Brand Fortress HQ: Amazon FBA Success Strategies

054: Tactic Tuesdays: The Changing Landscape & Your Brands Future on Amazon

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What if you could navigate Amazon's evolving marketplace and come out a winner? In this episode of Brand Fortress HQ, we make sense of the rising competition from Chinese sellers and platforms like Temu, and what it means for your brand. Discover Amazon's bold strategy to create a lower-cost marketplace segment, allowing Chinese manufacturers to sell directly to consumers, and the potential fallout for premium brands. Learn how government-subsidized shipping and tariff exemptions give Chinese sellers a leg up and explore the effects on low-priced sellers already established on Amazon.

But don't worry, we're not just here to spell out problems; we're offering solutions. U.S.-based brands can still carve out a dominant niche by leveraging targeted customer marketing and emphasizing a strong brand identity. We dive deep into understanding American consumer preferences and crafting a resonant brand message. You'll hear about the importance of identifying your customer avatar and tailoring your message to build loyalty and stand out from price-focused competitors. This episode is your playbook for capitalizing on the aggressive advertising strategies of Chinese sellers while maintaining a robust presence on Amazon.

Lastly, get the lowdown on the competitive landscape as Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) sellers flood the Amazon marketplace, driving up advertising costs and ratcheting up the competition. We highlight strategies for building a strong brand and maintaining direct customer communication to foster loyalty and repeat sales. Learn why strategic pricing, value addition, and offering warranties or guarantees can provide your customers with peace of mind and cement your brand's position. This episode is packed with actionable insights to help you navigate and thrive in Amazon's rapidly changing ecosystem.

🚀 Transform your brand on Amazon by building a powerful customer list with the After Purchase Funnel Blueprint course. Click here to get the full course for free.

➡️ Ready to go deeper into your Amazon FBA journey to accelerate your success? Get your hands on ALL of the Brand Fortress HQ resources, mentorship, and knowledge base by visiting us at BrandFortressHQ.com

⭐️ Want to help our show grow so we can continue bringing you the very best of guests and actionable content for your Amazon FBA business? We'd greatly appreciate if you took two minutes to give us a five star rating and review. Thank you!

Speaker 1:

Welcome everybody to the Brand Fortress HQ podcast For this episode.

Speaker 1:

We are live again on LinkedIn, and today what we're gonna be talking about is your brand's future on Amazon, specifically talking about Chinese sellers and the battle for brand survival, and I think this is a really important conversation that we had prior to this that we wanted to bring to the podcast, just because some of these are continuing changes, but understanding kind of the details and what's happening in the landscape, especially when we start looking at overseas sellers and what impact that has on products that may have worked in the past before that probably won't work in the future, and then also brands that, quite frankly, aren't going to exist, at least from the U S perspective, anymore on Amazon in the next couple of years. And then on the ad side, we're going to talk a little bit about how things are changing over there as well. So I'm going to start off with, as we started this discussion, matt, what maybe kind of piqued your interest the most as we talked about brands' futures on Amazon and how things have changed with Chinese sellers.

Speaker 2:

Well, I mean, the biggest thing that I've been paying attention to in the space is this new marketplace and I don't know if it's a separate marketplace or what, but it's a lower cost place of Amazon that it looks almost as if they're giving Chinese manufacturers the ability to sell direct in its own kind of low price corner of Amazon, which I mean that's super interesting, and there's a lot of people that shop just on price and are going to Amazon because they can get things for the cheapest that they can. Interesting how that plays out and how hard Amazon is going at courting these Chinese manufacturers to sell on this kind of marketplace to compete with Timu or Temu or Shine or however you pronounce, those other lower cost marketplaces.

Speaker 3:

Well, it's interesting, as you were mentioning, that one of the things that honestly didn't come to mind the other day when we were discussing this, but it kind of comes to mind now, is that it may end up being kind of this dichotomy on the Amazon platform. I would assume, amazon being Amazon, that this new marketplace will be a subset of Amazon's system. I don't anticipate it being a completely separate marketplace. I mean, they've built something pretty significant at Amazon, so it strikes me that it makes more sense for them to keep it within the ecosystem. But by the same token, I wonder, once this platform opens, depending on how it's structured and what it ends up looking like, because obviously we haven't seen it yet.

