example but it's a subtle example of just like
on a website you're assuming that this is all kit and you don't need to be told that it's kit because you're there
versus on amazon you're trying to find it out of a massive catalog um and what what are you searching
very good so number three was then focus on creating great content and um we've
talked a little bit about that what would be uh number four what's the the next sort of step we need to think
Packaging
about yeah so that that one would be packaging um you know think of it like
and there's always somewhere to start so if you're a new seller listening to this and just trying to develop a product and sell it on amazon put it in a plastic
bag put it in a brown box selling is better than perfection by any means but we're talking about branding today so
we're gonna you know we're gonna stick to that i guess what i'm saying is anything that gets the job done is better than not selling by you know by
far but if but thinking about packaging like um you know we were at the mall as kids
and and you would have somebody to have the doc martens bag or someone that has american eagle or um whatever it might
be carrying that bag around in the store why do the brand spend money on on a big branded bag like that well you're you're
advertising to all the other shoppers there that you went in that store and bought something right um and i think that
sellers and brands can think about that too with their customers and their packaging um
so you know two things to say here one would be the unboxing is huge so what is that
experience that the customer gets even if they open an amazon box and your package is inside there
how do they feel about it this is all everything we're talking about branding is about trust trust and as a brand
you're trying to get it and maintain it and grow it and so you know if if i receive an item in a great box or great
packaging i immediately feel better about my purchase i feel like the brand took enough time to make this package or
this box like unique and clever and on brand they probably also took as much time on the product itself because this
is the last area that often times gets attention so it's it's definitely a subconscious feeling and it really
matters another thing is you know i'm buying brands myself right now that were made
for amazon you know from private label sellers or different things like that and bringing packaging and and some
tweaks and adjustments like that to the brand that i'm purchasing so you know how can we make it where this
product sure it's great for amazon but could it also be on a retail shelf well as it is no but let's get it ready to be
on a retail shelf um even if we're just selling on amazon so those are some of the things we're doing packaging is is
huge also includes ways to like upsell your other products and your newest releases and some of your other products and get
them to add you on social media you know your your packaging is a way to um get
shared and get influenced and kind of do that digital word of mouth thing that we love um yeah so i would say number four pay
attention to your packaging um we talked about the looks and aesthetics of it because that's what comes to mind but
also you know optimizing for size and weight and dimensions can can make massive
profitability changes for you on amazon that's right and one of the things in the in the back
of my head as i'm listening to you talking and by the way i agree with everything that you said whether you're doing amazon or an e-commerce business
how you ship that product is is remarkably important you know and how the customer feels when they open the
parcel remarkably important one other thing and this may not be may
it may be an inaccurate assumption okay so correct me if i'm wrong but if i sell a product on amazon
um in effect i'm selling to amazon's customer that is amazon's data that i'm not getting that email address i'm not
getting that customer information amazon keep and retain their customer data okay
um and so part of the question in my head with amazon has always been how do i
how do i encourage people to sort of connect with me as the brand um
you know me as the the seller of that product on amazon because obviously it's great that i've sold the product but i i
want to somehow start doing you know traditional marketing i want to engage in a relationship with that person if i can
um and it's just as straight as you're talking in my head i ca you know
i'm seeing that seems that could happen with your packaging you know you're encouraging people to connect via social
media to connect via your website and that's one way to draw people into
you as as a brand would that be a fair comment yes sir um you're right on and you know
there's a lot of strategies i get excited thinking about how to pull those things in because you know i've just been uh been out here blazing the way so
to speak in regards to like solving for some of these things and some of them were just problems and now we've come up with solutions and other ones are you
just you get to be super creative in the way you do these things especially all within amazon's terms of service at the
same time you know so it can be entered to win um you know new products coming out with an
insert in a box it could be something on the box that's a qr code or that brings them straight to your social media or
let's say you're selling pet products tag your pet and get a you know free -day supply or um there's so many
different ways you can get customers to engage you know follow-up emails mailers afterwards what i would say
about amazon's data is that um
we can think about what we can't get from amazon or we can think about what we can get
okay i like how you reframe that yeah and i think that's that's something that a lot of brands and manufacturers
need to think about sure you can't get everything that you can get on a shopify website but there's still a whole lot of
information we can get and so you know advertising is a massive way to get data
