Ecommerce Roundup: Amazon, Shopify, Marketing, Advertising, Growth, Strategy

ER 021: Facebook Algorithm Changes, Amazon Unverified Review Changes Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings:http://azmarketers.com/listing [http://azmarketers.com/listing] Want to join an ecommerce mastermind? Sign up: http://azmarketers.com/mastermind [http://www.azmarketers.com/mastermind/] SHOW NOTES This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 21, today is January 12, 2018, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – But, before we get started, I just want to apologize for not publishing a podcast in nearly 2 months! Crazy how the time flew buy. I don’t want to make excuses but I will. I was gone for Thanksgiving, and then for Christmas and New Years, plus 4th Quarter is always crazy, and then I’ve got a lot going on right now with my ecommerce business plus consulting, and to be honest, this podcast isn’t my first priority, so it does fall by the wayside when other things come up. That being said I really like doing this podcast, so I am going to try to continue to do it weekly, so please stay with me! Anyway, enough of that. I’m sure you’re not hear to listen to me get personal. Let’s get into today’s podcast, which is going to be a bit short, but it’s also very important. ___________ 1. Facebook announced that it’s changing its algorithm again 2. Amazon is cleaning up reviews, and not letting buyers leave unverified reviews 3. Wall Street Segment Facebook changing its algorithm again Facebook announced this week that it’s changing its algorithm so that people see more content from their friends and family. Basically Facebook is concerned that the user experience is bad because people are seeing too much in the news feed related to brands and ads. On the surface this sounds bad for us as ecommerce businesses, right? And I’d agree with you if you think so. Facebook is facing an issue of people not using it as much as they used to. And of course this is a major problem for them. If there aren’t users on the platform then Facebook goes away. End of story. It’s critical that they find a way to keep people on Facebook and to keep people coming back. What’s interesting is that lately there have been reports coming out about how bad Facebook is for your own psychological and emotional health. And I fully agree with this. There’s nothing that can take you from a great mood to a terrible mood as fast as seeing your ex living an amazing life on Facebook. Or seeing your childhood friend vacationing in Tahiti while you slave away at the office. Don’t get me wrong, I like Facebook too. It’s great for staying in touch with family. But it’s a double edged sword. And it seems mainstream society is waking up to this fact. So Facebook has to communicate to people that using it is a healthy way to spend your time, and they have to keep people entertained and engaged on it so that they don’t leave. This is hard. So what are they going to do? Clean up the news feed and prevent you from seeing things you don’t want to see. This change might hurt your business. This change might hurt brands. Just as it hurt brands when Facebook changed their algorithm to prevent organic reach and it became pay to play. But the reality is that Facebook is still the best place to advertise, and we have to play by their rules. So keep playing by their rules until a better place to advertise shows up. My advice to you is don’t panic. Just adapt to it. See what will happen. When Amazon increases their fees the Amazon world collectively loses their minds for a week. And then we all just go about our business as usual. Why? Because Amazon is still the best place to sell. So all in all, I wouldn’t lose sleep over this. Business is full of challenges and this is just one more to add to the list. Now, what to do practically about this right now? Double down on ads that are working. Build up your pixel list so you can make custom audiences. If Facebook makes it harder to reach people your lists are going to become even more valuable. But, to be honest, this isn’t great advice, because if you had ads that were working, you’d already be doubling down on them, right? If not, you should be. I don’t think Facebook is going to drive away advertisers. They need us. But they also need their users. They’re in a tough position so let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and see what happens. Amazon cleaning up reviews and not letting buyers leave unverified reviews So this is a big deal. I’m seeing Amazon reviews removed from products across the board. The reviews being removed are unverified reviews, so clearly Amazon is going through a clean up phase right now. Whenever Amazon does this, it’s always nerve wracking. Why does this matter? Because it’s making getting reviews for your listings even harder than it already was. When Amazon took away incentivized reviews, getting reviews got much harder. Now it’ll be even harder. Even though incentivized reviews have been gone for awhile, you could still have people leave reviews for your products when they bought the product at a discount, or even when they got it for free, or even if they never even ordered it. None of this was against Amazon Terms of Service as long as they didn’t leave a review because they got a free or discounted product. Leaving a review was always the prerogative of a buyer, no matter what. Now, buyers can’t leave reviews for products that they recieve at a discount or that they don’t buy at all. Amazon doesn’t even give them the option. I’m hearing reports now that unless a buyer buys the product for at least 80% of the price, then Amazon doesn’t let them leave a product review. This is a big change. It’s also a big change for services like Viral Launch or Zon Blast, because even though those services were never review services and they never advertised as review services, if you used one of those services you were still going to get reviews. Now if you use Zon Blast or Viral Launch you’ll probably get zero reviews. And using those services is now way less valuable than it once was. So what do you do? What’s the solution here? You have to up your marketing game. You need to build your own launch list. You need to build an email list. You need to build a list of people who love you and who will review your product even when they purchased the product at full price. I’m not going to cover how to do this on this podcast because it’s a huge topic and I’ve touched on it briefly on past podcasts. If you want to know how I do this, email me at info@azmarketers.com [info@azmarketers.com] and we can speak about it. But, just know that everyone now is struggling to get reviews. If you’re struggling you’re not alone. This is also upsetting because this is creating a rich get richer situation on Amazon. Meaning the products with thousands of reviews will just get more reviews because they’re selling so much. It’s becoming much much much harder to launch a new product or new brand on Amazon. I hope Amazon does something in the near future to help new products and brands get some exposure. This topic is also related to Facebook changing their algorithm, because we use Facebook ads to build our outside list of