Firing The Man
THANK YOU TO OUR 25,000+ LISTENERS! We are so thankful to be one of the TOP E-Commerce Podcasts delivering high-quality authentic content to you! Serial Entrepreneur’s David Schomer and Ken Wilson share tips, advice, and insider knowledge about all things Amazon FBA, Walmart WFS, and E-Commerce. Discover how you can create multiple income streams by selling physical products online so that you can have the time and freedom to do what you love - whether that is spending more time with family or traveling the world. Ken and David have successfully created several six and seven figure online business ventures. During the journey, they have had major wins, losses, and lessons learned. This podcast will teach you about selling physical products online through platforms such as Fulfillment by Amazon, building a team, outsourcing, listing optimization, pay per click (PPC) advertising, driving traffic to your listings, and productivity tips / life hacks that will provide a path to be successful in building your online business. It’s a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from Ken and David you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.
Firing The Man
Turning Product Launches into Long-Term Growth with Noah Wickham
Ever wondered what separates wildly successful Amazon brands from those barely breaking even? Noah Wickman, VP of Sales and Marketing at My Amazon Guy, pulls back the curtain on the strategies driving $1.2 billion in annual revenue across 400+ brands.
Noah's journey from eBay reseller to e-commerce leader offers a fascinating backdrop to his practical insights. While many sellers feel discouraged by Amazon's increasing fees and competition, Noah brings a refreshingly optimistic perspective: "There are millionaires made on Amazon every single day." The difference? A willingness to invest in testing new approaches rather than operating from fear.
The conversation dives deep into advertising strategy, revealing that My Amazon Guy allocates approximately 89% of ad spend to Sponsored Products across their client base—challenging conventional wisdom about ad distribution. Noah also shares a startling finding: about 20% of most sellers' ad budgets are completely wasted, with zero sales resulting from those expenditures. His practical advice for auditing campaigns and identifying these inefficiencies could save listeners thousands.
Perhaps most valuable is Noah's framework for sustainable growth. He outlines the four unchanging pillars of Amazon success: catalog management, design, PPC, and SEO—with the latter being the consistent needle-mover for 90% of brands. "The more keywords you have, the more search volume you get. It's essentially just widening that funnel," he explains. Even brands doing $23+ million annually continue to optimize SEO monthly.
For those struggling with profitability, Noah offers an unexpected suggestion: test price increases. "You can usually raise prices about 15-20% before your conversion really takes a hit," he notes, provided your listing already ranks well. This single insight could transform margins for many sellers.
Ready to accelerate your Amazon business with strategies from someone who's seen what works across hundreds of brands? This episode delivers actionable tactics you can implement immediately. Subscribe now and join us as we continue to unlock the secrets of e-commerce success!
How to connect with Noah:
Website: https://www.myamazonguy.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/myamazonguy
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/my-amazon-guy/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevenpopemag/
Twitter: https://x.com/myamazonguy
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/myamazonguy
Ready to scale your Amazon business? Click here to book a strategy call. https://calendly.com/firingtheman/amazon
Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts, serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone to the Firing the man podcast, where we dig deep into the strategies that drive e-commerce success. Today, I'm thrilled to have Noah Wickman with us. Noah serves as the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at my Amazon Guy, a powerhouse full-service Amazon agency that manages over $1.2 billion in annual revenue and supports more than 400 brands. Noah's journey in e-commerce began over a decade ago through reselling on eBay and since then he's become a growth-centric leader and client success advocate At my Amazon Guy. He's helped clients scale across Amazon, walmart and Shopify by honing growth strategies, improving SEO, refining procurement and evaluating brand building. When he's not shaping e-commerce success, you might catch Noah cooking up something new gaming, reading, playing chess or doing what many of us love exploring a new restaurant or venue on a Saturday night. Noah, very excited to have you as a guest on Firing the man. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Thank you for having me. David Glad to be here.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. To start things off, can you share with us a little bit about your background in the e-commerce world and what led you to being the vice president of sales and marketing at my Amazon Guy?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I've always kind of looked to myself pretty much like a you know, a jack of many, you know trades and you know, not really a master of any. I think that's something that kind of goes against the grain compared to most people, because most people are like, oh, I'm going to take this one thing, I'm going to master it. But you know, that kind of started with the aspect you know as you mentioned. You know, over a decade ago I had been at a garage sale and I saw somebody had this giant, giant box of trading cards was like Yu-Gi-Oh cards, no-transcript them back. And I looked on eBay one day because there was a specific card I was trying to buy and I found Interment Market for Contraind cards on eBay. I was like, oh cool, I'll put some mine up here on this and everything. I actually almost got my eBay account when I first started taking down because I got a few negative reviews, because I was so new to the whole realm of shipping things and all that that I had just sent a couple of cards in a little envelope and I didn't think about the fact, oh, these are going to get bent and that people want the cards in a little envelope and I didn't think about the fact, oh, these are going to get bent, and that people want the cards in like pristine condition, because I was somebody I'm like I never cared about that. I never cared about the pristine condition, I just wanted to play with the cards, right, I didn't care if they had bends or anything Other people do. And so I end up kind of evolving that process and getting that and eventually I started kind of think about I was like, well, I'm starting to, you know, buy more stuff and then resell it on eBay. Why don't I try? And, you know, do this and do my own brand.
