[00:00:00] Lazar: Hey guys, welcome to the Wild PPC Bunch podcast. My name is Lazar and I’m a PPC nerd. I have over 10 years of experience in online advertising. And currently I’m the owner of the growing Amazon advertising agency called Sellers Alley. 

Brent: And I’m Brent, the owner of AMZ Pathfinder. I started this company five years ago and we’d been working in online advertising since 2013.

Lazar: Every week, we will spend around 30 minutes covering one topic and it will get to her. I promise we’ll prepare a topic, covering everything from PPC basics, in-depth strategy and current trends. 

Brent: One things’ for sure, you won’t be bored and you’ll hear insights, tactics and ideas scrape from two experienced agency owners. Go strap in for the ride and enjoy.

Lazar: Hello everyone. A couple of weeks ago, when we had Prime Day, we had 48 hour live  stream. And..Uh, as you [00:01:00] probably already know, we had a lot of guests, a lots of guests that are really well known in Amazon community. And we had a situation that we couldn’t get  brian Johnson. I’m not pretty sure that if there is anyone, uh, like in Amazon world that doesn’t know Brian Johnson and we have a huge pleasure to have him today with us. So here’s Brian, give me just a second. Hi, Brian, how are you?

Hey Lazar! 

Nice to see you! So today we are having one interesting topic. The three are going to cover because I’m pretty sure everybody’s going to talk about prime day soon and all of that, but there is one topic that is really interesting that you mentioned recently, and it’s basically about ad placements and it’s about using specific ad types to acquire market share.

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. This is something that we definitely love doing because it’s such, it’s a huge [00:02:00] opportunity. Uh, since Amazon rolled out the, uh, you know, the new, the new set of ad types in the last 12 to 15 months. And so it’s very under utilized by most brands, which means it’s an opportunity for. Each of you who are actually going to learn what those are.

Lazar: Yeah. That’s sounds like from our end and sour, Sally, like we can see that the Amazon is working really hard, introducing a lots of new stuff. There are new ad types and also they’re, uh, Revising what they already did with some, some ad types that are already there. Like, uh, a lot of changes is positive bandits and like Amazon was really busy when it comes to new ad types.

Brian: Yeah, and it seems like it’s changing every week and they’re, they’re doing a lot of, a whole lot of new testing every single week, something, something different. So, um, yeah, constantly moving anymore. 

Lazar: Just so-so basically the thing that [00:03:00] is going to be a bigger challenge for Amazon sellers. Like when, when you, when you.

Well, listen to older guys, so that they’re four years Amazon. They’re like, Oh, it was really good back in the day when you can do whatever you wish. And it would make a lot of money, but like when it comes to, um, new ad types more options to optimize and like, is it going to be a bit more challenging or like do things that people like lost the ability to make that kind of money?

Like, as they say, like they used to. 

Brian: Um, you’re talking about as far as like the old the wild West kind of days of selling on Amazon. Yeah. I mean, it, every platform is going to change, right. You’ve got to continue to adapt and continue to up your game. If you will, you know, increase the, the value proposition, um, you know, you and I both own agencies that are well-established it.

You know, we run it. We talk to brands all the time that they created something back from, you know, [00:04:00] eight ASM too many years ago. It seems like now. Um, and they never changed it with their listing. And now they’re one rain. It’s like, wow, how come my market share? Just continues to dwindle year over year.

You know, my sales just keep declining year over year compared to my competitors. Well, it’s because they’re eating away at their market share. They’re they’re stepping up and they’re using, you know, they’re, they’re optimizing their listings for current conversion. They’re getting the attention of the shopper.

They’re showing the value of their product to their shopper. And of course they’re using all the advertising assets that Amazon provides. In order to dominate the space, get the attention of the shopper. And of course they are currently taking market share away from that brand, you know, and, and. Kind of like you, like, you probably speak to them pretty much on, you know, multiple times a week and you see it again and again, and again, it’s the same story.

Lazar: Definitely. That that’s a repeating story. And also one of the things that are happening, like if you think that you found that you found the right [00:05:00] way, how to advertise and like that it’s like winning strategy, like, and people are used to like keeping that strategy and like not challenging. Um, Just leaving it that way.

And that’s like the best way, how to lose sales for us. Like what they saw that like something that is working really well and made a lot of money, but with really good, they kiss and everything, but keeping it that way and like not optimizing, not challenging it with AB tests. It always ends up having a lot of other guys in the market, like taking sales from them and taking market share.