buyers. So with the Facebook changes I know that things look uncertain now, and this podcast hasn’t been good news, but now that you know about these changes you can be prepared and start making adjustments. I hope the fall out from the Facebook algorithm changes and the Amazon product review cleanup is short lived and we can all go back to 2017, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen. So stay up to date and stay in the game. There’s still plenty of success to be had using Facebook Ads and selling on Amazon. So don’t get discouraged. I’ll update you as I learn more and come up with new ideas to adjust to the changes. Wall Street Segment Alright, and now our wall street segment. The stock market is booming. It’s really amazing. Facebook stock is down because of their algorithm changes announcement. I think it’s a buy. Facebook is a great company and they make the right moves all the time. Remember when they bought Instagram for 1 billion and people thought they were insane. Or when they bought WhatsApp for tens of billions and people thought they were insane? Those were good moves. In Zuck we trust. In 2018, I still like ecommerce, online payments, tech, and cryptocurrencies. I dislike retail although Target is doing well. I’m predicting the Democrats will win the House in 2018, and the stock market will see at least a 5% fall. I’m predicting Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency space will come under intense government scrutiny around the world. If you play in the cryptocurrency space, just make sure you don’t put in more than you can afford to lose. And last, invest in yourself. The best investment you can make in 2018 is the investment in your business and in your personal growth. This is not a woo woo podcast so I’m not going there, but I’m a big believer in this. Maybe someday I’ll get sensitive and let you guys in. But not today. ___________ So that’s it for today. Thanks for listening. Hit subscribe now so you can be notified of new podcasts coming. Also, I want to offer you a free 15 minute ecommerce strategy session with me. We can talk about whatever you want. Amazon, Facebook ads, Wall Street, you name it. All you have to do is leave this podcast a review. Then, take a screenshot of your review and email it to info@azmarketers.com [info@azmarketers.com]. So leave a review right now, and email me a screenshot of the review to info@azmarketers.com [info@azmarketers.com] and then we’ll schedule a time to speak. Also, I’m putting together a mastermind of experienced ecommerce business owners so we can compare notes and help each other grow. The mastermind is going to be free, and it’s only for business owners who are doing over a certain minimum revenue per month. So it’s not for beginners. It’s for intermediate to advanced ecommerce business folks. Sign up at www.azmarketers.com/mastermind [http://www.azmarketers.com/mastermind] and I’ll keep you posted. I do see people signing up for this and I apologize that I haven’t gotten back to you yet. This is in the works for 2018! And last, if you need any help with your ecommerce business, we’re at azmarketers.com [http://azmarketers.com]. Until next time, keep selling and keep growing. The post ER 021: Facebook Algorithm Changes, Amazon Unverified Review Changes [http://www.azmarketers.com/blog/er-021-facebook-algorithm-changes-amazon-unverified-review-changes/] appeared first on AZ Marketers [http://www.azmarketers.com].

ER 020: Digital Coupons, Social Media Promo Codes, Backlinks, Facebook Ads Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings:http://azmarketers.com/listing [http://azmarketers.com/listing] Want to join an ecommerce mastermind? Sign up: http://azmarketers.com/mastermind [http://www.azmarketers.com/mastermind/] Links: Digital Coupons – Viral Launch Blog Post [https://viral-launch.com/amazon-blog/news-updates/amazon-news-updates/coupons-in-amazon-seller-central/] Amazon Private Label Sportswear [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-06/amazon-s-push-into-private-label-sportswear-makes-quiet-debut] Amazon Augmented Reality [http://www.businessinsider.com/review-amazon-augmented-reality-shopping-feature-2017-11/] Check out how many products Amazon sells here – cool data [https://www.scrapehero.com/how-many-products-does-amazon-sell-worldwide-october-2017/] SHOW NOTES This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 20, today is November 17, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________ 1. Run through the news 2. Digital Coupons in Seller Central 3. Social Media Promo Codes in Seller Central 4. Backlinks to Amazon listings 5. Facebook conversion events for getting email signups 6. Wall Street Segment A quick run through the news you should know First, Amazon Australia will launch by Black Friday. This is huge in terms of Amazon’s global expansion. And in general I’m very supportive of this. I hope to be selling on Amazon myself and I look forward to helping clients and students sell in Australia. However, let’s not get carried away. Australia has a population of about 24 million. Canada has a population of about 36 million. So for a rough estimate take your Canadian sales and subtract a third to get your estimated sales for Australia. I have heard though that Aussies love to shop online, so I might be wrong and Australia could be even better than Canada. My only point is don’t get distracted from what’s most valuable to your business so you can open up shop in Australia. If you have time for it, then great, do it. If not, then wait until you do. There’s still more Amazon gold in the US and EU than there is in Australia even though it’s brand new. Second, this probably belongs in the Wall Street Segment, but it applies to you as an ecommerce business owner so I’ll say it now. I saw an article on CNBC quoting an analyst projecting that Amazon will have a record breaking holiday season and will own almost half of all online sales. Think about that for a second. Half of online sales. Isn’t that unbelievable? The message here is to keep working on your Amazon listings, keep running ads, and to keep doing what you’re doing. Digital Coupons in Seller Central are here Under the Advertising tab in Seller Central, you will now see a Coupons page. You can now create digital coupons in Seller Central and offer discounts on a single product or set of products. These coupon codes will show up in search results among other places which is a big deal. There’s a lot to unpack here and I could have a whole podcast episode on just this, so I’m actually doing to direct you to Viral Launch’s blog post on this topic for a full explanation, and I think they do a good analysis about this new feature too. Coupons have been available to vendors for a long time, so I’m not sure this is going to change much, although we have to see the implementation of it. I encourage you to read the blog post, I’m going to link to it in the show notes. After you read it I would immediately test this feature out. I know I am.  – https://viral-launch.com/amazon-blog/news-updates/amazon-news-updates/coupons-in-amazon-seller-central/ [https://viral-launch.com/amazon-blog/news-updates/amazon-news-updates/coupons-in-amazon-seller-central/] Social Media Promo Codes in Seller Central Check out within your promotions tab within Advertising. Sellers can make a temporary promotion page with a unique URL and decide who you want to share it with. Amazon says – This is a targeted promotion type; these promo codes are not shared with all customers on Amazon’s deals page or product pages. Sellers can tell customers through social media or e-mail and drive traffic to their products on Amazon. Simply direct customers to the unique promotion page and the discount automatically applies when they add an eligible item to cart. No extra fee for this. Must be in Brand Registry to do this. The discount must be at least 15% off site price and can be a maximum of 80% off. Promo codes can start four hours after they are created and can run up to 30 days. This feature is currently available in US only. So my take here is number one, get into Brand Registry if you’re not already, because Amazon keeps rolling out new features for those within Brand Registry. Second, this is Amazon’s take on a landing page. This could be very valuable for driving traffic to your products. However, sellers already do this with Super URLs. And the reason they use super URLs is because apparently super URLs still help you rank. This isn’t just hearsay. Pretty much everyone I speak with uses super URLs and I see big brands on Amazon using super URLs. Therefore, I’m not sure there’s enough value here for sellers to ditch using super URLs to drive traffic to Amazon and instead use this feature. It’s nice that the discount is already added when a shopper adds the item to their cart, but again I’m not sure about this. I’m going to test it out because I haven’t yet. You should test it too. Try using it by emailing your list or running Facebook ads. Backlinks to Amazon listings A powerful way for you to sell more on Amazon without doing more on Amazon is doing blogger outreach. I’ve been thinking about this for a while because this is what normal online businesses do, but then I saw an article on it recently that claimed when you do this, it has an outsized effect on your Amazon performance. The idea is you want to get backlinks to your product on Amazon. This helps your product get more exposure and more sales. Most effective are backlinks from Amazon affiliate websites because these are websites that are directly generating sales on Amazon. If you do this right it’s like free advertising for you. So how do you do this? Easy. Go to Google, and search your competitor’s name. Also use keywords like review, unboxing, and verses, in your search. Then look through the first 10 pages of search results, and contact anyone relevant to your product to tell them about your product. Offer to send your product for free so they can review it. Also send them the link to your product on Amazon. If you don’t have competitors, then use your niche as a keyword for searching on Google. This sort of activity you should be doing anyway for your main website. The key difference here is to pay attention to Amazon affiliate websites and ask them if they’ll list your product too. This will also work with YouTubers. You can go to YouTube and search for relevant YouTubers to review your product. Ask them to make a video and review your product and to drop a link to your product in the video’s description. This is standard influencer marketing so it’s something that you should be doing anyway. It’s best if the reviewer can link to your ecommerce store and to your product on Amazon. This is a nice little hack that will separate you from your competition. This is also an ongoing task that should never end. Blogger, influencer, and YouTuber outreach is a key task for any business these days. Side note, YouTube is the best platform for these besides blogs because YouTube videos come up in Google search results. Other social media platforms are fleeting, or don’t show up in results, or are private. So focus on blogs and YouTube. Facebook conversion events for getting email signups Facebook has a new optimization feature where you have a Facebook conversion ad that optimizes for link clicks until enough conversion events start kicking in so that the algorithm can start to learn who to serve your ad to for getting more conversions. This feature has been around for a few months, and Digital Marketer tried it out a while back and said that it was more expensive for them to use but I recommend trying it in your campaigns now for getting email addresses from Facebook ads. Basically it works like this. Say you want to build your email list with Facebook ads. You then run conversion ads with a conversion event of a complete registration, or an email address. Well Facebook needs about 25-50 conversion events to optimize your ad, and if you aren’t getting 25-50 email sign ups per week then this type of campaign won’t work. In the early stages of your ad this is a big problem. So Facebook has a solution where in the beginning of your ad’s lifetime they’ll optimize for link clinks, and then once they get enough data to learn who will convert then they’ll switch the optimization to your conversion event. In theory this is an amazing feature so try it out. You’ll find the option in the ad set level at the bottom as your making your ads. It’s a little radio button that you toggle on. If you don’t get results from this because you aren’t getting enough sign ups, then make your conversion event one step from the real event you want. Say instead of making your conversion event email sign ups, make it for when people land on your landing page. This way you’ll get your magic minimum 25 conversions per week so Facebook’s algorithm can take over. Or if you don’t want to do this then just increase your ad spend so you get to the minimum 25 conversions per week. Just don’t lose all your money in the process if you go this route of upping the ad spend. Wall Street Segment According to CNBC an analyst at Morgan Stanley thinks Amazon is going to be worth $1 trillion within a year. And I agree. That means Amazon needs a share price of about $2,000. I haven’t done the math on that so don’t quote me on an exact share price. Amazon is taking over the world. They are becoming the global mall, plus with AWS they’re a massive cloud computing company. But if Amazon becomes worth over a trillion then Google and Apple will also certainly be worth over a trillion too. The message is to buy tech stocks and forget about the rest. Amazon is coming out with its own private label sportswear to take on Nike, Under Armor, and Lululemon. Amazon quietly is coming out with its own brands. There’s danger on the horizon for big brands unless they can continue to innovate. Link in shownotes – https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-06/amazon-s-push-into-private-label-sportswear-makes-quiet-debut [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-06/amazon-s-push-into-private-label-sportswear-makes-quiet-debut] Amazon has augmented reality so you can virtually shop for furniture and see how it’ll look in your house before you buy it. The feature is in its mobile app. I think this is one of the best use cases of augmented reality I’ve seen yet. I think this is going to help a lot of people buy more