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How to Scale with Amazon Ads without Sacrificing Profits with Liz Greene · Selling on Giants: The eCommerce Marketplace Podcast

• 0:11
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to another episode of Selling on Giants, where we explore strategies to help e-commerce businesses thrive in marketplaces.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_03: I'm your host, and today we're excited to have Liz Green join us.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_03: In the crowded Amazon jungle, Liz founded Jungler to help sellers achieve eight-figure revenue goals and beyond.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: With her experience as a former Amazon seller, Liz has a talent for simplifying complexity, developing a top-down approach that jumpstart seller success.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_03: Her clear, simplified process enables businesses to scale efficiently and effectively.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_03: In addition to her impressive professional achievements, Liz is a mother of six, which has honed her skills in scaling with simplicity.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: Her personal experience brings a unique perspective to her work, making her an expert at balancing growth with the everyday challenges of life.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: Today, Liz will share her insider knowledge on how to scale with Amazon ads without sacrificing profits.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: Get ready to dive deep into practical strategies and actionable insights that will help you elevate your business.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: Join me in welcoming Liz Green.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: Hey Liz, welcome to the show.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: We're super excited to have you here.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: Uh to kick it off, can you share a bit about your journey from being an Amazon seller to the founder of Jungler?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I guess you could say it was a journey of opportunity, probably, which is probably how a lot of us get into it.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, got into uh it started off trying to find a business where we could work from home.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, don't come from an entrepreneurial background.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: My dad is insanely smart, but he has self-proclaimed that like I don't really like to go off on my own.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: So he knows where his strengths lie.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: My husband's family is the exact opposite.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: My father-in-law is like, I don't think I'm really employable at this point because I worked for myself for far too long.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so really mirrored into that.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then a lot of their businesses were very brick and mortar.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so looking for something to do online, which of course leads you so many options out there.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things that we got into was selling on Amazon.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that of course led us into the world of advertising, um, you know, knowing how to advertise products.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then a lot, this was back when all the Facebook groups were popping.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so everybody's asking questions in there.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I love about the Amazon community is how open and how just helpful everybody is.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so in trying to add to that helpfulness myself, uh, I was answering questions in Facebook groups.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, you know, I have some answers to your questions, let me be helpful, which of course leads to people going, Oh, do you do this?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, kind of.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so um just started off managing some accounts for brands, was able to get some really good results, found out funny enough, I absolutely love it.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, never thought I would, I mean, like back when I first started, I had little to no experience using even say spreadsheets.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, like every so everything I have now is self-taught.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And like, as we all know with advertising, you basically have honestly anything when you're doing selling on Amazon, you pretty much live in spreadsheets.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so found out I really, really enjoy it.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I really enjoy it, and so that leading me.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I always say, like, I fell into it, then I fell in love with it, is kind of how I feel about the whole thing.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so yeah, just started managing couple counts.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that worked out really well, and just continued to share insights that I was learning.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that really just spearheaded our growth trajectory.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been, I think, going on six or seven years now.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, been grown ever since.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's amazing.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: And if anybody's not following you on LinkedIn, they should definitely check it out.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_03: You share tons of really great knowledge for anybody who's either getting into advertising or has some experience in advertising.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_03: You're definitely a great resource.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_03: And before we jump into the main topic, I guess there's so many questions, but myself, my co-founder is also my wife, and we've been working together for probably about as long as you guys have.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_03: I guess what do you love most about it and what do you find most challenging about working with your spouse?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Probably so the thing that I most love about it is it's I think in a lot of ways brought us closer together.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because you it communication just has to be there, right?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, probably that's maybe one of the most challenging things is that uh you have to learn how the other person communicates.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and allowing allowing space for somebody else's perspective.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the truth given any sort of relationship, whether it's just like with a coworker, with the team, anyone.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: But the difference is when you're working with your spouse, you can't run away from those conversations.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so I don't think, and I think this is attributed to just how well me and my husband have always worked together.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, meaning so before like I was at home, so I was a stay-at-home mom before like really diving into this business thing, always was more of the facilitator role.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that's been a real I love it um in my entrepreneurial journey, just having that growth trajectory of being more of like the public facing, which is like awesome.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, it's just been so he's taught me a lot.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I I leaned on him in the beginning a lot for sort of just validation because I was just, you know, I'm just figuring this stuff out, right?