Speaker 3:

It does actually make me wonder whether a lot of those low priced current Amazon sellers may shift to that new subset of the marketplace. Will they remain in the main you know Amazon area or will they end up in this kind of subset marketplace, that's, you know, again trying to compete with with Timu? If that happens, there's a chance that it may actually help some premium brands in a sense, you know directly, just because a lot of the sellers that now are sitting at the top of the category, oftentimes simply because they're the lowest priced items. If they shift over into that area of Amazon, it may move some of those premium brands closer to the top and give them more of an opportunity to sit top of category.

Speaker 1:

Well, I think maybe we need to just maybe rewind a little bit for folks that may not be super up on kind of T-MU's model and some of the other things that have existed in the past. So the first thing that I'll say and again, you guys feel free to jump in where you think it makes sense, and if there's something that I get wrong in it, which is when we talk about Teemu, one of the big advantages is because of the way tariffs work and shipping and that type of stuff. Basically, the Chinese government massively subsidized shipping into the United States. In addition to that, the way the tariff laws work in the United States is if you're bringing in a product that's under a certain dollar amount and I believe it's somewhere between like 70 and $80, essentially it's duty free, so they don't pay any tariffs on it. So you combine the fact that they have incredibly cheap shipping in order to bring products into the US market and the fact that they're not paying any tariffs on it, which that right there is a competitive advantage versus all the other US sellers that if you're bringing in a significant amount of product, you're paying some sort of tariff in a lot of cases on that product to bring it into the United States. So right there, they've created an unfair advantage.

Speaker 1:

So that's kind of the understanding, the Teemu model and what Amazon is basically doing and, as what we've seen in the last couple of months specifically is, they are courting Amazon or, excuse me, chinese sellers and manufacturers, to essentially be that same model as Tmoo, but only on Amazon, because Amazon doesn't want to lose market share to specifically to Tmoo, but also kind of that whole model in general. So that's the way I understand it. Is that what you guys are seeing as well when we talk about kind of this Tmoo model selling low to mid-tier price goods on Amazon?

Speaker 3:

I don't think you got anything wrong there. That sounds like a pretty accurate representation of the way that it's functioning and the way that we would anticipate that this new subset marketplace is going to function on Amazon. And then, in relation to what I was just saying a moment ago, I think it would be a question of the sellers that are already on the platform. Many of them, of course, are selling FBA, you know like they're shipping the products in, and of course, Amazon has been for a while. And I guess this is another important part of the conversation is that it isn't just this new platform that has Amazon kind of courting those Chinese sellers and giving them advantages over American sellers, because even the Chinese sellers that are already on platform and aren't necessarily using that same model, they still have an advantage in terms of shipping their product in directly to Amazon.

Speaker 3:

It's actually one of the reasons that we've started using Skewdrop, which is a staging warehouse in China that ships directly to Amazon warehouses, because we can actually get significantly reduced shipping rates by doing that, because we're essentially taking advantage of the Chinese model that already exists and so they're already receiving that benefit on that side. So if you're a low priced Amazon seller and you're shipping products into staging warehouses here in the US and then taking it into Amazon warehouses, you are already ata significant disadvantage versus the Chinese sellers in your category. And again, if you're selling at a similar price point, you know down at that low end you will never beat them because they're willing to take lower margins than you and they have lower expenses than you do. So if you're trying to compete in that arena with price being one of those significant competitive factors, you will lose.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think you know just I'm going to go out on a limb here and even put a number on it which I would say you know previously if you were selling a product under probably $15, you're really going to struggle and I would say that that is probably going to reach up into more of the $20 to $30 range.