Speaker 3:I started to kind of learn a little bit more, actually got into dropshipping for quite a long time and dropshipping was kind of the thing that opened my eyes to, I think, ecommerce as a whole. And you know, back in the day, I think e-commerce as a whole and you know, back in the day I think it was much, much sleazier. I think that is, you know, even nowadays, and it was also getting more saturated, you know, nowadays compared to back then. But then I kind of pivoted then to my own brand, started on Shopify, which is, I think, a lot or very odd to many people who might know me, because you know I kind of obviously Expo is the my Amazon guy nowadays, and so starting on Shopify is kind of interesting for that. But yeah, started on Shopify, I actually didn't pivot into Amazon until I had my second brand. So my second ever brand is the one that I actually launched on Amazon for the first time and that was kind of my first step into the Amazon realm back in the day, before you could even really advertise, and you know you took pictures with your cell phone and just upload it and somehow that would get you organic traffic and views and sales.
Speaker 3:And over the years, you know I've done a lot of different things. I did a lot of consulting back in the day after a couple of my brands kind of did really, really well. So I started consulting for other people, just, you know, people asking questions. And eventually it got to the point where you get enough people asking you a question. You're like, well, I should probably charge people for this, you know. And then eventually people see that you help them answer those questions, like, well, what else can you do? Can you, you know, do design for me? Can you, you know, do uploading? Can you just manage this for me? And so I kind of pivoted that into a very small boutique kind of consultancy slash agency for a few years. And then from there I did that for a couple of years I ended up working with another company that was kind of a startup company at the time and still did my own consulting stuff on the side while I was doing that.
Speaker 3:And then eventually I, you know, just had a colleague who worked here at my Amazon and they were like hey, we have an opening here on our operations side and you know, if you're open to some stuff, I'd love to have you on board.
Speaker 3:So I was like, yeah, I didn't have as many things going on. My last brand I had pivoted out of in 2021. And so this was 2023 at the time. And so I was like you know what, why not? Let's give it a shot. It was either that or start another brand, to be honest.
Speaker 3:And one thing led to another, and I remember about a year and a half ago, at this point in time, I was talking to the founder of my Amazon guys, stephen Pope. At this point in time, I was talking to the founder of my Amazon guy, stephen Pope, and I told him I hate sales and which is funny because I was on the operations side at the time and he took that and he really ran with it and then he kind of just was like you know, I'm going to hand all of the sales side of this agency and this business over to you as a somewhat impractical joke, I suppose. Impractical joke, I suppose. And sure enough, here we are now growing and thriving on, you know, the e-commerce landscape as pretty much the largest single person owned agency.
Speaker 2:So very nice, very nice. Well, looking forward to diving into this interview, and, as many of the listeners of the show know, I my primary sales platform is Amazon as well, and so it's always good talking to somebody who's familiar with the Amazon ecosystem. And so, as we sit here, talking in 2025, what is the state of Amazon, whether it be for established brands or new brands?
Speaker 3:I think that's such a difficult question to answer, even though so many people want to answer it, primarily because I think the state of Amazon is it's tricky right now, right, so there are Amazon is on kind of a I almost want to say downhill trend as far as quality goes. Right, the number of complaints about things, like, you know, chinese sellers is at an all time high. Amazon is removing services like their prep services. They're adding new fees, even though last year they said they're not going to raise fees at all. Well, technically they didn't, they just added entirely new ones that never existed before, right, and so I think, in general, the landscape for Amazon sellers, it's difficult, right, it's not an easy one by any means.