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And when you do that, there's a lot of self-doubts that come in.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so he was in a lot of ways my confidence.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so I can say there's no way I would be where I am without that support, like 110%.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but of course, yeah, again, I think it's just that it's just a different per perspective, and maybe because you know the person so much, um it's maybe a little bit easier to not want to take the advice or like ah, that's not right, and then going back to it pretty much in all of our conversations, as I I will publicly admit this, so it's on the record.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: He's pretty much always right, he is always right.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: It just it takes me a while to recognize that.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: So actually, the thing that I've had to work on myself is admitting that sooner, I think.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: I if I admit that sooner, I honestly would save myself a world of pain.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's uh sounds like you and I are a lot alike, and uh I mean it sounds like you and your husband are an amazing team, and you guys heard it here first, so uh husband's always wife, uh, doesn't always translate between families, but uh that's amazing, and I'm super happy for you guys.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: Your journey is just amazing.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: And um, between starting off as a consulting and you're running a full-fledged agency now, so anybody out there listening, Liz does not mess around.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: She has a bunch of employees and she manages a ton of accounts.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: And with that being said, her main expertise is one of my favorite topics, advertising.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_03: And today's topic to we're gonna be talking about how to scale with Amazon ads without sacrificing profits.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: And this is just a huge topic.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, in maybe 2020, 2021, when we had the aggregator boom, a lot of it was top-line growth.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of advertisers kind of stepped away from being profit-focused, ACOS, tacos driven.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_03: And now that we're we've seen the economy recess, we've also seen a lot of those aggregators go away.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, profitability on advertising seems to be on everybody's mind.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_03: So, really pumped to talk about this.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_03: And with that being said, let's chat about some general strategies.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_03: So, how how do you use Amazon ads to drive growth?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's a really good question.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, the thing that's very unique about the Amazon platform, and where I think a lot of sellers or even advertisers like puzzle through and struggle with is the very obvious correlation between advertising sales and organic ranking.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's night and day, it's there.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, ad, you know, ad sales are technically reported in business reports, so it's not separate.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like there is a very obvious sales growth that comes with advertising.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: But as you set up the conversation so well, the problem with you know, leveraging that advertising is you're paying for it, right?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're not paying for the right things or in a way that is efficient, you it leads to immense amounts of unprofitability.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I agree with you, there's been a lot of sellers who are continuously chasing that top line growth.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And cash flow is traditionally a very difficult thing to manage, I think, in any sort of physical products business, um, especially with Amazon.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so, with that, if the business is at a place where they're really funding their growth through cash flow, if you're not being careful, it's very easy to run yourself out of business.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I think a lot of sellers, they're kind of stuck in this like rock and a hard place situation where, and a lot of sellers, they've they've gone through the path of like hyper focusing on profitability and then watch that decrease in the top line sales.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're like, Well, I know I need to push ads to be able to grow my account, grow my products, but at the same time, if I push too hard, I'm not going to be in business.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's really where our agency comes in, or you know, any agency is how can we help you navigate this dynamic in a way that's going to make sense for your business?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to say it's easy because it's not, it's a heck a ton of hard.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And hopefully I can give some pointers as to maybe how to approach it in this conversation, but it can be done.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's complicated.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's really complicated.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: 100% agree.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, just alone in the last year, like the console, the platform, even attribution, it's just constantly changing.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, with that being said, how what type of questions do you ask to uncover like what profitability means for the different brands that you work with?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_03: Like, how do you know, how do you tell a customer that we need to spend more to get eyeballs in order to, you know, help with SEO versus, hey, you know, you got a mature product, it's rocking right now.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: Let's figure out how to how to be more efficient.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what does that look like as you're as you're doing discovery?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: And for those listening, as they're looking at their catalogs and they maybe have 15 or 20 products and they're like, hey, I got$5,000 a month.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like, where do I put allocate this effectively uh in order to have the biggest impact on my account in the long run?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I like that question because it's one that we've been puzzling over for a very long time.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and what I find is that it really starts with goals, bar none is what I found, and top line goals.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then identifying the constraints.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, constraints and goals typically, when you're talking advertising, it is the difference for some sellers, but for other sellers, uh the goals would be top line revenue growth, and then in how whatever way you calculate that.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, some sellers will say, like, well, I'm okay with a 20%.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Some are crazy, they're like, I want to double.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, some are looking at it in numbers of orders or units move per month.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's different ways to look at it, but often it's what do I want my top line to be?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then your constraint is um typically total A cost, we find is the most scalable way to have that constraint.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, sometimes it's a specific budget.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's kind of dependent on the clients, but um it's basically what am I willing to give up in terms of profitability to achieve those goals.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then that at least gives you a good picture because what I find when I talk with a lot of sellers is not because they're intending to do it, but often they will focus on the individual things that they think are going to get them to those goals.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll have the conversation and you'll you'll start talking about okay, what are the issues?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what are you seeing in your account?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: What's their biggest struggle with your Amazon ads right now?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of them will hop to, well, I need to rank, or I'm feeling like I'm missing out on negative keywords.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Or so there, there a lot of times what I find in the conversations is they hop to what they feel is the fix for the issue, but we're not really talking about the issue.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I'm doing and what I'm coaching my team on is how can we figure out what it is that we're trying to achieve, because then that's a much easier conversation to work backwards from.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it gives you more of a lay of a lay of the land, and then you can have the conversation on how easy and or difficult, because most oftentimes what I find is they're like, oh, I'm having a ranking issue, possibly, or they're like, I want to get the number one BSR.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Great, you know.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's not a bad, it's not a bad goal to have, but behind the idea of getting a number one BSR, behind the idea of giving a you know, high ranking on their main keyword, they're saying, I feel like if I had this, I would achieve what I want to achieve.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then sometimes getting the number one ranking or getting that number one BSR is too expensive and too unprofitable to do.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're like, that's why they're in that struggle.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Cause they're like, I feel like if I don't have this, I can't have this.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes those correlations where that is a way to get where you want to go, but oftentimes it's not the only way to get where you want to go.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So if we can have that conversation and what is the actual outcomes, then oftentimes, you know, because we're really well versed in advertising, we can bring a different strategy and say, like, well, this is one way to do it, but given X, Y, and Z, we feel like that's probably not the best path for you because we feel like given again your constraints and you're on those goals, I don't feel like that's gonna get you can't have your cake and eat it too if we do this.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: But there is a scenario in which we can achieve that if we do, you know, B C D, right?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: And I like how you frame the constraint aspect of it.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_03: And also the you're right, like a lot of clients will come in and say that this is the fix and the problem, but this is totally the fix.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: And to your point, like getting number one uh BSR for a specific category can be really expensive.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_03: And if their their goals and their budgets and their you know efficiency standard doesn't align with that, you know, A, they're gonna have a bad experience because you're mismanaging expectations, uh, and they're not gonna get the outcome that they want.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: And that, you know, that's the that's just project management and managing clients.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_03: And that sounds like that's something you guys do really well and pretty often.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, we definitely we definitely try.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: We definitely try.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_03: Amen to that.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_03: Beautiful, beautiful.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: Well, on that note, let's let's jump into scaling efficiently.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: Let's we'll get into kind of the heart of this.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: So, what are the key factors to consider when scaling an Amazon ad campaign efficiently?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um two things.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I would say one, um the impact that that campaign has on the account, and then two, the impact of that campaign on um the sales or the results that you're getting for that specific product is what we found.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so for context, a lot of our approaches are shaped by managing very large SKU accounts.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere along the lines, we got a very large clothing account.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that definitely threw a wrench in the works.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like we had a bit of trial by fire in a lot of things on not necessarily that it was difficult to get the results for the counts, you know, initially, right?
