What Separates Breakout Amazon Brands From the Rest? | Steven Pope Reveals the Secrets

What actually separates a breakout Amazon brand from a forgettable one? We sit down with Steven Pope, founder of MyAmazonGuy, to map the playbook that scales—from a scrappy LinkedIn post that sparked his agency to the CTR-first mindset that turns search pages into sales. Steven has led a 500-strong team managing thousands of ASINs, and he’s generous with specifics: which images earn the click, why video is still underused, and how the ICAP model (impressions, clicks, add to cart, purchases) guides every decision.

We start with the bedrock: operations and product quality. If sourcing, logistics, and reliability are tight, marketing ignites. Then we push to longevity—how to build a brand story that survives knockoffs and price pressure. Steven breaks down where messaging actually lands on Amazon: main images that make the benefit louder than the logo, secondary visuals that answer pre-purchase doubts, and fast, clear videos with a close-up in the first two seconds. He explains why improving CTR often lifts conversion, how to spot anxiety points in returns and reviews, and when pricing sharply is the honest path to momentum while reviews accrue organically.

On the ad side, Steven’s stance is blunt: over-reliance on exact match starves discovery and inflates costs. He outlines a scalable structure where sponsored products dominate budget, autos and broad do the heavy lifting, and weekly negations prune wasted spend. We dig into time-based bidding, realistic TACOS ranges by category, and how Search Query Performance reveals the keywords you should flood with coverage—including video placements—for market share jumps. We also touch on AI creative: why Amazon rewards outcomes, not production methods, and how quick iteration beats perfection.

If you want a practical roadmap to grow traffic, protect conversion, and build a brand that doesn’t crumble when copycats arrive, this conversation delivers clear steps and hard-won lessons. Subscribe, share with a fellow seller, and leave a review to tell us which tactic you’ll test first.

Website:
https://myamazonguy.com

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@MyAmazonGuy

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/myamazonguy

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/myamazonguy

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/my-amazon-guy/

Ready to scale your Amazon business? Click here to book a strategy call.  https://calendly.com/firingtheman/amazon

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Intro

SPEAKER_00 1:07

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 street in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts, serial entrepreneurs, David Schomer and Ken Wilson.

Steven’s Path To MyAmazonGuy

SPEAKER_02 1:31

Welcome back to the Firing Demand Podcast, the show for entrepreneurs who want to build businesses that give them freedom and fire themselves from the day-to-day grind. Today's guest is Steven Pope, the founder of MyAmazon Guy, one of the most well-known Amazon agencies in the world. Steven built My Amazon Guy from the ground up into a team of more than 500 specialists across the globe, helping brands scale their sales on Amazon through world-class listing optimization, PPC management, catalog troubleshooting, and creative strategy. His team manages thousands of ASINs and has become a go-to resource for brands that are serious about winning on the Amazon marketplace. He's built a massive following online by openly sharing technical Amazon knowledge through YouTube, podcasts, and social media, breaking down the exact strategies brands can use to increase traffic, improve conversion rates, and scale profitably. In this episode, we're going to dig into what separates the top performing Amazon brands from everyone else, the biggest mistakes sellers make with listings and PPC, how Steven built and scaled a 500-person Amazon agency, and where he thinks the future of Amazon selling is headed. If you sell on Amazon or you're thinking about launching a product, this is an episode you will not want to miss. So with that said, let's welcome Steven Polk to the Firing the Man podcast. Welcome, Steven. Hey David, thanks for having me on. Absolutely. Looking forward to digging in. So to start things off, can you take us back to the beginning? What led you to start my Amazon guy? And what were some of the early lessons you learned about selling on Amazon that hold still hold true today?

