Why You Should Market to the Amazon Algorithm Too

Matt Edmundson (00:00)
Well, hello and welcome to the eCommerce podcast. My name is Matt Edmondson and it's great to be with you on this fine, sunny September afternoon at the time of recording. If you don't know me, I've been in eCommerce since 2002, which is a fair while. It makes me what I call the delightful eCommerce dinosaur, I think is the phrase that we use.

We've definitely been around for a while. And as a company, we're just talking about this with today's guests. Tim, what we do is we partner with e-commerce brands. It's what we do. And so if you're wondering whether that can be something that you're interested in, check it out. Give us a ring and let's have a conversation. But of course, all information you can find on the website, ecommercepodcast.net, including links to today's guests, the show notes, and also one of those beautiful

forms, you can put your email address in. Yes. And we will send you a newsletter once a week with all of the beautiful stuff from the podcast and a few other bits and bobs as well as we're growing a newsletter list. Like every good e-commerce entrepreneur should be doing is working their email list. Yes, they should be. And so come join us. You get a lot more value on the email list nowadays because we've worked hard to do that. And so, yeah, it'd be great to see you in there.

⁓ come join us on the list, e-commerce podcast net to go find out more information. Anyway, all that said, let's talk to today's guest, Tim, all the way from the sunny state side. mean, Tim, you've got sunshine streaming through your window, so I'm guessing it's sunny for you as well.

Tim Wilson (01:35)
Yeah, it is. is. grew up in, I'm from New England, not old England, but New England. And then we moved out, my wife ended up moving to Southern California. So I'm in San Diego. Anyone's from Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (01:41)
Hahaha.

San Diego. Very

good. Beautiful part of the world. was there, San Diego, when I was there 18 months ago, about that sort of time now. Went to a Padres game. That was fun. So, no.

Tim Wilson (02:02)
Did they win? ⁓

Matt Edmundson (02:09)
It was, it was just one of those, but yeah, it was good. I enjoyed it. I, I, it's a beautiful part of the world. So anyway, through the wonder of technology, you are here. Um, and Tim, today we were talking about this earlier on, um, what we're going to talk about on today's show. Now to give it the broad strokes, we're going to narrow in on Amazon just a little bit. Um, but you guys have got a very different way of approaching Amazon that I wanted to hit sort of straight away.

⁓ and so one of things I like to do is ask our guests, listen, we're talking about Amazon. What's the biggest single problem that if you could solve, if you like had a magic wand, what's the biggest single problem we're all making, ⁓ that if you could fix you would.

Tim Wilson (02:52)
Ooh, that's a great question. The single biggest problem that we're all making. I think, well, I'm of the opinion that everyone needs to master the fundamentals and I'm still shocked at the PDPs that I see that are in no way optimized and ready for prime time.

Matt Edmundson (02:57)
Mm-hmm.

Tim Wilson (03:18)
Right? And it can be because either they're under engineered in the sense that it's been a pretty lazy attempt. There's one or two images in the stack, the title, the description are not very helpful. Or it can be the other end where it's totally over engineered and there's too much information, it's too confusing. We were working with a company, a consumer product company that's actually based out of France.

Matt Edmundson (03:19)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Tim Wilson (03:47)
and we helped them with a particular campaign. Part of our job, which we can get into later, is to drive traffic and visibility to your listing. And from that perspective, the data was off the charts. It worked wonderfully well. However, they were very disappointed because sales didn't follow, because that's ultimately all that matters. We dove into the product detail page and looked at, even before they worked with us, what was going on.

Matt Edmundson (04:08)
Right. Yeah.

Tim Wilson (04:15)
We've since changed our things, but you know, the category average are there and had a conversion rate of about three and a half percent, maybe four. Their conversion rate was literally 0.1%. So we dove in and I'm like, this is not a traffic problem. This is a conversion problem, right? Let's go through and let's look at the best performing PDPs in your category and kind of iterate and improve them from there. But to me, doesn't, it all starts.

Matt Edmundson (04:26)
⁓ dear.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Wilson (04:43)
with your product detail page, making sure your content strategy is accurate, making sure your title, your entire page is constructed and optimized for conversion. And I think people overlook that or underestimate it. And it's really the most important thing.

Matt Edmundson (05:00)
That's a really important point, isn't it? And I like it when you say the fundamentals, they're the important things. I think, and this is true, think, across e-commerce, right? We're looking for the latest silver bullet, the magic AI prompt, whatever that's going to be. But actually, the old school principles still matter. And actually, you've got to get those right before you build all these clavidic things on top.

Tim Wilson (05:02)
Thank you.

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (05:28)
The PDP, for those of you who know, you have mentioned that product detail page, is one of those fundamentals, right, on Amazon. And getting that right is, I remember having a conversation with somebody who called me at once and they're like, Matt, listen, our website is doing this. I can't remember the exact numbers. It was like a million a year. We're doing a million a year, but our competitors are doing 10 million. And so...

