External Traffic For Amazon Sellers

In today's episode I give you the strategic overview of using Organic Search Traffic (Google Traffic) to drive sales of your own product. We get into the cost of organic traffic, as well as define the approach you need to take with keywords and content publishing to ensure your site is bubbling with SEO from the moment you publish a post. I also bust a couple of myths about the standard "ecommerce" approach to ranking "product pages" for keywords and realign our focus on producing content for the purchase journey and for the wider market. It's our longest episode yet at just over 25 minutes! So step away from the Amazon FBA Business for a second and get some strategic thinking on the go.

Today I'll be talking about the cost of paid advertising for eCommerce businesses and how they might translate for Amazon only eCommerce businesses. Quite often when trying to establish a strategy the most difficult thing can be estimating performance especially in terms of cost So it’s really useful when somebody like Andrew Youderian from e-commerce fuel publishes his yearly report of data collected from hundreds of of high performance e-commerce entrepreneurs and businesses - The State Of The Merchant Report 2019 Return On Ad Spend RoAS Statistics From The Report Looking at Return on Ad Spend - which is Ad spend divided by revenue (not profit).So if you paid $50 in advertising and generated $100 in revenue, that would be a 2 x return on ad spend as you generated 2 times as much revenue as you spent on Ads. (this doesn’t account for profit in any way) So Facebook was surveyed at an average of 3.4 x RoASAnd a median of 3.0x RoAS - so there were some outliers in that data that skewed the average towards a higher RoAS - the median is a better demonstration of performance of the data set Google came in at an average of 5.1 X RoAS - now we’re talkingBut again, there must have been some serious high performing outliers in the surveyed companies as the median was at 4.0 x RoAS still better than Facebook Then finally on to Amazon Ads at 4.6X RoAS averageAnd a 4.0 x median RoAS - once again, showing the presence of some high performing outliers skewing the average upwards. Facebook and Google Ads Return On Ad Spend So let’s talk about the Facebook Ads and Google Ads numbers for a secondThese return on ad spend numbers are based primarily on e-commerce businesses with the three pillars of profitability being used - they have their own stores that their driving cold traffic to, retargeting warm traffic and then up-selling hot traffic in the loyalty pillar So those numbers take into account high profitability campaigns and retargeting campaigns and low profitability if not loss making awareness and acquisition campaigns If you've already listened to the Ezra Firestone three pillars of profitability for Amazon sellers episode you'll know that as an Amazon Seller you don't have access to the higher profitability pillars in the same way as e-commerce store owners and as a result can't achieve the same levels of return on ad spend. Where do Google and Facebook Ads actually appear? If you’ve not done a tremendous amount of work with Facebook Advertising or Google Advertising, I might be doing you a disservice here in not going into more detail about the types of Ads I’m talking about.When I say Facebook, I of course also mean Instagram - as Instagram Advertising is controlled under the Facebook platform.But more than that, this will include Facebook messenger ads, in Facebook and Instagram stories, in mid-stream of videos, Facebook search, Ads on the Facebook Audience network - that’s right, you’ll get little display Ads when you’re on certain apps and websites that monetise their traffic with Facebook display ads - you’re seeing Facebook Ads when you’re not even on Facebook. It’s less surprising to know it’s the same for Google.Google have a display network of websites that show Ads for Google as well as Apps just like FacebookThere’s obviously top of search Ads, but that’s the very thin end of the wedge or tip of the iceberg.There’s shopping ads in searchShopping ads on YouTubeYouTube video Ads So when I say Facebook Ads, I don’t just mean the one’s you see in your feed.And when I say Google Ads I don’t just mean the top of search ads - there’s a WHOLE WORLD out there to go and waste a tonne of money discovering! What These RoAS Numbers Mean For Amazon Sellers Back to the numbers then and what those RoAS numbers mean for Amazon sellers So maybe as an Amazon Seller, someone driving traffic to Amazon without access to the high profitability campaigns