SPEAKER_01 3:24

So I worked for a bunch of failed startups. Amazon was discovered while I was working for Ula Popkin, a woman's plus-sized clothing company owned by a German. And uh this was like when FBA was just starting to come out, and I couldn't convince them to load inventory up into a warehouse they didn't have control over, uh, which I can't blame them looking back, like high SKU counts, clothing, FBA. That's hard. That that truthfully that is hard. But we were in the beta program for advertising. Nobody else really had access to advertising back then. And so I worked for a bunch of failed startups, like one after another. I worked for the Brits selling restaurant equipment. I, you know, I worked for the Germans, then I worked for the French doing some consulting under Verizon Wireless. And what happened at every one of these failed startups is uh I would lose my job, but the people I worked with liked me, would refer me work, and I'd ended up side hustling all this Amazon consulting work over the course of four or five years. And I did it for the money, truth, truthfully. I started to like it and I got really good at it. Then one day, when the next field startup ended, I got a three-month severance. I was working for a lighting company, uh, Lights Online, owned by Progressive Lighting in Georgia. And uh I was like, whoo, I'm 30 years old. I'm making$200,000. Who the heck is gonna hire me? And I moped around in the forest for a couple of days, and then I was like, I'll hire myself, make a LinkedIn post. Hey guys, well, I figure out myself, I'm gonna do some consulting for Amazon brands. Anyone know any anybody that needs help? That was the post. It was like super simple, two-liner. Might have been my first LinkedIn post ever. I don't even remember. And within two days, within another 48 hours, I had signed a uh a deal worth several thousand dollars a month for a supplement company. That brand still with me today, eight years later. And that's how I got into it. But along the way, I resisted starting an agency. And I'm like, I hate agencies. I've worked for one before under Publicis. Uh, and just seeing all the politics and the client bullshit you have to go through. I was like, I don't want to do this. Why would I want to fire the man and then get hire 500 more bosses? You know, that was what was going through my head. Uh, unfortunately for me, it took off. And I was making$50,000 MRR almost within 90 days, like unheard of, just immediate success. I was making content on YouTube. I even posted my cell phone number in one of my videos, like the first or second video I posted out there, and I had a hundred phone calls off that video. Just like crazy uh entrepreneurial stuff that you hear about when people grind it out. Uh, so it was wildly successful. I had to hire people immediately. I hired people out of my church, I hired people off LinkedIn, indeed, you know, whatever local social media I could get my hands on. Facebook maybe even got an employee off there at some point in my first 10. And and it just and it just took off. Uh, so after that, I I was like, all right, guess I'm doing this for the rest of my life. And uh, even though I have fired the man, it's it's still every day I have to go to work and still put in the effort, still uh reply to email, still talk to my employees and manage them. Yesterday I was having a conversation with uh a guy whose father was dying. Things nobody ever signs up for. That's what it's like to own and run a company and fire the man, so to speak.

Product Quality Versus Marketing

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Got it. Got it. Well, I love that story and and uh what a good good intro into selling. And and uh I it seems like when people would get fired by a a failed startup, uh they they may ditch what they're working on and go try something different. And so good for you for doubling down on uh what you had competencies in. And and I have to say, I've been in, and I mentioned this before we hit record, was uh I've been a fan of your content for a long time. And one thing that I've I especially like is you give away all the secrets, like all the secrets. It seems like what a lot of people will do is they'll say, All right, I'm gonna give you 20% to get you interested. And if you want the other 80%, you hire us. But you know, you you've done an outstanding job of of um providing value. And and if you're discussing a particular strategy or tactic, you you give the complete package. And so it was really excited to have you on the show today and and excited to chat more.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Thank you, thank you for noticing that. Um, and and it's really worked out for me, I might add. And I think others should replicate that model. Uh, I think it levels up the whole world a lot faster.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

Yeah, absolutely. I I fully agree with that. So one interesting lens that you view Amazon through is through all of your clients. And, you know, if I think of myself as a private label brand owner, I am only looking at Amazon through my single lens, through my single brand. And so my question is when you're working with a variety of clients, what are the winning brands doing differently than say the ones that are struggling on Amazon?

Brand Story, Moats, And Knockoffs

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Well, there's a lot of things we could talk about on that question. So I'll have to narrow it down to one or two goodies. Um, but but what I would say is the model changes uh frequently um over the years. And there's so many different ways that you could tackle selling stuff on Amazon. Um, the model that has always worked, though, is somebody who's good at product dev or operations or sourcing or logistics or a combination of those things will will be successful on Amazon even if their marketing is weak. But the reason why I like this example is because typically I'm hired to do the marketing piece. And if they have a good product, it just it just takes off. Uh and if somebody doesn't have a good product and they hire us and we do the marketing, it usually doesn't work. Uh or if it does, it's temporary, or if it does, it's not as big, if you will. Um the problem is that when you do have a good product, people rip it off constantly. And you got the Chinese over there who do not care about intellectual property, uh, and your own factory is hawking your own patented item to 17 other vendors. It's it's a mess, right? It's a whole cultural problem. Um, you know, Trump's trying to solve that with tariffs and taking over the world's oil supplies, and you know, there's a lot of geopolitics in the background going on. Uh, but but the brands who are able to get something that consumers want and feel that demand tend to win. The question then becomes how long can they win for? Uh can their product go two years without being ripped off? Usually not. Uh so then after the product is good and it gets the demand, then how do you maintain that velocity? And that's typically where the marketing and the brand story take the rest of the pie. So you could take uh one of my clients is chirp wheels. Uh, they have fantastic video content out there. Uh and made my job really easy because they're demoing their product. And and since they've been successful doing millions and millions of dollars on on Amazon, I've, you know, and I've been their exclusive partner for, I don't know, five or six years. Uh they they they were they saw hundreds of knockoffs, hundreds of different wheels that people rotate their back on. And hopefully we put chiropractors out of business because, you know, that that business needs to go. Um but suffice it to say, they're still winning because their brand story kept people enticed or interested. It's it's kind of like a dude wipes storyline, right? All at the end of the day, dude wipes is a wipe. And wipes have been around for a long time. But dude wipes can make the claim, and it might be even accurate, that they've taken a percentage of sales from toilet paper, big, big paper, if you will. And they make a hoot and a holler and they shitpost on social media and they make fun of everything. And they got people spreading chocolate on cheeks at shows and come wipe it with toilet paper, and now come wipe it with our wipe and see the difference. And that's, you know, you're leaving chocolate on your butt if you don't use our wipe. You know, that kind of hilarity ensues. And and that's very long-term brand power, right? So, so I think that uh logistics sourcing uh that gets you started. And what keeps you going is the brand, uh, that the marketing is able to tell that story.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Let's talk about where exactly on an Amazon listing or on an Amazon brand, where are the best places to communicate that? Right? There's there's the the EBC module uh brand story, but there are there are other areas. And what would you say for a company doing a good job on the marketing side of things, where are they expressing that or sharing that story within their Amazon account?