What I want to do is 10 X our ad budget to get 10 times traffic so I can get the 10 million. And I was like, dude, what's wrong with you? And so we, ⁓ we, said, wait there just one second. And I pulled up his website and his competitor's website next to each other. And I said, you've not got a traffic problem. You've got a conversion problem. And you can tell that just straight away. Right. And so we spend all this money sending people to.

listing pages and product pages. And they just don't convert because we've not thought about that. Right. And so the traffic becomes very, very expensive.

Tim Wilson (06:34)
Yeah. And even the way you just described it, right? Like it's a traffic problem or a conversion problem. Fundamentally, I understand, similar to you, I've been in this space for a long time, not since 2002, but in 2008. And people are always looking for what's this hack that I can do. But if you just practice the fundamentals in sport, but pick your favorite sport. If that player is really, really solid and masters their fundamentals.

Matt Edmundson (06:51)
Mm.

Tim Wilson (07:02)
they're gonna be an important part of your team. And then just figuring out your strategy, is it traffic problem or a conversion problem? Like what's the most basic way to navigate from there is I find to be the most important thing that people can do. People tend to overcomplicate things.

Matt Edmundson (07:05)
Yeah.

Yeah, they really do. Especially in England. We're brilliant at over-complicating things. Just look at the rail system. Let's not get political, So if I'm, we've both mentioned actually, just thinking about what you said and what I said, one of the things that I did, one of the things that you mentioned is pulling up a competitor's website or pulling up their PDP, right? And looking at what they're doing. So go and find the good people.

the top sellers in your niche, in your market, look at their website and look at yours, compare the two and see how they're doing it better and what you can learn from that. And in some cases, how they're doing it worse. And, know, again, capitalizing on that. But what are the things should we think about when it comes to our product detail page? you, what are the fundamentals of the product detail page that we need to really hone in on?

Tim Wilson (08:17)
Well, I believe the statistic is something like 70 % of shoppers don't even read the product description. They rely on the image stack. And that's what people look at to make their purchasing decisions. I think, you know, when you, yeah, me too, right? Like me too. And by the way, I don't even look at all seven. Like I go to like two or three and make my own.

Matt Edmundson (08:29)
Yep.

I'm one of those 70 % by the way. just, just.

Yeah, that's it. I've made my decision. I've

looked at the pictures, I've looked at the price and I've looked at the heading. I've made a decision.

Tim Wilson (08:48)
Yeah, price,

rating, maybe number of reviews, although after a certain point it doesn't matter, and in a few pictures. That's it. Again, keep it simple, right? So image stack is by far the most important thing. And then just understanding within the detail page itself, what is the what's the actual?

Matt Edmundson (08:55)
That's true. Yeah.

Yay. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Tim Wilson (09:17)
purpose for each one of those things. Like what's the purpose for the title? Like what's purpose for the product description? And making sure that you're optimizing the content for the audience and that purpose, right? So, and understanding that the purpose and the content that's on there is not a static thing, it's a living, breathing thing. The way people use your product may evolve over time, and certainly the they talk about it will. And so the way you talk about it, and the way

Matt Edmundson (09:41)
Yeah.

Tim Wilson (09:46)
you position it in the image stack is critical. So we have ⁓ one customer that makes prenatal and postpartum products for mom and baby. So you're pregnant or you've just had a baby, they make products for mom and baby. They created a pregnancy pillow, something that is critical to help mom with some better sleep towards the end of her pregnancy. And when they initially made their image stack,

It was focused on that. But when they put it out in the hands of a bunch of different creators in the community, what they found is that these moms were using it, they were taking pictures and using it like in the car where they were driving to go visit mom one more time before the baby's born or kind of like travel comfort on the airplane. And they're like, man, we didn't even have that in our image stack. Right? So that's a big miss. That's what I mean by like, you've got to understand that just

Matt Edmundson (10:34)
Yeah.

Tim Wilson (10:44)
what your product, just because you guys set it up once, it's not a set it and forget it. You need to come back and revisit each one of those sections and making sure that they're still serving the purpose for which it was originally created.

Matt Edmundson (10:57)
Yeah, absolutely. And testing it, right? And testing different things, not just leaving it on autopilot. And we've been testing and playing around with different things like the wording that we use, you know, to describe benefits on the images. And so you can use a lifestyle shot like that, like the being in a car is a life, that's a lifestyle shot, but that tells a story. And it tells people, there's a lot of this sort of unconscious questions that people have that a shot like that can say, like,

Tim Wilson (10:59)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

sure that.

Matt Edmundson (11:25)
Who's it for? How can you use it? All of these things in the back of their head that one simple photo, a picture pegs a thousand words, right? And yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. It still works. It's still powerful. And thinking carefully about the stories that you want to tell with the images that you've got and the words that you can put on those images, I think are really, really fascinating. And it's interesting, isn't it? This sort of evolution of images on Amazon. I mean, you've been around for a while. You've obviously seen this.

