Brand Fortress HQ: Amazon FBA Success Strategies
Welcome to the Brand Fortress HQ Podcast, the ultimate resource for mastering Amazon FBA success. Dive deep into the world of e-commerce with your hosts, Jon Stojan, Mike Kaufman, and Matt Atkins—three seasoned Amazon brand owners who have seen it all and are ready to unveil the secrets of their success.
Your hosts each and every week are Jon Stojan, Mike Kaufman, and Matt Atkins. Jon is a former predictive analyst for the Air Force and brings his analytical prowess to the e-commerce battleground. After establishing his own 6-figure brand on Amazon, he founded First North Marketing, a beacon for brands aiming to conquer the Amazon marketplace.
Mike Kaufman is an e-commerce pioneer, having been navigating the online sales sphere for over three decades. His expertise has not only led to the creation of a mid 7-figure brand on Amazon but also birthed invaluable tools and resources to bolster other aspiring brands.
Matt is the jack-of-all-trades in the e-commerce arena, from building a 7 figure meal prep brand, multiple Amazon brands, coaching new brand builders, to helping brands of all sizes grow at Canopy Management. His passion lies in fostering a community of entrepreneurs, offering them the wisdom and connections needed to thrive.
Join us for Tactics Tuesdays, where Jon, Mike, and Matt dissect the real-life strategies propelling their own brands and companies forward. Plus, tune in every Thursday for enlightening interviews with the brightest minds in FBA—transparent leaders and business owners who are shaping the present and future of e-commerce.
With two episodes every week, the Brand Fortress HQ Podcast is your stronghold for insider knowledge, innovative tactics, and inspiring stories. Whether you’re an established seller or just starting your FBA journey, our hosts are here to guide you through the intricacies of the Amazon marketplace. Unlock your brand’s potential and build your own fortress with us at Brand Fortress HQ.
Brand Fortress HQ: Amazon FBA Success Strategies
046: Tactic Tuesdays: The Wrong Customer Avatar
What if your marketing strategy is targeting the wrong audience altogether? This episode of Brand Fortress HQ takes you through a pivotal realization by Mike at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, where he identified the necessity of shifting his focus from the end users to the actual buyers. Mike discovered that the majority of Amazon purchasers are women, leading him to reframe his approach to appeal to wives, thus highlighting how high-end pool cleaning tools can enhance family time by freeing up their husbands' schedules. By understanding that emotional appeal can be just as vital as logical reasoning, Mike shares how this shift can expand your customer base and improve engagement.
We dive into the complexities of Amazon purchasing patterns, especially when multiple users share a single account. Gender roles and shared accounts can skew analytics, potentially causing inaccurate targeting. Listen as we break down effective strategies for analyzing and refining customer avatars through Amazon's powerful data tools. From virtual bundles and custom landing pages to targeted sponsored brand ads, we discuss how to leverage these resources to better understand and reach different demographics. Plus, learn how tools like PickFu can help you fine-tune your messaging before launching broader tests on Amazon.
Finally, we emphasize the importance of the post-purchase process and the invaluable insights gained from customer feedback. Surveying customers to understand who bought the product, who they bought it for, and their motivations can significantly refine your customer avatars and marketing strategies. Engaging with your audience through surveys not only provides crucial data but also fosters a sense of involvement and loyalty. Tune in for an episode packed with insights that could revolutionize your approach to customer targeting and engagement, helping your brand thrive on platforms like Amazon and beyond.
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Welcome everyone to a Brand Fortress HQ podcast. On this Tactics Tuesday we're discussing what do you do when you're going after the wrong avatar or the wrong customer avatar and this is a conversation that came up as the three of us were discussing, and Mike thinks that he discovered that he's been going after the wrong customer avatar for going on seven years now. So with that said, Mike, I'll let you take it from there.
Speaker 2:All right so so, yeah, so my wife and I are out here at BDSS. And just a little plug for Kevin If you've never been to a BDSS, the content is amazing. Everybody here is, you know, super high level. So then, some really great content, some good conversations.