Where To Tell Your Story On Amazon

SPEAKER_01 13:00

So the majority of products that sell on Amazon do not do this effectively, right? And and in case in point, how many monthly searches does your brand term have? Right. So if you're looking up, you know, your search create performance data, I like to use the ICAT marketing method, uh, ICAP impressions, clicks, add to cards, purchases. Uh, and it's a it's a really great model to figure out like where your brand is doing well, but just to specifically address the search volumes, uh, you can tell how many monthly impressions are coming for your brand. So if you have less than 100 monthly searches for your brand, you know that you're not doing a good job with your brand name. Or you sell a commodity, and no amount of branding will change that. However, there are exceptions to this. Like dude wipes, they sell a commodity, and somehow they're the most famous wipe in the world now, at least for men. And and so it is possible to brand those commodities. And I know you're looking for some specifics, so let's dive in. Uh, so the main image, you got to start there, but the brand should be small in comparison to the keyword, right? So uh Dude Wipes in this case does both at the same time with its keyword and and its brand. But if we were to talk about just a random product, uh, like I've got on my my desk here some aloe vera, right? So on the packaging, they have the brand name the biggest, and they have organic aloe vera uh slightly smaller, and they have a big plant, right? So there's some good things going on with this packaging, but if we were to analyze like how to make this better for a main image on Amazon, the aloe vera should be like 3x the size of the brand name. And so you can look at uh uh the orange product that's for dog cleaning uh supplies, and they did exactly this. When Thracio, before they were bankrupt, bought this brand. They took it, they tripled the size of the keyword on the main image, and that started to get the sales to go up, right? So, why does that address the brand story? Well, first of all, you have to get sales by generating clicks. You need that CTR to get anything started before you even get to the listing. So that's you got to start the main image. Your branding is commoditized in the search results, therefore, main image is a small step towards rectifying that. Uh, we could talk about title bullets, but nobody really reads these days. It's it's you know, images are for people, text is for robots. So all of the text and keyword optimizations for robots, yes, you could tell your story there. It's pretty much irrelevant. So that leaves us secondary images, the brand story module, and the rest of A plus content or EBC enhanced brand content. And and these are okay, but realistically, only one out of 10 purchasers are actually looking at this. So again, it's a small fraction. So then after that, we're left with packaging and the consumer experience following the purchase. Uh, and if you are brown boxing it, which I've done many a times, you don't have a brand, you have a commodity, you have a product, right? So when I was selling tumblers and I was brown boxing it, nobody went back to Age of Sage to purchase Tumblr. They just went back to Amazon and typed in the next funny meme and they wanted it on a Tumblr. And then if I happen to sell it, they would buy it for me. Right. So that's the challenge with Amazon. It's made uh branding much weaker. And so to get branding to become household name or to elevate above commodity status, it takes significant effort, packaging, consumer experience, how how people will engage with you on content and social media, if they'd be willing to like your page or like a post or comment on one of your social media posts, that is a good sign that you have a brand and not a commodity. So there's there's a lot to break down in some of those specifics, but that's that's kind of high level how it addressed that. We we didn't talk about video. Obviously, video is a huge one all by itself.

Conversion Rate Reality And ICAP

SPEAKER_02 16:57

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's that's really helpful. That's really helpful. And it gives a lot of different areas where uh people can step up their game on that. Now let's talk conversion rate optimization on Amazon. And I I think one thing to start with is how do we know if we have a conversion rate problem? Um and so I I'm looking for maybe an average, or if you were to jump into a new account when you're looking at conversion rate, um, what do you expect to see? And once we've identified that, hey, we've got a conversion rate issue, how how do we address that?