Tim Wilson (11:32)
I was just going to ⁓

Matt Edmundson (11:53)
I was saying to a previous guest, Sean, I can't remember really the last time I read a product description on Amazon, mainly because it's not that easy to distinguish what is the product description, right? It's like, where is it? don't, there's just, there's a lot going on on Amazon page. I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that on your own e-commerce website, by the way, but on Amazon, they seem to get away with it. And you tend not to read it occasionally.

If it's a well-known brand, can kind of scroll down and there'll be a video somewhere, which might be helpful. But again, that's telling story, isn't it? That's answering all those questions because I don't want to read the text.

Tim Wilson (12:32)
Yeah, the video could be in the A plus content. It could also mean the last slot in the image stack, which is the best practice, right? Throw a video in there in slot seven. But yeah, no, it's, you're right. You should be constantly testing and iterating. you should, it's never done, right? Like you're chasing perfection, chasing perfection, even though perfection is not possible, but that's still, you're listening to this podcast right now. You're listening because you're trying to get a little bit better at what you do, which means you're chasing perfection as well. So.

Matt Edmundson (12:39)
Mm-hmm.

Never.

Hmm. No, that's true.

I'm curious, Tim, have you, not to stay on this too long, but I'm curious, have you seen people take this principle, ⁓ what we call the image deck on Amazon, where you do now see images with a lot of text, ⁓ and lifestyle shots as well as, you know, the usual sort of dull and boring one at the start. ⁓

Have you seen people reverse that and put that on their website? Because that intrigues me, right? So a lot of websites still very much a case of studio product shots, you know, and, but on Amazon, it's obviously quite different. then, and I'm curious if you've seen people reverse engineer this onto their own sites.

Tim Wilson (13:38)
Yeah.

on their direct-to-consumer websites? Yeah, you know, that's a great question. Here's the way I would answer that with what we've seen is that, and I believe Profiterro has a great study on this. ⁓

Matt Edmundson (13:50)
Yeah.

Tim Wilson (14:04)
But what we've seen is that when you have UGC, authentic user generated content, whether that's from a creator that you've worked with, an Instagram type creator, TikTok creator, or if it's just from your own stable of brand advocates that you have, like people that are just passionate about your product for some reason, when you have UGC in the image stack on Amazon,

conversion rate goes up. If you get, it's like eight to 10 % just from having that kind of authentic imagery. And I have, you know, I have definitely seen increase in user generated content imagery on the direct to consumer. It's just as a meta trend in the industry, not even in the, excuse me, in society. I feel like there's a general meta trend around.

Matt Edmundson (14:37)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Tim Wilson (14:58)
being authentic, being real, which is interesting because the rise of social media is so inauthentic. That's why there was even like a, probably that was like an app a while ago called Be Real. But the idea of just being, I one of the things people love about that Taylor, I have three little girls, so maybe that's why. Taylor Swift is a big name in our house, having three daughters.

Matt Edmundson (15:04)
The irony is not lost, yes.

Okay.

Tim Wilson (15:25)
But like one of the things that she does a great job of is connecting with her fan base. Like or not dislike her music. I think everyone out there, no matter what company you're in, can learn from her in terms of how to engage and connect with your audience. In a very real way, very real way. And with that kind of like real connection that everyone's trying to drive for. And UGC is a very strong tool to do that, right?

Matt Edmundson (15:40)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Wilson (15:55)
In particular, I've seen a couple of our different customers essentially make a collage, like in one image, but that one image is a collage of different people and different use cases, and it works because no matter who you are, there's somebody in that collage that you can look at and say, that's me. I can now see myself with your product. I can see myself using your product now because there's someone who's just like me in that image that I connected.

Matt Edmundson (16:13)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's super cool. Yeah, I was just about to say to you what kind of user generated content works well in the image tab. We've answered it, the collage type thing.

Tim Wilson (16:31)
There we go.

Yeah, the collage works really well. And I've seen it, you know, ⁓ primarily as an image, an individual image, but we've also seen ⁓ short form video come about with people kind of putting all these different things. And so you can play with it. And again, to your point, you can test and learn with it, you know, and that's part of the fun of this game. I don't know. ⁓ That's part of the fun of what we're doing here.

Matt Edmundson (16:45)
Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim Wilson (17:00)
Right?

Like, let's test, let's learn what different things we can do to get an edge here. ⁓ But certainly connecting with your customer through the photos and through the videos is an important, I think, way to do it.

Matt Edmundson (17:02)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah, because I, it's interesting, isn't it? We have this phrase, Tim, you won't know this, but we have this phrase called digital David's, right? And we talk a lot about this for e-commerce entrepreneurs. It's like, I am a digital David taking on the e-commerce giants, right? So I have to play the game according to what works for me.

Tim Wilson (17:22)
Okay.

Matt Edmundson (17:34)
I think in the old story, David didn't wear Saul's armor. He kind of figured out what was going to work for him. And he sort of took on the giants. And of course the giants, the bad guys, because every story needs a bad guy, right? We talk about Amazon and Walmart and all these people, the big brands with the, you know, big deep pockets that can do things that as mere mortals can't do. And it's an interesting analogy, right? How, how we do this. And one of the key things I think, one of the key ways that you

Tim Wilson (17:34)
Right.

