Brand Fortress HQ: Amazon FBA Success Strategies

060: Tactic Tuesdays: Understanding Modern Product Launches & New Amazon Tactics

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Launch strategies have changed in the last couple of years as Amazon has changed their rules. Ready to understand your product launch strategy and master the art of audience building? Join us as we explore groundbreaking techniques with Matt, an expert in launching new brands. Discover how engaging with trending communities like biohackers and the sober curious can pave the way for a successful product introduction even before it hits the shelves. We tackle the challenges of balancing taste and effectiveness in product formulation and navigate the shifting dynamics of influencer partnerships to ensure your brand thrives in Q4 2024 and beyond.

Unlock the secrets to Amazon success without relying on fickle algorithm hacks. We dissect the controversial "honeymoon period" myth and present an alternative: driving sales velocity through a passionately engaged audience. Learn the power of cultivating a brand community that withstands platform changes, ensuring your product launch isn't just a fleeting success but a foundation for sustainable growth. By strategically partnering with non-competing brands, you can tap into new customer bases and elevate your brand's perceived value, fostering loyalty and better margins.

Explore the potential of Amazon's Creator Connections and the surprising impact of deal sites over traditional influencers. Despite its invite-only status, this program has enabled brands to achieve staggering sales figures with simple, strategic moves. As we wrap up, we celebrate the contributions of Matt and Mike, and invite you to our live LinkedIn sessions for real-time engagement and insights. Join us each week for more strategies to build a robust brand identity and pave the path to long-term growth.

🚀 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

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Brand Fortress HQ podcast. And today we're live and in addition to that, we're also talking about something that is important for any brand in order to continue to grow, and that is product launches, especially in Q4, what those look like now in Q4 2024. Obviously, launch strategies have changed a lot in the last couple of years as Amazon's kind of changed the rules and then also some different features and that type of stuff. That as far as what Amazon allows. So for this topic, I'm actually gonna start off hand it over to you, Matt, as I know that you guys are getting ready for a launch on a new brand. Maybe what are some of the things that you guys are thinking about as part of your new brand launch that are different from when you did launches a couple of years ago?

Speaker 2:

I think the biggest thing now for me. I've always been about building audiences. That's always been and it hasn't been building audiences myself, as we've talked about a lot of times on this podcast before. I also leverage other people's existing audiences and so pretty much every brand that I've ever launched on Amazon, starting with our very first product launch, there was some sort of an audience for us to be able to send to the Amazon platform to help kind of grease the skins a little bit For our new brand. We don't have an audience. We don't have another audience to leverage, although we're going to use a lot of influencers and affiliates and things like that.

Speaker 2:

But we're doing, we're kind of having a pre launch type of a audience building exercise where we're building the brand out in the open.

Speaker 2:

I go, I post a video about once a week on things that we're dealing with where we are in the process.

Speaker 2:

A lot of it's been sampling the drinks that we've gotten from our manufacturer up until this point.

Speaker 2:

So I'm kind of building it out in the open on my own socials and then we have a social media agency that is also just posting informational, educational type stuff about the ingredients that we're using and this whole kind of sober curious non-alcoholic or alcohol alternative trend Actually it's more of a trend now and I think there's a lot of opportunity for us to tap into that market. But then also we have some functional ingredients in our beverage as well and that's a whole other segment of the market the whole biohackers who are into adaptogens and that kind of stuff. So for us it's all about we're building the brand out in the open to build kind of a pre-launch list. My goal is to get 500 people on that pre-launch list that are excited about the brand, that are exactly in our kind of demographic and who are excited to buy the product at full price when we launch. So we're kind of taking a build the audience first approach for this particular brand and I'm super excited to see what the results are going to be when we launched in January.

Speaker 3:

Do you think, matt, that an available avenue for your brand? Because it's kind of in that semi-biohacking kind of arena. There's a lot of recent podcasts and whatnot and pretty significant YouTube channels and TikTok profiles and whatnot and pretty significant. You know YouTube channels and TikTok, you know profiles and whatnot that are very dialed in on that. You know biohacking. Do you think you could get you know an interview or something on one of these biohacking channels or something and see if you could leverage that to kind of build out an audience or just utilize their audience, partner with them in some way?