SPEAKER_01 17:37

So the Amazon platform gets conversion rate between 8 and 12% across its platform. So if you compare that to a Shopify website, which gets 1% to 2%, you would by default already believe that conversion is pretty awesome on Amazon. And that would be a true statement. Uh now, how do you know if you could improve it? Well, you can always improve something. It's just a question of scale, time, priorities, et cetera. But if you have a conversion rate of 8% and you track that by keyword on the ICAP report over in the search create performance section of Seller Central, and your competitor is getting 10%, and your other competitor is getting 11 and the other one's getting 12%, you know there's a problem. Right. And so when we look at conversion improvements at large across the internet, we usually talk about anxiety reduction and friction improvements. So anxiety, do I trust this product? Can I give them my credit card? Uh, friction, can I find the checkout button? Is it three clicks until I purchase? Or uh can I find the right product details to make sure this product is for me? Those sort of things. The Amazon platform solves significant portions of both of those categories of friction reduction and anxiety reduction. And so it becomes very difficult to improve conversion rate on Amazon because of that. Therefore, you should actually spend most of your time generating traffic and just utilizing what Amazon's already solved on the conversion front. But again, you still can improve conversion. But one of the things that a lot of people don't realize is that when you improve click-through rate, CTR, you actually improve conversion as well. People sometimes think, oh, if I go mess with my main image, it'll hurt my conversion rate. That's literally not true. It's completely uh congruent with each other. If you improve CTR, your conversion goes up. There's a lot of other things you can do to improve conversion too, like go address your typical FAQs from the consumers. Uh anything that reduces return rates will also improve conversion rates. Uh what are people looking for and give it to them, right? Fastest way to grow any business ever. This is true for consumer goods, service-based, doesn't matter. Fastest way to grow a brand, ask consumers, what do you want? Give it to them. And then here's the third step a lot of people forget about. Ask, did you get what you wanted? And if you do that, that feedback loop back and forth, back and forth, give them what they asked for, check if it was right. That that's how I built my Amazon guy. That's how you can build any brand ever. Sometimes people don't go back and get that feedback, therefore they go off left field and they don't give consumers what they're looking for and they start to slowly uh digress.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

I'm collecting that feedback. So if I compare an Amazon storefront to say a Shopify storefront, what you're able to communicate with your Amazon customers is much less. And so versus if you look at like a post-purchase survey on a Shopify store where you can ask what almost made you not purchase. Uh, you can ask very specific targeted questions. And so for I fully agree with you on getting that feedback from customers, but what's the best method within terms of service to collect that?

Feedback Loops And Review Signals

SPEAKER_01 20:55

There there isn't one. Um so the the ways that you can do it is to look at the negative reviews and address them. Uh size, fit, color, those sort of things uh create a lot of anxiety that the consumer is not going to get what they want. Addressing the return rates, if you have the badge that says frequently returned on Amazon, you're screwed. If your 4.3 stars gets down to 4.2, then you're rounding down to four stars, then your conversion starts tanking. If you get down to 3.6, you're pretty much done on the platform. Unless you're selling a super niche health product that nobody else can get, or all the health products in that category all have terrible reviews. Uh, but but if but if you get consistently poor reviews on a particular subject matter, you should be able to address that and and fix it. You can also read the return reports. Although a lot of consumers are lazy and they're just making shit up, you still can gain some insight and knowledge that, like, hey, there's a fit problem here, or hey, uh, it didn't come with the screws to assemble my table. Those sort of things are pretty obvious. Uh, you can also uh give the product away uh or have friends and family order it and do that organically to get their feedback. But it's a lot of effort to do those sort of things. Uh and and and so I don't generally recommend spending significant time on this particular uh question. But when you do the sample ordering of a product, that's when you have the best opportunity to do it without high costs. Uh and and that's when you can show your sample to lots of people. Uh so right now, uh I'm working on a new service for lawyers, um, and it's called confidential.law with a K for the C. And I'm gonna go talk to 20 lawyers before I start investing heavily in this. And I'm gonna go quiz them. What are you looking for? What's your biggest problem? Oh, you really hate Clio. Uh, tell me more about that. What's it what's what is enraging you about this only offer that currently you know helps lawyers with their CRM and customer data and automations and stuff. And I'm gonna listen to them and I'm gonna write down exactly what they say, and then I'm gonna make that part of my marketing. And so you can do the same thing as a product goods cons uh, you know, seller on Amazon, you can get a hundred samples of your product, give it away. This is exactly what what's the uh I forget the name of the sunflower seed company that did this. They went over to baseball games and they started giving their product out to baseball players and recorded the video. And and they got enough people to say, yeah, that looks good. I like it, or they give enough free product away. And then everybody else wanted to eat the same sunflower seeds that pro baseball players are doing. It was ingenious. These were like teenagers at the time. And now they've got like the biggest sunflower seed brand on Amazon, right? Like that's a real world example. And of course, I can't even remember the name of the brand showing how irrelevant branding is on Amazon, but um, nonetheless, highly successful.

Honest Review Strategy And Removals

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You had talked about reviews, and it it seems like there's two types of review problems that people have. One, they don't have enough reviews to build that credibility, uh, or they have bad reviews. They've got a couple one stars that are really dragging down their average. And whenever this topic comes up, I always like to say um a clean conscience is a comfortable pillow. You know, I'm I'm using this brand to support my family. And there are a ton of sketchy ways to get reviews, but I I like to operate within the terms of service. And so for those two camps of people, you don't let's let's start with with you don't have reviews. What are some legitimate ways to get those first couple reviews?