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's always some cleanup to do, there's always things that can be improved right off the bat.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: But in terms of constant management of that, it's like with all the insane amounts of complexity happening, you know, when you go upwards of tens of thousands of SKUs, how in the world do you decide where best efforts are spent and where ad spent is best spent?
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so that actually has led us to, you know, through all that pain, has led us to a lot of good systems that allow us to identify these things again, even at a massive scale.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so the thing that basically when I summered upon this, it was kind of like a dumb moment, but like, you know, it's like one of those things you like see and you're like, why have I never looked at this before?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's basically what is the impact?
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: So when we're looking at an entire catalog or we're looking at a single campaign, it's basically how big of a piece of the pie is this thing.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're looking at uh advertising performance, a lot of that is looking at ad spend because good ad management is really just good ad spend efficiency or good ad spend allocation is probably a better way to put that.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we'll do, and I'll give you a really practical way of doing this, and this is the duh moment.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: So hopefully it's uh, you know, helpful to your audience is looking at things in percentages of total.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, was like, oh, there's a very quantifiable, like how big of a piece is this?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that was something that um has been really beneficial just to look at say overall accounts.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: So most account, you know, most sellers will say, like, oh, I know this is my best seller, right?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is my top product, or here's my top three products.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I am often a little bit surprised um that they don't realize like the actual impact of that.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: So for a reference, like there was an account where um their top seller made up like 85% of the total sales.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a massive.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, as go that product, there goes the account.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you better keep a really close eye on that versus other accounts that we're managing.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's actually quite a few products.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean, I think the top half of their catalog, each product is probably about even, doing maybe about you know, I don't know, 15 to 20 percent.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a pretty even split across all of the products.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we're like, well, we have tons of options, you know, as far as what's gonna have account impact here.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: So just doing that, and the same thing with campaigns.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, so where is my biggest allocation of ad spend?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then what we do off of that, it's like, okay, so now we know this is where the biggest piece of the pie is.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: What are the efficiencies on that?
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Efficiencies and ads typically mean like a costs, and you know, for products, it would be total A cost.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if I know that a biggest piece of my pie is highly inefficient, meaning has insanely high A cost, well, that's something to definitely pay attention to and optimize.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or on the flip side, if I have something that has a very large piece of the pie, I'm like, it's highly efficient.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's it's fantastic, right?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: How do I get more of that?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the way that we've kind of started looking at things is like, what is the what is the impact of this thing on the whole and by how much?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then how do we move this thing closer to where we want it?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: So efficiencies would be like, how do we get better A costs here?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or um if we're looking at, you know, sales, okay, this product is highly efficient in terms of total A cost, how do we get more of that?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how can we how can we do more?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's led us to some really, really good insights.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's essentially how we would look at something that, like, you know, you looked at tens of thousands of hundreds, hundreds of thousands of SKUs, you're like, how in the world do you make sense of this?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, it's by looking at how big of a piece of the pie is it?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you're looking at the bottom half, even if I have the most efficient ads run, like if I have like a one, let's go crazy, one percent a cost on something, if it's only driving like a fraction of the total, it's a blip on the radar in terms of my entire account.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: I could have a hundred percent a cost versus, I'm not saying you want to go that high, right?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm just saying, like in terms of actually making big moves in the account, it's gonna have little to no impact.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Versus if I can identify where my biggest pieces of the pie are and where those inefficiencies are, then all of a sudden in sort of like staring at an ad account and going, oh, I have to do all these things and I don't know, and you're just like running around trying to push buttons and like add negative keywords and cut bleeders.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Those things are great systems.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong, those should be running in the background.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: But in terms of like, where do I put in my focus?