Speaker 2:

A hundred percent and that's going to be a big part of this particular brand is partnerships like that. One of the big things that we're waiting on right now is we haven't finalized the formulation yet. There's still a couple of things. I mean for us there's two things that are important. First of all is the taste and second of all is the buzz, and the ingredient that we're using for the buzz right now is kava root, which has a very bitter taste, and we if it doesn't have the buzz, then you know a lot of our target market.

Speaker 2:

Who are the younger who are driving this kind of sober, curious alcohol alternative movement are the younger generation, like generation z, I think they're called. I think that's the youngest kind of in college age. Those are the ones that are driving it. So if they don't get a buzz, if there's not a noticeable effect from what we're from our drink, then it defeats the whole purpose. So the problem, the challenge with that adding more kava to get that buzz is the bitterness.

Speaker 2:

So there's some things that we're playing around with to kind of help make that buzz a little bit more potent but still maintaining our kind of healthy segment that we're trying to make sure like we're not adding sugar, things like that. So that's the biggest thing that we're waiting on is finalizing the formulation and then also the different flavors. At the same time, we've already kind of got our branding nailed down and we actually have samples canned samples that are on the way from our label printer, so we're going to be able to be able to make content with our actual cans. That's kind of the biggest thing that we're waiting on to kind of go that route. Right now we're just kind of building more brand awareness. We've got about 50, 60 people on our email list now, which is a good start. But yeah, so those types of partnerships in the biohacking scene is a big part of our strategy for when we get ready to launch.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that what you said there that I really would encourage the listeners to take away is yesterday or, excuse me, yesterday. Last week, on our Tactics Tuesday, we really talked about building an audience and how to leverage that audience. Launches is probably one of the most highly valued areas where you can leverage that audience. So I think this connects really well to what we talked about last week. So I really encourage listeners to go back and listen to that episode where we talked about building audience.

Speaker 1:

Whether you already have a brand or you know, you're essentially starting from scratch and you know what channel you want to go on, whether that's email or, you know, social media. I think there was a lot of good information in that last tactics Tuesday on kind of how to build that audience, and I think you know today in talking about launching. Well, I guess I'll ask you guys you know we were talking about a little bit before we hit record you know Kevin King, who obviously has a lot of influence in the space. One of the things that he put out recently was that essentially, the honeymoon period for new products is dead or no longer a thing. I guess I'd love to get your guys' take on what do you think of that perspective when you think about launching new products?

Speaker 3:

Well, I would say one. I don't know if it's actually dead or not, but I would say that I haven't read that recent posting from him, so I don't know the details of how he's come to that conclusion. I trust Kevin King that he knows a lot about the category, so chances are, at a minimum, it must be less effective or less useful than it has been in the past. I would say that likely is true, and, ultimately, I think that we do need to, as Amazon sellers, as much as we need to use the platform in the best way that we can, based on how Amazon's algorithms are working and whatnot. I think that it's important also, though, as an Amazon seller, to try and implement strategies that are somewhat algorithm agnostic, let's say, but algorithm agnostic, let's say, so that when Amazon changes their algorithm, you don't have to completely revamp your strategy for how you're launching products or how you're managing your brand or how you're. You know like, yes, there's going to be tweaks, there's going to be changes, you know things are going to happen, but if everything is just kind of a hack, if everything is based on manipulating the algorithm in some way versus just good business practice, then you have a problem, because you're going to have to change strategies all the time and that's really tough. And so that's why another reason why coming back to that idea of you know of those audiences is so critical, because it really doesn't matter how Amazon changes their algorithm or how some other social platform changes their algorithm. None of that matters. If you have an audience, you have an avenue to sell product, and so I think that's really a critical piece of that is just recognizing how valuable that is and how much it allows you to transcend, let's say, all of those little nuances and, most of the time, make good use of them. But back to the honeymoon thing, if that's not as valuable as it used to be.