Speaker 1:Don't have the magic ring. Bdss is a billion dollar seller summit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, good point, right, you don right, you don't have the decoder. So, but anyways, through some of the content that was presented and to clarify as much, as obviously we talk about customer avatars, it wasn't any specific mention of customer avatar or anything that really led to this. It was just kind of a few things came together in my head that basically said, oh dang, like I think I screwed this up. So we have, for quite a number of years now, we kind of dialed in on a very specific customer avatar for our products and I think maybe at the front end of this, the best thing that I could say is there's two ways that you can attack your customer avatar, and one of them is paying attention to who is the end user of the product. The other is paying attention to who's the actual buyer of the product, and I think that's where we might have gone wrong is that we have been very hyper-focused on the end user of the product and not so focused on who I think is actually more likely to be the purchaser of the product. So for those that haven't listened to previous episodes and don't know, we sell very high-end premium pool cleaning tools with an unlimited free replacement warranty. Premium pool cleaning tools with an unlimited free replacement warranty. And so the customer avatar that we, I think, very effectively nailed, at least in the sense of the user of the product, is this kind of mid to upper level management guy. He's a husband, father, has a fairly expensive in-ground pool. He's probably making 150 grand a year. Very loyalty, integrity, responsibility, focus Like this is this is the guy right, and so I feel like our messaging has been very good in that sense. I do believe that is our primary user.
Speaker 2:The problem is, I think at least and this is why I want to have this conversation, because I'm very interested in what you guys have to say about it is A the majority of buyers on Amazon are women. The stats very clearly bear out that, generally speaking, probably like 75% of the time, the person that's actually purchasing on Amazon is the woman. So from that standpoint, we are in a sense, targeting a much smaller audience than maybe we could. But then, beyond that, I feel like and I have to be careful how I say this, because I don't want to, I don't want it to come across the wrong way because I don't want to, I don't want to come across the wrong way, because I don't want it to sound like. You know, women are just emotional and guys are always logical, because obviously guys buy all the time on impulse and emotion. So I'm not trying to make that point, however.
Speaker 2:So in our messaging, what we've been working on and working toward in our messaging is kind of this idea that for this guy you know who's this, you know middle upper level management guy he works his tail off, he's probably working super long hours, who, reasonably speaking, if there's something that he can do himself, he does himself and doesn't pay somebody else to do it. So that includes cleaning his pool, that includes mowing his lawn, that includes, you know, doing basic kind of repairs around the house. So you know, he's working these long hours at work and then he's coming home and he's working hours there, you know, taking care of all of these things around the house that need to be taken care of. He loves his family. He really wants to spend that time with the kids. He's got this pool, you know, for the reason of spending time with his family and unfortunately, oftentimes he doesn't get that time. And so our focus recently has been on kind of putting together materials that really dial in on that whole idea that this guy just doesn't have the time to be with his family and his kids and spend that time, enjoy that time in the pool that he envisioned. You know when he put the money into, you know putting the pool in. So that was the messaging. That's where we've been headed with this.
Speaker 2:I think, though, that we would be far better and I'm not necessarily saying that we can't target that avatar at all, because I think we still should but I feel like we would be better if we focused on the wife and focused in on basically pitching to her that, by purchasing these products, you are, in effect, giving your husband the tools to be a better husband and father and spend more time with his family and enjoying more time at home. Because he works so hard, why have him struggling with these crappy tools and whatnot that take way more time at home? Because he works so hard, why have him struggling with these crappy tools and whatnot that take way more time to do the project? So that's kind of the epiphany that I have is that I feel like I have A a larger audience to target, because mostly it's the women who are placing the orders on Amazon, and B I feel like we can tug that emotional string a little bit harder there and probably get more out of it. I think we can juice that a little bit more than we can with the guy. And so I feel like we have these two avatars that we likely should be targeting.
Speaker 2:One is the one that we have been, but the other one, I think, is actually the more critical one, and I also.