furniture and high ticket items online. I’ll link to the article in the show notes – http://www.businessinsider.com/review-amazon-augmented-reality-shopping-feature-2017-11/ [http://www.businessinsider.com/review-amazon-augmented-reality-shopping-feature-2017-11/] I found a cool article that describes how many products Amazon sells worldwide. It’s just fun data to look at. Amazon US has over 600 million products it sells. Worldwide the number is 3 billion. I’d assume there are double counts here because the same product could have different ASINs or different SKUs, but it’s still a ton and it gives you an idea of the enormous size of Amazon. According to this data, an average of 1.3 million products are added to Amazon’s US catalogue each day! I’ll link to it in the show notes – https://www.scrapehero.com/how-many-products-does-amazon-sell-worldwide-october-2017/ [https://www.scrapehero.com/how-many-products-does-amazon-sell-worldwide-october-2017/] ___________ So that’s it for today. Thanks for listing. Hit subscribe now so you can be notified of new podcasts coming. Also, I want to offer you a free 15 minute ecommerce strategy session with me. We can talk about whatever you want. Amazon, Facebook ads, Wall Street, you name it. All you have to do is leave this podcast a review. Then, take a screenshot of your review and email it to info@azmarketers.com [info@azmarketers.com]. So leave a review right now, and email me a screenshot of the review to info@azmarketers.com [info@azmarketers.com] and then we’ll schedule a time to speak. Also, I’m putting together a mastermind of experienced ecommerce business owners so we can compare notes and help each other grow. The mastermind is going to be free, and it’s only for business owners who are doing over a certain minimum revenue per month. So it’s not for beginners. It’s for intermediate to advanced ecommerce business folks. Sign up at www.azmarketers.com/mastermind [http://www.azmarketers.com/mastermind] and I’ll keep you posted. And last, if you need any help with your ecommerce business, we’re at azmarketers.com [http://azmarketers.com]. Until next time, keep selling and keep growing. The post ER 020: Digital Coupons, Social Media Promo Codes, Backlinks, Facebook Ads [http://www.azmarketers.com/blog/er-020-digital-coupons-social-media-promo-codes-backlinks-facebook-ads/] appeared first on AZ Marketers [http://www.azmarketers.com].

ER 019: Facebook Ads – Cold Traffic, Acquisition Cost, Strategy Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings:http://azmarketers.com/listing [http://azmarketers.com/listing] SHOW NOTES This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 19, today is November 3, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________ 1. Facebook ads for ecommerce 2. Wall Street Segment Facebook ads for ecommerce Obviously if you’re in ecommerce, you have to be running ads. The first ads you must run are Amazon ads. I do think people way over complicate advertising on Amazon. It’s pretty straightforward. There really are no tricks and silver bullets. And with the ability to use software tools like Seller Labs’ Ignite, it’s much easier to manage them. Gone are the days when you had to spend hours in Excel to optimize your ads. AMS ads still take a bit longer to work with than Sponsored Products, but eventually you’ll hit a point where you’re doing what you can with Amazon ads and keeping your campaigns in maintenance mode doesn’t take much time. What do you do then? Go off Amazon. And go to Facebook. In my opinion, Facebook is the best ads platform right now. The reason is because of the targeting options they allow you to do. Making custom audiences, lookalike audiences, and being able to pixel someone and then get your message right back in front of them is very powerful. I have to admit that Google, and with that YouTube, also has retargeting and gives you the ability to build audiences, but it’s not nearly as easy to use as Facebook, and that’s another reason I like Facebook. When I log into my adwords account I’m just confused about what to do. Facebook is intuitive and easy to learn. Please Google if you’re listening to this make adwords easier to use. Also, we know people are spending a lot of time on Facebook. I don’t think people are hanging out on Google like they are on Facebook. On Google you find what you’re looking for and move on. Facebook is where you go to find people hanging out. As a side note, YouTube is also a place where people go to hang out. I think that after Facebook, the second best place to advertise right now is YouTube. YouTube is the 2nd biggest search engine in the world after Google, and the targeting options with YouTube are awesome. However, I’m not going to talk about YouTube right now. My advice is to first master Facebook Ads, and then go to YouTube next once you’re comfortable on Facebook. So now let’s talk about Facebook ads. This topic came up this week because I know a bunch of ecommerce entrepreneurs who have hired Facebook ad consultants to run their Facebook ads for them. And their results have been less than stellar to say the least. However, in defence of these Facebook ad consultants, I think these ecommerce business owners had misplaced expectations. They assumed that they’d be able to get sales from cold traffic at a profitable price, and I think a lot of that is just wishful thinking. So my message to you today is to stop thinking Facebook ads operate like Amazon ads. They don’t. Amazon ads do make money immediately. Facebook ads don’t. And I think that should be your mindset. Now, let me qualify what I’m saying here, because of course some Facebook ads do make money immediately. Which make money? Facebook ads that target or retarget hot and warm leads do make money. Dynamic product ads do make money. The problem is that for most people those lists are relatively small unless you’re a big company. Even if you get 100,000 visitors to your website pixeled every month and you have customer lists in the thousands, those lists are not big for Facebook. You’re going to wear out those list fasts if you run ads to them everyday. Also, I just have to mention lookalike audiences here. The ability to build lookalike audiences on Facebook is awesome and powerful, but they are still primarily cold audiences. Lookalikes should never be treated like hot and warm leads, and you shouldn’t think that they will perform like leads. But, here’s the bottom line with Facebook ads – You can make money from your Facebook ads from cold traffic if the lifetime value of your customer justifies it. Let’s do a couple mental experiments to spell this out. The best internet information marketers typically get Facebook leads from cold audiences, which are usually webinar registrations, for somewhere between $5-$10 per signup. Now, while signing up and watching a webinar for an hour is a lot of time to give up, giving an email address over is pretty easy and not much to give. It’s a lot easier to give an email address than to give your credit card to buy something. For someone to actually buy something, even if it’s a little bit amount of money, it still way more to ask than just asking for an email address. So let’s double the cost and assume that