Speaker 1:

Now, that's really going to depend. Everybody's margins are a little bit different. So you might have a competitive advantage and we've talked about it here before where maybe you already have a built-in audience, where you've got 10,000, 50,000, 100,000 followers on social media or email addresses or something like that. That process can still win. But if you're looking at purely using the basic blocking and tackling of Amazon ads and bringing in a product, this the same, maybe slightly better, than what somebody finds on Alibaba I think that you know we've been saying this for a while, but I think even more so now those brands are basically at least the US based version of those brands is going to disappear, if they haven't already, in the next year or two, because of these changes that we're seeing in the incentivization by, you know, essentially the Chinese government, along with our tariff laws and some other things that make it almost impossible for a US seller to compete in that lower to mid-tier product area.

Speaker 2:

This is just more of a reason to do all the things that we've talked about since the very beginning of these conversations is diversifying and making sure that you're doing the things to build your build an actual brand and, at the same time, build an audience, because, I mean, that's that's the way to compete and that's that's really what the future of, and it's the the evolution of running this like an actual business has been happening over the course of the last five years anyways, but this is even more so. You know, making sure that you are building a brand that your consumers care about, and solving problems or enhancing their lives and getting their email addresses at the same time, like these are the stuff that we talk about, and this is the reason why things like that are a benefit, because not just relying on Amazon. Traffic is going to be a lot more difficult in the next year, and it already has become and it will continue to be so.

Speaker 3:

Well, differentiation is always the key, right. I mean. Anytime you're going to enter into any market or you're going to remain competitive in a market, you have to have a significant differentiation from your competitors. And if you have looked at price as a potential differentiator, then that's the area where you're going to struggle, and if you don't have much else, it's something significant. You know, I mean you can differentiate in a lot of very small ways but, reasonably speaking, if you're selling in that lower price tier, most of those things are not going to be important enough to the customer that you're selling to for them to actually buy your product versus some Chinese product that's 10% or 20% less expensive than yours. So if you have kind of these minor differentiators beyond pricing and you think that's enough, that's going to get you over the hump and continue to make you competitive in that area, you're wrong. That's not going to continue to be a play that you can make, and so you're going to have to make a transition. I think it's important for us to point out we're making this statement and look, maybe we could be wrong, maybe this isn't what's going to happen, but the writing on the wall seems pretty clear, the direction that things are moving and so don't just hear this and say, oh well, I guess my business is screwed. You know, chinese sellers are going to beat me and there's nothing I can do and I guess I just quit, I'll move on to something else.

Speaker 3:

Take this as in my current state. If I don't make any adjustments to the way that I'm running my business and my brand, then yeah, I'm screwed. But if I change, then I have an opportunity here, because there's certain things that Chinese sellers in a lot of cases either can't do or won't do. You know, because they can compete on price, they can beat you on price. So they don't have to do a lot of those other differentiation things that you need to do so many of them won't choose to. A lot of those other differentiation things that you need to do, so many of them won't choose to. So it eliminates a large portion of your competition and kind of sets them over in this little category over here. If you can do something significantly different that you know they're not going to do, it creates a hurdle they're probably not going to jump over. So that's the takeaway here you have to make those adjustments, don't just say you're screwed make a change.

Speaker 1:

Well, I think that's such a great point, and just to build off that just as a first of all, from a very high perspective, is that what I try to take away is, anytime that there is a crisis, if you will, within your business, whether they be big or small is trying to think about what is the opportunity within that crisis for your business to take it to the next level. And so a couple of things at the tactical level that I really think about here. In this situation, what we've already seen, and if this rolls out kind of the way we think it will, with a lot more Chinese sellers coming onto the Amazon platform and selling in the US, it means two things. One, brands with the big B, meaning that they've really figured out their color scheme, they figured out they have a brand name that's not just a collection of numbers and letters or certain names that obviously are not US-based, and that type of stuff. Brands that really put the effort into building a brand and doing branding with a big B are going to have an advantage.

Speaker 1:

The other thing is is that, especially as to see who's had the biggest increase in sales velocity in the last 30, 60 days or whatever, and it's typically these Chinese sellers that are very, very aggressive with PPC. Well, if we already have a great review profile and a strong product that allows us to target their listings, so now they're putting a ton of money into essentially getting this visibility and we're able to take sales from them by being much more targeted, by targeting their listings, because our brand is on point and you can actually use that in order to leverage kind of the ad dollars that these Chinese sellers are putting into trying to gain traction on the platform to catapult your brand forward.