on advert on amazon um through advertising we can find out what our customers are searching the
exact thing that they're looking for in a retail store you can't get that they come in they look around the whole store maybe they pick up your item you don't
know why they came in you don't know what they were looking for did they change their mind when they bought it did they just grab it was it an
afterthought you have to do massive customer surveys and research and things to find that on amazon within six months
of heavy advertising i could tell you exactly what customers are searching to find your product i could tell you if we
have any kind of issue converting them once they find it um we can dial conversion rates into sometimes so
to me that is incredible incredible right so that's the advertising and the keyword data um
because amazon converts so high it's different than a website and a landing page so google ppc to me isn't even as
accurate as amazon ppc because there's just a lot of other factors um another thing would be zip codes okay
so you can get a lot of names and zip codes and things like that so let's say you're a food retailer
you know you can be selling on amazon for a couple of years i've seen this strategy enacted
and you take the the some of those zip codes and go start selling the grocery stores in the area saying for the last two years i've sold units to your
zip code right and then you're going in reverse and having an opposite conversation but already telling them
that you've been selling there or take the zip codes and type in you know do facebook retargeting and just
destroy that market or that segment right so um there's ways from
getting zip codes to getting customer search data to um you know to those
tactics you got to get to get people to engage with your brand another one is to like you know save some products just
for the website so i'm not a huge fan because i feel like you should be anywhere that your
customers want to buy and the brand should stop saying hey i want to make you buy here or make you buy here and
say hey if you want to buy on amazon here at the same time it's a way where maybe
some products don't make sense for amazon profitably uh or something like that or maybe just
don't move enough volume to be on amazon with that product and so there's certain products you're keeping behind for your
website and um you know so from there uh maybe like the the brands coming in
they're like oh they have additional colors on their website they have additional options on their website and they go and engage with you there for
example or maybe you have customize uh you know customization make your make your website much like a brick and
mortar that just has a lot more extra content than than amazon can do and you'll give your customers reason to
engage with you there um i like that and that's all a free extra bonus ladies and gentlemen
but i like that focus uh on the the data they give you and apparently they give you a lot of
information which you can use to help grow your business uh which is great so uh pay attention to
Customer Service
packaging number four finally number five drew where are we at provide great customer service and um
you know this is this is one of the things you lose when you outsource the work to distributors or wholesalers or
choose not to even be there um you're letting your you know those distributors care more about your brand and you have
to trust that they do you have to trust that they care more about every single customer that you have
versus uh you know their their bottom line and the the truth is distributors are selling all kinds of brands um you
know and they're going to focus on the rule the best moving products of that brand um versus supporting every
product like it's the only product you're selling uh and i think that as a brand you just get that extra touch you get the chance to make someone's
christmas by getting them product out in time you get chances to you know respond to bad reviews or to questions about
your product with truth truthfulness and authenticity about around the product people people respond to that you might
see a negative review you see the brand respond it seems fair i move on that negative review doesn't tarnish my
opinion um so you know with great customer service you can only have that by having control
of your brand there uh if you're not doing that you don't even have the the possibility of this so um
it's a tried and true thing don't make amazon one of those channels where you don't provide that you know that amazing service
um and i think you'll do you'll do great you know there's been brands that come in uh
come in to help that you know customer service and just like response times and it's really operationally that they're
suffering not even from a branding or you know a product base or you know they're just suffering from
the logistics and operations around amazon which is customer service and shipping time and all those kinds of
stuff so yeah you know there's so much there's so much to think about um you know but at the same time it's the
basics it's the basics of good business just translated for amazon yeah and that's what i like actually about what
you said none of this stuff uh to quote you at the start is rocket science um it is the fundamental rules of e-commerce
you know good customer service good pricing pay attention to your packaging you know brand well protect what you're
doing keep the story consistent tell it in a way that works for your customer i mean it's it's all straightforward stuff
but you've tailored that for amazon which i think is which is fantastic and i and it's i guess learning more about how
to do that and the thing i i love talking to you drew is obviously you've gone through the mill you've you've
figured a lot of this stuff out over the last ten years which is great um and so i think it what i think what
you've done if i'm honest uh is you've you've made amazon
almost like an exciting place again to sell for those that maybe weren't that excited about it i think listening to