Speaker 3:Is all that say? I don't think that people can start on Amazon today and still find massive success? Absolutely not. You know, 63% of all online searches for products start on Amazon at this point in time. So it's just such a powerhouse still. It's still growing. It really comes down, in my opinion, to diversification and just being a better fit for customers with your product than the next best guy, right, and even if you have a Chinese seller competitor who's, you know, 50% of the price of you. That doesn't mean necessarily you can't still gain market share. I mean we have clients that we're seeing start from literally nothing and become, you know, million-dollar brands over the course of a year, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I really like that, and it seems like there is some pessimism going on right now in this space, and understandably so. However, I would also say that there are millionaires made on Amazon every single day, and, and so it's not all doom and gloom conversation, right and so, with what you know now, with engaging with you know, one really cool thing about my Amazon guy is it manages over $1.2 billion in annual revenue and so and that's across 400 brands, and so with visibility into 400 different brands, if you were to build a brand today, what would be some characteristics of that brand that you think would make it successful on Amazon, whether it be price point, whether it be niche, whether it be gated or ungated of the people that are clients of my Amazon guy, who seems to be crushing it?
Speaker 3:You know, I think that it's a complicated thing in the sense that you can kind of crush it in almost any category. In my opinion, right, at least parent-level category, I think the big thing to see for our clients especially the people who are crushing it you know far more than others it really comes down to those that are willing to invest, especially if you're just starting out right, invest early on and focus very heavily on building brand identity, especially early on. It's one of those things where the brands that are going to consistently still do well, consistently be profitable, are those that have search volume right. If you look at any brand on Amazon whatsoever that is in the top 100 of its category, it has some form of search volume right, even if it's minuscule. Even if you only have 50 search volume a month, that's fine, because that means that there are at least 50 people who are thinking about your brand every single month, right? And so that's the type of thing where brand identity is something that I think in the past, historically, hasn't really mattered on Amazon, and I think part of that is shown with the idea of, like I said, chinese sellers, where you know it's some Y-X-Z-I-W type brand, right?
Speaker 3:You know I always keep a.
Speaker 3:I keep this little like desk cleaner on my desk at all times.
Speaker 3:I have no idea who the brand of this practice is Some Chinese seller brand that was selling it for $2 on Amazon, right, and I'm never going to know that brand. I'm never going to look them up for another product again. But at the same time I have also products like you know, this screen protector, which is like magic job screen protector. This is the only screen protector brands that I will ever look up. I don't look up the key term screen protector when I need a new one. I just look up Magic John, because it's become so synonymous in my mind with the product that they sell. Right, and I think that's a very apparent thing that I see both in products that I purchased but also in our brands as well. You know, I think of some of the brands we've launched in like the last year, and the fact of like, the reason they've been able to take market share, is because they focused so heavily on that brand identity both on and off Amazon, to kind of just build that audience.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, For a company that is trying to build that brand identity. What are some specific action steps that they can take that will help that search volume go from 50 to 100 to 200 month after month?
Speaker 3:People don't really search for brands often.
Speaker 3:They search for products, right, and so brand identity on Amazon as a whole is just difficult to attain, just because Amazon doesn't put a lot of stock and historically hasn't put a lot of stock into branding, and so I think the easiest thing is building off Amazon brand identity right. So starting to do things where you get your email marketing going, starting to do things where you have a social presence of some kind, pushing out you know both, you know sponsored display campaigns, and also pushing out something we have launched in the last year that's done phenomenal for all of the clients that we've kind of pushed onto is DSP, demand Side, programmatic, programmatic advertising, right, and that's, that's the big thing. My opinion is pushing that off Amazon. I guess power of your brand identity and getting people because, again, as I mentioned, 63% of all sales or searches start on Amazon anyhow right For products, and so if people saw your brand outside of Amazon, you can still assume they might search for it on Amazon as well, and so it's one of the things where that's, I think, a really big thing that people need to focus on, and it's one of the only things you can really still if you're all in on Amazon control.
Speaker 3:Is that kind of off? Amazon brand identity and presence is that kind of off?