Speaker 2:

That's definitely one of the places that I still see room for differentiation is Chinese sellers really still aren't great at the big B what you're calling the big B they're still not. Yes, ai has made them better at things like copywriting. I think that I see, overall, chinese sellers are getting a lot better at that, but my mom, who is not an Amazon seller in any way, shape or form, can still pick out a Chinese seller on Amazon pretty effectively and I think that matters to a certain subset of consumers I would say most consumers. If most people knew what a Chinese brand looked like on Amazon, I think a lot of US-based consumers would stay away from them for a lot of reasons. But my mom can pick them out and she stays away from them, and that's, I think, still a place where we, as building big Bs, can differentiate and stand out in the search results is what our main image is and how we speak to the consumer in our copy consumer in our copy.

Speaker 3:

Well, and I think one thing that it comes back to is that you have to recognize that Chinese sellers don't understand American culture. They don't. You know like, there's a lot of things that we have an advantage in if we are actually focusing on building a brand Like they. There's a lot of things that we have an advantage there, and one of the things that I would say is, if your primary driver is is price competition, then oftentimes it tends to be the case that you ignore the idea of who is my actual target customer avatar. You don't really spend a whole lot of time delving into who is my copy speaking to. Does it speak the language of the person that would be most interested in my specific product? And is my product different enough from somebody else's product that it even makes sense to have a target avatar? You know like. So I think part of that is, if you are one of these brands, that's in the crosshairs.

Speaker 3:

Building out a brand essentially means, yes, you know, getting your color scheme right, having a good logo, having a name that actually makes sense and isn't just gobbledygook. You know like. Yes, those things are key, but more than that it is people become loyal to a brand for a couple of reasons. Essentially, one is you treat them well, and hopefully really well in comparison to other brands. The second is that they like who you are or what you stand for, or you know those sorts of things Like it resonates with them right. That's the branding piece you know.

Speaker 3:

You have to convince that particular customer that your brand is the better brand to buy from versus all of these other brands, because you are in alignment with them. Because you are in alignment with them, people like to buy from businesses that support the same things that they do, that think the same way that they do, that you know that value the same things that they value. You can't do that if you don't know who your target customer is, because if it's everybody, well then you've got liberals and conservatives, you've got people who are religious and who aren't religious. You've got people who are fitness nuts and those who aren't. Those are that pets, those that don't.

Speaker 3:

Who are you talking to? You have no idea who you're talking to, but if, instead, you narrow that down and it may be even just choosing, it may not even be a bunch of market research that says who is the best customer for my product. It might just be. Let me select a good customer for my product. Really flesh out this very specific customer avatar. They're, you know whatever. They're conservative, religious, they have a large family, they've got dogs, you know. They have a management position. You know, whatever you outline that Then you can start speaking their language and then your brand starts to resonate with them, and if you treat them well, then it resonates only that much more. And now you have the big B brand.

Speaker 1:

Well, I think the important thing there, too, is that people sometimes get kind of, you know, stuck where they feel like they have to choose one or the other, and sometimes and sometimes you do but also keep in mind that, like, you can take that same product and you can use it to speak to multiple audiences.

Speaker 1:

So I think a perfect example I was just speaking with a client that they're working on developing a new product that they're in the ATV accessory space, and so the product that they were looking at had basically two very specific or different purposes.

Speaker 1:

Well, if we look at that, I mean we don't want to try to make that product speak to both of those purposes, because now what we've done is we've diluted the message to where somebody that's like hey, you know, if, if I want, you know, if I'm a sportsman, then this may not be for me, whereas if I'm, you know, more of a recreational driver, then you know this may not be for me.

Speaker 1:

So now we need to. We take that product and we it's the same product and we just build two listings One that speaks to, you know, the sportsman audience and all the things that they care about, and then another listing that speaks to. You know that. You know recreational user and all the things that they care about, and so you know I think that's the other thing that's important to keep in mind too is that you do have the flexibility to tailor a product to multiple different audiences. Now there's definitely some more work involved in that, but, to your point, you know that allows you to really speak very clearly to that audience that that specific product is designed for and still keep it, you know, within your brand message.