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Where do I hone in that analytic attention?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: You only have so much time in the day.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: So, how can I be most efficient with it in a way that's going to be the most effective on the account?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: That makes a lot of sense too.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, I think some You made a lot of really good points there, but spend allocation obviously, if it's spending the most, it's gonna have your biggest impact on ACOS.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: And something you mentioned, those catalogs that have the hero skew, like 80% of sales from 20% of the catalog.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_03: I always find that those types of catalogs, it's mistakes are easier to be hidden or uh inadequacies and neglection.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, they won't notice because they're like, oh, the hero products running at five percent and it spends you know 80% of our budget while you have all these other inefficiencies.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm really glad you mentioned the large account.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, let's like what is uh I get this question all the time.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: So I love to pose this to other advertisers optimization.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_03: For those of our audience, like they hear that all the time.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe they're brand managers or they're they're managing a team.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_03: What does it mean to you when you're optimizing an account for efficiency?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what levers are you actually pulling and and what KPIs should I be aware of if I was gonna go in and kind of backtrack and maybe check my account to see if it's being optimized?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, well, for those of you in the weeds, I'm gonna say something that's gonna make it seem super simple.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'm gonna tell you why it's not as simple as what I just said, and then we'll talk about the specifics.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: But so efficient ad management is about ad spent allocations, right?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I I try my try my best again to take the complex and try and make it simple in a way that's easy for me to understand because I too get stuck in the weeds, and like with the like I'm a perfectionist type person, like this must be the absolute best it possibly can be, which leads you to spending way too much time and then your brain just explodes and you do nothing.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm always trying to be like, how do I put this in a way that's easy for me to understand to take the next step down the rabbit hole?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so really when I was contemplating this a little while back, it's like, well, there's actually only two actions that are done in an account when you're optimizing spent.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: You are deciding to spend more, which is increasing.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is bids, this is budgets, this is adding additional keywords, this is adding additional products.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: All of those actions increase ad spent.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Or you decide to spend less, or you decrease it, which is decreasing budgets, which is decreasing bids, lowering placement percentages, adding negative keywords, anything that's going to eliminate ad spend in the account.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: So at the end of the day, we're flipping a switch.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: I it's more of a slider, it's less of a on and off.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's more of a slider, and that's where the difficulties come.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll say something like that, and somebody will go, oh yeah, that seems super simple.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then they're going to go into their account and they're going to be like, Yeah, it wasn't as simple as you just said.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: And that would be true.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because the thing that everyone gets stuck on, I myself am constantly trying to optimize this thing, is to what degree are we going up or down?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And where is that sweet spot?
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the struggle for most sellers is that sweet spot is ever changing, which is why I still have a job, right?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: If I could if I could go in and optimize an account and have it be the best it possibly could and have every single data point at my disposal, tomorrow it would change.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Probably the next two hours it's gonna change, right?
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's really what you're doing in terms of like what are the actual levers that you're pulling.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this the barometer that I have found to be the most effective, and I kind of stumbled across this in the beginning when I was more I would say agency, but it's pretty much freelancer, let's be honest.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, till now when there's a team, is really your barometer in the buy how much question should be looked at the lens through how much of an impact does this item have on my sales?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's really the barometer.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if I'm looking at an ad account and I'm seeing a ton of clicks and no sales, how much impact does that have on sales?
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Not I got no sales way down, right?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's what that lever is going down really, really fast.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Versus, and this is where a lot of new sellers get stuck on is they will see something in their account and they'll look at the A cost and they're like, Oh my goodness, this is way too high.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And they would be correct, right?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably unsustainable.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: But they'll say, Oh, fast, bad A cost down, right?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the thing that they're not taking into account on but on the buy how much equation is what is that impact on sales?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because oftentimes what you'll find is that those maybe unefficient items, so yes, there are optimizations need to be done, have a high degree of sales associated with them.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And again, here's where percentages of total are great, right?
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a keyword that has what 60% of your total sales being driven through that, and the A cost is too high, and you say, Oh my gosh, too much, slam it down.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the next day you go into your account, rankings are down, sales are down, everything's down, right?
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that didn't actually lead you to where you wanted to go, which was I need to be more efficient, I need to make sure I'm not losing money, right?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: But there was other residual aspects to that, and the the crux of that that I've really found um is the impact on sales.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's one thing that's been helpful to us um as we continue to try and find more efficient, more effective, more data-driven ways to make those optimizations, it's making sure that we're viewing it through that lens.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: Beautiful.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_03: That's really well said.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, I mean, a lot to unpack there, but I mean the base you do so well at exemplifying it from you know, adding keywords, adding budget, uh subtracting the negative, the down bids, but also the ramifications because you're 100% right.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_03: Like uh you could be super aggressive, and you know, instead of the sliding scale, which is a great analogy, I'll be uh stealing that, but I'll send you the royalties.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: Go fine instead of flipping that that switch is a really good point because uh I think a lot of advertisers when they first start, I'm guilty of it when I started in advertising is just being aggressive, like, oh, you know, X amount of clicks, this amount of spend, it's not doing anything off, and then you don't realize like it was feeding something else, and all of a sudden you're seeing uh total sales drop, and then you you have to figure out you have to fix it, and then understanding incrementality uh is a big part of it.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, why we're we're kind of in the weeds, and those of you guys in advertising, when you think of campaign structure and you think of setting up an account, you know, a large count, small account, whatever is easier for you.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: Do you are you worried about like cannibalization?