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Most people are not gonna like my answer, but it's simply sell more product. You like all of the review gen strategies just do not work in 2026, they just simply don't. Uh they all have too much risk. Uh, Amazon is hostile to Review Gen. Uh, they have cut you off with the knees from emailing and asking for reviews. Uh, if you have anything that resembles five stars review for incentives or anything that even asks for review in your product packaging, they will ban your product at some point and require you to forcibly return your FBA inventory. It's simply not worth it. Uh, so I would consider review gen not even a top 20 strategy in 2026 right now. And and case in point, can you look, can you launch a product with zero stars on Amazon and sell fifty thousand dollars in product? And Survey says yes, how do you do it though? Lower price, right? You you just have to you just have to work around uh the lack of reviews with other incentives. And if you have if you have a low lower price, people are like, well, this one's$30 and the competitor with the thousand reviews$40. I, you know, I might take a$10 risk here. Generally speaking, 50% off, way, way more sales are gonna come in. And then after you do that, you sell more product, the reviews come in organically, you're gonna get better reviews because the thing is lower priced anyway. So people are like, yeah, at$25, that's a five-star product. At$30, it's a four-star product or whatever. So so getting more orders is is is the true, honest, best way to get more reviews. Your challenge is 1.5% of people leave a review, and you cannot really structurally improve that without cheating. So that's the challenge.

SPEAKER_02 26:15

That's helpful. That's helpful. Um, what about to the group of sellers that have a couple one-stars that are really bringing down their average? Are there legitimate ways to get those removed? Do you just would you stick with the same advice that you just gave on just getting more sales? What are your thoughts there?

SPEAKER_01 26:34

So definitely get more sales. That's gonna solve every problem ever on Amazon. You need sales to get sales on Amazon. You need sales to get reviews, you need sales to bury a one-star review. All that's gonna be true. But but fighting, um, especially since there's a lot of Chinese sellers that hire bombarding fake reviews, I do think it's merited to request removal of bad reviews. Uh now, our success rate is somewhere between three and six percent on review removal. Uh, and it could take months of ticketing the same one. But if that is the difference between you being at four stars or four and a half, highly worth it. So it just depends on you know how much time, how much time you have to spend here versus alternative priorities. But this is a VA labor level task. It's an you can outsource this to agencies. There are third-party tools that will charge you buy review successfully removed. Um, TNC questionable on some of those, but I do think that it's worthwhile to remove some one-star reviews. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

Okay. No, it's helpful.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

Now last I'll add, I do have a free guide on this. If if you just type in my Amazon guy negative review removal into Google or any LLM, my full guide shows how to do this and it goes into great detail. It's definitely worth trying. But again, three to six percent success rate.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

Outstanding. That's helpful. That's helpful to know that on the front end, um, just for what what success looks like in this case. So, okay. Now you you've audited uh countless seller accounts. What are some of the most common mistakes you see brands making that are quietly killing their growth on Amazon?

unknown 28:17

All right.

Biggest Growth Killers: CTR First

PPC Structure, Bidding, And Negations

SPEAKER_01 28:17

So we'll we'll put this into traffic generation categories uh because I think that's where most mistakes are made. Uh, because again, Amazon's 8 to 12% conversion rate solves, even if your product doesn't have A plus content, it still has an 8% conversion rate. You should obviously have A plus content because it gets you more traffic, right? But the point is that traffic generation is where all marketing begins. So uh the CTR on the main image, if you don't have a keyword, if you don't show your packaging, if the uh product's not large enough, if it's not optimized for mobile, if the colors are wrong, if it's hard to read, if people can't understand what it is in less than a second flat, those are problems you should solve first. Number one, CTR, 100% fastest way to grow sales on Amazon. No question about it. Like we could do a whole podcast just on CTR, it's that worthwhile. It could do a whole 10 hours on CTR, it's that worthwhile. People should be spending significant amounts of time focused on click-through, right? After you solve that, the next would be advertising. So uh I think that there are structurally lots and lots of thousands of different micro mistakes when it comes to PPC on Amazon. Uh, people underinvest or under-index on broad and auto campaigns. They're over-indexing and overspending on exact match. Uh, the amount of tools that are available in 2026 versus say 2020, 2023, et cetera, are significantly different today. You now have the ability directly in Seller Central to do some forms of time bidding changes. And so if you know that Monday at noon you have the best sales, you should be upping your bids by 20, 25, 30% during that time frame. Uh, there are a lot of negations that are lacking, even by other agencies or other automated tools, uh, which by the way, at MAG, at my Amazon guy, we do not use any automated tools on advertising management. And the structural reason for that is that they're still not really out. They're built to do one thing really well, which is to reduce wasted spend, but they're not great at growing brands. And uh a holiday comes along like Labor Day. The tools are not smart enough, even though I've complained about this for six plus years, they're not smart enough to reduce your bids on holidays. Instead, what they do, impressions go down and they raise bids. So I got fired. I I was using one of the most popular automated PBC tools, which I won't name six years ago. Labor Day hit. I lost three clients that week. All three complained, you spent 3x our budget on Labor Day weekend, and we got 3x worst results. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. Why can't I program this into the tool? And no tool can solve that, to my knowledge, even today. So PBC is where I would spend significant time. Make sure every SKU is advertised all the time. That doesn't mean spend all the money on equally across SKUs. You should be spending 80% on your top 20% of your portfolio, 80-20 roll in reverse. Uh, you need to have every type of campaign built, however, most secondary types of campaigns from display uh to other uh other methodologies, whether it's sponsored brands, anything that's not sponsored product proper, if it's ACE and targeting, et cetera, they they do not perform as well. So 80% of your budget should be in sponsored products. 80% of your sponsored product budget should be in auto and broad match campaigns. So I like to use those high-level numbers. Obviously, everybody's gonna have a little bit different result, but that's structurally speaking how I would address the biggest problems that we see. And a lot of negations are lacking. Not enough brands know how to run negations, uh, and they waste hundreds of thousands of dollars uh on terms that will never convert for the brand. For example, if you sell wine glasses, you're never gonna convert on steel wine glass if you're a glass. So you gotta address those structurally at account level.