in the best case scenario you can get cold traffic to buy your products for $10-20. Let’s call this best case. Let’s do a second exercise. A great ecommerce site converts 3% of people to a sale. Let’s say you are getting clicks for $1 on Facebook, which could happen but it’s likely it’ll cost you more, but let’s stay with $1 per click for now. If you get 100 clicks, then that’s $100 in ad spend. But if only 3% of visitors buy, or 3 people. How much money will you make? If you’re average sale is $20, then you’re getting $60 in revenue for your $100 ad spend. That’s not great. And in this scenario, you’re getting a sale for about $33. Let’s call this a realistic conservative case. Now, what if your conversion rate is 2% and your cost per click is $2? Then all of a sudden you’re getting a sale for about $50 in ad spend. Yikes. Let’s call this worst case. So, we can make a rough estimate that best case you could get one sale from ads with cold traffic at $10 in ad spend and worst case you can get one sale with cold traffic at $50 in ad spend. But, there are many variables involved here so of course this is an incomplete analysis. Yes, your Facebook audience targeting makes a huge difference. Yes, your ad creative makes a huge difference, and your results may vary. You might have found an amazing audience that resonates with the message in your ad and you could be killing it. If you are congratulations, and keep doing what you’re doing. For the rest of us, let’s be realistic. Let’s make a very rough estimate and say that you can acquire a customer from cold traffic on Facebook from anywhere between $10-$50. Admittedly, this is a huge range, but it helps to paint the target. Is your customer lifetime value worth more than what it costs to acquire a customer with cold Facebook traffic? This is a question that only you can figure out with the numbers related to your business. If ads to cold traffic makes financial sense for your business, then by all means run them. However, I like to go upstream instead. Don’t go for the sale, go for the easiest lowest hanging fruit. Go for the email address. And build the relationship with your potential customers through email first, then ask them to buy. With this method you can simultaneously build your brand, your audience, your influence, and your customer base. You can also use collected emails to build more Facebook custom audiences faster. It’s far cheaper to get email signups instead of a purchase from cold traffic. Will you lose out on immediate sales if you do this? Maybe. But if that’s a concern send an automated email with a link to your product after they sign up. Or on the email thank you page show your product off with a special offer so they can get it right away. It’s conventional wisdom that a company sometimes needs multiple touch points with a potential customer before getting a sale. So play that long game of getting touch points and building the relationship instead of going in for the kill right away. The odds of someone scrolling through their Facebook feed, then seeing your ad, resonating with it, and realizing they need it right now which will then make them go buy it immediately are small. One other thing. When you get someone on your email list you can make Facebook custom audiences to advertise directly to that person. So when you send out an email to them you can also send them a Facebook ad at the same time and get them twice, or at least increase the chances that they’ll at least see something from you. So if you’re thinking about running Facebook ads to cold traffic I’d encourage you to examine if this is the right move for you. If you have the capacity, you should be testing all sorts of ads and offers on Facebook. You should be running ads to cold traffic to see if you get any conversions. But you should also be running ads designed to collect email addresses so you can see if those are better for your business. Don’t expect a Facebook ads consultant to come in and magically give you money. If anyone makes any guarantees to you then run from them. All great ads professionals are great scientists. They are constantly creatively experimenting and seeing what works and what doesn’t so they can improve and adjust for next time. If you’re new to this podcast I’ll tell you right now that my favorite thing to do is run giveaways and drive traffic to them with Facebook ads. Anyone can run a giveaway, not matter what you’re selling. If you’re a consultant you can give away free consulting. If you’re selling homes you can give away a free estimate. Be creative and don’t be spoiled because of how easy Amazon ads have been up until this point. With Facebook ads you’re playing a different game. And I think the game is best played if you look at it like you’re doing virtual networking rather than direct sales. Wall Street Segment Let’s talk about Shopify. They reported earnings this week and beat estimates. Stock should shoot up right? Nope. It went down. There are still issues and doubts about the company due to a company called Citron Research thinking that Shopify is a fraud that will be investigated by the Federal government. I think a lot of Shopify investors out there just bought the stock because of its momentum this year and don’t really have a clue about its business or with what’s happening in ecommerce in general. I still disagree with Citron’s short report and don’t think Shopify is a fraud. I think for now the stock is a buying opportunity. But it’s interesting to note that Shopify can’t shake Wall Street’s fears over one report. It just goes to show you how the stock market is so fragile and dependent on people’s expectations and fears. I’ve heard that it takes like 7 positive reviews to negate one negative review on Amazon. I don’t remember where I heard that of if it’s even true, but the point is clear. One negative report can destroy tons of positivity. That’s a good life lesson there, right? Also, Amazon recently told businesses that sell non-perishable grocery items on Amazon.com that it was lowering the fee it charges them on items priced at $15 or less. Amazon previously charged 15 percent on all grocery items, but will now charge only 8 percent on the lower-priced goods for at least the next year. This is good news for sellers and bad news for grocers. I’m not saying that now Amazon will own grocery. But with Amazon making moves to change the economics of grocery items it’s encouraging for sellers to see that Amazon understands the marketplace dynamics, and is making an effort to make accommodations. ___________ So that’s it for today. Thanks for listing. Hit subscribe now so you can be notified of new podcasts coming. What did you think about this podcast? Email us at info@azmarketers.com and tell us. If you’re liking this podcast please leave it a review in the iTunes store that would be awesome. And if you need any help with your ecommerce business, we’re at azmarketers.com [http://azmarketers.com]. Until next time, keep selling and keep growing. The post ER 019: Facebook Ads – Cold Traffic, Acquisition Cost, Strategy [http://www.azmarketers.com/blog/er-019-facebook-ads-cold-traffic-acquisition-cost-strategy/] appeared first on AZ Marketers [http://www.azmarketers.com].