Speaker 2:

Well, there is a lot of work, but it's less work than launching a new product.

Speaker 2:

And I can think of another really good example.

Speaker 2:

I was watching Brandon Young was showcasing our data dive and it was a hanging closet organizer and the intention of the brand owner was to build it for travelers, like people that were getting in planes and putting this travel organizer inside of their suitcase.

Speaker 2:

But as they dug through the search demand for it on Amazon, they also found a completely different subset of people that were in RVs that also were searching for a type of organizer solution for their RVs, but there was nobody that was really speaking to that consumer.

Speaker 2:

So what they decided in this it was like a masterclass that I was watching is to make another listing specifically for RV, and you had a whole different audience of people that were searching for completely different things that saw the same product but positioned in a different way, with images that were inside of an RV as opposed to inside of a hotel closet or something like that. So I mean you have one product that was very intentionally for people getting in airplanes, but now, with different images and different search terms, that you they're targeting is a completely different audience that they're targeting with the same product, just different images. So like yes, it is a lot of work to do something like that, but, like I said, it's a lot less work to do that than it is to go through the product research and launch a whole new product. And you can do that with one product. Just talk to different consumers.

Speaker 3:

Well, and also I mean they. You know, in that example they essentially found this deep blue ocean that nobody else was fishing in, you know, and they didn't have to develop a new product. Like, the product already exists, they already have the molds, they have a manufacturer, they have. So there's, there's a lot of pieces that are already in place there that they don't have to change. It's just the marketing piece that has to change. You know, like, okay, we need new copy, we need a new ASIN, we need whatever. Maybe we need a new brand, but maybe we don't. Maybe we can sell into the same brand and just sell that product under two different listings, two different audiences. Something to think about If you're going to choose those two different audiences, does the brand name that you already have is that one that's going to distract from the copy and the marketing? Is there a better brand name that you could use? If there is, maybe you should run that route, but it's not necessary and as long as at the front end of it it could be just testing, like, okay, I don't think the brand is helping us in that category, but I don't know if it's hurting us either. So we'll keep the same brand name, we create two separate listings. Let's test it and see how that market goes. You know you can always make adjustments down the road, but that opportunity to sell to those two different audiences is really critical. And I think it's important also to back up, and that is.

Speaker 3:

We started this conversation with the idea that you are not going to be able to compete on price with Chinese sellers. That is not going to happen. The further we go forward, the more problem that's going to be. I mean, unless some significant change happens in American law. You know whatever you know like maybe, but given the scenario that we have right now, there's no way that's going to happen, and so, therefore, you can't compete on price anymore. You probably. If that's the case, you might as well raise your price if you're not going to compete there. But if you're going to raise your price now, you need branding with a big B, like that's the only way forward. If you're going to sell at a higher price point than a lot of other brands sitting in your category, you have no choice but to follow this branding mechanism, and that's the point at which that target avatar becomes important, or avatars.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I'll even throw I know we talked about this a little bit and I think this is related as well which is I don't think a lot of folks have been paying attention to this, but I think over the long run, this is going to have equally, if not more, of an impact for kind of those low to mid tier price products, which is Amazon is already testing serving ads to services and other folks that are not sellers on Amazon.

Speaker 1:

So what does that mean?

Speaker 1:

That means, if you look at ad costs I mean we've seen over the last couple of years, really since from the pandemic and post pandemic, the ad costs have continued to go up as things have gotten more competitive, et cetera, et cetera Well, what this means is that ad costs are going to continue to go up and probably will go up percentage-wise more than they have over the last couple of years, because Amazon essentially, is going to open it up to be something akin to Google, where if you're a service, as long as you're following Amazon's terms of service, even if you're not selling a product on Amazon now, you can advertise on Amazon.