SPEAKER_02 32:04

Okay. You had mentioned negations. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_01 32:07

So a bad keyword. So if you advertise a product, we'll keep we'll keep going with the wine glass uh method here. Uh I sold wine glasses for a decade, and we we know what won't convert for for those campaigns. And if you don't add weekly negations, go into your auto and broad match campaigns and add in negations, you're wasting money. The reason why it's worth doing this instead of spending all of your money on exact match is because everybody else who's lazy is only doing exact match and you're all bidding up those terms equally. Amazon will give you a discount, sometimes 10, 20% less on your bidding for the same term by doing an auto or broad match campaign. And it's hard, it's like if somebody doesn't believe that when I tell them, it's really hard to convince them that it this happens until I just tell them scientific method, go test it yourself. Right? So you can set up two campaigns, one with a broad match term wine glass, one with an exact match term wine glass. The broad match will beat the exact, not initially, but after two weeks of optimization, it always wins because you can down bid all the things that don't work on broad match while still getting the discount on the term wine glass on the broadmatch campaign. And additionally, you'll get sales on cursory keywords that you weren't paying attention to that you would never have added in an exact match campaign to begin with, and nobody else is bidding on them because they're all bidding on exact match instead of broad.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

Okay. That's that's really interesting, and I would probably put myself in the camp of someone who wouldn't believe that. However, I am a big fan of testing and I am gonna look into that. I on the the autos, it seems like there are seasoned brands. Like I've got a brand that I've had on Amazon for nine years. I feel like I've got a very good understanding. I've harvested all the keywords. Now, uh from what you're saying, I would probably be good to it would probably be good to continue to let those autos run, get my lower bids. And that's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

Okay. Your your auto campaigns will outperform your exact match within two weeks. Okay. Great.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

I love it. I'm gonna look into that. On a on a healthy PPC account, what uh what percentage of revenue is going to ad spend?

SPEAKER_01 34:30

Uh this is gonna be category-specific. So if we're in supplements, obviously you're gonna be paying through the nose. Uh if we're in home goods, you might be spending as little as 8 to 11% tacos. Um, but but every year it does seem to go up about a half percentage point. So I would say in 2026, we're looking at 12% tacos as a statistical uh average across categories. Um, but if you want to grow, more than that. So if you're in the 15% category of tacos, uh so every hundred dollars you sell, you're spending 15% on ads, uh, not just on ads dollars generated, but all account dollars generated, total account, then you're gonna be looking at closer to 15% if you want to grow, grow aggressively. Um now, uh you can you get away with 8%? Yes, you can get away with it. Uh if you've got a long-standing brand, it's got power, it's got a thousand reviews, 100% you can spend less. Um and if you want to take profits, like sometimes, you know, every PBC question ever could be answered with, well, it depends um on your goals, right? And so uh the best way to address this is to answer the question with a question, which is what is your goal on a scale of one to 10? One being profit of the cost of growth, 10 being growth of the cost of profit, what's your number? Based on that, I can give you a tacos all day long by category, et cetera. Um, but but it's it's just structurally important to know that if you spend money on ads, it needs to be productive and it can always be productive. Now, if you have a seasonal item, it's more productive during certain times of year, obviously. Uh, but that doesn't mean shut it off completely. It just means maybe you spend 80% less during your off season.

Broad Vs Exact And Autos That Win

SPEAKER_02 36:11

Okay. Okay. The other thing that you had mentioned was applying the 80-20 rule to your the keywords that are really moving the needle on sales. In your reports, what are some of the most helpful reports that you're looking at that aid in PPC?

SPEAKER_01 36:33

My favorite report is the Search Query Performance Report. And it's it's got the best data. It tells you your impressions, clicks, add a cards, and purchases, ICAP by keyword. Uh, prior to this report coming out three, four years ago, you had to estimate it with third-party tools, uh, which were directional and helpful, but not accurate. And it changes on a week-to-week basis. So inside of the search credit performance report, if you find out that you have a ridiculously high CTR or and conversion rate for a keyword, it's 100% a signal, spend more on ads. Why? Because if you have a high CTR, you're gonna have a lower bid cost for that term because Amazon rewards low PPC costs, uh, lower that they'll charge you less than the next guy if you have a higher CTR. Uh, they'll also charge you less if you convert better. So by looking at that report, you can basically figure out within a micro minute where I should spend more money on PPC. Conversely, if you find out you have a low CTR or low conversion, spend less on those PBC terms as well. Even if the A cost is good, it's still, structurally speaking, uh more opportunities elsewhere available.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

Okay. Now, when you say spend more, does that mean going into your campaigns and increasing the bid or allowing a higher budget within that campaign for a combination of both?