ER 018: Super URLs, Stealth Review Strategy, State of Amazon Marketplace Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings:http://azmarketers.com/listing [http://azmarketers.com/listing] SHOW NOTES This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 18, today is October 27, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________ We are now thick in the fourth quarter and this is an exciting time of the year. Expect your ads to be more expensive, and expect your conversion rates to go up. My advice to you is to ride out the wave and spend more money on ads now while the traffic exists. That being said, let’s get into the podcast this week. 1. Thoughts on the Amazon marketplace as a whole right now 2. Super URLs 3. Stealth strategy for getting product reviews 4. Wall Street Segment Thoughts on the Amazon marketplace as a whole right now I know I haven’t posted a podcast in a month so I just want to give you a high level overview of where I’m seeing things now. This is a bit of a state of the marketplace speech right here. People have been coming to me asking for help with their Amazon operations and they’re approaching the situation as though it’s 2015 still. The marketplace is maturing, and the players who have been selling in the space have mature listings, with lots of reviews, and a ton of seller history. It’s no longer good enough to just put up a product, even with great images and listing copy, then turn on PPC and expect to start taking sales. Sure, maybe this is possible in small niches, but soon those gaps will be closed too. The secret is out and everyone knows that selling on Amazon is incredibly lucrative. Entrepreneur magazine now regularly posts articles on how to get started selling on Amazon. Selling on Amazon is now mainstream. If you’re struggling with sales, and you have good images, good listing copy, good keywords, and reviews, then you’re problem is probably not doing more keyword research and using the hot new software tool that’ll boost your rank. Your problem is either your product isn’t demand, or you’re not doing enough to nurture the sales to reviews flywheel that feeds the Amazon algorithm that increases your organic rank. If you aren’t continually running promotions for old products and launching new products, I have news for you, your competitors are. The players who have been selling for 2 or more years are now making so much money that they are dominating the ads because they can bid the highest. They also have a lot of reviews and are only getting more. It’s getting harder and harder to be seen on Amazon for a new or underperforming product. The products that have a thousand reviews now will have two thousand reviews next year. And unless Amazon makes some sort of change there will be further consolidation and the rich products will continue to win and it will Alright, so what do you do? Where’s the good news in this? What’s the plan of action? Continuous promotions. Continuous promotions should be a part of your regular marketing plan. I’m seeing the same companies do promotions on Zon Blast and Viral Launch continuously. They can afford to pay for it! And this is squeezing out the small guys. Ironically, I heard the founder of Viral Launch on a podcast say that he thinks the blasts that they sell are becoming less effective, and I agree with him, but that’s for another time. For now they still work. If you don’t want to do these types of promotions I understand because I don’t like doing them either. Instead, run Facebook ads to a giveaway to build your email list. Then, after people sign up for your giveaway, get a Mailchimp account and send them an email follow up with a promo code to get your product at a big discount like 50-70% off. Some people will buy. Most won’t. But you’ll then be able to email these people in the future. The truth is that everyone selling on Amazon needs to mature and become more sophisticated marketers or else they risk getting left behind. Unfortunately, it’s no longer 2015, and we’ll have to take a more holistic approach to marketing now beyond running Amazon ads. Those who can build a brand and an audience will be the winners who will survive. If you don’t want to do this, which I understand because it takes work, then I suggest you look to sell your Amazon business and get out while you’re on top. I know this was kinda a downer message but I think it’s important that people on Amazon come to grips with what’s happening. Super URLs Super URLs are still a thing and people are still using them a lot. To be honest, I’m shocked that Amazon hasn’t either banned them or prevented them from working. But I’m seeing people use them all the time so the must still be working. I’m speaking about this now because I’m just surprised to see them being used so much this past month. I think Super URLs are a gray area. You can use them, but do so at your own risk. If you don’t know what a Super URL is, it’s a link to your product on Amazon that contains keywords so it mimics someone looking for your product on Amazon organically. The idea is that since it mimics an organic search, if someone clicks on that URL and then buys your product is as though they purchased your product from an organic search, which then gives you credit in Amazon’s algorithm for those keywords in the URL, thus boosting your organic rank for those keywords. Where can you use super URLs? You can use them in Facebook ads, emails, giveaways, discounts, whenever you’re sending someone to Amazon. Here’s an easy way for you to make one. Go to your seller storefront by clicking on your seller name. Then click on your storefront. You’ll know you’re there because your seller name will be to the left of the search bar. Now enter in keywords related to your product. Now the URL that’s in your browser is your Super URL for the keywords you entered in. Copy this URL and use it wherever you want. There are other Super URLs too but this is the easiest to make and is popular right now. People have been saying for years that Super URLs will go away. They haven’t yet. I think it’s more likely that Amazon will figure out a way to make them ineffective rather than banning them. So give it a shot if you want. Stealth strategy for getting product reviews I came across a genius strategy for getting product reviews, and I’m going to tell you what it is right now. But in order to get the whole strategy, you have to go to my website and sign up for my email list, and watch my 1 hour long webinar, so I can sell you a $1000 course on it at the end of it. Just kidding. Ready? Here it is. You need an email list. I’ll assume you have one because I don’t want to get into email list building right now. You email your list with a special offer. This is the special offer, if they buy one of your products today, or however long you want this offer to last, you’re going to send them a second product absolutely free. All they have to do is order the product on Amazon, and then email you back the order number. Then within 2 weeks they’ll have a second product totally free. So, when they email you back their order number, you’ll verify that they purchased the product at full price, and you have their address from