Matt Edmundson (18:04)
win that war is you, you tell your story authentically. You have a personality. have, you have you want to a better expression, a better expression to be the sort of the face of the brand to connect with people a bit like Taylor Swift, like you're talking about. And I totally agree that if you can do that well, that's where bigger companies can't really do that. You know,

Apple, know, if you think about Apple, Tim Cook, he makes an annual appearance, doesn't he? But it's that's Apple, right? And they're going to do what Apple does. But in the meantime, if I'm trying to compete with Apple, I'm like, I'm out every day. I'm talking to you every day. I'm doing stuff that Apple can't do. And I think. I think that's where you win. And it's interesting that this is now filtering through into Amazon, that actually you can bring that brand voice, you can bring that brand identity, you can bring that story.

that resonates with your customers just in seven short images.

Tim Wilson (19:08)
Yeah, and I think the important part is to make it come across in as many different ways as you can. In the images, in the description, in the title, certainly on your DTC, you have to take full advantage of that real estate, right? But as a challenger brand or a digital David, you know.

Matt Edmundson (19:22)
Yeah.

Tim Wilson (19:29)
You can't play the game the same way everybody else is. If you're due, you're just a two product and you're not gonna make it. You have to change the game, right? You have to be ⁓ different, right? There's a fellow named Christopher Lockhead who you can follow on LinkedIn. He's a retired CMO. He's written a few books, but the...

Matt Edmundson (19:34)
Mm.

Yeah.

Mm.

Tim Wilson (19:54)
If you were to take all of his content and distill it down into one thing, he said, you win by being different. So it's interesting because growing up, especially as a teenager and as a person, you're doing all you can to kind of blend in and fit in. Yeah. is interesting because the way you actually get outsized returns in life is to not fit in, is to be different and to celebrate those differences.

Matt Edmundson (20:00)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, you want to be the same as everybody else. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm.

Tim Wilson (20:21)
you know, as a challenger brand, it's really important that you don't follow, play by the same rules as everybody else. You know, that you push the envelope in whatever way makes sense. Because if you don't, you're just not going to make it.

Matt Edmundson (20:33)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally agree. We could wax lyrical about this, Tim. I, you know, I'm going to get on my soapbox in a little minute. ⁓ but before I do, let me bring it back on track. Let's bring it back. ⁓ now you have this idea, don't you? ⁓ that your company talks about marketing to the algorithm is a phrase which intrigued me when I got it in the notes. ⁓ talking about Amazon.

Tim Wilson (20:38)
⁓ yeah.

Okay.

Matt Edmundson (21:01)
And you describe what you guys do over at Product Wind as an assault on the algorithm, which I think is quite an interesting phrase. And ⁓ sort of these sort of four things that you do. And before we get into it, let's just talk about what you mean by marketing to the algorithm and why it's why your approach is different and why we need to talking about different. Why do see the segue there? I've just seen it myself. Genius.

Tim Wilson (21:25)
Yeah, I do. I saw it.

That's why you're the pro. That's why you're the pro. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (21:32)
Yeah,

maybe I'm just lucky and figure it out as I go along, which is normally what happens. But you know, how do you, how is it different? You know, this marketing to the algorithm thing, what, what is, what is that all about?

Tim Wilson (21:44)
Yeah, so the fundamental, it's really a theology more than anything else, right? The fundamental belief that we have at Product Wind is all of these marketplaces, we can talk just about Amazon, but I believe all of them, they're algorithmically driven. ⁓

That's not going to change these retailers are really tech shops and they are investing more and more into automation into AI chatbots and into different ways that they can use technology to make their business more nimble faster, etc. And so it's this algorithm that is really the thing that's determining your product's success. It's determining its placement, its relevancy to other consumer search, etc.

And a question we ask all of our customers is, well, okay, so if we all agree that, you know, Amazon as an example is algorithmically driven and it's the thing that's determining your products, what's your strategy for marketing to the algorithm? How are you influencing the algorithm to like your product more than others? And this is an example to your point of being different and not playing the same game as everybody else. And a lot of people kind of, even when they're represented by

Matt Edmundson (23:00)
Yeah.

Tim Wilson (23:04)
some of the big ad agencies that we all know, right? A couple of them based there and it's like, everyone kind of shrugs their shoulders. because, know, 10 years ago or whatever it was, I used to work for, I used to work for Kantar owned by WPP, you know, those folks. And we would help brands get ready for their buyer meeting, right? Cause they had to make sure the buyer liked them to get all this favorable placement and different things that they wanted.

Well, the buyer position has evolved over time. It's evolved and a lot of what you were doing there is really handled by the algorithm now. The algorithm is determining how much of your product to buy, where to place it, how it should be positioned to the marketplace, et cetera. And because it's moved from a buyer, it's moved from being a person to a piece of technology, this piece of it anyway, people feel like they can't really market to it.