Speaker 3:

And just for clarification for anybody who maybe doesn't even know what that is, it's basically this period after you launch a product where, to some degree, amazon favors your product or at least gives it more exposure than it might otherwise give it, without very many reviews and without any sales history and whatnot. It's kind of this idea that Amazon doesn't know. Maybe your product is great, maybe it's a tremendous asset to the category, so they want to give you some more exposure to see, because of course, that's going to be in their best interest, because if it is, they're going to sell more of that product. So they give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that's not true now, maybe they don't do that, or maybe it's not to the same extent.

Speaker 3:

So if you don't have that, well then these partnerships and these you know community building, you know strategies and whatnot, become that much more critical, because you can't count on Amazon to give you that exposure. But they will give you exposure if you can send traffic volume. That is one thing that Amazon it's guaranteed. If you can send traffic volume and especially sales volume through your listing, you will gain more traction within the listings and you're going to gain more exposure. So it is the way, it is the mechanism that you can guarantee that exposure, even if the algorithm is no longer favoring you as a new product.

Speaker 2:

So there's a lot of talk, there's a lot of people that think they know Amazon's A9 algorithm and, like you said, mike, the one thing that is for certain, that there's no argument about, is sales velocity increases your organic rank. The other thing that increases your organic rank, which is very explicitly not allowed based on Amazon's code of conduct, is search find buyers. Those are another thing that, without doubt. I don't think there's an argument in any seller's mind that sending when we used to be able to do that, send traffic to your listing searching for a keyword, buying it from that keyword, and when you did that, that also very much increases your organic rank. And one of the things that I really want to pound home and I think we do it a lot, but this whole podcast has really been around it in the early goings is when you have an audience that you're able to send to your listing. Those are the two things that are guaranteed sales velocity and sending external tribe. Now, people that are in your audience are usually going to search branded search for your brand, brand name, but if they don't and they search for a particular keyword, that audience searching, that audience being sent to Amazon, whether it's with an attribution link or they're searching for your brand name. It's going to increase your sales velocity, and so for us and brand launches like the reason why I want 500 people on an email list before we launch is I know what happens when you're able to send 200 people buying your product on day one on the launch, whether or not there's a honeymoon period and, by the way, real quick that actually was.

Speaker 2:

Kevin King was mentioning a study that Danny McMillan did, and if you know anything about Danny McMillan, he is probably the biggest nerd when it comes to Amazon's algorithm and things of that nature. So this was in data that he's been collecting for years and years that and I think that I haven't read the article either, I've just kind of read it at a high level I think he's saying that it never really existed. I think he's saying that there's no evidence that the honeymoon period actually ever existed. Now there are things that you can do to, like I said, increase your organic rank, and it used to be. There were tactics that you could search, find, buy and the rebates and all these rebate services and things like that. It certainly increases your organic rank, but I think what that thing is saying is it goes even further that not only is there not one really now, but there really hasn't ever been.

Speaker 2:

And so it goes back to what you said is sound business practices, like building an audience, isn't just a buzzword. The brands that win are actually worrying about their brand, as opposed to just selling random products on Amazon. It's because of how powerful is having a community is and again, we talk about this all the time, but it's that much, it's that important. That's why we talk about it all the time, because the power of an audience, especially on a launch, launching a new product, it's one of the biggest benefits that you have as a brand owner when you have an audience that you can leverage.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and what you guys are saying and I just want to double click on that because I think it's so important is you know we could get into the weeds and have, you know, an argument about the technicals of is there a honeymoon period? How much is it? How has it changed over the last couple of years? And while that might be really interesting to Amazon marketing nerds and Amazon nerds in general, the reality of it is that if you have an engaged audience and a strong brand, if you look at first principles, if you take that as a first principle, then really it doesn't matter, because you've already solved that problem and you're not reliant on how the Amazon algorithm is going to change. Whether it's, you know, now there was a honeymoon period and now there isn't because of AI or whatever it happens to be, it becomes irrelevant because you look at the first principle of I have an audience that's engaged, that wants to buy my product, you know. The other thing that I think is really important and kind of the change that's been made is is that you know if you don't have some sort of audience or somebody to buy your product at launch.