you'll only really achieve 2x return on ad spend on Facebook ads for Amazon products As opposed to 3 or 3.4 So at a 3 to 3.4 RoAS you’ll be paying $9-10 per unit to sell a $30 product through Facebook Ads - with dialled in campaigns utilising the 3 Pillars of profitability At 2 x RoAS you’ll be spending $15 per unit to sell a $30 product Let’s convert that to Amazon Seller speak - ACoS3-3.4 RoAS is 30-33% ACoS 2 x RoAS is 50% ACoS On every sale Realities are if you’re just running Awareness and Acquisition campaigns and not doing anything sophisticated to remarket or retarget in a scalable way, the RoAS will be even worse than 2 x Google Advertising looks slightly better, but this is also where the 3 pillars will be getting deployed effectively by WooCommerce and Shopify Store Owners.That 4-5.1 x RoAS (or 20-25% ACoS in Amazon Seller Speak) could easily degrade down to 3 x or 2 x as you have limited access to the “money making pillars” or “money making campaigns” that convert existing customers and extremely hot leads - instead you’re limited to hitting cold traffic, or at best warm audiences. Amazon Advertising being 4 or 4.6 RoAS is interestingThat means that an ACoS of 22-25% is being achieved on the Ad Campaigns of the businesses in the survey - which is good (in my opinion, very good). However, this isn’t taking into account the likely 15% commission that’s being paid on each item - which is in essence a “traffic tax” So you add the 15% to the 22-25% and you get 37-40% ACoS (if we’re comparing apples with apples here for Facebook and Google Ads) So translating back to compare now with RoAS that’s 2.5-2.7 x for Amazon Ads… Or for a $30 product, that’s $11-12 per product in traffic cost. But - the Amazon Ads DON’T require you to be using the “3 pillars of profitability” in the same way Google and Facebook ads to to drive profit through remarketing and loyalty campaigns. Paid Advertising IS An Expensive Traffic Source Those numbers are interesting right? They should certainly help you establish a benchmark when thinking about your traffic strategy and what types of traffic are affordable and scalable for your business Another thing the report covers is the year on year increase in Cost Per Acquisition of 19% for Facebook Ads, 16% for Amazon Ads and 10% for Google Ads If the cost comparisons didn’t have you scratching your head, then the ad cost increase probably should. The implications of these levels of cost increase are huge, not over the next decade, but even over the next year or so. Add to that the fact that over an approximate 2 year period from July 2017 to July 2019 the share of Amazon Pageviews that came from sponsored ads tripled from 4% to just shy of 12% Courtesy vox.com That also helps to explain the double digit growth in advertising cost per acquisition for Amazon Ads. This is why I believe the biggest risk to Amazon centric eCommerce businesses isn’t trade tariffs or terms of service enforcement's and changes - it’s the rising cost of traffic. Like the frog being boiled to death because the imperceptible danger of increasing heat. The eCommerce stores outside of Amazon have the ability to make Facebook and Google and other platforms like Pinterest and TikTok and the new emerging platforms LAST LONGER than a pure Amazon Seller - as they have access to the higher profitability pillars and campaigns.So they’ll be making profitable sales for a while after your off-Amazon Paid Ads become economically crippling. And it’s a level playing field ON-Amazon between you and the eCommerce stores who choose to sell both ON and OFF Amazon. Time To Engage The Strategic Brain This information should have your strategic brain humming Waiting for things to get worse probably isn’t the answer. You’ll be glad to hear it’s not all doom and gloom by the way. I’m a strong believer when it comes to business you need to be seeking ways to turn adversity into opportunity. This Amazon FBA Podcast is aimed at helping you understand how YOU can leverage external traffic as an Amazon seller - and I’m going to do just that. And the good news is, there are some lower cost traffic sources that can be tapped into over and above straight up paid advertising. I’ll leave you with a final thought before closing out the episode. Where’s All That Ad Spend Going? As I mentioned, Google isn’t JUST advertising on Google - it’s advertising on “partner sites” in it’s display network, sites which GOOGLE pays to place ads on. The same goes for Facebook, they’re paying their Audience Network partners to place ads on their apps and websites. The money is flowing from you, the one trying to