Matt Edmundson (23:43)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tim Wilson (24:04)
But that's

not true. It's not true at all. An algorithm, it just needs data. So you know what? Why not give it the data it loves? So that's all we do. A product when we launch campaigns specifically to market to the algorithm and then there's a whole bunch of benefits that follow downstream when you do that.

Matt Edmundson (24:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yay.

Mm.

That sounds, when I read it and and, you know, preparing for today's conversation, I thought this is quite smart because years ago, before the internet, which I remember being a man of a certain age, you used have to do this thing called networking and you would have to go and shake the hands of people and, know, and you would have to wine and dine and you would, should we go out for a meal? I've, I've, I've, I've avoided the golf thing. I never had to go play a round of golf, you know, and, um,

Tim Wilson (24:43)
Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (24:54)
And it's that kind of thing, isn't it? I've been involved, I was on the board as a non-exec for a PLC company here in the UK, which is a company listed in an exchange. And they sold a lot of product into places like Tesco, right? It's just what it did. so you're like, okay, so who's in charge at Tesco? How do we get to know that guy? How do we make him like us so that we get better placement on the shelves, right?

Tim Wilson (25:07)
Sure.

Matt Edmundson (25:24)
There was a whole strategy conversation around this. How much money can we put into that as a strategy? know, what can we do? Can we take them to Dubai or can we take them to, you know, Jakarta or somewhere exotic and just wine and dine them? But I love what you're talking about because it's again, it's old school principles. Only I'm not taking a guy to Tahiti. I'm taking

⁓ I'm giving the algorithm, I'm understanding how to seduce an algorithm, which is a little bit different thinking, but it's the same principle. I love this as an idea, Tim. How did you guys figure this out?

Tim Wilson (26:02)
Like all startups you over time right make So our founder right that the company was founded with this idea that Specifically focusing on helping companies launch new products new product launch

Matt Edmundson (26:06)
My accident is the usual phrase, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

Tim Wilson (26:28)
doesn't matter if you're Unilever or Matt's hot sauce, right? Like if you struggle to launch a new item and make it, you know, have it become retail ready, gain traction, become successful, it's a struggle. So the products, the original idea of the company was, well, the best way to launch a new product is to try to help it go viral on social channels. So we were launching, you know,

campaigns with you know, a hundred tik-tok creators a hundred Instagram reels and just kind of trying to generate a ton of buzz through traditional social methods And the problem for us other people may have solved this but what we couldn't solve for ⁓ ultimately was It was impossibly difficult to figure out which one of these videos was gonna

Take off right because oftentimes the video that frankly I personally liked the least and it's like wow this one's going crazy and And even if it did go crazy And become you know get quite a bit of visibility we then still had a hard time connecting, you know, what does What does 10,000 likes mean? You you're modeling out. What does 10,000 likes mean for sales for every 10,000 likes? I'm gonna get this much in sales. We weren't able to at least any reliable predictable way

Matt Edmundson (27:53)
Yeah.

Tim Wilson (27:58)
be able to consistently deliver on that. And so when you can't do that, you either have to change your strategy or change the way you're using it, which I think ⁓ for us who are trying to do more lower funnel, mid funnel type of work, I just couldn't make that connection. ⁓ Or you just change your approach. What we've noticed though was that as there were other indicators, other things that we were able to reliably start to drive on. So we just leaned into that.

Matt Edmundson (28:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim Wilson (28:26)
So we started off, we've moved from a world where we said, you need to have a couple hundred people out on the social channels talking about you to a world now where we have at this point over a thousand plus successful campaigns that we use as a validation that this is working to a world now where instead we are working with like e-commerce creators to in a very specific way, which I'm happy to get into.

Matt Edmundson (28:43)
Yeah.

Tim Wilson (28:56)
to drive traffic and sales, drive sales velocity, conversion rate, and really assemble just an army of people to go send in those signals. Turns out, I think the best way to make your product be successful in terms of driving sales isn't to make it more visible on Instagram, it's to make it more visible on Amazon. Make it more credible on Amazon. Move it from page.

Matt Edmundson (29:01)
Mm. Yeah.

Mm.

Tim Wilson (29:24)
slot 87 in the search results to slot seven, right? And when your product is on page one, it's on top 10 and it's got credibility around it in terms of product ratings, product reviews, it's got good images. where we started to call the product detail pages, it's fundamentally sound. If you do that, you're gonna drive sales and then you can literally spin the flywheel, right?

Matt Edmundson (29:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's true. But this is what you, this is, this is marketing to the algorithm, right? This is understanding what Amazon wants. ⁓ and so, according to those people that know a lot more than me, product wind has identified seven key signals that signals, algorithms.

Tim Wilson (29:55)
So yeah, that's what we're doing.

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (30:16)
Amazon's algorithm value. That's not an easy word to say. Amazon's algorithm value. There we go. Number one is external traffic. Number two, click through rate improvements. Number three, sales velocity. Number four, conversion rate optimization. Number five, reviews and ratings. Number six, engagement metrics like time on page and interactions. And number seven, content freshness and relevance.