Speaker 2:One is the one that we have been, but the other one, I think, is actually the more critical one, and I also think it's the one that is the better target, because then it's the gifting, and so then it's, you know, father's Day and Christmas and all of these other opportunities that we might have to turn this into a gifting type situation where pitching the woman situation, where pitching the woman. That means that all of our messaging at least the major messaging on our website and on our product detail page and things like that would be more dialed in on that idea and focusing on the woman. And then we can create landing pages within the store, so like we can have a landing page that's specific to the wife, but we could also have a landing page that's specific to the husband, so we could do Amazon ads and point them specifically to the individual landing pages that we want, based on what customer avatar we're targeting. So that's the idea right now.
Speaker 1:That's the epiphany that I had, which I'm interested in having you guys tear to pieces if you think I'm wrong, but so the first thing that I would say is, no matter how long I've been involved in working, growing brands, ads, marketing and all that's involved with, that is as much as I think I know I've learned over time that really what matters is to test, and so the first thing that comes to mind for me is how could you test this theory without completely, you know, upending your current strategy, right?
Speaker 2:I have an idea, but I'm interested in what. And, matt, I don't know if you're still there. We don't have video or audio, so maybe you've stepped away. I can hear you. So it is technically. It does technically lean toward men who are buying the product. The problem from my standpoint, and the reason that I wonder about this, is because obviously, the brand analytics is telling me who is buying, but if the message that I'm putting out there is a message that completely resonates with a man, then that's kind of how that's going to roll. So I think, in a sense, I think I've skewed my own brand analytics. We've used that to some degree as the basis for building out this avatar. It wasn't the only information that we used, but it was significant in building out this avatar. So I feel like, to some degree, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. We assumed from the beginning, to some degree, that that was the avatar, and now we've created that as the avatar you know, and built it into our data just because of who we targeted.
Speaker 2:I think we have a single account that we both use and for us I would say well, I mean she. She probably does do most of the purchases, to be honest. I mean, because I'm the cook, you know a lot of what I buy off of Amazon that's kitchen related. You know I would purchase. So that skews things a little bit, because I do think there's a lot of stuff that gets purchased. Of course that is either food or kitchen gadgets, things like that, and in most families, of course, the guy is not necessarily the cook. So I think that would be the only reason why you know, in terms of purchases on our account, that it would skew my direction a little bit. Other than that, she definitely is the one who makes you know the most purchases on our account, but we only are only one right Is attributing to you, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great point because what I'm realizing is is that all three of us are in that same boat. So I also am, my name is on the prime account and my wife uses my prime account. So, like you said, matt, I'm sure the analytics shows, you know, when you look at the demographics, that is being purchased by, you know, a male and as opposed to a female, which probably has some really interesting purchases.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're cross dressers in the whole thing.
Speaker 1:Got a couple of sundresses my day apparently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which which begs the question. Like you know that amazon is not stupid, so there has to be something built into their system that tries to suss that out. Because they know multiple people are buying on the same account, they they've got to have ways that they kind of separate that. But at the same time I guarantee it's not perfect. And so you know, especially if it's a product that isn't an obvious, you know, a product that obviously skews one way or another, then maybe they are getting that wrong. And again, same thing, like coming back to this same conversation.
Speaker 2:Let's say that it's pool tools, right? If you were to look at that purely from the idea of end user, then you would assume that it's the men who are purchasing those. And so, for a product like that, is Amazon just simply making that assumption that the owner of the account is the purchaser, because it's a tool, as opposed to who might have bought it, as you know, as a gift or as a you know thing to give to their husband to say, hey, you know, this would make your life a whole lot easier. So I think it's highly likely that, even though my Rand analytics says it's this guy, I think it's actually more commonly his wife, who's probably buying it for him, and I think that messaging would resonate better for us. But I do think you're right, john. I think we need to just test it and I have an idea for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that'd be a good place to start and probably give you some good indications. I think Amazon should be paying me a dollar for every time I bring it up. But Amazon, especially the new Amazon bundles in being able to customize those. I'd be very interested just from a testing and data perspective. Amazon ads really gives you, I think, probably the most robust data looking at.