promote your product, to Google and Facebook, then it’s flowing into websites and Apps across the web. You may well have guessed it by now, but Amazon Affiliate websites typically also run Google Ads - they generate revenue not only be referring people to Amazon, but also by showing Ads to visitors - in many cases a LOT of money. I know of one “small player” who monetises using “display ads” who generates over $40,000 in revenue per month - that’s almost $500,000 a year in advertising spend that’s flowing from you, to Google and on to a website - who ultimately just publishes content and places Ads inside the content. So while Google and Facebook are growing fat through Ad Spend - so are the publishers, digital magazines and Affiliate websites who also monetise with Display Ads.Imagine cutting out the middle men and just running your own ads on your own site? Imagine creating one of these sites and being able to monetise it not just by promoting your own products, but also by promoting high end products in display advertising? And like that, we’ve turned adversity into opportunity. I’m not saying jump from one to the other, I’m saying think about the power in the combination of being an eCommerce ret

In this podcast I'll be talking about 3 of the biggest myths about the Google Search Engine specifically in Amazon Sellers So let’s see if you’ve been sucked in by any of these… 1. Google Traffic isn’t purchase intent traffic and therefore isn’t worth it Tell that to the website owners making millions of dollars per year just directing traffic to Amazon - earning from their affiliate programmes. Every single day there a millions of clicks on Amazon affiliate links driving traffic to Amazon Listings. So if you're wondering how to drive traffic to your amazon product, this is worth a really good look. 2. Google Traffic takes far too long to get Meaning you’re better off focusing on the short term To launch a product on Amazon without a seller account takes ages too! 3. Google’s just an algorithm like Amazon A9 and is susceptible to the same level of gaming Google had some of the most revolutionary changes in it’s algorithm in Penguin (April 2012) and Panda (Feb 2011) Then there was Google Medic Summer 2018 (less revolution, more evolution) More data for Google to play with that doesn’t automatically generate a self fulfilling prophecy If Amazon changes the rank of an item, that will change the very metrics by which it’s achieved that rank - hence it’s a flywheel mechanism. So Amazon is very sales velocity focused - yes they might take a look at things over a longer and shorter term, compare windows of time etc. People talking about honeymoon period, but it’s not a more diverse array of data - it’s just more of the same. Google is also that bit more mature as an algorithm - yes the businesses have followed a similar timeline, but Google’s algorithm focus has meant it’s that bit more mature. The guys at Amazonseoconsultant.com agree with me, having experts on both the Google and Amazon A9 Algo, they référence how the A9 Algorithm is; "like Google's younger (stupider) brother" So why do these myths about Google even exist? Particularly within the Amazon Seller space! Scared of the unknown - of having to now “hack google” in the same way you “hack Amazon”Time strapped and trying to justify NOT doing something I personally know that External Traffic, including Google will be a huge differentiator for us going forward - differentiating ourselves from the Amazon only sellers and from the eCommerce Store owners who are addicted, but also scared to death of their Paid Advertising traffic that comes at a more and more unsustainable cost. And you know the tide is changing, when the industries very own Ryan Daniel Moran says “The ones who win are the ones who are doing Search Engine Optimization and sending the traffic to Amazon and closing the deal on Amazon.” This was in an interview with Nathan over at the Outsourcing and scaling podcast from Freeeup.com https://freeeup.com/blog/podcast/using-higher-quality-tools-for-success-with-ryan-moran/ https://youtu.be/3M_lQ3z3M2I Are you putting off developing your external traffic strategy because any of these myths? This has been a 30,000 foot view of Google - and there’s tonnes more misinformation and outdated information out there - again because optimising for the Google algorithm as a topic has been around for a long time. So don’t panic Don’t go diving into droves of information I’m going to continue to talk you through why and how you can leverage traffic sources including Google, in ways you might not have even imagined.