Now I was looking down this list, Tim, and I was going, they all apply to your direct-to-consumer websites as well, right? I mean, this is the same, I guess, suppose you're talking to a different algorithm, which is Google, in essence, or AI now, because AI is just destroying Google search, it? There's always something. ⁓ So some of these are obvious. Like, obviously, you know,

Tim Wilson (30:50)
Absolutely.

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (31:09)
We need some more external traffic. So, well, actually I say that's obvious. That might not be obvious to people when thinking about Amazon. Because I, I'm assuming the default thinking is right. I'll send external traffic to my website and all internal traffic on Amazon can go to my product ⁓ page. And I'll just keep those two systems working side by side like that. But one of the things mentioned here is external traffic. What do you mean by that? And why is it so powerful?

Tim Wilson (31:37)
Yeah. So this is something that we've seen in our data become more important over time with Amazon. And I think if I were to assert as to why it's because Amazon now makes a majority of their money selling ads, right? It's more profitable than AWS. And to your point, I'm so old. I remember when people, retailers said it's unfair that Amazon is AWS. It gives them an unfair model.

Matt Edmundson (32:05)
Ha ha ha!

Tim Wilson (32:07)
advantage in terms of putting money into R &D, et cetera. But now that's not even where it all comes from is their ads. And so as they have. So the more amount of people you can get from out of Amazon's property to come into Amazon's ecosystem, to come into Amazon and start to shop and browse, Amazon loves that and they reward that accordingly. So.

Matt Edmundson (32:09)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, they've become Google, haven't they, in many ways.

Mm.

Tim Wilson (32:35)
you know, we might, the way that we help influence that is we might work with 500 or even a thousand people. It's like an organized army of people. And let's just do basic math. Actually, I'll stick with 500 people and we'll say, all right, hey, we're all working on this campaign for such and such company. Go through some qualifications to see if it makes sure that makes sense for them to join. This is what the software will do automatically for you.

Matt Edmundson (33:04)
Yeah.

Tim Wilson (33:05)
⁓ But then we'll say is okay great well let's not we don't necessarily want to make a public post because There's a lot of scrutiny and some challenges that can come about Representing the brand on Instagram so instead Let's just can you help drive traffic through offline means whether that's a text message or email and if all those 500 people Validate it can show and prove that they've driven at least 20 clicks

That means as a piece of software, 20 times 500 is 10,000 visits. We can now influence and kind of coordinate or orchestrates, maybe the right word, orchestrate when and how these 10,000 visits come to the product detail page, which is how you can start to market to the algorithm. Cause you can show those KPIs that you just mentioned.

Matt Edmundson (33:37)
Mm.

Yeah.

Tim Wilson (33:54)
The trick is to be able to show all of those KPIs improving with increased intensity, kind of week over week over week. And when you do that for a certain amount of time, you literally have started to spin the flywheel in your favor.

Matt Edmundson (34:09)
So, is, thank you for explaining it. And I'm listening to you talking, I'm thinking, geez, 500 people, that's a lot of people, right? And I've got an established business where I go, well, okay, I can think in those kinds of numbers. But if I'm starting out, do I need 500 people? Is 500 people expensive? I mean,

Tim Wilson (34:25)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's a question.

Matt Edmundson (34:31)
It just sounds like a lot

of people to try and, what was the you used? Orchestrate, with a very good use of the language there. But to orchestrate 500 people, think, that sounds like a bit of a deal, right? I mean, there's a lot of work there.

Tim Wilson (34:45)
So first of all, if you are a, yeah, if you're the brand yourself, if you're working with a provider like us or someone else, whether you use five or 500, it's the same amount of work for you. You really don't have to do anything, the software does it all. So then it's strictly about the cost and the pricing and does this make economic sense?

Matt Edmundson (34:59)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tim Wilson (35:08)
And the good news is there's a very clear business case and you can figure it out based on your own business goals and where you are. It should be a very easy decision, frankly. ⁓ But the amount that you need varies. It depends on how competitive the category is and where you are. So I'll give you an example. Well, we already mentioned earlier that the company that does prenatal products, the pregnancy pillow company.

They also have another thing that they have for anybody out there who's had a kid recently. Remember, you've remembered like you've they get a cold and you kind of kind of like suck the boogers out of their nose. So if you're not a parent, you're not a parent. Yeah, that sounds disgusting. Like I would never I would never do that. I will never do that. But adds to the list of, you know, adds to the list of things you say you'll never do. And then once you have kids, can't believe I'm doing this.

Matt Edmundson (35:51)
Yeah.

Hahaha

Tim Wilson (36:03)
I remember my wife at one point saying, I'm never gonna have a minivan. It's like, I'll tell you what her favorite thing is with the own. The minivan is her favorite thing, man. It's unbelievable. ⁓ My favorite thing, I love the minivan.

Matt Edmundson (36:07)
Yeah, whatever. Yeah. ⁓

say can I admit

at this point in the podcast I don't have a minivan I just have a van I got rid of the sports cars and I got a van and it was the best decision I ever made love that thing absolutely love it anyway I just my 20 year old self is punching me in the face right now what are you talking what have we become

Tim Wilson (36:20)
Okay.