Budget, TACOS, And Goals

SPEAKER_01 37:57

All of the above, but probably also creating new campaigns uh and having additional match types made for those keywords. So uh the example I like to give, um, and I and I could show you a graph and some of the results at myAmazonGuy.com slash ICAP. Uh, but essentially we we took a uh a product, some sage that you can burn, and we found that when I had, you know, I could 3x my results by spending more on that term. I also added the term to my main main image as well, and it also increased sales uh and tripled the conversion rate and tripled the impression share, et cetera, et cetera. Total market domination. I went from 7% of the market to 20, 21% of the market instantly. Uh so having an exact match campaign, broad match, phrase match on that term to make sure that you have every iteration available uh and bidding accordingly uh is very, very important. And then also making sure you have video ads on your top keywords. Video is still slept on in 2026 when it comes to video ads. Uh, there's some really smart people who were able to download every video ad in existence on the Amazon platform. Amazon got really pissed and banned them. Um, but what was what was striking from that exercise was just how little or how few video ads were running or how much money was going there. And so the takeaway was if you show up with an AI video, which is good enough but not great, you're gonna dominate and have uh a better time because the people who are hiring agencies, the people who are hiring VAs to run their PPC, or the guy who's got a nine-year-old brand is most likely not running very much video ads or hasn't created a new video in a year or plus longer. Uh, and so you can go in there and get lots of fast coverage at low cost, which is really what marketing is all about. It's about indexing higher where there's opportunity, right? So if other people are bidding up in this one area, shift to another area where it's bid lower if there's enough opportunity uh for the ROI to exist or be better. And so video is just really slept on. Obviously, we could talk about TikTok, we could talk about ads running into the platform, but if we just took video ads within sponsored brands directly in Amazon, there's a massive opportunity to use those to target select keywords where there's just not a lot of video being developed, which is why Amazon's been giving so much um AI support and video support and free asset library, because they're running out of room for ads and they need to sell more inventory on video. And people still don't do it because it just takes so much more work.

SPEAKER_02 40:41

So, are you seeing it? Seemed like perhaps a year or definitely two years ago, there would be an implicit penalty in using AI generated images. And you could just kind of tell that they didn't look legit. Uh, as we sit here talking in March of 2026, AI videos gotten pretty good. Uh it's the same thing with with AI photos. And so are you seeing any penalization on AI generated content on Amazon listings?

SPEAKER_01 41:12

None at all. Okay. Right. So the way that Amazon's gonna run its algorithm, it's are consumers happy? Are they engaging the content? Are they buying the product? If those are checking out, they're not gonna care how you did it. They really won't. Right? Like you could spend a thousand hours reading their TNC and their help files and try not to violate the rules. Or you could spend five hours just giving customers what they want, and you're gonna outperform the dude reading the TNC every single time. Because Amazon's gonna let you get away with a lot if you just give customers what they want and are doing well on the platform. Now, occasionally, yes, you're gonna get a stranded listing or a uh a suspended product for reasons unknown, Chinese sellers reporting your listing, et cetera. Um, but you're still gonna do structurally really good if you just give consumers what they want, which is why a lot of our CTR hacks still do good, even though they're against TNC technically in a lot of ways. And case in point, all the big brands do it, Amazon's own brands do it. And it's it's just funny to hear people worry about TNC when it comes to main images, when anybody and their dogs can do it and does do it, and then sees good results from it and don't ever get penalized. Nobody's ever been suspended for breaking main image TOC or blurring the lines there at all.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

So you had you've mentioned a couple of these main images, main image hacks or or strategies. So putting your main keywords in in larger text, um, what are some other ways that you've seen brands do a really good job with that main image?

Search Query Performance And ICAP

SPEAKER_01 42:45

So if you sell soap or you sell, we'll just go back to the aloe vera thing right here, right? So on the package, it does show the plant. But if you put the product on the main image and then have the plant as a backdrop, it's it's gonna do really good. Or if you sell a beauty product, or even if just keep going with the aloe vera product, this goop in the middle here, if I just take two fingers and I splash it outside of the product so the consumer can understand what they're getting. Like show the product in use in a way. If you sell a supplement, you gotta show the pill count really large, you've got to show the size of the pill, everyone wants to know the size of the pill. Everybody wants to know that. Uh, showcasing that, uh, how many servings it has, uh, what is what is the MG behind it? All of these things that consumers want to know, have them more than obvious on the main package. You're not selling this in a grocery store where someone's gonna pull it off the shelf and read the ingredient list. You need to have the most obvious thing front and center, right? So if it's cinnamon apple, crunch yogurt things, then have that be front and center and giant and big, not the brand, which everybody keeps making their brand name the largest thing in a packaging. So when you do your main image on Amazon, go ahead and shrink that, photo, you know, like literally photo edit it down and increase the keyword to take up that space. When the consumer gets the package, they don't care at all uh if you mess with the font size of your main image. So there's a lot of things you can do there, splashes, uh if it's American-made, showing an American flag, uh, and and just endless possibilities here. And then there's also design flaws like don't put red text on blue, so it's not readable, and and a lot of readability tests as well. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

On the uh I had this question pop into my mind when we were talking AI video. Are there any tools that you're using right now to generate AI video that you like?