Brian: You know, it’s also, this is something that in talking with brands in, in whether it’s, um, you know, for, for the agency or for coaching or something like that, it’s, you know, it’s kind of the analogy of like the death by a thousand cuts. You’ve heard the story of, um, You know, you don’t, if you’re being chased by a bear, you don’t have to be, you know, you don’t have to be the fastest, you just have to run faster than the people you’re [00:06:00] with.

Right.

For most of these, these brands that we see this all the time is because we go through and we do like a full, like, like a health analysis for as like, look, what is your presence on Amazon? How are you, you know, how are you compared to your competitors? Nine at nine times out of 10, they’re only using about 15 to 20% of the ad placements or ad space that is available to them because it’s changed that much in the last year, year and a half.

They’re only using about 15 to 20% and their competitors might be doing 25%. Like they don’t have to have a hundred percent. They just need to be 5% faster than, you know, or 5% doing 5% more than you, I should say. Um, in order to win in order to gain your customer more often than you’re gaining there.

Lazar: Yeah, definitely. That makes a lot of sense. Like, Oh, when we are approached by [00:07:00] potential clients and well, when we check their accounts and do the audit, we see some common patterns of mistakes that they’re happening. Like there’s literally a list of things that we started checking. Uh, just because we saw that those mistakes were repetitive and some of the, not like mistake, mistake, but it’s definitely a bad thing.

Not to have certain ad types and not, not being, uh, able to show up with certain positions on Amazon, just because you didn’t expand on time and like, Using different strategies, like from defensive on the festive strategies, when it comes to like Asian targeting, uh, companies are frequently missing. Like, I, I, I I’m, I wasn’t even aware that people are missing that the ad type, like any ad type that is using ACEs as, um, targeting methods, but it’s.

Pretty frequent thing to happen, like, especially like defensive ones. When you target your own products, I [00:08:00] didn’t know. What, what do you usually see? 

Brian: No, yeah, it’s definitely both because we look both at the offense and the defense, you know? Um, what are you doing to protect your brand and your products from competitors?

Basically doing the same, but to attack or the same thing to you. In other words of gaining market share, uh, stealing is probably the wrong word because essentially what you’re doing is you are showing that your product has more value to a shopper and the shopper deserves to have the best product that’s available to them.

So it’s not like you are doing anything, gray hat or black hat or anything like that. It’s more of a case of you’re just. Putting forward the value of your product and your brand better than the next person. And really that’s what Amazon wants you to do. That’s what the shopper wants because ultimately the shopper wants to have the best product they can get and defending your own product listing as well as.

Letting, you know, running ads in order to run, to let shoppers know that there are alternative options that have a higher value proposition, um, [00:09:00] on other product listings is a great way, you know, there’s office, there’s defense. There’s also, you know, like, like your agency, we’ve got, you know, hundreds of different strategies that fit the situation, right.

It’s not just maybe what we teach or coach, something like that, but the. There are some where we go out and it’s simply just like, okay, we’re defending our real estate. You know, I like to use the analogy of, um, you’ve got, you know, if I, if I bring up a product detail page and I show all the ads that are surrounding somebody’s product detail page, I’ll say, look at all these different aunts.

That’s like, you know, top right. Bottom bottom, bottom, bottom, bottom box. You know, there’s a bunch of them down below, right. But that is, if you are allowing your competitor to put a for sale sign in your front yard of your house, your side yard, your backyard, and you’re not doing anything about it, you know?

Um, At the same time though, is, you know, coming in and saying, you know, I [00:10:00] do have a better product. The, the shopper does deserve to know about it. I’m okay. Running the ads on their product listing, essentially putting my own for sale sign in there, you know, on their sidewalk. Um, If ultimately the shopper’s going to benefit from it.

Ultimately that’s one of the reasons why we try to improve the products that we offer. Um, I know I certainly do with my brand. Um, you know, we try to, with each iteration, we try to improve it and learn from past mistakes and learn from what the demand of the shoppers are. Um, ideally though, is. Um, there’s also where you can run a course.

You can run ads on products that you don’t directly compete with. It is your same audience. But they’re not currently shopping for your product. They’re shopping for something that is either an assessory or complimentary or a completely different product, but it’s still your same audience. And how are you getting out to the, how do you proactively reaching out and getting their eyeballs back to your product listing [00:11:00] even when they’re not currently looking for your product or your competitor’s product.