Yeah.

Right? Totally. So...

⁓ dude,

man. Right? 20 year old me would just be, yeah, not be impressed. Not be impressed. going back to the size of the campaign, so they have this product that sucks the boogers out of your kid's nose. They call it an infant nasal aspirator. There's not a lot of competition. Not a lot of competition for that. And so because there's just not a ton of search volume and

Matt Edmundson (36:42)
Yeah.

dear. No.

Tim Wilson (37:03)
shopping activity on that category, probably don't you can probably get away with like 50 people, right? You just don't need money but then the other end of the spectrum go to like a consumer electronic product like a speaker or a headphones where there's Millions of purchases that are happening, right? And you're competing with companies like Bose and Sony and Apple like well, there's so much activity there if you come in with 50

Matt Edmundson (37:21)
Yeah.

Tim Wilson (37:31)
know, visits or 50 creators or what have you, it's just not enough noise. A part of marketing to the algorithm is understanding how much noise do I have to make to get its attention. And that is very specific to what's the product.

Matt Edmundson (37:37)
Yeah, no.

⁓ Yeah.

Yeah. And is that easy enough to figure out? The noise level?

Tim Wilson (37:53)
Yeah, yeah, I mean so everyone first of all, you don't have to use product when to do this everyone can do this stuff themselves ⁓ And if you're just getting going you're just getting started There's gonna be some trial and error but the way that I would think about it the framework that I would do is we use a For Amazon we use a plug in a software called helium 10 Which some of you may know may not know but within helium 10 It'll tell you

Matt Edmundson (38:06)
Mm.

Tim Wilson (38:21)
what kind of what all the popular search terms are on Amazon for any given product and how much activity is happening on any one of those search terms. And so we use ⁓ we use that along with your ⁓ expected sales forecast. Are you expecting to sell 20 units a month, 200 units a month, 2000, whatever. What's the order of magnitude? And we use those two inputs.

Matt Edmundson (38:32)
Yeah.

Tim Wilson (38:51)
excuse me, to dial in how many creators do you think we should be using. And the good news is, because Amazon's algorithm is so sophisticated, there is a true stimulus and response, right? So you can do something and within a week kind of see, it work? And so what you can do is you can start off with a stable and then just decide.

Matt Edmundson (39:05)
Yeah.

Tim Wilson (39:17)
as you monitor things, hopefully on a daily basis, but at least weekly, is this something I need to turn up or is this something I need to turn down? And then you can start to understand for your own business and product, kind of like your own model and forecasting for how to do this.

Matt Edmundson (39:34)
Yeah, that's super helpful. Super helpful. It's interesting, isn't it? you say, again, bringing it back, the difference here is marketing to the algorithm. It's understanding what the algorithm wants and then giving the algorithm exactly what it wants. And in this case, external clicks. Amazon is in their latest, what algorithm number are we on now? Number 10 or something like that. It's loving it, isn't it? These sort of external click type things.

Tim Wilson (39:56)
Yeah. Yeah.

What's interesting is as Cosmo and Rufus become more ⁓ involved inside of Amazon, that's their AI kind of search component. ⁓ This stuff is actually becoming more more important, right? Essentially what's happened is the digital shelf of options has gone from

Matt Edmundson (40:08)
Yeah.

Tim Wilson (40:19)
You know, at first we used to talk about, we called it Endless Isle. And we were back in 2010, Matt, we were talking about, oh, it's this endless aisle, this infinite aisle of options for can openers or whatever you're looking for. And then we realized, no, that's not really true. It's really, you got to be on page one and see if top acts. then page one has turned into this billboard of, you know, paid placements everywhere. And now with Rufus in particular on Amazon, it's

Matt Edmundson (40:29)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Tim Wilson (40:49)
it's just five options. So there's an argument that says there's five placements. now they're, they used to all be organic and it's already transitioned into some sponsored placements in there. So to play this game, ⁓ you need to be able to really help the algorithm love your product. And so, or that you can emphasize those KPIs you mentioned.

Matt Edmundson (40:52)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tim Wilson (41:14)
And have a strategy or a plan in place to build on it. What you don't want to do is show the algorithm that you're here today gone tomorrow. Because then it's going to be like, well, you know, the next time you show it like it's still gonna be like, well, is this this here today gone tomorrow? So you really need to have a little bit of a longer. I don't mean super long, but you got to have at least a 3060 day plan to show this ramping over time.

Matt Edmundson (41:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, you do.

Yeah. My experience actually with Amazon is it gets better and better. ⁓ Almost like a fine wine. you play the system and you understand the system, it does get better and better. But like SEO, the longer you're around, the easier SEO is because you've been around and Google goes, you've been around for 10 years. You're not likely to go anywhere if I recommend your site. Right? So it does get easier, I think, with longevity.

Tim Wilson (41:43)
It's done.

So.

Yeah.