Speaker 1:

So that's going to make especially when we start looking at keywords and those types of things a lot more expensive for things like sponsored product ads, which are very accessible. I mean, it doesn't take at least in order to spend a dollar. Now whether that dollar gives you the return you want, that's a whole nother discussion, but at least to start spending money on the ads platform, amazon makes that incredibly easy, and so you're going to have a lot of people out there that are in services and other industries that are going to look to Amazon for a better ROI than what they're getting with Google or Facebook or other marketing platforms, and that's going to significantly raise ad costs when we look at traditional sellers that are selling FBA on Amazon.

Speaker 3:

I also think that there's a few other things that are going to happen with that, I think. First of all I think mostly you're going to end up with two different types of sellers that enter in that space and cause issues, cause a rise in advertising costs. I think you're going to have DTC sellers that have been selling on their website for years and they really, really have their branding dialed in and they understand marketing right. These are the guys who really know what they're doing and now Amazon opens the doors to a much better advertising platform in the sense of the data that's available and how you can target customers actual buyers, right. So, as a D2C, if I come into that space and I've got my branding really dialed in, I'm going to be super efficient with my advertising, which means they're a serious competitor to people on Amazon.

Speaker 3:

So costs are going to go up because their D, dtc and their branding is so dialed in. They can spend more on ads because they convert so well, like just because their branding is good. So costs are going to rise as a result of them. Costs are also going to rise because you've got another subset of those individuals coming into the platform who are clueless, but they are going to see Amazon as a tremendous opportunity for advertising a brand new one. Right, they're going to throw money at it, not knowing what they're doing, paying PPCs that are way above what they really should be paying, and so our ad costs are going to go up again as a result of that.

Speaker 3:

So I think those two categories of DTC sellers are really going to cause us some significant problems once that door opens up, and it's going to create issues. Something else that comes to mind is that we may also find the performance of our listings begin to decline, because my guess is, as they open the door on that, those D2C sellers aren't only going to be advertising in the search results, they will likely have access also to advertise on our listings. So those DTC brands that really do have a brand like they've really built it out and they've got it dialed in they're going to be advertising against your product on your listing, and if your branding is not dialed in, you are going to lose that customer to that brand offsite, and so your conversion rates are likely actually to go down if you don't really start dialing in your brand.

Speaker 1:

Well, I think the other thing. Again, you bring up a good point with the direct to consumer, but I think the other thing that I want to point out there is it's not only those brands that are not selling a physical product on Amazon, but just, you know, think about if you're a health coach and you start targeting supplements and exercise products. Again, that's probably a very minor example. But there's a ton of service-based businesses out there that can afford to spend $100 per customer for customer acquisition, and so they'll be happy to pay, you know, 10, 20, $30 a click, because, quite frankly, it's probably less than what they're paying on Google and Facebook, right?

Speaker 3:

now, oh yeah, If you're a fitness trainer or things like that and you want to, you want to get into the, you know, start advertising on supplements and things like that. Absolutely the prices that they charge for a lot of that consulting. They can way outpace you in terms of what they can afford to pay.

Speaker 1:

So I think, yeah, just keeping that in mind. I mean you combine those two things together and that means for some categories you're going to see a pretty dramatic increase in ad costs in some of these different categories as Amazon opens that up over the next year or so.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, and then wait till those brands that are used to advertising off of Amazon platforms start to see some of those conversion rates that are going to be much higher on Amazon than they are on their websites.

Speaker 1:

They're going to see that juicy and they're going to spend even more, so it's going to be this perpetual cycle, yeah, so I mean, I think, just kind of coming full circle to our conversation that we started with, which is the brands that are going to succeed at least the US-based brands that are going to succeed and really survive over the next few years are going to be those brands at the higher end of the pricing brackets and those premium place brands.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I also think getting back to something that we mentioned and of course we talk about it a lot, but it's worth reminding people that this idea of building out and really getting your brand dialed in a big piece of that is having the opportunity to actually communicate with your customers.

Speaker 3:

You need to build a really loyal customer base that you can repeat, sell to, that you can launch products to, that you can consult and send surveys to and polls to find out what new products they want, what features they want, those sorts of things so that launches go well. And so building out that brand. If you want to make that connection with those customers, you've got to be able to communicate with them. And if you're an Amazon seller, the only way that's happening is if you're building a list on the backend. So if you're not building a list, you're not building a brand. I don't care what you do with your logo, I don't care what you do with your copy and your messaging and everything else. You are not building a brand on Amazon if you are not building a list.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're really just renting space at that point and it's going to put you at a huge competitive disadvantage over time.