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: Do you worry about duplicate keywords and multiple campaigns for products?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what are some best practices and tips you can give our the audience listening now who may be advertisers?
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like how they should think about initial setup for campaigns and then you know the grooming aspect of it.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: I will I will tell you so anyone starting up their account, I'll tell you what's best, and then I'll also tell you why sometimes it doesn't matter.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so best for us would be we like single campaign, single ad groups, uh single product lines.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Product lines for us, which again for context, we manage say clothing brands.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: So there's some people who will put like individual SKUs and you know have campaigns for each of those.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: We find there are certain negative aspects of that, uh, if you're not aware of them.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, we can get into that if you want.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but we think of because for for context, this is say like parent-child ASIN relationships, right?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you can think of we think of listings as say like landing pages.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it is a place to direct traffic.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: So the problem with having multiple products, and when I say multiple products, again, it's clarity, it's child ACINs that are associated with separate parent accounts, is how I would define that.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you have those grouped into a campaign, well, if you say like, oh, this again, if we're going to evaluating products and the efficiencies on those products, this one's working really, really well.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: This one's not.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: So ideally, again, I want to turn up the lever on the one that's working best, and I'm going to turn down the lever on the one that's not working.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: My problem is that those are grouped together into the single campaign, and the levers that I can pull to go up or down are going to be things like bids, placement percentages, and budgets.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: And those are all I don't have a way to separate those things.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so it becomes very, very difficult to really micromanage those efficiencies.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is why that structure is not the most effective.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: The most effective when it comes to optimizations.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I will tell you why in some cases it doesn't really matter, is because I'm not saying that that structure is the most effective when it comes to performance of those acts.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is the most effective for optimizations and for spend control, which we've already defined as that is the way that you manage accounts well, is by having good spend, you know, good spend allocations and you're putting it in the right places and the right buckets.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: So you lack that control when everything's a mess.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've all seen those, I call them like dump campaigns, where it's like every single product in there, there's a ton of different main keywords, there's like exact phrase and broad, it's all clustered together.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's just one big jumbled, like in terms of control of ad spend, you're like, I'm just like I can kind of you know sear it, but like there's not there's not much I can do here.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And yet that campaign is absolutely crushing it in terms of performance.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so a lot of advertisers will look at that and say, like, oh, like this by every single metric that I've been told, because I know this is not quote the best structure, this should not exist.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm a big fan of go with the data.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're looking at a campaign like that and you're like, this is honestly pissing me off as a manager because there's little to nothing I can do, but at the same time, I cannot ignore the performance of this.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so my takeaway in those scenarios is again, it's because I lack the control levers for that.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of people like I'll talk about um ranking campaigns, right?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: And there's this whole I don't say it's like ongoing debate on LinkedIn with you'll see posts popping up and people talking in comments about like, you know, broad match is great and phrase match is great.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: Why does everybody feel like there's this exact match, you know, like and that was a thing a while back where it was like exact match is the end all be all, and everybody should only be doing exact match.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't go that far.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you do ask me, like, hey, how do you build a ranking campaign?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you, you know, single campaign, single ad group, only exact match, main keywords, be aggressive with it.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there was a again, I was kind of going back and forth in the comments with some people, and they were saying, like, well, phrase and broad match also can lead to ranking.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, you're 100% correct.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, a lot of times the exact same search term will perform way better in terms of a cost in a broad match or a phrase match.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And again, as an advertiser, it drives me up a wall, right?
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: But it is a fact.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: My problem with people saying, like, oh, you should use broad or phrase match to go after, you know, for ranking purposes.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my answer to that is yeah, if you can get efficiencies there, great.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: But what happens when the algorithm stops serving up that search term in broad match?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: I have no control over that whatsoever.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so from a control standpoint, exact match is gonna give me much more levers if I say this is the very specific search in which I want to direct my ad spend to only spend here, I have much more control over that.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: That makes a lot of sense.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: So like control is a big thing and building out these groups, and I agree with the parent children, especially for big catalogs too.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like the amount of money it would take for like a thousand skew catalog to advertise on every skew is crazy.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but that being said, do you have you ever tried like the honeypot method or anything like that?
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_03: Where uh we've had large cat uh large SKUs under uh a parent, and one of those SKUs would be like a lot cheaper than the others.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: And we would advertise that SKU to get them on the main page and then they would purchase.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, do you have any any tips or tactics along those lines that you've seen be effective that maybe somebody could test to see if they could drive results?
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: So here's here's our um structure if we're dealing with an account.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: So if we have the data to support it, um you will typically advertise the best-selling SKUs.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think that makes total sense.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like put your best foot forward, right?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for contacts, again, it here's another pro tip.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: So depending on how much your stock fluctuates, it may make sense for you to add more than one of your best-selling SKUs again on that specific parent ASIN into that campaign.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Reason being is because your advertising is really or specifically sponsored products, which tends to make up the bulk of most accounts, is retail aware.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: So which means if that best-selling SKU goes out of stock, your ads are gonna shut off, right?