Speaker 1:

One of the other hard things to do is to offer any sort of coupons or discounts. So Amazon has made it to where your product has to have a reference price. So if you want to start out and say your ideal price is $50, but you're willing to discount it down 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, doesn't matter, you have to have a reference price in order to start, otherwise Amazon won't even allow you to do any sort of prime deals or coupons or anything else, to run any special promos on your listing. So you have to have some people interested or that are willing to buy your product at essentially full price right out of the gate. Now, how many people in order to get a reference price? Again, there's different opinions. I've seen everything from three sales and we were able to get a reference price on a product to. I've seen up to 10.

Speaker 1:

And I'm sure, depending on what category you're, in and all that type of stuff, it's going to vary. But again, if you look at first principles, if we have an audience, if we have people that you know are interested in the product and interested in the brands, you know being able to sell, you know that first, 10, 20, 30 products at whatever you know is a reasonable price for your product really puts you in a much better position than if you don't have that. If you're just relying on Amazon, you're going to really struggle right out of the gate in order to get some sort of traction and to get that Amazon flywheel going.

Speaker 3:

Well, it gives you a lot of flexibility too, because then, whereas on Amazon, the discounting of your product in order to get sales volume moving and get your conversion rate up discounting of your product in order to get sales volume moving and get your conversion rate up, it has to be a coupon or promotion or whatever, so it has to be money, it has to be money back. The difference with a list is that you can provide them with additional value that they're not getting on Amazon, so you don't have to go down the discount route. It could be a rebate, it could be whatever, but remember that what we're talking about here, in terms of this reference price point, is that you wanna sale at full price, and probably multiple sales at full price, and again, don't know exactly how many, but chances are it's probably 10 or less for most categories that you might get, but you need those full price sales. So if you have an audience, you can easily have some sort of either a rebate system where they go, place the order at full price and they get a rebate on the backend from you, but you can also do, you know, like you provide them with a free report or some PDF guide or some additional product that you can ship to them super inexpensively, and so it feels like a $10 or $20 or $30 discount, but it only costs you maybe $10 or whatever it is. So there's a whole lot of flexibility in terms of how you provide let's back up A discount.

Speaker 3:

Essentially, all that a discount does is it means that they've gotten more value for the money that they spent, and in this case it's because the value of the product is, say, $50, but I only spent $40 or $30, right, there's a mismatch between the value point and the price point. Well, you can create that mismatch differently. It doesn't have to be a discount If the value of the product is 50 bucks and they pay $50, but then you give them an additional $20 value for some other product. Well, now they got $70 of value for $50. So it's just I like having that flexibility, and when you have a list, you can do all sorts of things with that list to generate that sales volume and to provide additional value that you might not be able to provide otherwise, and so I just think that's a really critical piece of that puzzle we lost John.

Speaker 2:

Do you think we lost his? Do you see him? I?

Speaker 3:

don't know, so we'll just keep going and we'll pretend that we didn't lose him. So, yeah, I think, on that point of that reference point, I think the other thing is to remember that reference points are also valuable for strikethrough. And if you can get strikethrough then of course you can get better conversions on that listing. And so, again, setting that reference point with full price purchases at whatever that price point is that you want is really critical, because then you can get the strike through, then you can do discounts if you want on Amazon's site, and it just provides you with a lot of avenues for that additional volume. I was also going to go back to something that you mentioned earlier, matt, and I don't know if this is where John wants us to go or not, but I find it interesting, and that is when we're talking about audiences these days, because everything is social media.

Speaker 3:

I think that the assumption that most sellers would make when they hear that is you need to build a social media audience or you need to find a social media audience that you can partner with. You know whoever owns that audience, but it doesn't have to be social media. Obviously, email is one way you could build a list. People have been building email lists for ages. It obviously works and it's an avenue that you could walk down. But the other avenue is remember that, ultimately, what you're looking for is just a target audience to sell to. Well, there's a whole bunch of other brands out there that sell to the very same target audience that you sell to, many of whom are not competing with you in any way. They just happen to sell to the same person. So they have an audience. They've got customers. If they're an established business and they have customers that buy their product, well then they have a bunch of people in your target demographic that you want to sell to, that you could sell to.