Speaker 1:

And I mean and I think there's some good points there I mean, email is probably the easiest way to get started on that, or easiest kind of communication method, but I mean it doesn't have to be email. You know you can use physical mail. There's, you know, text message, like there's, you know, other opportunities out there in order to build that brand and ideally, you're using a mix of all three of those in order to, like you said, build that connection with your customers. So they know you, they like you and they trust you, because that's going to send you apart from 95% of the competitors, let alone that happen to be from China, and, you know, really help you continue to grow, whether that is on Amazon or somewhere else. As you take, you know, expand beyond Amazon for your brand, right, all right. So, as we wrap up this conversation, talk about what brand builders can do as we see this change. Come on Amazon, what are maybe one action step that you would give brands to take right now?

Speaker 2:

Well, knowing that you're not going to be able to beat these competitors that we've been talking about on price, I think really starting to understand how you can increase the value of your brand, even if it's just perceived value, looking at with an objective eye on the category overall and asking yourself how do I increase the value of my products and my brand, as opposed to figuring out how to beat Chinese competitors who will always have the pricing advantage over you.

Speaker 3:

Well, I think that's really important, to just recognizing that you can't just raise the price Like if you're not offering more value, raising the price just means you're going to sell less. There's no way around that. So, you know, building out your brand, part of that process is going to have to be the value piece, and some of that is in the product, but some of that, but the level of service that we offer on the back end, you know, to those individuals that have that warranty, you know making things really super easy for the customer and fulfilling on that and just doing everything that you should be doing. You should be doing. But I think at the end of the day, I would come back again to that idea of choosing either doing the market research to figure out who the best customer avatar or best customer avatars are in your category, or just choosing one or two or three avatars in your category that you think makes sense. Maybe you can't, maybe there's not really a good way for you to do the market research. On that I would say the keyword research. Somebody sometimes can do that, as Matt suggested with Data Dive. Sometimes you can find that niche that nobody else is hitting. But either way, whether it's market research or whether it's just kind of a gut feeling, like I think these are two or three different avatars that we could try to sell.

Speaker 3:

To Try it. See, you know, like really put your eggs in those baskets, like say, okay, we're going to choose these two avatars, we're going to change the copy, we're going to update things, change the images, really get the messaging on point for that specific person, and then let's see what happens. Like let's build out the brand according to that, get the marketing on point and and see you know which resonates. Maybe they both resonate, and so we continue to hammer on both of them. Maybe only one of them really starts to fly wheel, and so then we put all of our eggs into that basket. But you know, at least try it. You know you really do need to do that If you're going to raise the price. You got to know who you're selling to.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I would build off that for my action step. And again, this might be somewhat controversial, but I think that lowering your price for a temporary amount of time, for a strategic reason, can make sense, but just lowering your price to try and drive sales really is the lazy man's lever. So think about how you can either maintain your price or increase your price by adding additional value to your customers, and that doesn't always mean that you need to have more of your product or a bigger product. It really can come from a lot of different areas. And coming back to that big B brand conversation and idea that we brought up earlier in the podcast, so for folks that are listening out there, I would encourage you to think about you know, how can you add more value under that big B you know brand umbrella?

Speaker 3:

And without extending this out too far, just real briefly. I think it's important Recognize the amount of money that people spend for peace of mind. People pay for insurance and all sorts of things that have only one purpose peace of mind. So that is a value proposition. If there's something related to your product or the person that you're selling to, that there's something you can do for them or offer them that provides them with peace of mind. Do not underestimate the value that that adds to your product and figure out how you can put that into your marketing and your copy.

Speaker 1:

Well, I think that's such a you know as much as I want to wrap this episode up right now.