Speaker 1:Okay, I got X number of impressions, y number of people clicked and Z number of people actually converted on that to where you could pretty easily set up you know, without having to create a whole new product and everything else that's involved with that Essentially a virtual bundle that then you could change up some of the images and the wording and the title and that type of stuff to test that new customer avatar and then run some ads against it and see, hey, did it, you know well, and you want to create one for your current avatar and one for your new avatar, run the same ads you know and to them and see which ones performs better, and I think that would give you at least a better indication of if you're on the right track as far as that going after a different customer avatar.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. I think another option that I think a lot of sellers don't take enough advantage of and we're in that boat as well, to be honest is your brand store, because you can create custom landing pages within your brand store. We could easily create a landing page store. We could easily create a landing page that is specifically for the wife and then another landing page that is specifically for the husband, and then we could create sponsored brand ads that, you know, cause we can custom the customized, the creative, so we could create those so that the whole funnel, you know, is specific to the avatar. So we could create those so that the whole funnel, you know, is specific to the avatar. So we could create that sponsored brand ad where we're highlighting, in that, you know, custom, creative image is directed at the husband, and then we could create one that's directed at the wife, direct them to the specific landing page that we're talking about.
Speaker 2:We can put the product on there with an add to cart so we can have all of the product. Information could literally be right on that landing page, so they don't have to go anywhere else. They see all the information there and just see how many add to cart. You know, how many add to carts and purchases do we get? How many click-throughs do we get on the on the initial ad? I think that information would probably be the closest to reality. You know, pickfu is useful, I think, and I think it might be potentially a good place to start to help us nail down what should those landing pages look like. So maybe PickFu is the place where, as you suggested, matt, maybe we create some content and see how well it performs for the wife, because we kind of already know the guy like that avatar we've got. But working out the details of what does that messaging look like for the wife and then doing the testing through an actual Amazon brand ad and pointing it to a specific landing page and seeing what we get out of that Right, right, no, not at all, I think.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, I think most guys fall into that boat. I mean, we're tool people, you know. I mean as it rules. So even if it's not a power tool, it's still like if I got, if I got this super heavy duty upgraded pool pole that had this amazing locking mechanism and whatnot, and I knew that it was going to make my life easier, I would be ecstatic, and I think every wife out there is well aware of the fact that their husband would be ecstatic over that, because I know it's going to save me time, right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, and I think you're on track. Either way, you should be testing your customer avatar, especially when you have, you know, kind of these, you know brainwaves that pop up and because there might be another option out there or you know there might be you may come up with a strategy to really get the best of both worlds. With that said, I will say that what this kind of reminds me of or I think the quintessential from a marketing perspectiveruity Pebbles and Fruit Loops and all those other cereals. Where do they advertise? They advertise on.
Speaker 1:Well, back in the day, when you know you didn't have streaming 24-7, they used to advertise on Saturday morning, cartoons, right, and then the kids would go, you know, bother their parents to buy the cereal. That was, frankly, the coolest. So when I look at it from that perspective, it's who's the end user versus who's the actual purchaser. So in that scenario, the end user was the kid and they're the ones that were really pushing their parent to go or their mom to buy that cereal. So in your scenario I just wonder, that end user is most likely the guy cleaning the pool, so he probably cares the most about whether he gets some you know piece of junk that's going to break in a month or two versus a super high quality product that's going to make that process a lot faster and a lot more enjoyable, because he's not working with junk.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think that taps back into that idea of how are you marketing the product and to which avatar are you marketing the product so interestingly? First, I think, as listeners, one of the key takeaways, I think as listeners, one of the key takeaways, I think, from this particular podcast episode is a, you might not be targeting the right avatar. Or, b, there might be two equally relevant, relevant avatars that you should be targeting in different ways but that you have to evaluate Because, again, like you said, john, in the case of serial marketing, it to the kid is the way to go, because the kid's going to be like mom, mom, mom, I want this, I want this, I want this Right. In my case, if I assume and we'll have to do some testing on this to find out but if I assume that the woman is the one who's likely the one that's going to be the end buyer, as opposed to the user, then who do I target Right? Well, if I target the man, I don't think the husband is going to go to the wife and say, hey, I really would like to buy this, you know, whatever. Like I mean, yeah, it's kind of expensive. So maybe you know, maybe he is, but the point is it's not the same scenario, right, like?