Speaker 3:

So affiliate partnerships with them, where they run an ad to their list or to their customers or to their community, is an excellent way to be able to potentially send that volume of traffic through Amazon at that original launch point. And there's very little expense to you. I mean, you pay an affiliate commission. Well, so what? You're going to pay ad dollars on Amazon's platform, and this is external traffic. You can run it through an attribution link and save your 10% of the referral fees. So really, that's a very win-win kind of scenario of the referral fees. So you know, really that's a very win-win kind of scenario If you can take what might've been 20, 30, 40% ACoS or normally when you launch a product it could be as much as 100% ACoS and instead translate that into a 20% affiliate commission to a partner and save 10% on the referral fee. Like there's massive benefits there in terms of the amount of volume that you might be able to send through and they're going to be super appreciative. They get to make money on your launch.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, a couple of things that I love about that. First of all, I love what you said about when you have an audience, you can increase the value of the offer as opposed to providing them a discount. I am a huge proponent of increasing value. I like to sell on the high end. Of every category that I sell in, I'm at the high end of the price point, so that's how I fixate my prices. I want to be at the high end. How can I provide enough value to make it a no-brainer for my customers? So what I love about so first of all, that's, first and foremost, increasing value is a much better way than racing to the bottom in terms of price. It's a much different game and it's better customers. You have better margins. You can play a completely different ballgame when you're at the higher end of a price point and margin. But what I also loved about what you said, which goes along with that margin, but what I also loved about what you said which goes along with that is a partnership.

Speaker 2:

A good strategic partnership can increase the value of your offer without costing you any dollars, and a lot of it's just perceived value. Let's take your pool brand, for example. I mean having a relationship with someone that has a pool as a software for pool service providers. You're not competing with that type of a brand in any way, shape or form. They're definitely talking about, they're definitely talking to the same person, but now you have a whole nother value add that you can talk to clients about when you go start to expand into the pool pro market, then that's another conversation that you can have is hey, we have a partnership with this tool.

Speaker 2:

What are you guys using for your software? And it's not even a hard pitch, it's just hey, like you, you probably use a software to manage your business, and if you don't, why don't you? And here's some that we have a relationship with. So, like you're talking about affiliate commissions, you're talking about getting in front of their audience with emails and on their socials and things like that. But you're also talking about increasing the perceived value of your offer without having to spend any dollars yourself. But I mean, how much could that increase if that software saves that pull service business? You know X amount of dollars or X percent every single month. I mean they're going to, in their mind, attach that to you who they got their pull tool from, and you know that's. That's a whole. Nother way to get a customer for life is is by providing value like that.

Speaker 2:

So you're increasing the value of your offer instead of dropping the price.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, for sure. And in a situation like that, you know, like, you set up a partnership like that, as long as it goes well, that partnership would likely continue. And so if you have an arrangement like you were saying, you know where we're working on this full service software company. If you have an arrangement with them where, okay, if we send you business, everybody we send you gets a 10% discount, you know across the board or whatever that is right, then that's again additional value add for our customers because if you sign up directly with them, you're going to pay X. If you're one of our customers and we direct you over there, then you save 10% a month, you know, on whatever that is.

Speaker 3:

But likewise, from their perspective, like if you're pitching this to somebody as a partnership opportunity, don't neglect the idea that you can offer their customers a discount on your product. Remember referrals, if it's an external traffic source, you can save that 10% referral fee. So, off the top, you've got 10% to offer right there, you know off the bat. And if you want to do an affiliate commission plus, you know a slight discount, you can still do that because, again, remember, you're saving ad dollars. These are zero ad dollar, you know sales. So whatever you would have spent on ad dollars to get that person to buy your product, you can afford to pay that in an affiliate commission.