Speaker 2:Amazon brand identity and presence. Okay, no, I really like that. I really like that. You had mentioned DSP, and that was one thing I definitely wanted to talk to you about was the pay-per-click advertising on Amazon, and so what I have personally experienced and seen of a lot of different sellers is, after your cost of goods sold, after your shipping expenses and after your PPC costs, you are at or near break-even, and that seems to be a pretty common theme, and I think one of the things that people will often point to is Amazon has so many fees you know they're taking between 33 and 50 percent of your sale and whether that be FBA fees, referral fees, long term storage fees, inventory management fees, they tend to take it a chunk. Now, ppc is something that as an operator, as a brand operator, you do have some control over, and so what would be some general guidance for brands that do feel like they're at a break-even point and are, you know, are wanting to get into profitability mode?
Speaker 3:You know, one of the things that I'll say first and foremost with it is I think there are a lot of brands on Amazon that are deathly afraid of raising their prices and thinking that it's going to destroy their product, destroy their conversion, destroy everything, and it's something that in recent times we've played around with. I mean especially with things like, you know, all the tariffs that are happening in the world right now. Right, and that's a huge cost adjustment people need to make that you can usually raise usually about 15, 20% on your product before your conversion really takes a hit, as long as you have already decent rankability, I should say so. It's one thing I would always encourage everyone to do is that testing regularly, about once a quarter, of just raising your product's price to see at what point really does your conversion actually take a hit from doing that. That's an easy, easy way to keep up with times, keep up with inflation, make sure that your product is both staying competitive but also you're getting that profitability. Now, from the aspect of PPC, fully agree.
Speaker 3:Some of the major things that I would say is I think people are putting money into the wrong things on advertising all the time, typically speaking across all of our 400 plus brands that we manage right now, about 89% of all ad spend that we manage every single month is going towards sponsored products. It's just the number one thing. Right At the end of the day, you'll hear a lot of gurus, a lot of different people be like, oh, you should have, you know, a 60-30-10 split or a 60-20-20 or a 70-20-10, right Split within your ads from you know, a sponsored product, sponsored brand, sponsored display perspective. It's just not the case. We've done tons of testing. I mean, we're currently managing about 415, 420 brands. We work with a thousand per year, right, very, we have so much data on advertising and the most recent thing is about 89% sponsored product, about 9% product, about 9% towards sponsor brand and about 1% to 2% towards sponsor display. Now, that's not including brands. They're doing DSP, I should say. But it's one thing I would say to most people is, if you are struggling right now and look at your how you are kind of separating all of your different advertising, how much percentage are you putting in sponsor product? How much are you putting in sponsor brand, sponsors, how much are you putting in sponsor brand, sponsor display?
Speaker 3:Now, secondarily to that, the big thing that I think I see the most common is that people don't actually understand or don't actually look through and know how to like audit for things like wasted spend right, the amount of counts that come through to us at any given time. I've, I mean, I've looked at probably over 1000 counts in the last year and 80% of them have probably 20% of their entire budget just being wasted spent every single month where they are. And I'm not even talking wasted spend in the sense where, like the ads are above their a cost like threshold, right to where it's no longer profitable. I'm not even talking wasted spend in the sense where, like the ads are above their ACOS like threshold, right to where it's no longer profitable. I'm saying strictly from a spending money and not getting a single sale in return. If you add on to that the aspect of you know how many ads they have that are, you know, over a certain ACOS threshold for them, it's just exponentially worse when it comes to waste spend cost threshold for them. It's just exponentially worse when it comes to waste spend. So knowing how to and looking through and auditing your advertising expenditure on a regular basis is just extremely needed.
Speaker 3:I typically say five to 8% is good rule of thumb of like what healthy wasted spend is, and I include in that things that are above your ACoS goal, because that point that means you're likely testing new keywords, you're trying to expand your overall advertising reach, and so it's some of the things where I think a lot of times, when we're looking at people struggling with cost per click, struggling with, like, customer acquisition cost and the lifetime value of their you know customers, a lot of it just comes from a lack of retargeting, remarketing. A lot of it comes from a lack of expansion, a lack of just regular checks and audits of very simple things that people don't even think about checking Right. They see the stuff that's right in front of their face. They don't dig a level deeper.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay, you had mentioned that across your guys' clients that 90% or 89% is sponsored products, and I'd like to dive a little bit deeper there. So for people that are unfamiliar, Essentially a sponsored product is as simple as it sounds. You are advertising a singular product, right? Two different ways you can really do it. One is through a specific keyword search. The second is through doing either a product or a category search as well. This will appear anytime someone searches within Amazon for a specific keyword for a product. If they click on a product, they'll see your ads, right. Tons of different places these can pop up within Amazon.