And that’s, that’s where it starts getting more advanced, but. What you and I see obviously is most brands that we talked to. They’re not even doing the basics of defending their own house, let alone gaining new market share by offering better value, let alone the, you know, the 10 other strategies that you could implement if you had, um, you know, obviously time, resources, knowledge, all that kind of stuff.

Lazar: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. And like the way how we like to explain to our potential clients is basically, uh, moving it to let’s say, best buy and imagining like that. Uh, our potential customers is best buy and best buy customer is. It’s basically their customer, unlike having somebody working a retail and offering different stuff in the retail because, um, maybe Amazon is sometimes missing [00:12:00] that like human touch.

When you have conversation between seller and the buyer. And like that conversation tells you a lot, like what kind of stuff you want to do, like upselling cross-selling stuff, or like one of the things that are frequently missing, like in 99.9% of the time in all of the concentrated scene is, um, other category targeting like.

Targeting something that is not inside of your category, but like something that is highly relevant to your get the glory and refined further. So your product could be basically frequently, frequently bought together section with that. Some other products. Obviously, you’re not going to be a billionaire because you did it, but it was definitely increase your sales.

Brian: So there’s a lot of strategies that, um, you know, you see this in. Um, you know, in the different, uh, you know, chat groups and that kind of stuff, and people are saying, it’s like, Oh, you know, what’s, [00:13:00] what’s the best thing that’s working now. You know, what’s the number one thing I should be doing. Um, and, and it’s not as easy as that.

I mean, I could come in and say, well, right now, during this time of year, there’s two go-to ads that we typically go to that produce really high results. And those are the product targeting ads and the sponsor brand video ads. Those are doing phenomenally well right now, most of your competitors are not doing it.

Are you. Or are you not, you know, do you, are you great gaining the edge or are you just kind of letting it happen to you? Uh, which obviously we don’t want for you. Um, But I, I do completely agree is that, um, you you’ve got even strategies or tactics, you know, strategies like that, where it adds on, let’s say it adds on 5% additional sales.

We’ve got a ton of those. We add in, we stack, you know, we stack those together, you know, so that if we’ve got 10 20 of those strategies to add on 5% additional sales, some people might dismiss. I go, I don’t want to do that because it’s only going to add on 5% sales. Well, yeah, but if you stack them together, what’s it doing, [00:14:00] you know, 50 to a hundred percent increase in sales.

It’s like, you know, it it’s more work, but don’t let that stop you from, from making smart choices because frankly. One of the, one of the things I usually say is, look, and I do this when I’m, when I’m teaching differentiating a product or a conversion rate optimization or advertising is look at what your competitors are doing and do the opposite.

Lazar: Okay. 

Brian: It’s huge. I mean, it’s, it’s a huge opportunity for you to step in because maybe it, like, if it’s a lot of work for you to do something, That means your competitors are joined to either, which means, which means it’s a much bigger reason why you should be putting in the extra effort in order to set these things up.

A lot of times with the campaigns. This, the, the set up is what was, what takes the longest. And then once you get a set up, then you’re just on maintenance [00:15:00] optimization, and just continues to run and produce sales and your competitors continue to not set these things up so that you continue to gain market share.

So simply just putting in, taking the extra time to actually just, you know what, I’m going to sit down today. I’m going to put six hours into just building as many campaigns as I can get out the door that have, you know, a variety of strategies. Including product targeting ads and sponsored brand video ads.

If that’s the two of that, you have to go with, start with those, because that is where I know certainly for our clients, that’s where we’re getting the biggest increase in sales is, uh, increasing the market share or the, the sales relative to a product niche that Mark increasing that market share and that brand share, um, is paying off huge.

Lazar: Yeah. Like what we hear from our clients is basically that they don’t have the asset to create and the good thing, and the, the, some of them don’t know, Amazon is offering [00:16:00] a free tool to create video. It’s not the best one. It’s probably like it’s 1999. Once again. But it’s still something unlike you can take your phone and like record with them, or, um, it’s still going to be buttered that not having anything like it, especially in your niche, if nobody else is doing advertising on that type, like 

Brian: video ads, 

Lazar: you’re gaining a huge advantage.

And one of the things that is happening recently, you guys are introduced in Europe and in Europe is like, Even cleaner because like in U S it’s more competitive market and more people are focused on new stuff. But in Europe, like if you have video ads, you’re probably the only one in your niche that is having a meet you at.