Speaker 3:

So you could offer a 10% discount plus a 20%. You know, if you're paying 20% A cost on your sales, you've got 30% to work with there, you know. So you can offer that to them as well. So then now that's their value add to their customers. Hey, you sign up for our service. You can buy ProTuff tools anytime you want at a 10% discount, right off, you know, right off the top. So you know there's a value add on both sides of that and that's the way a partnership should be. But it creates that situation where it's a very you know, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours.

Speaker 2:

And you never know where that might go. Yeah, another thing that kind of goes along with that that I know that John wanted to talk about was and he kind of touched on it was influencers and affiliates. You know, like for me that was one of the first things I did with my first business, the meal prep business. We kind of targeted not kind of we were all in the CrossFit community. Everything that we did, all of our marketing, our logo, everything, every piece of communication that we had, was very targeted to the CrossFit community and at the time we were, you know, we started that business in Denver. There were three pretty popular CrossFit athletes in the Denver area that were already athletes at gyms, that were drop-off spots for us. So that was one of the very first things we did, even before there were joint brands and all these other kind of affiliate influencer platforms and things like that we we were able to leverage, I mean and for us it was we offered them free food. So the margins on our, the margin on that cost, getting them to go in front of their, our, their audience, like they would compete at a local competition. They'd have our food, I'd have a big giant logo on on the back of their shirt and all it costed me was the food that they were eating, which I mean that's. It was nothing compared to the amount of dollars that we were spending on facebook and instagram and all those other places.

Speaker 2:

So, especially nowadays where we have platforms like brands, where you can find these content creators and even if it's just a content creator that doesn't have necessarily an audience like those, are those initial reference purchases that we're talking about. When they go to buy one of your products to make content for they're making a purchase on Amazon I don't, I've never worked with those, but they're getting some sort of a reimbursement, and even if they're not getting a reimbursement for the product, they're getting commissioned on any, any that they sell. So those are your reference prices. So, influencers, because of platforms like that, the cost of an influencer I mean five, six years ago, even a short five or six years ago, when someone said the word influencer, I think what most people had in their brain was things like the Kardashian sisters or an NFL football player, where it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to engage with these people.

Speaker 2:

But now, to be honest, I think that you can get better engagement from micro-influencers with 10,000 followers and if you have 10 of them that have followers that are very specific, like this is what we're going to look for for Gio the alcoholic seltzer. I mean, we're looking for people that have about 10,000 followers we want 100 of these not just 10, but 100 of these that those engaged followings that they're going to post at the same time on launch day, so you get the benefit of those very engaged eyeballs who listen to what their influences. They're influenced by what the people that they who they follow on social media tells them to do and products that they do. So I think that's another really, really important thing to keep in mind nowadays is that these influencer platforms are really easy to use. There's a lot of influencers that have existing audiences that are just waiting to give them or to show them products that they know that they're going to love. So that's another very important tactic nowadays when you're launching new products.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, for sure and honestly, if you don't want to use any of those platforms, amazon's creator connections can be a good place to start. There's a lot of responses that you get that aren't particularly valuable, but if you set it up right so that you send them to an external form and you get them to register so that you can talk with them more and evaluate like we have them sign through Creator Connections when we do a campaign there they would go to an external form and on that form we're asking them all sorts of questions about what platforms they're on, what their follower count is on each of those platforms, what their total video views is. You know those sorts of things so we can gauge. You know, like, how big are they, what kind of? You know where are they? You know we can go check out their profiles and stuff.

Speaker 3:

You don't get that necessarily directly through creator connections and you, of course, don't have a direct email connection to them either. So if you get them to register through your form whether that's hey, you know we'll send you, you know free samples or you know whatever that is you can get them to register over there and and that's actually been a pretty good source for us even of finding some good influencers. We've actually got a number of really good partners that we're starting to work with. That came to us, that that direction.

Speaker 2:

So so real quick. I think it's important because I think that I don't know how many people have seen any success Like I. Personally, I went. It's because it's all about the effort that you put in and I didn't see the same success that you did. But the last time you looked at Creator Connections, what's the amount of revenue that those affiliates have brought in? I think that most listeners are going to be astounded by that number when they hear it.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, let me take a quick peek, because I haven't looked at it for a short bit. It's just kind of been running in the background for a while. Let me take a look at where we are right now. I know that the last time I spoke with you which has probably been like about this issue was it was like $80,000 in revenue that we had brought in, and that's as of a couple of months ago. It might not have changed a whole lot since then because our season, of course, because we're full products, our season's ramping down, so, but if I can manage to get signed back into Amazon I'm not sure why I'm signed out, I will tell you, but it's been.