Speaker 2:I think you have to evaluate your product and evaluate is is the end user in in this scenario, somebody who couldn't buy it themselves, right, the kid can't go buy it themselves, so it's going to be mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, and the mom's going to be like fine, whatever fruity pebbles, right, and so that's the way they'd use that. That. That's how that worked. The marketing was effective that way.
Speaker 2:This is a different scenario. It's not going to be the husband going wife, wife, wife, wife, wife. I want to buy this. It's not going to work like that. So I think you have to look at the psychology of the situation in the product that you're selling, figure out who the end user is, figure out who the likely buyer is and maybe target both of those avatars to see Maybe they're both equally relevant and they both generate the same amount of dollars. But by separating them out and getting your messaging right for each audience, you do better. But it may be that only one of those audiences is the one that you really want to be targeting, and you better figure out which one it is and test that out, and so I think that's where we are is that? We just need to figure it out.
Speaker 1:Well, even moving beyond you know, kind of the, the stereotypical gender roles, as you're talking about that. What I think about is you have people who are just naturally they're shoppers. You know they got kind of a list in their head and they're looking for kind of that cool, new, whatever, and they're very open to a lot of different things that they let percolate for a while. And then you have people that are I don't even know the right words, but basically required to purchase type of things where they're trying to solve an immediate problem. And I just say that because I fall into the bucket of I generally am not.
Speaker 1:The way I look at something is I go, okay, here's a problem that I have and now I'll go look for a solution. I go, okay, here's a problem that I have and now I'll go look for a solution. But if I don't have a problem, like I'm not perusing through Amazon for any category, looking for, you know, random products, even in categories that I know, let's just use something like you know that I'm really nerdy about like protein powder, like right, I kind of find a couple of brands that I like and that's kind of my thing. So I just wonder if there's, you know, kind of moving beyond the gender stereotypes, of looking at it through the lens of problem solution customer versus, you know, shopping customer. And how do you speak to those two different audiences? Right right, right Now? The question is do you feel bad when you click on somebody's ad? Because I definitely do.
Speaker 2:I'm like I never do either.
Speaker 1:I'm only going to click on this ad if I'm serious about buying this product, because I know that this is going to cost this guy like three to five bucks, I know I never click.
Speaker 2:I never click the ad. I'm like no, I'm not going to screw this guy that way. But but yeah, but back to. You know that idea, john, you know of the, you know of the. You know that idea, john, you know of the, you know of the window shopper versus you know problem solution kind of a thing is that. I think that's the. That's likely.
Speaker 2:The primary distinction between the messaging that we're looking at here is because for the man, if we're selling to him, we're selling this kind of problem solution thing. Now that doesn't mean that in a sense, we're not selling that to the wife, but that's not actually what we're selling to the wife. What we're selling to the wife is you know, you want your husband to be the hero. Help him be that. Here's the tools to help him. Be that, because he'll be done cleaning the pool three times faster than he would with anybody else's tools, and then, guess what, he's spending time with your kids in the pool for the rest of the day.
Speaker 2:And so I think that's the. That's. The difference in that messaging is that, yes, this product is solving a problem, but the problem that it's solving is different. The problem that it's solving is your husband never has time for family. This gives him time with family. This makes his life easier. This relieves his frustration at the pool when his tools break and the warranty you know nobody stands behind the warranty. It makes his life easier and it makes him, you know, gives him that opportunity to be that better dad, to spend more time with his kids instead of spending time cleaning the pool.