So that’s insane advantage to have. 

Brian: Yeah. Yeah. That’s um, yeah, if there’s no competition, then the cost per click is really [00:17:00] cheap, you know, and you’re a cost it’s not uncommon for us to see in, in product niches that have very little, uh, competition, as far as ad space is you can get single digit or even, you know, 10 to 15% a cost.

You know, and just like, man, I’ll take that all day long. You know, there’s some, you know, like we said before, it’s like, there’s some that, well, this only increased the sales by 5%. But it was a whole profit, like, let it happen.

But yeah, the, uh, yeah, I definitely agree with that. I was kind of curious, Liz, do you want me to show that that one slide as far as, just to kind of recap for people, what the, um, you know, what some of these ad types that we’re talking about since we’re, you know, 

Lazar: If you are able to share that, please do so I can put it on the screen.

Brian: Let me go ahead and do that here.

[00:18:00] All right. Let me know if you can see that screen. Okay. 

Lazar: Okay. Here 

Brian: it is. Give me just a 

Lazar: second to remove this. Some maybe like this is even bigger. So 

Brian: this could work. 

Lazar: Okay. Just let me know if this is better than, than like having us on the screen. I’m not the richest guy in the world. 

Brian: Well, so let’s, uh, so let me kind of, cause I know that some people will probably listen into this.

There’s just the audio only. So I’m going to kind of verbalize this a little bit here. So essentially what I’m showing here is an example of different ad types. These are primarily product targeting ads and you can see that there’s, um, you know, basically five. Different ones. There’s five different positions that are showing here.

Um, this product listing is for like an op monopoly board game. And what we can see is there’s a top, um, uh, There’s a top Stripe, then they actually call it top Stripe. [00:19:00] Um, the, that goes above, uh, in the place where we typically, we might see things like, um, you know, a sponsored brand ad for instance, like a headline ad.

This is a thinner ad that goes up above the product listing. The second one is going to be a, another product targeting ad that goes directly below the bullet points or the features of a product listing. The third one on the right hand side below the, in the add to cart column down below the add to cart section, there’s another.

Product targeting ad and then the assets or the positions that I’m showing the left-hand side can show up in search results or product detail pages. And those can be like a vertical skyscraper or like a horizontal, um, uh, you know, wide, uh, placement, um, sometimes. And then, then those can be filled by different.

Uh, ad types and different creative. So each one of these, um, you don’t have control as far as [00:20:00] I’m going to target specifically this particular position. Amazon’s going to be making the choice as far as where your ad shows up your ads show up in these position, in this position or these positions, um, as far as the ad placement.

But if you take the time in order to set up a mix of let’s say product targeting ads, I would do it. If you’ve got access to it, I would do it in both. Or I would do it in sponsored product ads, sponsored brand ads and sponsored display ads, activate product targeting campaigns in each one of those. And in those ad types like sponsored display and sponsored brand sponsored display.

When you have the option to create a campaign that includes creative. Or custom creative custom image, custom title. Um, definitely create an extra campaign for those that have the create the custom creative. Ideally, what you’re doing is depending on where you’re running, that ad, [00:21:00] you might have custom creative.

This is something we do internally is we, we create multiple advertisements that have custom image or custom title. That targets a much narrower slice of our target audience, so that we’re speaking as if we’re speaking directly to a specific subset of our target audience. We’re not simply shotgunning, but if you had never done this before, just set up one.

Make it generic, uh, create one that doesn’t have custom creative, uh, image or title, and then take the extra effort and create another one. Uh, that is a product targeting ad that includes a custom image and custom title. Right? You can still make it generic as far as who you’re targeting, that’s 13 for your product.

And then worry later on about segmenting those to talk to as individuals, uh, specific subsets of your target audience. 

Lazar: Yeah, definitely. Th th that’s to be honest, pretty common question that we were getting like, should we run. [00:22:00] Um, different ad types with AC targeting to one specific, ASEN like, what’s the benefit of it?

And like, why should we do it? And like, should we do it on our agents as well? Or just to target other races, but like, this is like really good coverage of like what you should do there. And like, Why is it important to, to show up when product wasn’t based? Basically? 

Brian: Yeah. This screen is actually part of a much larger presentation training presentation that I do for a workshop that, um, no, this is not a workshop for sale.

It’s just like what I’ve done. During groups and stuff. Um, then I’ll present to like private Facebook groups and that kind of stuff that I’ll present to you. And so what I’ll do is I’ll go in and essentially what I teach is how to identify what your targets are. Some things that are common that we look for are.