the order so you’ll then create a fulfillment order and send them a second product for free. Then, the kicker here is that you email them back to tell them that their second free product shipped. And you include a link to review your product. This is great because it’s within Terms of Service. Your customer bought your product at full price. So it’ll be a verified review. And you know they like your product otherwise they probably wouldn’t want two of them. And you still make money because your margin covers the cost of all of this. So there you have it. Try this strategy out. If you have a big email list of repeat buyers this could get you tons of real verified 5 star product reviews. Wall Street Segment Shopify – There was a short report that came out a few weeks ago written by a company called Citron Research and the Shopify stock plummeted from the 120s to the 90s. I think that short report is nonsense, and that when Shopify was in the 90s the stock was on sale. Now it’s back in the 100s. Their earnings come out on October 31 so I’m excited to see what happens. I’m a buyer right now although a cautious one. With Shopify Capital and the dongle card reader they still have, they’re in a position to be more valuable than Square, which currently has a bigger market cap than Shopify, and is also a stock I like. Amazon stock is up huge today after a great earnings report. I’m not surprised. Amazon is taking over the world. The stock is still a long term buy. Amazon’s second headquarters idea is causing cities and states to give out gifts to Amazon like never heard of before for a corporation to relocate. New Jersey is offering $7 billion in tax credits if Amazon goes to Newark. That’s insane. Amazon already pays no taxes. But obviously the positive externalities that will result from an Amazon HQ in your city will pay dividends to the population for decades to come. So it’s a good idea for governments to go all out to win this award. I think Newark is a terrible idea, which is probably why Newark is offering so much. Moody’s thinks Austin Texas is going to get it, and I wouldn’t be surprised. Austin is in my top 5 guesses. But my number one guess is still Atlanta. Amazon wine is shutting down. Amazon wine started in 2012. The issue at hand has to do with the existing laws surrounding alcohol sales, which Amazon has unsuccessfully tried to change by working with regulators. The existing laws make it difficult for Amazon to sell alcohol as a retailer and operate a marketplace. All in all though you got to admire Amazon for trying things even when they don’t work out. As a company they have a ton of guts and you have to respect that. Amazon has this new idea called Amazon Key where they can open your front door to leave packages. I’m on the fence about this. Do people really have a problem with stolen packages? I think the better value would be if you order groceries, then the delivery guy puts them straight into your refrigerator! ___________ So that’s it for today. Thanks for listing. Hit subscribe now so you can be notified of new podcasts coming. What did you think about this podcast? Email us at info@azmarketers.com and tell us. If you’re liking this podcast please leave it a review in the iTunes store that would be awesome. And if you need any help with your ecommerce business, we’re at azmarketers.com [http://azmarketers.com]. Until next time, keep selling and keep growing. The post ER 018: Super URLs, Stealth Review Strategy, State of Amazon Marketplace [http://www.azmarketers.com/blog/er-018-super-urls-stealth-review-strategy-state-amazon-marketplace/] appeared first on AZ Marketers [http://www.azmarketers.com].

ER 017: Black Friday Cyber Monday Prep, Inventory Removal, Facebook Ads Problems Check out our Amazon SEO guide for optimizing your product listings:http://azmarketers.com/listing [http://azmarketers.com/listing] MENTIONED LINKS Top 10,000 ASINs per Category – US, Canada, Mexico Marketplaces [http://go.amazonsellerservices.com/l/229492/2017-08-23/g2j9b2] 10 Tips For Preparing Your Amazon Ads for the Holiday Season [https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/AmazonMarketingServices/Holiday_Prep_2017_Sellers.pdf?ref=sspa_us_s_acq_sc_hdl_txt_q4prp17] SHOW NOTES This is The Ecommerce Roundup, Podcast 17, today is September 29, 2017, I’m your host Bryan, and here’s the ecommerce news roundup for this week – ___________ First, I just want to do some quick housekeeping. Last Friday, I didn’t publish a podcast and it’s because I’ve been traveling a lot this month and just have had a lot going on, so unfortunately, for now, the podcast has taken a backseat to other obligations. Also, I’ve got a lot going on over the next couple weeks, so it’s looking like I won’t get a podcast out again until mid October. I apologize for this, but I appreciate you listening now, and if you don’t see a new episode again for a couple weeks, know that I will be back in action around mid October, so please subscribe to the podcast to get notified when new podcasts are out. Okay, now onto this week’s episode. Since I didn’t publish last week, I’ve included a few things in this episode that are related to last week but you still need to know about them so we’re going to include them today. 1. Black Friday & Cyber Monday on Amazon 2. Free inventory removal on Amazon 3. Facebook ads getting disapproved and accounts being disabled 4. A report published by Amazon that shows you the top ASINs 5. A document published by Amazon that tells you how to prep ads for the holidays 6. Wall Street Segment Black Friday & Cyber Monday on Amazon Amazon is now letting you apply for lighting deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Unfortunately, you have to be invited to do this, but if you are, then sign up right away and get your place in line for this. We ran lightning deals over Prime Day and it was unbelievable the amount of volume we saw. Even if Black Friday and Cyber Monday is half of what we saw on Prime Day it’s still worth it. The fees are still going to be $500 if the deal runs on either day or $300 if the deal runs during the week. I think the day deals are totally worth it. I don’t know yet if the week deals are worth it. It just depends on what times they give you. But, go into your lightning deals tab and sign up today for as much as you can to get deals going during those weeks. Hopefully, Amazon will give you one of those two days or both. If you get the days. Do them! You have until October 16 to submit your deals. So turn this podcast off right now and submit your deals now! How do you increase your chances of running a deal on one of the two days? Amazon says – Deals submitted for the Black Friday & Cyber Monday window will be reviewed against all other Deals submitted. Amazon will choose the Deals for each event day that provide the best value to the customers based on a combination of best discounted price and available quantity. The best price and quantity for your Deal can be different from what is suggested on the Lightning Deals dashboard. Deals not selected to run on Black Friday or Cyber Monday will run on other days during Black Friday & Cyber Monday Week, which can have higher customer