Video Ads: Low Cost, Big Wins

SPEAKER_01 44:41

Yeah, it it switches every week. Like Elon Musk came out with Grocks 1.5 video, and it's looking really hot right now. Um, there's there's a lot of video libraries that are available. You don't it's cheaper to pay for AI versus stock imagery at this point. Um, I I've seen a lot of progress uh from all kinds of of platforms. I think Google. Will probably be the winner in the end in the AI race because they have the most data and they have the most data centers. I'm surprised Amazon is as far behind on AI as they are because they have the most product data. But they do allow you to use their library for video as well. And I think you could make 50 tests of video to see what performs best and run all these multivariant tests to find out. But at the end of the day, the structure that I learned as a TV reporter when I was making video has not changed how an ad should be built as AI has entered the space. So when you're shooting video, whether it's on an iPhone, whether using your AI library, it doesn't matter. You need to show a close-up of the products where it takes up almost 80% of the camera lens at that point in time. You need to show the product in use and you need to show the lifestyle. You need to show medium shots, you need to show faraway shots and give a lot of texture and understanding and shamwell the product, right? Like you got to be Billy Mays showcasing the products. If you sell coffee, you're going to want to be walking in Naples, Italy, and wherever else. And how does the product make you feel? Right? You're selling feelings as much as you're selling the products frequently when you're selling product with video. If it's a technical product, video does even better than a keyword because then you can show how the product solves their problem better than you can explain it, which is why Shamwow guy, Billy Mays, existed, right? Like, and wait, there's more. Let me show you how I can do this. Let me show you how to do this. And within five seconds, you're like, that's amazing. I need that. And then you give them your credit card and you're done. So, so showcasing the product quickly, but a c but I would tell you this without a doubt, in that first two-second frame, you need to have a close-up of the product 100% of the time.

unknown 47:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 47:03

That's really, really helpful. Now, before we get into the fire round, one final question is uh tell us a little bit more about my Amazon guy. Who are your typical clients and uh what would be um in what scenarios do people pick up the phone or or send a message over to my Amazon guy to engage with you guys?

SPEAKER_01 47:22

Yeah, so we we help brands at every size. We don't turn any particular size away. Um, but if if you're a brand that wants to see better results on Amazon, you might give us a call if you've watched five or 10 of my videos on YouTube that I've helped you grow. You've you've already tested that yes, A plus content indexes after you saw one of my videos. Yes, you've tested that C chair increases your sales. And so you're like, okay, this guy knows what he's talking about. He's given me so much value. I'm gonna pick up the phone and call Steven Pope and my Amazon guy because he can take me to the next level on top of that. And and it's there's just so many things you can do on Amazon. And so it's just a question of what should I prioritize? Well, at MAG, we prioritize growing your traffic, improving your conversion rate. And we do that with PPC, SEO, CTR, design, catalog management, ticketing, all the bullshit you have to do to jump through hoops to sell on the Amazon platform.

SPEAKER_02 48:12

All right. Sounds good. Well, let's get into the fire round. These are four questions that we ask everybody at the end of the show. Are you ready? Let's do it. All right, what's your favorite book?

SPEAKER_01 48:22

Uh Wizards First Rule from a fantasy standpoint, but the road less stupid from a business standpoint.

SPEAKER_02 48:29

Very nice. That is a good one. Uh, what are your hobbies?

SPEAKER_01 48:33

Uh I like nature working out. Uh, I I do testosterone replacement therapy. I've got my body in shape. I dropped 50 pounds in the last two years, eat lots of protein, cooking, hiking every day, lifting weights, eating, eating really good these days.

SPEAKER_02 48:49

Great, great. What is one thing that you do not miss about working for the men?

SPEAKER_01 48:55

Having to drive into the office. Uh, and I realize a lot of people are remote these days, but showing up and the boss making stress tail at stay until five o'clock, uh I hated that.

SPEAKER_02 49:05

Yeah, yeah, you and me both. All right, and final question what do you think sets apart successful e-commerce entrepreneurs from those who give up, fail, or never get started?

SPEAKER_01 49:15

It's gonna come down to vision probably, uh, because you have to be able to look ahead. Uh so if you're making a brand to give your kid 10 years from now, your the likelihood of your success is 10x. Like just way, way better. Uh, versus you're just trying to make a quick buck, Amazon is not a great platform for that.

SPEAKER_02 49:32

All right. Well, very good. Well, Steven, thank you so much for your time today. And uh to all of our listeners, I'm gonna post links to the show notes to my Amazon guy, to Steven's YouTube channel, Instagram, and uh a couple other places you can get in touch with him. But Steven, thank you so much and looking forward to staying in touch.