Like even on this screenshot here, um, you can go after, you know, from an offense standpoint, you can create product [00:23:00] targeting ads, again, across all three, uh, ad types. Now I didn’t bring up demand side platform or DSP for a reason that is something. Uh, I think both of our agencies manage for our clients.

Um, you know, as far as self-serve, that works fantastic, you know, sometimes 20, 30% increase in sales, which is great. Uh, but that would be like the, the other ad platform. That’s kind of like the fourth ad type, but primarily sponsored products, sponsored brand sponsored display product targeting ads is where I would recommend you focus your attention on today.

Right? As far as creating, as far as the targets, if you’re targeting specific Asians, There’s kinda like what you’ve got the defense ads, you’ve got the offense ads. Um, the defense ads are where you have multiple products in your cross-marketing your own product. Um, so that you have, for instance, you’ve got, um, you know, product a and product B ideally not just child variations because Amazon [00:24:00] doesn’t like to show child variations on the same page or underneath the same parents.

But if you’ve got. Standalone products in a standalone product, a standalone product B you could run a, you can basically targets each other’s ASEN and therefore you run your own, uh, one of your own product ads, um, for your own product on one of your other products, uh, product listings. And so you’re, cross-marketing your products, um, and keeping that shopper instead of.

Handing that real estate, that ad real estate off to a competitor or it to potentially take your customer. Uh, you are defending your real estate. You’re defending your, your ad space so that you’re keeping your shopper. Who’s already on your product detail page within your brand. They might be jumping between your products, but they’re still within your brand, which is.

We’re quite a bit where we lose quite a bit of customers. If they go to somebody else’s brand, it’s hard to get them back because they might be doing a better job across marketing and keeping them within the brand. 

[00:25:00] Lazar: Yeah. That makes makes a lot of sense. And uh, if you want to continue talking about a product listing or 

Brian: yeah, it was targeting usually kind of the short, short version of this is I will.

Take a look at what are, if I’m doing an offensive product targeting, this is where I’m targeting ASINs that are of my direct competitors. So products who, uh, competitors who sell the same product I do in general. Um, I will look at those who are my, I consider kind of segment those into these are my weaker competitors.

Those that typically have, um, a lower, um, A lower perceived value. They have a lower, um, number of review ratings. They have a lower, um, uh, you know, star rating, for instance, you know, as far as the review rating, maybe they’ve got a price point that is quite a bit higher or significantly lower. Keep in mind is that shoppers look at [00:26:00] prices that are significantly lower and they’ll devalue that product in their mind because it’s like, wow, that seems inexpensive, but it’s probably too inexpensive.

It’s probably cheap. Um, and so you can target either one and be a valid. Um, alternative or substitute, uh, for that, that target product listing. So the, when you run your product targeting ad against say a weak competitor ASEN and I generally, I start out with maybe like 20 or 30, I’ll identify 20 or 30 weaker competitors in my product niche.

And I’ll run ads on them. And, uh, some of those will, will show ads and they’ll work. And, and some others, they will just never show ads because maybe they’re, they don’t get enough traffic, you know, Amazon just doesn’t think it’s a priority sometimes. Uh, the next level on that is going after kind of the, your head, your head competitors, those who have, are comparable to yours, both in the ratings, the price, the value proposition, um, You can go after that.

And now you might not be [00:27:00] as aggressive in your bidding as you would be for those weaker competitors. Um, but it just to keep the cost down, you know, keep the costs low enough, but I definitely go after those. Um, you can find those from simply just taking your top. You know, w how do I find the essence is kind of a common question.

You could just take your top converting search term search on Amazon. What are the products that come back the first 10 pages, right. You can go through and start collecting those there’s tools out there. That’ll grab, you know, all the Asians of every, everybody who’s in there. Um, you know, the marketplace intelligence and the jungle scout and the, and grabbers, and, you know, some of these kinds of tools, um, That are relevant, readily available that you can it’ll make it easier for you to start creating this list of 20 to 30 target ACEs that you can drop into these product targeting ads, um, and just copy paste, drop them in there.

You’re targeting them. You’re you’re you’re. Active, [00:28:00] right. It’s better to get something out there, even if it’s know messy, and then you shortcut it and you only come up with five. I’d rather have you do that and get the thing alive so you can start testing it and started seeing the value then to try to get perfect and take a week in order to implement anything.