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're gonna be like, oh my gosh, I totally forgot.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna be like scrambling to add those back in, which you can do if you're on top of it, or you can simply add in, say, like one or two other SKUs, which are again the best sellers.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I'm talking context of closing, so which means we have like hundreds of SKUs to choose from.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: So like there's a lot of options there.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe if you have three SKUs, it wouldn't matter so much.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so that that's the structure.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that is the structure that we use for our like main, we call them like generic keywords.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Generic, not in the sense of like they are like the gift for mom type, you know, who knows what somebody's actually searching for.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: Generic, as in like these are our main keywords that are not specific to any one of our stylized products.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: Meaning, um, if we had a keyword that says like blue running shoe or something like that, that's a very obvious, like specific search.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we'll do in those scenarios is that if we have a variation that is applicable to that search, well, then we can obviously make that connection between that search is relevant to this product.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that would be where we would say like product-specific keywords might be a way that I would put that.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Those ones get their own campaign with you know those specific products that are relevant to that.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we kind of run those structures.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: And what that actually allows you to do, and this is an advantage if you are leveraging variations correctly, is if you have variations that appeal to different markets.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Classic example of this would be uh, say, in the baby category, right?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: You often have like uh one that's a little bit more boy related and one that's a little bit more girl related.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: No, I mean, in the same age, yeah.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: Can a mom go in there and purchase a pink one for her baby boy?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: Do you most mothers purchase?
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: No, like you can reasonably suggest, right, that girl applies to pink and it is what it is, right?
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the market's doing.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: But the data.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so right.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you say don't have a pink variation, maybe you have like a gray one or like a gender neutral one that you've kind of tapped into that market and you realize, like, oh, there's a lot of baby girl searches, and I don't really have anything that specifically draws on that market.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you launch that variation that appeals to that market, well, you now have a whole new market share that you can tap into.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: And because it is a parent listing, all of that traffic conversions orders is being funneled into the parent ASIN, and there's been data to prove that just sort of all of that incoming traffic boosts the entire um listing overall.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you can sort of leverage advertising to tap into those markets, that's where you can see like that real boost come from um variations.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_03: Well said, and yeah, the I mean the halo effects and effect right there.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_03: And then to your point, like at the end of the day, they're the uh the back end is looking at sales on the parent.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: So if you get that lift number of work, and in that specific example, I love how you're right.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_03: You could totally tap into a different segment of shoppers, and you know, the girl shoe with the boy shoe is a perfect example.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_03: So, right there, you got three different searchers that that are there, and that's really really insightful.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_03: And kind of we're running out of time, so I want to get one more question because I get this a lot, and I would love to hear your insights on it.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but cost per acquisition is something that's discussed a lot.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_03: And what uh our clients and in my experience, what I hear from brands is like, you know, do you measure the difference between branded searches versus non-branded searches?
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_03: And do you even go higher in the funnel in terms of uh conquesting or you know, in IL versus complementary or anything like that?
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_03: Like, uh, do you have clients and how in depth do you get with kind of that granularity when it comes up with brands that you work with?
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I like that question.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we do have pretty scalable ways that we're able to segment our branded and non-branded traffic, even if those search terms, you know, you do your best to add the negative keywords, but even if they're occurring.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that is something that we would look at is um, you know, what what percentage of our total ad spent is going to those branded terms?
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how large of a piece is that?
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then the other thing that we would look at is what is the performance of that ad spent would be a huge one.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: I actually I got a I got a question from a client the other day.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: They were asking about the branded ad spend.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, okay, so what's your strategy that you guys typically run here?
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: And our answer was, well, I don't think unless it is dictated by the client, I'm not really interested in running really high a cost branded spend.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it makes any sense.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there will be a certain scenario where a client will be like, man, this this competitor is just like absolutely they're they're going after us.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like we we need to, you know, we need to fight back, right?
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that would be a very specific use case.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: And even in that use case, um you might just give it up.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, one really great tip I got um from a good friend, Joe Shellerud, um, from I'm not gonna say that, I want to say it's at advance, but maybe I got that wrong.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he he actually had a really good insight on using search query performance to identify if we're not going to be going after our branded spend, are we actually losing out?
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because search query performance will actually tell you, I think he was doing it at the overall brand level, but the search query performance tells you like how much you're winning in terms of like say click share or conversion rate share.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can QA that on your branded terms, you're like, okay, so well, we're not spending on advertising, but we're winning market share anyway.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: So why would we bother?
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I don't, I think there's there's also very specific advantages to leveraging branded.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: One of them is actually if you have really good branded search, leveraging that brand recognition on your newly launched products is a great strategy because you're you're essentially introducing your new offering to people who are are like shoppers who are already interested in your brands, and you know that's a really great lever to pull.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think there's really strategic ways in which going out or like you know, advertising on your own branded terms makes total sense.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: But what I would caution against is again, how much are you putting into that?