In this episode of the External Traffic For Amazon Sellers Podcast I’m going to define and compare traffic and audiences and why understanding the difference is vital for Amazon Sellers above all other eCommerce entrepreneurs. In these early episodes of this Amazon Seller Podcast I’m trying to bring you the core concepts that sit behind the strategies that we’ve observed, modified and implemented for my eCommerce brand, and this episode is no exception. My aim is to get you thinking beyond the surface and a little more deeply about the advice you follow and maybe the actions you take. What is the difference between traffic and an audience? Traffic is largely made up of: Existing customers Retargeted website visitors Fresh leads An audience is made up of: People who you get to communicate with again and again, with their permission, based on them having opted in or having already purchased from you. Why is the difference important? The existing, generic advice out there - almost now accepted as a mantra - “Build an audience” doesn’t take into account YOUR business. What does YOUR business need? This generic advice is borne out of the idea that an audience is higher converting - they’ve already bought in a lot of cases, so hey… that's probably true. And fresh traffic, new leads are way back at the top of the funnel - so they’re “expensive” to get from top of the funnel, right the way to the bottom where your “audience” already is. In eCommerce however, this view needs to be interrogated. An audience might be high converting, but if they’ve already converted and your product isn’t a consumable product, what’s the next sale going to be? There are largely 4 different types of products, in relation to different sales frequencies: High frequency consumables - Protein shake powder maybe Low frequency / seasonal consumables - diaries Products forming a complimentary range or collection Non-consumable When are Audiences Awesome? Audiences are great for frequent repeat purchases. They're not bad for low frequency purchases. They can be ok for products forming a complimentary range, but there's going to be some resistance moving an audience from one product to another, to another (and you need to be able to launch the products to keep up with having something new to offer!) Audiences are poor for non-consumable products, your only hope is to try and get referrals from Audience members who you might not have had the chance to build a lasting relationship with in a single transaction. When is Traffic Amazing? Traffic on the other hand. Consisting of "Fresh Leads" is great for 3 and 4, products forming a complimentary range and non-consumable products. They might be lower converting than an audience for a high frequency consumable, but if you're not selling high frequency consumables it's irrelevant. For MANY products, and many Amazon Sellers, fresh traffic actually makes a lot more sense than an audience. Deciding which you put the effort into, or how much effort you put into each, is strategically significant for your business. Knowing how to drive traffic to your Amazon Listing profitably is the key challenge, but that's for another episode! Final Thoughts Think about your product and what will perform best in terms of ROI. There may be lots of evidence to support high conversion rates for audiences of customers, but this might also be because of the PRODUCT PURCHASE FREQUENCY. Trying to extract the value out of an audience that's already spent is wasted effort with diminishing returns (unless you can launch enough products to keep up, adding complimentary range items like Away Travel) Fresh leads (qualified leads) are likely to be a richer and more fruitful source of sales for an Amazon seller with a product that doesn't have a high frequency purchase cycle. Resources Brett Curry and Austin Brawner on the Ecommerce Influence Podcast talking about Why Some Brands Scale Up While Others Flop In this episode they provided some really interesting Ads costs, but also talked about Away Travel as a case study and how they leveraged good Lifetime Customer Value by launching MORE and MORE products to extract the value from their list.

In this episode of the External Traffic For Amazon Sellers Podcast I'm going to share a fundamental concept with you and a framework for thinking about traffic, it's cost and profitability for your Amazon Listings. The structure of the 3 pillars was originally conceived on the basis of Paid Advertising Traffic. However today I'm going to add another layer to the thinking, especially for Amazon Sellers, answering tough questions like; Can Amazon Sellers profitably use the 3 Pillars of Profitability structure for their traffic? What impact could a lack of customer data, as is the case when selling on Amazon have on the 3 Pillars Concept? How can Amazon sellers find a competitive advantage with the 3 Pillars Structure but by thinking outside of the paid advertising box? Tune in, subscribe and enjoy as we start building up the fundamental knowledge that's required to master external traffic for Amazon. What Are The 3 Pillars Of Profitability? Ezra Firestone articulates how you should structure paid Advertising in your business and your mind to achieve true profitability and scalability. It’s what Ezra refers to as the 3 Pillars of Profitability. The 3 pillars are: Awareness & Acquisition Retargeting Loyalty Awareness & Acquisition The awareness pillar is classic "interruption marketing". Ads are put in front of an audience that's defined by a set of criteria unrelated