Speaker 3:

You know, like I honestly was incredibly shocked, honestly, by what we were able to generate there. And I will say, you know, kudos to Josh Hadley. Josh, yeah, josh, yeah, josh. You know his using his SOP for creator connections made a huge difference in in what we were able to, what we were able to do there. And so, you know, definitely check out Josh. You know like he's a, he's a good guy and he knows what he's talking about. You know what I say? That I'm in creator connections right now and it is not showing me. Oh, here we go there. It is for a second there. I thought our, our campaign had stopped. I was like I thought I sent it. So yeah, so our, let me go down here. We now have about a100,000 in sales that we brought in you started in.

Speaker 3:

April right yeah, we started in April. We've got about $100,000 in sales and our spend is $14,000. When you say spend is that the commission that you paid? Yeah, that's the total amount that it costs us. That's the commission.

Speaker 2:

So you're offering what a 15% commission-ish or something like that? Yep, yep. So you're offering what a 15% commission ish or something like that? Yep, so 15% commission, $100,000 in sales. What's your tacos right now? Do you know about essentially your overall tacos, is it? It's under right about 15%? Yeah, it's in that range, yep, yeah. So I mean, that's fascinating and, like I said, I think most people listening are going to be astounded by the number of sales. And what fascinates me I think we talked about this last time is that it's not even really a quote unquote influencer.

Speaker 3:

It's more like a deal site that has deal sites that have generated most of that For us yeah, yeah, we did get some really good influencers out of it who did generate some decent sales, but the biggest amount of sales that came out of creator connections was actually not truly influencers. They were deal sites and I can't remember exactly what they were, but, yeah, they were just you know, like you know best reviews or you know things like that. It was just something like that. There were like two different, two different sites that signed up as as affiliates for us through the creator connections and they generated I think those two generated like half of those sales, yeah, which?

Speaker 2:

is crazy. Anyways, John, it's good to see you again.

Speaker 1:

I had some technical difficulties where my internet went out for probably about half this discussion, so I apologize that I missed it, but it sounds like you guys were talking about Creator Connections, which I'm also a big fan of, in the sense of I feel like this is that's one of those kind of hidden gems within Amazon where I mean worst case scenario you set up a campaign and nothing happens with it and it costs you nothing and they you know they don't take a ton of time to set up. Best case scenario. I mean, like you talked about Mike, $100,000 in sales and, more importantly to me, that's the equivalent of a 15% ACOS, and I think most people at this point would be very happy with a 15% ACOS on their Amazon ads. So having that from an influencer is fantastic. And then, like you said, we've done this with a couple of clients and have the same experience where, even if we haven't made massive sales with it, just being able to connect with them and then produce some content out of it has been well worth the effort.

Speaker 3:

For Creator Connections, yeah absolutely, and it's you know. I mean the nice thing is, like you said, it doesn't cost you anything. I mean it's different than when you sign up for some of these other sites out there that offer you that opportunity to connect with influencers. A lot of them have a monthly fee plus whatever you're paying to the influencers. So creator connections being a zero cost type scenario, you got nothing to lose. You might as well try.

Speaker 2:

They're not letting new brands in right now, which is so frustrating. To create a connection, oh, connection, oh yeah.

Speaker 1:

I'm glad you brought that up really I wasn't aware with uh, they're putting you on a waitlist clients where we couldn't see it on the dashboard. And we contact, we reached out to amazon and they're like yep, this is an invite only program and we're not letting anybody additional in. There's nothing that you can do in order to get your brand in. So if you're in, good for you, you know, utilize it to the best you can. If you're not in, sorry. I think this is one of those things that maybe Amazon, another six to 12 months, decides to open up again, but for now, apologies to those listeners that we just described this strategy that you can't use.