Don’t do that. 

Lazar: Yeah, that’s unclear. I couldn’t agree more on one of the things that people are asking us in our agencies. Like, should they place all DAC in, in one campaign? Like, should they have like 200 of them in one campaign? Or like, should they like narrow it down and like keep like 20 or 30 of them per campaign.

Like, we usually don’t put all of them at once, but I would like to hear, like, what’s your opinion? Like, how would you do it? 

Brian: Well, ultimately, I mean, the idea is fair in that Amazon does have a limited attention span. And so they’re going to look at a campaign. This is kind of a common [00:29:00] misconception as far as how it’s done with keywords and product targets.

And that kind of stuff is like, Oh, only limits. You know, you only want to limit a campaign to only have 10 keywords. Otherwise Amazon will show it, but then if you create 10 campaigns that Amazon is going to show all the keywords across all of the campaigns. Doesn’t work that way there, you know, Amazon very much focuses on relevance, right?

Relevance is key here. So, um, the second part of that of course, is you don’t know which ones the Amazon wants to show. And so, uh, you know, there, there are tactics that we use kind of advance that it’s not like we’re, um, You know, we say a hard, no is like, like, Oh, we’re going to put in, you know, a thousand keywords or a thousand Asians into a campaign and then we never touch it.

That’s not true. What we do is we first observe what is Amazon willing to show the ads for which products and are those products producing the results that we’re looking for. They might show the ad. A million times to a product, but if it never converts, then Y [00:30:00] you know, you should just continue that, right.

When you discontinue that Amazon will likely choose another one and step it up. Right. If they’re going to, they’re going to pick a certain percentage, a smaller percentage of the overall set. If you choose to then move those along or to restart those in a new campaign, you certainly have that option, but there’s a bunch of nuances that go along as far as like how you choose which ones to move, whether or not you create a new campaign or for the existing ones or for the new ones.

So how you segment that is, um, Uh, probably a little bit more of an advanced topic, but simply just setting them up so that you have like say, you know, five or 10 targets per campaign and you create a multiple campaigns. Um, that’s, it’s a lot more work for very much diminishing returns. I know there’s certainly that there’s software that will go out and create, you know, two, 3000 campaigns with one keyword in it by [00:31:00] itself.

And sure enough. I’d like you to do. We get those kinds of clients all the time, the right point. That was a train wreck. I need somebody who actually knows what they’re doing. Right. So I can work. Awesome. But. Uh, I liked the fact that those kinds of solutions, the automated solutions are out there, uh, because it means more business for you and me from an agency 

Lazar: staff.

That makes a lot of sense, to be honest, it’s a huge headache. Like when we get to the account that has like thousand campaigns and each campaign has one keyword. That’s a huge problem to optimize. Like we do a lot of bulk files from our end and it helps, but still you need to have dedicated budget for each keyword separately and you need to track how much money going to spend.

And like, if you go in the opposite direction and say like hooky let’s. Please bump the budget, like [00:32:00] for each keyword that that can result in something that you probably didn’t want, especially in Q4 and especially with like, not knowing what’s going on this year with like everything, when it comes to advertising on Amazon.

Um, and, and that’s, that’s definitely a huge headache. And we have one question it’s like, will this bleed money? If our coworking search term has competitors with, um, higher reviews and ratings than us. 

Brian: Well, you’re still going to optimize it just like you normally would any campaign, if that search term or keyword or target pro targeted ACE.

And if it doesn’t meet the, the, the metrics that you would take action on that. And of course, I see that was from, from, uh, viral Jane. He knows exactly what he’s doing. So. 

Lazar: Yeah,

Brian: you’re doing too, but, um, but the, [00:33:00] the, the point on that of course, is that you’re still going to optimize it just like you would any other campaign you’re simply going to go in and say, look, I know what, like the conversion rates are of my products. I know how many clicks it takes, where I should expect a conversion.

If that doesn’t happen within a reasonable amount of time, reasonable number of clicks, whatever the case is, then I’m going to reduce how much I’m spending on that. Target or I’m going to eliminate altogether. It’s basic optimization that everybody should be doing across all their campaigns. And those are, like you said, it’s like, yeah, you know, we’ll use bulk operations, we’ll use, um, you know, software just to kind of help speed things up.