you talk you've made it accessible but i think you've been quite honest in saying you can do this but it's going to be a
it's going to be a bit of work it's not like you can just throw it on there forget about it you're going to have to
think about this you're going to have to be strategic in what you're doing and if you can if it's the right product
and you do that there is still there's still the possibility to do well on amazon would that be a fair reflection
yes sir um you know and that's where um maybe you need to invest in some content maybe need to invest in photography
maybe you need to invest in an agency like ours or there's there's plenty um
that can help you in that way and it's going to take you six months or a year to get up and and running and rolling but
i think tons of businesses would be glad to be doing a million dollars and see growth or growth year over year and
that's very very doable um it could be a channel you're not even selling in you know so
very very rarely have i seen uh amazon sales grow in a website
a decline just doesn't happen so they grow together so the cannibalism
uh myth is just not true um it's a different customer it's a very different customer so there's attribution now
which is pixel tracking we didn't even get into that but it's ways of knowing data more and more data you know are
your other sources working um so yeah huge opportunity obviously category by category and brand by brand and story by
story all differ um but you know still putting brands up and and doing it the
right way and i think what that's one thing that's exciting to me is brands are approaching us that haven't even started selling on amazon yet and are
just they know already that they want to do it the right way uh and those are the ones that are fun for me yeah no
absolutely and i uh i can attest to that let me tell you and it's uh it's worth doing listen if
people are listening to this and they're like that's cool how can they reach you how can they connect with you
how can they get a hold of you they got more questions maybe they want to know about your company markology what's the best way to do that
yeah so contact form at marknology.com so www.marknology.com
m-a-r-k-n-o-l-o-g-y i'm andrew um i'm also on instagram at andrew morgan's
just my name um you got in early enough to get your name did you yeah i think the s on morgan's is like
real unique just the whales okay so yeah uh maybe they didn't get instagram early i
don't know but uh yeah andrew morgan's on instagram website martinology.com i'm on linkedin
we try to be everywhere but uh personally i like chatting with people on instagram yeah fantastic no that's great and i
think um i mean i got in instagram early enough to get my name as well and i just i'm saying that because i'm just it's a
slight bragging right thing so well done for doing that listen we will put a link to obviously your good
self drew we'll put a link to mognology.com on the in the show notes so if you're regular to the podcast if
you get emails all the links will be in there um and uh yeah drew listen been an
absolute pleasure i feel like we're going to have to get you on again at some point in the future because it's like i feel like we've just scratched
some of the surface on some of these things that we could do so maybe we'll we'll do that in in the
future which will be great um but thank you so much really appreciate it and do reach out to andrew
if you want to know more well a huge thanks to my special guest today drew morgan's isn't he fantastic i
love talking about his five steps for successful amazon branding that are going to help our products stand out on
amazon and get noticed by more people trust me i have a lot
of notes and i hope you have too and of course if you're listening to this podcast
and you can't take notes you can get them for free without any email any of that sort of stuff you can just
head on over to the website ecommercepodcast.net forward slash and you can download the notes the
transcripts get access to andrew his links all that sort of stuff is
there and of course if this has just wetted your appetite and
you're kind of like this is not enough i need more info on how to grow my online business matt well let me tell you we
have another great guest next week john horn and he is going to explain to
us why we need to stop using facebook ads and start using google advertising
sounds slightly contentious doesn't it so here's an excerpt from next week's show
so i view google as a lower funnel higher conversion rate channel so if we have people who are searching for what
the client sells typically i'm going to start with google and look to maximum out the the number
of people searching for that getting that traffic optimizing the conversion rate so forth and so on and then once i've been able to do that and also even
improve the model mc and do testing of okay what messaging is performing best what are people actually searching for
what are the pain points that they're typing in then i'll typically expand to a facebook instagram and so forth to
capture additional audience or to get people into my funnel i'm looking forward to this one oh yes
great conversation with john coming up now if you have enjoyed this podcast uh then i would appreciate it if you could
rate the show on itunes or wherever you get your podcast from and even share it
out uh so you know we can connect with more folks around the world that we continue to grow and we can continue to
bring you this content as i said at the start all of the notes links and transcript to
today's show are online and you can get them for free at ecommercepodcast.net forward slash
all that's left for me to say is thank you so much for listening thanks for being a part of the podcast and do come
back next time as we get to interview john and we've got some more great guests
coming up on john so make sure you subscribe all of that good stuff i'll see you next week bye for now
you've been listening to the ecommerce podcast with matt edmondson join us next time for more interviews
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