traffic. So, this means, make a lot of inventory available and give Amazon your very best deal. Then make sure you have enough inventory in stock to make the deal happen. Free inventory removal for a limited time on Amazon On October 1, monthly inventory storage fees are increasing a lot for October, November, and December. However, you can now remove inventory for free if you want to avoid these fees. If you have too much inventory for fourth quarter and you want to avoid storage fees, then act now and recall some inventory. However, I advise you be cautious with this. It’s far worse to run out of inventory rather than pay Amazon a few extra bucks for fourth quarter. Yes, it’s too bad Amazon is raising their fees. However, it is what it is, Amazon still provides amazon access to customers for most businesses. If you want to get some inventory back, then figure that out as soon as you can. Facebook ads getting disapproved and accounts being disabled For the past 2 months Facebook has been cracking down on ads. Many advertisers have seen ads disapproved that previously would have been approved, and also there’s been talk of accounts even being disabled. What is happening? Facebook is getting stricter with their enforcement of ad policies. What can you do? The best thing is to stop running ads that are generating a lot of negative feedback. What does that mean? When people see your ad, and they click on the upper right corner of it, and choose to hide the ad, that increases the negative feedback score of your ad. If you had ads running that have a lot of users hiding, it’s telling Facebook that your ad is a bad experience for Facebook’s users, and then Facebook will disable your ad or even worse disable your ad account just for serving ads with negative feedback. You can actually check this in your ad account. Go to your Facebook ad in Ads Manager. And customize the columns that give you data so that it includes negative feedback. If you are running ads that have high negative feedback then turn them off. If you don’t want to turn them off then maybe just change the audience. One reason ads get negative feedback is because people are seeing them all the time and they get annoyed. If you have a frequency, of above 3 or 4, and you have high negative feedback, then you need to change your audience. Just don’t keep ads running on autopilot that have high negative feedback scores. This literally threatens your entire account. A report published by Amazon that shows you the top ASINs I found a website published by Amazon that lets you download the top 10,000 ASINs in a category by sales velocity on Amazon. You can do this in the US, Canada, and Mexico marketplace. I’ll link to it in the shownotes for you the check out – http://go.amazonsellerservices.com/l/229492/2017-08-23/g2j9b2 [http://go.amazonsellerservices.com/l/229492/2017-08-23/g2j9b2] This could be a good resource for doing product research. Not really sure what else to make from this information, so check it out and let me know if you find something useful to do with it. A document published by Amazon that tells you how to prep ads for the holidays Amazon has a guide for preparing your advertising for this coming holiday season. It’s 10 tactics for driving sponsored products and headline search ads to your listings. I’m not going to go through all 10 right now. Check out the link in the show notes to see this document – https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/AmazonMarketingServices/Holiday_Prep_2017_Sellers.pdf?ref=sspa_us_s_acq_sc_hdl_txt_q4prp17 [https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/AmazonMarketingServices/Holiday_Prep_2017_Sellers.pdf?ref=sspa_us_s_acq_sc_hdl_txt_q4prp17] I think the main takeaway is to be compliant so that your ads run, and also make sure everything is as optimized as it can be. Make your Amazon Store now so you have it. And make sure your ads are well optimized and running strong before the holiday rush starts. Wall Street Segment In this week’s Wall Street Segment, we’re going to keep it short. Toys R Us is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This is the second largest US retail bankruptcy in history. Now while it’s true Toys R Us is probably having a difficult time with Amazon, and with Walmart and Target also selling toys, a lot of this has to do with the debt Toys R Us is carrying. They were purchased by a private equity company and the private equity company loaded them up with debt, and now Toys R Us has so much debt it can’t pay it off in this competitive landscape that it’s currently in. So I don’t think this is entirely a death by Amazon case. However, if you sell toys on Amazon or online in general then this is good news for you. With Toys R Us going away, the big toy brands are going to have less control over the toy market, and now there’s even more opportunity in toys for entrepreneurs. If I were selling toys then I would go visit a Toys R Us as soon as possible and see what’s popular for inspiration on what products I could create to sell online. This creates a lot of upheaval in the toy market now so take advantage of it if you sell toys! Amazon also just announced a lot of new hardware devices this week. The glaring thing about them is how cheap they are. Clearly Amazon doesn’t care about making money, and Wall Street and the investor community rewards them for this. I recently heard that since 2008, Amazon has paid about 1.5 billion dollars in taxes, versus Walmart which has paid nearly 50 billion. So since 2008, Amazon has paid more than 48 billion dollars less in taxes than Walmart, and their stock has shot up and performed far better than Walmart. For some reason Amazon gets a free pass when it comes to Wall Street that they can just never post a profit and everything will be great. This has major repercussions for the economy and for other businesses. No business can compete with Amazon because of this reason. I think the solution here is that since Wall Street rewards Amazon for being a growth stock, other retailers should do the same. The problem is that Amazon’s mentality is one of a startup, and older retailers aren’t. So what’s going to happen? Amazon is going to continue to crush everyone. They’re going to sell their hardware devices for cheap, and make money on the backend through Prime subscriptions, or through the many other products and services they now offer. I’m not really sure if older retailers really get this threat they currently face right now. ___________ So that’s it for today. Thanks for listing. Hit subscribe now so you can be notified of new podcasts coming. What did you think about this podcast? Email us at info@azmarketers.com and tell us. If you’re liking this podcast please leave it a review in the iTunes store that would be awesome. And if you need any help with your ecommerce business, we’re at azmarketers.com [http://azmarketers.com]. Until next time, keep selling and keep growing. The post ER 017: Black Friday Cyber Monday Prep, Inventory Removal, Facebook Ads Problems [http://www.azmarketers.com/blog/er-017-black-friday-cyber-monday-prep-inventory-removal-facebook-ads-problems/] appeared first on AZ Marketers [http://www.azmarketers.com].