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think we've all you know audited those brands.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're like, I mean, I had a brand that we audited and um smaller brand, and they were looking to, they also wanted insane efficiencies because they gotten a little bit diluted into how efficient their branded ed spend was.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so they're like, Oh, we can't seem to grow market share, we're not growing at all.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we're shrinking, and we can't figure out why.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: And yet we want like a, I think it was like a 5% A cost or something.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, we want to maintain what we're doing.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I went and looked at the ads, I'm like, well, this is all branded, um, which is why you have the conversion rates to support the A cost you have currently.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: But if you looked at any of the non-branded spend, you had like a sub 1% conversion rate.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, there's just no way to maintain that efficiency when the conversion rate's so low.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you will run into those scenarios where again, it's just about transparency and you know, understanding how to relay that data and that information and you know, kind of hopefully try to path forward.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, I'm not against brand spend.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's a bad idea.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's just you you need to know again, knowing where your ad spend is going and the efficiencies of that ad spend.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: So just making sure it's gonna make sense given, again, your overarching goal of where you're trying to go.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_03: And uh yeah, uh, I'm hearing like flashbacks too of uh, you know, we've had accounts where it's all branded, ad spend, they're like, we want to scale outside of branded, but you got to keep it at a 5% ACOS.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like, well, your cost per acquisition for non branded is a lot higher.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, what do you want to do here?
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_03: But to your point, being a good project manager, a good agency, and just a good representative of the brands that you work with is good storytelling, the ability to take that information and simplify what you've done so well today for us uh on the Podcast, but being able to simplify that and tell those stories.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_03: So super helpful.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um I guess is there any other tactics or anything you want to share before we kind of jump into learning more about jungler?
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think I've given you some of my best stuff.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: I would say if if you're gonna look at anything going back to percentages of total, my favorite thing to do for a brand is to you can do this with business reports, and then you can use your um use bulk files or uh some of your other ad reports, but it's essentially finding a way to um take your sales sessions conversion rate, pull in whatever your advertising spend is, spend sales, because from there you can calculate things like a cost, total a cost.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you want orders and clicks because you also want to get the ad conversion rates, and then you essentially compile all that data, you roll it up to the parent ASIN level because you get a little bit more insightful there.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then you look at percentages of total sales.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: So where's my percentage of total sales?
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then this is my other favorite one to look at percentages of total spent.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, sponsor brands are gonna throw a wrench in the works here.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody has a good allocation strategy for that.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: So just be aware, like anyone, any tool that's giving you sponsored brain spend on a per product level is doing a calculation.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it's wrong, that's the best we got.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody's got it one for one, and you're not gonna find it in a report.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: So just be aware that there's that inefficiency.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: But this immediately will say, Well, this product again, allocations, right?
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm only doing 15% of my total sales for this product, and yet I'm allocating 40% of my ad budget here.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe, maybe not.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you it's a launch, maybe it's a product you're launching, right?
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: In that case, 100%, right?
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be a dynamic there.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: The other thing that's my favorite to evaluate after that, sort of saying, like, okay, what is my distribution of budget and sales, is looking at my ad conversion rate versus my unit session percentage.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: What we have found time and time again is that when we see ad conversion rates that are well below your unit session percentage, oftentimes you are targeting most of your ad spend is going towards targets that have really low conversion rates.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're talking about ranking and we're talking about, you know, getting that momentum from the ads, it's really tricky to do that if you have low conversion rates.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so sort of taking that analysis and then, which again gives you places to look at the account because you go, okay, here's where there's a discrepancy, here's where there's a discrepancy.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then instead of saying, I must analyze my entire account, you go, I just need to analyze the ad structure for these three products.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can go in there, QA that.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that often leads you to some of the best insights of what needs to be fixed into the account.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely brilliant, Liz.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_03: I love how you combine the advertising and the business reports to get that really holistic view in order to make informed decisions.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of, you know, you have the queen of spreadsheets right here.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_03: You're right.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's all about analyzing data and being able to uh get that information out to the decision makers.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_03: So super helpful.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_03: On that note, I want to talk about Jungler.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_03: You guys run just probably one of the best advertising agencies out there for Amazon brands.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_03: So, what sets Jungler apart from other agencies and like what's unique to your services and methodologies outside of everything you discussed here?
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_03: But if we were going to work together, like what is that experience like?
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_03: And what do you want to share that your team does really well?
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's probably that.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I said, uh kind of in the beginning, it's working backwards from business goals, I think has been our biggest the thing that I continuously push my team on, push my management team on, push our brand managers on, is how do we sort of understand where we want to go?
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because that paints such a much bigger picture of a straightforward ad strategy.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so, like you said, mirroring in the business reports and mirroring in the ad reports, I don't think you can run good advertising without taking into account all of the other factors in the business because advertising should fit into that business as sort of hopefully rocket fuel to take it where it wants to go.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're not managing that correctly, it can absolutely blow up in your face.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think every single account that I've QA'd or talked to or a brand where there's been some dissatisfaction either with what they're doing currently internally or with another agency or you know, whatever they're currently using to manage, maybe it's a software or something, is there's been a disconnect between the ad strategy they're running and what they're actually trying to achieve.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: And those dots are not connected.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I, you know, kind of really started on this.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I as I gain in this business even more, that's really what we're focused on is how can we get more and more clarity into where the brand is trying to go because that gives us so much more, like it makes it so crystal clear of like, oh, that's we need to go.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: We need this instead of all the other five things that are you know supposed to be done, we can pick the two that really matter that are gonna make the most difference.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_03: Beautiful.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, you guys have a reputation that proceeds yourself.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_03: And for anybody who's listening and they're like, wow, I got so much value today.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_03: Where can I find Liz?