Speaker 3:It's also what I would say the easiest advertising method to control, right, and it's one of the things that I think has allowed Amazon, as far as platform, to be so easy for a beginner to just get on but also, at the same time, so complicated and competitive. Right, Because you look at something like meta advertising, where it has far more algorithmic it's audience based. You have to get really granular with how you're targeting. You have to get into lookalike audiences, things like that, which don't get me wrong. I do love those aspects of meta advertising because it makes it super niche in how you can kind of target people. Amazon's just a different game in the sense that the thing they care about it almost operates more like Google for the same, but the aspect with Google is you're usually trying to get just clicks. Amazon is very conversion heavy in how it works for all of its advertising. So sponsor products is just a, in my opinion, kind of conversion machine where you are putting dollars in, getting dollars out.
Speaker 2:Okay. Okay, now, when I I and admittedly I am outsourcing my PPC management right now I've done stuff when I was running my own. The typical school of thought would have been when you launch a product, you set up a automatic campaign that is going to find keywords that convert, and then you take those they called it keyword harvesting and you put that into an exact campaign and you would just continuously harvest keywords into your exact campaigns. And so, since I have been managing, they have introduced broad match, phrase match, and you just have a lot more options. And so what would be? You know, your recommendation for people on a product launch.
Speaker 2:You know, in terms of setting up campaigns. You know in terms of setting up campaigns, and this is a two-part question. The second part is at what point do you turn your autos off or do you? You know there are only so many words that you can use to describe a product, and you know, after a year or two years, have you harvested all of them? Are you? And so what? And so what would be your answer to that?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think your questions in of themselves are kind of actually expanding on. I'm probably the biggest hater of like AI, quote unquote AI advertising, like softwares and whatnot, and it's largely because of exactly what you said. They're in like what you're asking. And so when you're launching right auto campaign yeah, always, always, do an auto campaign. We call them, you know, gold panning campaigns. We also do like auto catch all campaigns which are like the easiest campaign that anyone can ever set up and get sales from.
Speaker 3:Auto campaigns are great. Should you ever turn them off? No, not really. There's not really a reason to right. The only reason I ever see to turn off auto campaigns is if you're bidding way too high and you never negate anything on them. Right. Outside of that, they're just great to have on all the time. It's like why wouldn't you?
Speaker 3:Now you talked a little bit. I was on board with everything you were saying. I'm like, yeah, it sounds right. Until you said I put them into exact campaigns, exact campaigns only, and I was like, ah, we lost the plot. So, normally speaking, I actually am a big fan abroad. I think this is also what I would consider to be a differentiating factor between someone who understands Amazon's algorithms and PPC really really well, versus people who just kind of understands the purpose of them, right. So exact campaigns, they're really really good because it's going to obviously target exactly what you are trying to target. That's the only thing you target. You can control them super easily, right? And that is the, I guess, great part about exact campaigns. Now, the bad part about exact campaigns exactly what you were kind of talking about of like, after two years, haven't you found everything you can find? No, probably not actually right.
Speaker 3:There's always, I think, small relevancy. I think that's where broad campaign comes in the most, right. If you have, let's say, you're selling I don't know deck of cards, right, because I have it on my desk right here. So, deck of cards, you're selling deck of cards to people. Broad campaigns open up a lot of opportunity where it's like, yeah, you can target exactly just, you know card deck right, playing cards, anything like that. That's great. But what if someone says white deck of cards or someone says black deck of cards? What if someone says, you know anything in between? That's where broad and phrase really come in and they shine right between. That's where broad and phrase really come in and they shine right, because they open up to all of these different minute ways that customers look for things. And just because something isn't exactly what your product is doesn't mean that it might not have interest to somebody else. And I find this especially true for people who have more generic products, right?
Speaker 3:My favorite thing to talk about is this idea that people will talk about, like you know, tell me and come to me like I'm having such a hard time with you know, ppc, I'm having such a hard time with advertising. I have, you know, this super, super relevant keyword that I'm targeting for my product but it's just not getting any clicks. It's just not getting any conversions. Or it is getting clicks. It's not getting any conversions, getting a click sense, just not getting any conversions. Or it is getting clicks. It's not getting any conversions but it's like super relevant to my product.