to their interaction with your brand. i.e. like using demographics in Facebook Ads to target your advertising. Retargeting Retargeting, as the name suggests is about re-introducing your brand to an audience who have already interacted with your brands' advertising within the Awareness and Acquisition pillar. This is essentially setting up ads to display based on BEHAVIOURS and not demographics data. Loyalty This is another form of retargeting, but this time involves many forms of marketing to existing customers. Utilising the data you have accumulated on each customer, you can design hyper-targeted campaigns with an audience of 1 (in theory). Resources Mentioned in the Podcast Ezra Firestone's 3 Pillars of Profitability Spencer Haws "Niche Site Project 4" on the Niche Pursuits website Other Resources The 3 Pillars of profitability rely heavily on great technology to track customer behaviour whilst abiding by privacy laws and ethical standards. Of course, I'm talking about adding Facebook Pixels to your website, adding the Pinterest pixel and Google Pixel and any other pixel that comes along! But beyond adding pixels to WordPress, WooCommerce or Shopify, there are a whole bunch of complexities including synchronising your product catalogue with Facebook, Google and Pinterest. Not to mention setting up conversion events for each advertising platform you're using to follow your customers around with ads! We've written a guide for WooCommerce store owners covering your options when it comes to adding pixels to your WooCommerce store, syncing Product Catalogs and setting up conversion events. Spolier: There are a tonne of plugins out there that have the ability to deal with one ad platform or another, but if you're taking the 3 Pillars of profitability seriously and doing multi-channel remarketing you really need a WordPress Plugin that's going to support you across all the major Ad Platforms with ease. Have a read - Assess your options - and go implement the 3 Pillars! If you know an Amazon Seller who needs to hear this, please grab the URL and drop it in a Facebook Message, Whatsapp Message or whatever you're using these days. There are a world of profitable possibilities out there, and this is a dedicated Amazon Seller Podcast and eCommerce Podcast for driving traffic to your Amazon Listings and making more profit. Who wouldn't benefit from hearing about more profit?

Welcome to the External Traffic For Amazon Sellers Podcast In this short episode I lay out exactly what you can expect to hear from me on a weekly basis, with a relentless focus on Traffic for Amazon Sellers, including: Search Engine Optimisation (Obviously Google SEO!) Pinterest Traffic Strategies Paid Advertising and Paid Traffic Strategies and their costs Low Cost Traffic Tactics and Strategies Hyper Targeted and high performance retargeting and remarketing tactics The best marketing concepts and constructs from the industry, from the best in the eCommerce space If generating profitable traffic for your Amazon listings from a variety of low cost sources sounds like something of interest, tune in, subscribe and take notes because we've got quite a bit to cover! Why the External Traffic For Amazon Sellers Podcast? It's simple really. Intellectual capital. As a successful 7 figure Amazon seller I can always spend financial capital quicker than I can accumulate it, or put another way I have more aspirations and ideas for my brand than financial capital. So we're deploying our accumulated intellectual capital to help Amazon Sellers discover the significant advantage they can have over the competition by mastering external traffic for their Amazon listings. And yes of course, if you find the information of value but overwhelming, me and my team at Future State Media are here to help you implement these strategies through our services, coaching and our training (coming soon!). The fight for external traffic is on and choosing the right channels to master, with the highest ROI is critical for long term profitable success on Amazon. Let me help you avoid the stranglehold that a single source of (increasingly expensive, Amazon based) traffic has on your eCommerce business. Let me help you leave the competition wondering how you've steadily, and irreparably made them irrelevant and replaced them as the dominant global force in your niche. Want to listen to the next episode? Click here to hear about Ezra Firestone's 3 Pillars of Profitability for Amazon FBA Sellers Episode Transcript Ashley Pearce  0:01 Hello, and welcome to the external traffic for Amazon sellers podcast. My name is Ashley Pearce and I'm going to be your host. I'm a seven figure amazon seller and a digital marketing innovator. The concept of external traffic for Amazon sellers doesn't appear to be a new one. podcasts and blogs and Facebook groups are peers who've been talking about this for a long time. The key word being appear profitable traffic for Amazon sellers is probably a better description of what it is I'm trying to articulate here. Traffic is expensive, and it's getting more expensive by the day. influences in in in the industry appear to tell you, you either need to be on Shopify or on Amazon. Oh, and by the way, it's probably not worth being on Shopify, or having your own store because Amazon is such a lucrative channel that could talk your own store. Ashley Pearce 0:53 This advice is quite confusing and high level Ashley Pearce 0:55 and probably a bit misguided for many this world of Amazon and off Amazon, it really needs to collide and