We don’t typically use, um, the AI platforms for the reasons I mentioned before is that it’s still kind of a young industry created by people who don’t actually know the strategy as well as they think they do. Um, and Amazon continues to change. Um, The, the ad placements and the controls and a lot of the software doesn’t um, yeah, at says test method.

I got [00:34:00] ya. Um, but, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s not mature enough. It will get there. We certainly use, um, you know, AI primarily for competitive research, um, and analysis and auditing. We don’t necessarily use it to, we don’t we’re we’re we’re. We’re a human intelligence heavy in our, in our agency, we focus more on the, the correct strategies and adapt to the situation.

Um, 

Lazar: we use it, we usually call it like hybrid, uh, mode. Having people working with some kinds of tools and softwares that are helping on the other side, because as you mentioned, they’re still not there yet. They are going to be the, this is not the time for it yet. Like at least from our perspective and our agency.

Brian: And I think, I think it’s that it’s not like a, you know, like it’s not like I’m dogging the, the, the platform developers. I mean, I developed my own platforms too, but, [00:35:00] um, it is, I think it’s just from, uh, from our, our general perspective is that it doesn’t, it’s not a one size fits all and nobody should think that any solution or any agency for that matter is a one size fits all.

It, it really kind of case of, um, you you’re, you may be in a niche that needs some special. Uh, strategies or special tools in order to make it work well. Um, and. Uh, yeah. And, and then like you and I have seen, it’s like, we’ve seen plenty of that come over from software, you know, automated software that just can’t just doesn’t understand the subtleties of the differences as far as like the buyer’s behavior and the contextual analysis and stuff.

They do great at, uh, technical analysis, um, and just iterating through. And I’ve seen some platforms as it’s like, Oh, we, we optimize bids every single hour. It’s like, yeah, you’re an idiot. You know, they shouldn’t be, they don’t have a need to do that every single hour, unless, except for very extreme cases [00:36:00] where you’d actually have to edit the bid throughout the day, because it’s like prime day and you’re in a very competitive product.

That’s the only time I’ve ever seen where that actually has that benefit. 

Lazar: Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

Brian: I’m a little opinionated and on those, but, um, I use them. I love them, but, uh, but at the same time that you gotta, like you said, you’ve got to balance the technology with the human intelligence. 

Lazar: Yeah. And especially because Amazon platform is not working in real time. We have, we have discrepancies in numbers, especially in sales and like how, how can you optimize in real life all the time and like change the bids every 10 or 15 minutes when you get information in 72 hours, you know, that’s, that’s the tricky part.

Brian: Well, you know, if you think about it too, it’s like, you know, it’s, it’s common within the community. Like say service providers, uh, experts, you [00:37:00] know, an agency owners, that kind of stuff is that. What you see in, as far as the ad data inside of ad console is not going to match up perfectly with the advertising reports and that’s not going to match up either to the, the API data that goes to solution.

They’re all different. Amazon has stated, you know, it’s like, no, there are different systems. They’re not always going to sync up. But we have seen like st the last few weeks where the gaps between those have gotten pretty bad in some cases, and Amazon kind of partially acknowledges like, yeah, we’re researching it, but they haven’t publicly acknowledged, like, yeah, there’s obviously a problem with the ad data across these different, different data sources.

Um, and so now try to, if you’ve got everything that’s based off of automation or, um, you know, we, we kind of have to balance, you know, we want to. You know, we might work in bulk operations reports for instance, to do editing and analysis, but we also want to confirm, okay, how does this data look in these two other locations to make sure that we’re also auditing the [00:38:00] process to make sure that it’s a valid, uh, it’s a correct change too.

That’s right. But, and I’m not trying to scare anybody to say, it’s like, Oh man, I got to do all this extra work. Um, although, you know, agency, agency, you know, uh, uh, but I’m saying is that these are very real problems that we deal with on a re on a day to day basis. Um, Yeah, to be 

Lazar: honest, I asked Sean, Sean Smith a couple of weeks ago, like the same question.

And it feels like, well, if you know what you’re doing, and if you’re doing it correctly for a long time, you’re probably not to screw it up for prime day. You know, you know, like, The, the not making a huge change is going to result in some really bad results there. So might as well. I know it’s super challenging to, to work on, on something that is not like 100% precise, but it’s, it’s definitely like if your previous results were okay, you’re going to be okay.

[00:39:00] Eventually. 

Brian: Yeah, I think it’s, um, I don’t know if you’re the same mindset, is it one of the things that I, that I have gotten good at and I have a lot of fun with, and that is kind of the turnaround and that is taking something, a product or a brand that is failing and really identifying. Okay. Where are you?