Speaker 3:My answer nine times out of 10, when someone tells me that you know it is a keyword that is super relevant to their product, I'm like no, it's not, because, at the end of the day, relevancy is not determined by you thinking in your head that a keyword makes sense and is relevant to your product. Right, relevancy is determined by the customers and whether or not they click on your product, whether or not they convert on your product. And for that keyword you can have, you know, you can be selling a coffee mug, right, you can be selling a coffee mug. You can be selling a coffee mug, right, you can be selling a coffee mug. You can go after the keyword coffee mug. But if you get no conversions off of the keyword coffee mug, yeah, it's probably more than likely an issue with your product detail page and with your pricing. But it also is just a relevancy issue. You're not targeting the right thing at the end of the day.
Speaker 3:So, all that being said, to kind of circle back to your initial question of, like you know, do you keep auto campaigns on? Is you know, after two years, can't you find everything? Say no, I mean, we're still finding new stuff. Now, is there a limit to how much you can really find and optimize within advertising? Yeah, of course there is, but I think there within that, there's still always room to find new things. But kind of circling back to my point about AI, automated or automated advertising stuff, a lot of times that's basically what they're doing. They're just speeding up that process of saying, hey, we found, you know 40,000 keywords that we're going to advertise against with your you know $1,000 budget and see what actually happens, and you know that's where I think you lose the optimization effort of you know, three years down the line finding a new keyword.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have had similar experiences to that. I remember I don't want to call it the software by name because I can't remember what it was called but I and this was about two years ago had noticed that there needs to be a human element, and and at least at that point in time, the AI systems weren't good enough to suss out relevance, and so, no, that's, that's, that's really really helpful. Next thing I want to talk about and I I'm a big fan of Jocko Willink and I was actually listening to a podcast with him this morning and he was talking about tier one operators- which is just the best of the best, right, and I was just thinking of tier one operators, right, that obviously has a military meaning.
Speaker 2:However, if we're talking about Amazon and we're talking about the tier one operators within Amazon, what are they doing that some of the less experienced or amateur sellers are not doing?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a hard question. You know what I know? Actually, the perfect answer. The number one thing that will set somebody who is trying to scale a brand and believes in their product and believes in the aspect that their brand can grow, aside from brand owners who are fearful, I think, of the Amazon ecosystem, fearful of competitors and things like that, is the willingness to invest and test things. And what I mean by that is the aspect of willingness to throw never, never tried sponsor brand before, but willing to throw, you know, $1,500 to get really nice video put together and then $1,000 at an ad campaign to see if that video helps convert sales and helps grow the brand. Right.
Speaker 3:Willingness to try new areas to gather and I this doesn't even have to be Amazon related right, it could be literally any business in the world. The biggest thing is being willing to test new things. And don't get me wrong, after a while you get a gut reaction, like myself being our, you know, vp of sales and marketing. Right, there are some. I get a million, one different cold outreach emails about different software services and everything that will do x, y and z for us. Right, and after a while you kind of have you know, uh, you know, saw after enough of them and like, have seen enough and test enough, they're like no, I can tell a mile away that this isn't going to work, right, um, but especially if you're newer and you're not, you know, know, let's say like a seven figure threshold, as like an Amazon seller or just e commerce brand in general, right, or maybe you're just barely at that seven figure threshold. You could be brand new. You can be just barely at seven figures. You still need to invest in trying new things, new advertising, platforms, testing.
Speaker 3:I mean, if there's an area of e-commerce that you don't know or you don't feel confident, I mean you're a great example, david. You're like look, I don't know my PPC, I need to invest in hiring someone who can then go ahead and run it for me. Right, and that's exactly what I mean in the sense that brands that really, I think, thrive and grow are those they're willing to invest heavily into that growth. At the end of the day, that's, I think, the biggest thing. The age old you can't have your cake and eat it too. You know, at all times. You can't just be not willing to, you know, invest in things, but also wanting to, you know, become an eight-figure brand or a seven-figure brand, or even a six-figure brand, if you're not that yet.
Speaker 2:I think that's a really, really good answer, and I can say what my oldest tenured brand on Amazon is eight years old and I still am testing and trying new things. And so, you know, speaking to that audience with who you know may be approaching seven figures or is north of seven figures. Many of them have VAs, and this is something that I know I am personally working through this month, and you know we have really good listings, we have good infographics and EBC, we have good video and, you know, short of product launches, I, you know I've hired these team members, I've trained them and I want them to go to work on the highest ROI activities, and you know a couple of things that come to mind. You know, having an A-B split testing program would be one, you know, auditing the category listing report and seeing if there's any opportunities for improvements.