Speaker 3:

But if you happen to be somebody who's tested Creator Connections in the past and you didn't think it really performed, I would encourage you to try again and I would encourage you to see if you can find I don't want to spill the beans on it because Josh, it's his baby. He does have an SOP for Creator Connections and it's tremendous. This is what generated this $100,000 in sales for us is using his SOP, so I highly recommend it. So seek him out and you can get that from him directly.

Speaker 1:

All right, well, guys, I think that, well, I guess we'll end up with recommendations that you guys have for one action step from this episode. Seeing how I missed about half the episode, I'm going to do the technical issues. I'm going to bow the technical issues. I'm going to bow out on this particular episode. But when you guys look at launching Q4 2024, where we're at today, what's maybe one takeaway that you guys would give listeners.

Speaker 2:

I think my biggest one is don't. Hacks are fun and they're sexy, but if you build a business around what Amazon's algorithm is currently doing, then you have a short, very short-sighted view of of how to build a brand. Not just build a brand like and that's one of the things that we building a brand not having amazon blinders on is the way that you need to build a brand. And if you're only focused on a honeymoon period and you think that that's like the end all be all of launching a new product, I think you should sit back and take a real hard, listen to some of our episodes and learn what the actual way to build a brand today is. And it's not short term hacks, like I said. We just talked about a hack for creative connections, but I think overall, having the long vision of building a brand, having good products and making sure that you're getting contact information for your customers is the best you can is how you build a brand in 2024.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I guess I would say if you don't already have a community whether it's on social, whether it's an email list, whatever if you don't have a direct community that you have a direct communication channel with that you can communicate with, then I would encourage you to stop and think about what the best potential avenues forward for you are to generate that community. I will tell you if you are looking at like, if you're getting ready to launch a product, don't do not launch that product until you have a community. In my opinion, I don't think it's actually your best road forward and I think that if you devoted even a little bit of effort to this, you would find a community that you can tap into, whether it's another brand that you can partner with, whether it's, you know, influencers that have their communities that you can tap into, whether it's, you know, building out an email list with some sort of lead gen, you know type system, you know whatever that is. There are a dozen different ways that you could build a community that you could launch to, and I can almost guarantee you if you put anywhere near as much effort into building that community as you do in maintaining your current brand and whatever products you might be selling already. Then you could build a community that would be valuable for a launch in a very short period of time. I mean a month or less.

Speaker 3:

You know, maybe two weeks if you hit the right partner, you know the right company that you can partner with and, honestly, don't be afraid to communicate with multiple different potential partners at the same time, because many of them are going to say no, they're not going to see the value in it, even if there is a value component. But some of them are going to say no, they're not going to see the value in it, even if there is a value component. But some of them are going to say yeah. So if you reach out to 10 different you know influencers slash. You know other brands that are in your category, selling to the same target market I can almost guarantee you at least one or two of them are going to respond back and say hey, yeah, I think we're interested in that.

Speaker 3:

You know, let's move forward with that. You know, let's move forward with that. So it doesn't take that much, it's just committing to it. You know, maybe that's what I would say Commit to building that community and finding a way to do it, there is an avenue forward for you. And if you have that community, even if it was just 500 or 1,000 people, that is massive for a product launch. I mean, unless you're selling into a category that sells millions of units a month, you're like having 500 people on a list or a thousand people in a community that will buy your product. That's gold man.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, absolutely Well. I think that's a fantastic place to wrap for this episode. Matt Mike, thank you so much for carrying most of the weight on this episode, as I had some technical issues and I would just encourage our listeners to be back again next Tuesday. So we're live every Tuesday on LinkedIn where you can ask us questions live. In addition to that, every Tuesday we're going through, you know, different tactics that we're learning, either from launching our own brands, growing you know, million dollar brands or you know, working with other brands as well, on Amazon and beyond, in order to, you know, really build a strong brand that's going to be beneficial not only today and whatever algorithm Amazon has, but kind of that fortress that protects you going forward and really has something of value in the long term.

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Jon Stojan

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Matt Atkins

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Mike Kaufman

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