Where have you been screwing it up? How do we turn this around so that you, you know, instead of, you know, the decline, you’re basically turning around and going, you know, going back up again. So we’ve gotten, um, Really good at that. That’s something I love the challenge of doing that. And there’s plenty of people we’ve talked to is like, I don’t want to even look the spreadsheet.

Like don’t even talk to me about that. It’s like, that’s too. I, I’ve got to worry about whether or not Amazon’s going to check in my 15 pallets of product or if they’re going to dump it at some point. Cause you know, it’s just sitting there in the warehouse. Um, you know, they’ve got bigger problems to worry about.

So, um, but I would say kind of the overarching message that we’re trying to get across today here is. You can [00:40:00] gain, you can defend your, your market share. You can gain market share from competitors. Um, simply by just doing a little bit more than what your competitors are doing. And our recommendations here are implement product targeting ads.

Across sponsored products once their brand and sponsored display. You’ve got those two, if you’re brand registered also. Um, and then secondarily, uh, I would also go after sponsor brand video ads. Don’t make a big production about it. You should not be hiring some agency to, to spend 15 grand in order to create a professional commercial for you.

Uh, use Animoto to get something up there with a slideshow and text that shows your lifestyle, images and your product, and making sure that you’re showing. Whether it is your product, listing your at your ad, your custom ad, creative, your videos that you’re showing what’s in it for the shopper what’s in it for me to buy your product.

I don’t care about the specific case. I don’t care about your product. [00:41:00] I don’t care about your brand. I don’t care about the features. What I want to know is what is your product going to do for me? If you can’t. Clearly state that in your product listings and your ads and your videos, then you’re not going to compete in the next year on Amazon.

It’s just, it’s going to get cutthroat that way. You’ve got to target. You’ve got to talk to your audience. 

Lazar: Yeah, definitely. I think we should wrap up with that information and like, if you. Uh, have some extra food to share. And like you mentioned that you can’t workshop for people that are working with you, like how people can reach out to you and like finds you and like get you to, to those kinds of workshops that you’re, 

Brian: that you’re having.

Oh, sure. Sure. Um, so, so I actually do, um, I do a workshop every two weeks, uh, this season, it seems like I’m doing them on a weekly basis, so I I’ll do private yeah. Workshops. Um, you know, we’re all basically just kind of be a guest, kinda like, you know, you invited me here, um, I’ll get invited to a private Facebook group [00:42:00] or a training group, something like that, just to talk on a specific topic.

Um, and I’m sure you get the same kind of invites to you and bizarre, um, And yes, I do want to have you on my show as well. Um, um, you know, ultimately the, the, like the one I’m doing the workshop I’m doing tomorrow, uh, we promote it generally through my, through my Facebook group, which is the Amazon PPC troubleshooting group about, I think there’s close to 21,000 people in that one now.

So that’s nice. It’s grown over the years, you 

Lazar: know, it’s, it’s, that’s a big community. 

Brian: Yeah. You know, it is, you know, I, I do love it. Uh, and the fact that it’s focused just on PBC, I love, um, too. So, um, if you ever like have articles or something like that, that you want to post up there, that was just let me know, um, you to be there, um, as well, but, um, usually that’s where, where we announced the workshops that I’m doing, and these are not, um, You know, if our pitch, you know, kind of webinars, whatever these are actual workshops that I do, um, every [00:43:00] other week.

And in fact, the one I’m doing tomorrow is specifically about differentiating your product. Um, so like in the search results, actually having your product stand out from all the sea of competition, that all looks the same. Very common problem. It’s not even a PPC topic, but, uh, it’s another thing that I’m passionate about.

And so I want to, that’s something I’m I’m teaching, uh, in tomorrow’s workshop, so. 

Lazar: Awesome. Awesome. That’s great. Well, thank you so much for being with us today and I wish you all the best on the, on the workshop tomorrow and have a great stress or they thanks guys. I hope you liked it. 

Brian: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Thank you. 

Lazar: Thank you so much. Bye bye guys. See you. Well, this, this wasn’t really planned to, to happen and like to have conversation with Brian and like, this is not, this is not something that we plan to continue doing. Like, I didn’t know. Maybe if you have interests, [00:44:00] just let me know, send me a message. And we’re, we’ll be more than glad to have more topics in the future.

So have a good one guys. Bye.