Speaker 2:There is one Requesting reviews these opportunities, then I could plug them in on and I find myself asking the question what's going to move the needle the most? And just, you know, I have visibility into a single brand and and so I would be curious, like you know, for people in that position, what would be and this could also go for someone who's outsourcing somebody? Who's hiring my Amazon guy, for instance? What are going to be some of the first things that you guys go to work on that tend to move the needle, the?
Speaker 3:most. I think it doesn't matter if you're my Amazon guy, and actually I would say I know for a fact it's the same for most agencies at this point, also because we've taught a lot of agencies right over the years and whatnot of how to do it. And the big thing is there's four pillars to growth, always on Amazon, and that has not changed in the entire time Amazon has existed. Pretty much in the entire time that Amazon has existed, pretty much it is pretty much catalog management, design, ppc, seo. Those are like your big needle movers. Now, the thing is that those are very top level, there's a lot of granular pieces under them, and so no two brands are 100% identical. But the big thing is that we've kind of essentially just developed a lot SOPs and a lot of processes that work for, you know, I would say, 90% of brands right, regardless of the size of that brand right, and we work from everything, like said, from startups all the way up to, you know, nine figure brands, and so it's, you know, very vast, but there's always things to work on.
Speaker 3:The biggest, I think, needle mover, in my opinion, is always going to be, I think, seo for a majority of people, and the reason for that is that the biggest thing that you can, or biggest investment you can ever make on Amazon, especially with how the algorithm works, is understanding how to get your product ranked higher at for as many keywords as possible. The easiest thing there is just getting more keywords right. So the more keywords you have, the more search volume you have. It's essentially just widening that funnel at the end of the day, right, and the more overall impressions you get, the more search volume you get, the more people that click on your listing. It's just another chance at the easiest needle mover in my opinion, that so many people also get wrong.
Speaker 3:So I think people have a really hard time understanding how to get past, like, let's say, 2000, 3000 ranked keywords. Like, once you get to like that 2000 realm, I think a lot of people struggle with like okay, well, I have 2000 keywords, like you said, like, what do I do after that? And so it's really difficult, right, but it's it's the granular improvements. You know we have brands. They're doing north of 23 million a year, everything, and one of the biggest things I see with them is we're still every single month updating SEO on their listings, right, and it's because of the exact aspect that it moves the needle, even if it's by, you know point, one percent over the course of you know, a month and a half or something of increased conversion. That's more than you had before. So that's, I think, always going to be the number one first thing. Obviously you can dive into PPC, like I said, and all the different things, but the easiest uptick, in my opinion, for majority, 90% of brands is always just going to be SEO optimization.
Speaker 2:Okay, do you think with Rufus and do you think that is going away, or do you think that's here to stay?
Speaker 3:I think it's here to stay. I think it's here to stay to see how many Amazon shoppers actually even know what Rufus is or use it, because I didn't believe the numbers that Amazon had put out, and so I polled about 5,000 people. 13% of that 5,000 said that they had heard of Rufus before. So only 13%, I should say, said that they knew what Rufus was, and less than 5% total said that they use Rufus regularly. So it's one of those big things where I think, within the Amazon ecosystem as like sellers and people, software providers, service providers, everything I think we're all very in tune to Rufus, thinking it's like this really big thing within Amazon. I don't think Rufus matters whatsoever to the customer. My biggest thing always is focus on what the customer wants and what they are using and what they are doing. At the end of the day, I don't think Rufus is that. Now Amazon's going to change their algorithm here in the next probably 612 months with Cosmo, their new targeting system that is focused a little bit more around AI and whatnot within how it does it. They're also going to be changing things like how the title operates, with doing two part titles, where it's a 150 character top title and then 100 characters you can utilize for single word, bullet points, basically right, or characteristics as they call them. And so, yeah, seo is going to change. You know, I think GEO is going to be kind of a really, really big thing, which is, you know, basically AI citations how often are you showing up within all of this, and so I think all of that will change, but I don't think the core principle and idea of you need to optimize SEO, to show up in searches, is ever going to change.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, I also am a Rufus hater. The currency I've dealt in for so long is keywords. It's almost hard for my brain to wrap around how you know. If you think of Amazon, it connects shopper types in a keyword, it connects them with a product. And to abandon that and to say I'm going on a camping trip and this AI is going to suggest the 30 items that I need and know that I have expensive taste and I just I don't see, I don't see it. It's hard for me to like wrap my head around and so that's no, that's. That's really, really helpful. Um, before we get to the fire round, let's talk about my Amazon guy. Uh, who's your guys' typical clients and, um, who would benefit from getting in contact with my Amazon guy?