Speaker 1:And I mean, I'm not a pool owner and I'm not your target customer, but what you just touched on there as far as even more than time aspect to me at this point, when I look at different products that I'm buying, especially when it comes to tools, I'm looking at the one that is going to cause the least amount of frustration, because I'm just at that point in my life where I would much rather spend a little more money to have something that's quality, that's going to do the job, than trying to make a cheap piece of junk work, and so I think that's the other aspect that I would think about too, in addition to the time is just the level of frustration, and if you look at that from, you know, the spouse's perspective of nobody likes it, when you know their spouse is grumpy because they, you know, just spent 30 minutes, you know fighting with whatever tool it happened to do in order to accomplish, you know, cleaning the pool or mowing the lawn or whatever it happens to be.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's a great angle too, because if you think about it, you know you could easily take that down that road of your husband deals with way. You know a million problems all day long, every day, at work. Why not solve one of his problems here? Why not relieve one of those frustrations that he no longer has to deal with? All day long is frustration? Let this not be one of those things. So I mean, we'll see what that messaging looks like, but at the end of the day, I think that's kind of what we need to start testing. So I just thought it'd be an interesting conversation because literally, we've been targeting this avatar for years.
Speaker 1:You, I'm wrong for seven years.
Speaker 2:I'm starting to think it's the wrong avatar, so I guess we'll find out.
Speaker 1:But all right. Well, as we wrap on this episode, you know, and having had this discussion, what is, maybe you know, one action item, that or one takeaway that you would give for listeners, or one takeaway that?
Speaker 2:you would give for listeners.
Speaker 2:My biggest takeaway, honestly, is just to sit down and think through that idea of end user versus buyer, because I think all too often we probably focus exclusively on the end user, which maybe it's one in the same avatar and that's fine, that's great, but there's a decent chance it might not be, and I also think that if you separate out that idea of end user and potential buyer in terms of a gift, then you also have that opportunity to modify that messaging when it comes whether it's Father's Day or Mother's day or birthdays.
Speaker 2:I mean, it was one of the things that actually came to mind as we were talking this through is that every day, somewhere out there, a pool owner husband is having a birthday and there's a wife who's looking for the thing to buy him for his birthday, and every day there's a whole bunch of them. So you could literally run ads, say on Facebook or some other platform that is focused on that idea of just it's the birthday gift for the husband. I don't know if it still does it. Facebook used to allow you to actually target people by life events and you might even be able to target it by husbands having a birthday. I can't remember but that sort of thing, separating out those avatars that way. I think it's valuable to understand that perspective of end user versus the buyer.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Matt. Anything that you want to add before we wrap up.
Speaker 2:I think one more thing before we wrap up, too that comes to mind is don't underestimate the value of your post-purchase process, in having available to you a group of individuals who have purchased your product that you could ask. That's one thing that we haven't really done. We haven't surveyed our customers to ask them specifically. You know, who did you buy it for and why did you buy it? We've always made the assumption that whoever's on our list was the individual who A the one who purchased it and, b that they purchased it for themselves or something, and so I think it would actually be valuable if we just sent out a survey to find out who bought it and who'd you buy it for, walking through that process to really kind of suss out that idea of buyer versus end user and why did you buy it. What were the things that stuck out to you as the end user or as the gift buyer?
Speaker 2:You know, whatever it is, I think there's a lot of information to be gleaned there and again, having that post-purchase process in place and building out that list so you have those individuals that you can survey in that way, because they like your company and if the messaging is right in terms of, we need your help and we're trying to understand our audience better and so we can serve you better, and those sorts of things, which is true. All of that's true. You're not lying to them, but generally speaking, they're very responsive to that kind of thing, and so I think that's another avenue.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well. I think that's a great place to wrap for today and some fantastic takeaways for our listeners as they think about not only who is their current customer avatar, but how they can test other customer avatars that may bring their brand forward and help them grow continually on Amazon and beyond.