Absolutely, and that's what ultimately what we're talking about here Matt is an SEO play right? that's what we're trying to drive your products visibility inside of a marketplace inside of Amazon move it from page 3 to page 1 and Everything gets anchored off of that visibility especially with all the money going into retail media now and How many dollars people throw in retail media the great thing about this SEO play is that your product is ranking more?

Matt Edmundson (42:09)
Mm.

Yeah.

Tim Wilson (42:34)
higher inside of Amazon. And so that makes your sponsored rank higher, which makes your retail media more efficient and more effective. So you can actually spend less dollars on retail media and get the same results you're getting today.

Matt Edmundson (42:35)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Yeah, the rising tide floats all boats idea, isn't it? It's, it's intriguing to me because the, the nature of Ecom, the nature of Amazon is such that it is crazy. Everyone's crazy busy, right? When you started out, you had a website and you then that was about it. Now there's all these marketplaces and you've got to think about social and you got to think about this and you're juggling 20,000 balls in the air as a, as an Ecom manager. And so you go, well, we need more sales. So what's the easy thing to do?

Tim Wilson (42:52)
Exactly.

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (43:17)
The quick one is to destroy some money at it. So I'll just ramp up my ad spend. But that's what 99 % of people are doing. Not many people are doing what you've been talking about. And actually, if you can invest in that now, I think you separate yourself in the medium to long term, you know, because you're, you're, you're investing, not just the money, you're investing the time to go, let's get this right. Let's get these foundations right.

Tim Wilson (43:34)
No doubt.

Matt Edmundson (43:42)
because not many people are doing that, which makes it actually more opportunistic. There's less competition, perhaps, whereas the competition is all for the AdWords.

Tim Wilson (43:51)
You nailed it. And actually you said something really interesting there around the foundation piece, which is we talked earlier about launching a new product. If you're doing this when your product first comes onto the marketplace, you're literally building your business on a foundation of such solid data, right? Like an algorithm, the foundation of your ASIN, your Amazon product,

is so strong that it sets you up for the possibility of just long-term super sustained success versus if it takes your product six, nine months to get there, the foundation of data that's being built on is much softer, which means your staying power isn't quite as strong, right? So it is a bit of a long game too.

Matt Edmundson (44:27)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Persistence wins. Apparently water beats the rock every time. Now, Tim, listen, ⁓ I'm aware of time and how quickly it has gone. How do people reach you? How do they connect with you if they want to do that? Good sir.

Tim Wilson (44:57)
Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn if you want to search for Tim Wilson, Product Wind, or just jump on to productwind.com. We'd be happy to show you some software that automates all of this or just have a chat about what we're seeing others in your space do to be successful.

Matt Edmundson (45:14)
Yeah. Fantastic. We will of course linked Tim's LinkedIn and to the product wind sites in the show notes. So if you're subscribed to the newsletter, which I mentioned earlier, that will be in your inbox. If you didn't, it won't be, you're gonna have to go on the web and find it, which is why you should subscribe to the newsletter. Just make your life easier. That's what I should do. I should get every guest that comes on the podcast to give like a 30 second like promo for the news. Anyway.

Tim Wilson (45:30)
I would definitely subscribe. Absolutely.

Matt Edmundson (45:42)
Listen, Tim, in the last two minutes, we like to do this thing called saving the best till last and watch the top top tip you've got. Deliver the maximum value you can for all those that have stayed till the end. In the last two minutes, the mic is yours, my friend.

Tim Wilson (45:58)
What's the top top thing that you can do? You know, I feel like we discussed it a little bit earlier, but I think that around mastering the fundamentals, but the number one thing that I would say is top top thing you can do is to engage with your.

customers that love you the most. The amount of rich, exciting information that we've got by helping brands talk to and communicate with those brand lovers that love them the most has been ⁓ changing. We've seen customers launch new products, launch new innovations, change the way they position themselves on a product detail page. I mentioned that one company that didn't realize they should have the pregnancy pillow with photo shoots and those things are gold and they're right there.

Matt Edmundson (46:40)
Mm.

Tim Wilson (46:46)
If they're not free, they're super low cost to you. So as an emerging brand, lean into your best customers and don't worry about everyone else.

Matt Edmundson (46:50)
Yeah.

Fantastic. Top, top tip there from Tim. Tim, listen, man, genuinely loved having you on the show. I feel like, I say this a fair bit actually with, with, with, guess that I feel like we've just scraped the tip of the iceberg. As they say, we were just starting to get into something good and the hour's gone. But listen, really appreciate you coming on. Really nice to meet you all the way from San Diego on the other side of the world. And yeah, all the best, my friend.

Tim Wilson (47:22)
Thank you, Matt. Loved being here, loved chatting. Hope to do it again soon.

Matt Edmundson (47:26)
No doubt. No doubt we should. We absolutely should. Well, listen, thank you so much for joining us, folks. It's been great to be with you this week. Make sure you like and subscribe and all of that sort of good stuff. Because you will get next week's podcast if you do. But that's it from me. That's it from Tim. Thank you so much for joining us wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.