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely so. You know, like I said, we work with everything from people just launching on Amazon all the way up to, you know, nine figure brands, right, and so we're kind of all over the place and who we can operate with. Now, that being said, does that not mean that we don't have like an ICP that we love operating with? No, of course we do. I would say, on average, the brands that we typically love working with the most are brands that are somewhere in the ballpark of between 50 and 100K monthly revenue. That's usually going to be kind of the sweet spot as far as, like, a sales revenue area that can go up to about 250K in most scenarios. So usually, basically, brands that are doing 500 to 2.5 million a year. That's kind of where I'm going to say these are the best brands we work with, right, it's people who they are wanting to hit that seven figure mark all the way to.
Speaker 3:You know the aspect of.
Speaker 3:They have that investment mindset, like I said right, and are like, yeah, I know that I need to invest in things in expertise, in area that I don't know right, and, the end of the day, I look at us as, both you know, an education company in the sense of how much content we put out on, you know, youtube and things like that but also just a growth accelerator for brands. You know, a place for brands if they're looking for either just a tune-up you want, you know, a little bit of help and a little bit of guidance for a couple of months Fantastic. We also have brands we've been working with for seven years. You know, and have seen go from mom and pop type brands all the way to doing eight figures, and so I think my favorite thing is just seeing brands grow at the end of the day, and so favorite people work with are those that are, like I said, willing to know that they don't know everything but have enough awareness of what their brand is, what their brand does, and can work with people who have worked with you know hundreds of other brands to utilize same principle strategies but just in a different way you know to do it. But yeah, that's kind of I would say kind of core ICP for us at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:Okay, very nice, very nice, and I will post information or link to the website in the show notes. Before we end the interview, we have something called the fire round. It's four questions we ask every person at the end of the interview Are you ready?
Speaker 3:I'm ready, let's do it All right let's do it.
Speaker 2:What's your favorite book?
Speaker 3:Ooh, favorite book Happiness Advantage by Sean Aker. All right, what are your hobbies? I play video games, I go to the gym, I'm training for a marathon right now. Those are kind of the primary ones. I like to go to restaurants, like I said, and oh, I do like tracking for coffees and beers. I love trying different coffee shops and different beers, and so I kind of like mix those two together, try and do like new one ever so often.
Speaker 2:Nice, nice.
Speaker 3:What is one thing that you do not miss about working for the man? Oh, I think the number one thing I don't miss is the aspect of not really being able to go and like go to an appointment, go and do something you need to do. Having, I guess, that flexibility, I love the fact that I can schedule a dentist appointment at, you know, 11 am ona Tuesday and just go to it, be like that's fine and not be penalized in some way, not have to take out PTO or anything like that, and yeah, that's always been like. I think the biggest aspect to me is the flexibility that you get, where you're not just tied to one area at all times.
Speaker 2:Okay, Okay and final question what do you think sets apart successful e-commerce entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail or never get started?
Speaker 3:Speed. It's the number one thing that I always talk about. I think that people who are perfectionists and need to have it be perfect uh, you know, the first time are always going to fail. My favorite thing is uh, you know, fail for, or fail often, fail fast, right, uh, I would much rather try something and come up with an idea for something, execute on that idea within 24 hours and test it and see if it fails very, very quickly and then move on to the next thing.
Speaker 3:And again, because by the time that you know, I've tested eight different uh contract or eight different, you know setups of've tested eight different uh contract or eight different, you know setups of whatever it is I'm trying, someone else who is a perfectionist hasn't even tried once, right, uh, and so it's a big thing of. Uh, fail fast. Fail often is something that I see so many entrepreneurs uh, afraid to do. Right, and again, I think it comes into that investment aspect be willing to try new things and be willing to spend a little bit of money to do it. Because of that, at the end of the day, even if you fail or it fails, it's knowledge for you, right To understand how you can make a better decision in the future.
Speaker 2:Very nice, Very nice. Well, Noah, this has been an outstanding interview. We've really got into the weeds on some Amazon stuff and I really enjoyed it, as will our audience. Thank you for being a guest on the Firing the man podcast and looking forward to staying in touch.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Thank you, david, great being here.