Speaker 1:

I think that that's such an important concept that you know well, we get to do what we want, so, and I think it's important for listeners to really understand that, that idea of peace of mind. So, when you mean when you talk about that, I mean what pops into my head right away is is that again talking about depending on where you're at in the market, if you're, you know, on kind of that upper end of the market, and I'll just talk, you know from, for me personally, from a customer perspective, I'm at that point where, for most things, I am willing to pay more for a solution that I have high confidence is going to solve my problem, rather than paying less for something that's going to, quite frankly, be a hassle into my head. But I guess, when you think about that from your brand's perspective and kind of you know what listeners should take away, what does that mean? You know what? What do you want listeners to take away from that peace of mind as a how they incorporate into their brand?

Speaker 3:

Well, I think one of those things is exactly what you said, which is, if you think about this idea of raising your price, right, if you're going to raise your price, you are selling to a different customer. As soon as you raise the price, you're selling to a different customer if you raise it in any significant way. So then the question becomes okay, what's different about that customer versus the customer I was selling to before? And one of those things is people people who have earned their money, right, so somebody who has money they're more well off than somebody else and they earned it then they tend to be an individual who is, as you said, looking for solutions. They're a solutions-oriented individual. So make sure that you're focusing on that in terms of what problems are you actually solving for the customer? And, potentially, what problems could you solve for the customer that actually have nothing to do with your product, but something else that you could do on the back end that you could offer them. That's additional. You know some service, you know connected to it that you could offer. That would. That would again be a problem solving type of solution. And how could you advertise that on your listing, right?

Speaker 3:

The other thing that comes to mind, of course and I'm always going to come back to this because it's the way I operate but is guarantees and warranties.

Speaker 3:

If you can generate a good enough review profile that makes it fairly obvious that you actually stand behind your warranty or guarantee depending on the type of product, that is because it doesn't make sense depending on the product you use one or the other but if you can create a profile that makes it clear that you stand behind it, then a warranty or a guarantee does offer additional peace of mind and it does add value, but you have to stand behind it.

Speaker 3:

You can't offer a warranty and not stand behind it, because anytime you deny a claim whether it's warranty, guarantee, whatever, if somebody asks for replacement or asks for refund or whatever and you deny that, you guarantee a negative review. On Amazon and pretty much anywhere online these days, you guarantee that negative review. If, on the other hand, you make that process super easy for that customer and you fulfill on it every time, then you almost certainly guarantee a five-star review out of that customer, and that differential between adding a one-star review to your listing versus adding a five-star review to your listing. That is an exponential adjustment in terms of how that affects your listing. So I think warranties and guarantees are great. Just be careful with them, because you better be, you better fulfill on it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, and a couple of things there, and I know we've talked about it a couple of times before, but you know, even if you don't get that five-star review from it, preventing a one-star is the equivalent, you know, of getting you know like five, five to 10, five-star reviews, especially with how the system on Amazon is weighted. And then I would just encourage listeners you bring up a great point and obviously you have a lot of great experience when it comes to warranties. I would encourage listeners to listen to some of our episodes where we talk specifically about warranties and guarantees and how you incorporate that into your brand and really get into the details, because I think there's a lot of value to be had for listeners that want to have that premium brand and are looking for something else to add value to their customers and kind of that peace of mind that you mentioned.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I was just going to say briefly too. It's really important to recognize there are far more products that people are selling that you could easily apply a warranty or guarantee to and be profitable on it, not lose money on it. Not everything, every product doesn't work, but far more products than people think you could offer a really strong warranty or guarantee on and still come out of it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and again, I think some of the previous episodes that we've done really do a good job of covering that and how to think about how to add a warranty or guarantee to your product. So if you're wondering details of how you do that, I would encourage folks to go back and look at some of our previous episodes, because we've covered that in detail and with that, I think this is a great place to kind of wrap up and talking about what your brand's future should look like and really thinking about how you can continue to add value so you can be more on that premium end as we see more and more competition at that medium to low priced area that we're going to continue to see on Amazon and all the challenges that occurs. So with that, thank you everybody for listening and we'll be back here again for another Tactics Tuesday.

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Jon Stojan

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Matt Atkins

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Mike Kaufman

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