be explained. And that's what you're going to get here. I'm going to share with you the best practices from my business, but also from the most respected e commerce, retailers and brands across the web. I'm going to join the dots. I'm going to be your translator. And I'm actually going to be your experiment with my own business. That helps you understand how to generate profitable traffic, and ultimately profitable sales on Amazon using external traffic. So you won't hear much about Amazon PPC, other than to draw some comparisons and contrasts. But you will hear about search engine optimization, Pinterest traffic strategies, low cost retargeting and remarketing tactics, marketing concepts and constructs from across the industry and how they can be adapted to be powerful mechanisms for your business. But don't get me wrong. I'm not talking to the tech geek who's looking for a code based solution to this marketing problem? I'm talking to the business strategist, the woman or the man at the helm. Ashley Pearce 2:10 I don't want to give you hacks. I want to provide you clarity, and strategies that will help you steer your business to long term success and help you avoid the out of sight risks, the biggest of which is the escalating cost of traffic and the increasing stranglehold that single traffic source will have on your business. But who am I to give you advice on selling on Amazon? If you want to hear more about me, I'd advise you head on over to future state media.com forward slash about where you can see some podcasts that I've been on and read a little bit more detail about me and my business. In brief, I'm a seven figure seller who's been very focused on brand building and traffic building over the past two years. I've invested countless hours and countless dollars into developing strategies, tactics and processes that my team use to propel our e commerce business forward. Now, if you're smart, then maybe a smidge cynical right now you should be asking yourself, but why the hell are you talking on this podcast? Why focus your time on anything else but the e commerce business. If the e commerce businesses so successful, it's actually pretty simple. Over the past two years, we've been investing in brand and traffic building, we've accumulated significant intellectual capital. We've also accumulated quite a bit of financial capital. As with any business grown in the e commerce space, you can quickly run out of financial capital when you're trying to grow at pace. All money is invested back into your inventory and into cash flow management, which just gets harder as the business gets bigger. So I saw an opportunity to leverage the intellectual capital that we built through futures Media and use some of our time and our brains and our energy to help others and to generate business for future state media. But that's not the end of the story. And in fact, that's not even the beginning. The truth is, having been in the Amazon space for the best part of half of the past decade, I've seen an explosion of information available to Amazon sellers. Not all good, but not all bad. Most, however, failed to do our topic, external traffic, any justice whatsoever. Ashley Pearce 4:39 As I said earlier, I actually believe that traffic ownership of that traffic and the accumulation and ownership of customer data are their biggest sources of risk to any e commerce business that hasn't got a strategy to deliver traffic at lower costs. Ashley Pearce 4:50 Paid advertising has proliferated and the waterline is rising. And in many cases, it's risen beyond the level of financial viability for many products, brands and services. I believe the strategies that my team has been developing and implementing over the past two years could have a huge impact on the world of e commerce for Amazon sellers. And that's my goal to make an impact. Now, I'm actually an engineer by trade and I became an engineer. And for those of you in the UK, I mean degree qualified engineer, a real engineer. I became an engineer because I wanted to change the world huge aspirations. On my first day at university, I was told by the dean of engineering, engineers understand, use and leverage scientific principles for the betterment of humanity. I walked away from that very lecture, feeling like I was going to be a freakin superhero. And in my business, that's what I aspire to be. What I didn't appreciate was that those scientific principles are all around us in every industry, especially in marketing. So I want to talk to you about all the things that no one else is really talking about. I want to help you find your competitive advantage. Your differentiation, your profitable variation, I'm recording with a very low tech setup. Apologies for that. But I'm sure I'll make up for our audio imperfections with tonnes of high impact strategic value. And if you just take the value from the podcast and implement the tactics and strategies that I'm going to talk about here, then I know I'm going to have an impact. If you want to get more involved and work with me or my team, then great, I urge you to head on over to future state media.com and discover what we have to offer. I've worked in many large and small businesses and I've, I've been a prolific change agent in those businesses. And I went and built my ecommerce business from scratch. So I know I can provide value to you and your business, and I'm really excited at the prospect. So join me subscribe, start clicking through these episodes. And let's go on our journey together. Thank you.