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_03: Her LinkedIn information is gonna be in the show notes as well as her website.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_03: Check out their case studies, check out what they do.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_03: On top of that, Liz, we have a little tradition.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_03: We like to ask all our thought leaders their perspective on the future of e-commerce and technology.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, AI is hot right now.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_03: Honestly, it's hard not to talk about it.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so I hate to beat the dead horse, but I'm gonna beat it because I want to get your perspective on it.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, how do you see advancements in technology like AI and machine learning influencing the strategies and tools used in Amazon advertising in the coming years?
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think how it how I hope it will work is helping us get to the answers much quicker to be able to sift through the noise.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it seems to me, and that's I think what really has kind of blown everyone away with like ChatGPT or the language models of like, oh, I can input all of this information and it can synthesize it and it can pull up things.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, when I ask it to go the extra mile and do something, sometimes it's not exactly correct.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: But what it does phenomenally is condense information and give me the highlight reel.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're talking data analysis, when you're talking, um, you know, so Rufus now helping sellers or not sellers, hopefully it helps sellers, but uh definitely it's helping the shoppers right now, you know, just start a uh sort of sift through the noise and find the thing that it is they're looking for.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's really the amazing thing about AI is what it's actually doing is saving us time.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the one asset that no matter how big you get, you only have so much of it.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can't buy more time, you can't beg, borrow, steal more time.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's AI, what AI is doing is giving us back time.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the the difference in the thing that will be interesting to see how well it does is does that saving and time actually lead to better insights that we don't have to go back and like do rework because we realize, like, oh, that wasn't actually what I was looking for.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: That wasn't what I needed at the time.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where sort of some of the current shortfallings are with some of the things that people are trying to use AI for is we're trying to do the shortcuts, but then we're going back and realizing I have to do a ton of rework because the quality on the output just wasn't enough to get me over that line.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think as AI, it's here to stay.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I see the future, it's terrifying, but it's also absolutely thrilling and phenomenal.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I am an internal optimist, so I think it's gonna be wonderful.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm just keeping an ear to the ground on when does AI get us over that line of not having to sacrifice the quality um and not having to go back and do the rework.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think once we can get over that line, it's gonna be a whole new world.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's well said.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_03: And the time efficiency is everything.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_03: You know, if you could be more strategic instead of plugging it away in spreadsheets, it's gonna be worth it.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_03: I'm really glad you mentioned Rufus too.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_03: I actually used Rufus this Prime Day uh to purchase some workout equipment and it did the comparison for me and made recommendations.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_03: So uh while it's not perfect, it definitely influences shoppers, that for sure.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_03: And it did help a seller because I did make a purchase.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_03: So very cool.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_03: Well, hey Liz, thank you.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for being here and sharing your valuable insights and expertise with us today.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's been a pleasure having you on the show.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_03: Before we wrap up, could you let the listeners know where they can find you?
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_03: And if there's anything else you'd like to share about jungler or any upcoming projects or events.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so if you want to reach out to us about service, best place is going to be the website.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds like that'll be in the show notes.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but junglerj-ung-l r.com is the best place.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you just want some insights and you're like, what's going on with Amazon advertising?
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like you said, LinkedIn is a great place to follow me.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: I also do a live every single Thursday.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: I go live for an hour, uh, talk about Amazon ads, show up, drop a comment in the or drop a question in the comments, and I will get you my best answer.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's always on the table.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_03: Well, beautiful.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_03: Liz, thanks for being here.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_03: We appreciate it.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_03: Like I said, everybody in the show notes, you'll find all the details.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_03: Till next time.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_03: Let's dive into some of the key highlights and takeaways from our conversation with Liz.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_03: First and foremost, balancing growth and profitability.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_03: Liz discusses how to drive growth with Amazon ads while maintaining healthy profit margins, sharing practical tips and strategies that have proven successful.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_03: Next, we identify opportunities.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_03: Learn how to spot growth opportunities within larger catalogs, and how to uncover potential wins in lesser performing products.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_03: Next, we talked about effective ad strategies.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_03: Liz shares her top ad strategies, including leveraging sponsored brand and display ads, optimizing ad spend and utilizing data to drive decision making.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_03: We also talked about avoiding common pitfalls, insights into common mistakes sellers make when they're scaling their Amazon ads, and how to avoid them to ensure sustainable growth.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_03: Next, we talked about future trends, looking at emerging trends in Amazon advertising and how sellers can prepare and capitalize on these developments.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_03: Tune in to hear Liz Green's expert advice and actionable insights that can help elevate your Amazon business to the next level.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_03: Don't miss this opportunity to learn from one of the best in the industry.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_03: And that wraps up another insightful episode of Selling on Giants.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_03: A big thank you to Liz Green for sharing her expertise and practical strategies on scaling with Amazon ads without sacrificing profits.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_03: Her insights into simplifying complexity and driving success in the Amazon marketplace are truly invaluable.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_03: I hope you found today's conversation as enlightening as I did.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_03: Whether you're just starting out or looking to elevate your e-commerce business to the next level, the tips and strategies Liz shared are sure to help you on your journey.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_03: If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider liking, subscribing, and leaving a review wherever you're tuning in.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_03: Your support helps us continue to bring you the best in e-commerce strategies and stories.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_03: Stay tuned for our next episode where we'll dive into more actionable tactics to help you thrive in the competitive world of online selling.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks for listening, and until next time, stay classy, people.