✔ Amazon Copywriter | Interview with Emma Schermer Tamir

Tomer David [00:00:00] In this video, we’re going to have a new guest, Emma Schermer Tamir she have an agency called the Marketing by Emma that provides copywriting services and most of her clients are Amazon sellers that use her services to get good converting listings, copy for their listings.

In this video, we cover a couple of topics, but we’re not really covering on how to write a good listing. We actually covering how to detect and find a good copywriter, how to check their job, the deliveries that you got, and a little bit about AB testing and like the processes that she have in place to get the most quality from her team and for her client.

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And I did have again, the issue where it doesn’t switch between the speaker’s view. But after 10 or 15 minutes, you know mid the call, I was able to fix it, and then it was resolved. So you are welcome to watch the entire video and get a lot of value from it.

Tomer David [00:01:43] Let’s start.

Tomer David [00:01:49] Welcome, everyone. I’m really excited to have Emma Schermer Tamir with us from Marketing by Emma, right?

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:01:56] Yes.

Tomer David [00:01:57] Emma is an expert, a copywriter. And today will talk about copywriting for your Amazon listings. Emma could you let those that don’t know about you, how you became a copywriter? Maybe a little bit. A little bit about yourself.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:02:12] All right. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me, Tomer. I’m really excited to be recording with you today. I kind of fell into marketing and then I sort of fell into e-commerce as well.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:02:25] So I was always a strong writer and I was always writing stories when I was a kid. And so it was just a strength that actually employers started noticing as well.

And so it would be something where maybe I was hired as a waitress during college, but then they would discover from an email or something that I could write.

And before you know it, I’m writing their newsletter or helping with their blog. And so it was just something that as I started being almost recruited into these types of responsibilities, I gained more and more interest in.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:03:02] And so then I just started to educate myself more on it. And then eventually I started actually pursuing marketing types of jobs. So that was how I got into the marketing space.

And my husband, who also my business partner is really who opened me up to the world of e-commerce. So he had a lot of friends that were sort of on all sides of the e-commerce world, people that were selling on Amazon, people that we’re teaching, people that were providing other types of services.

And they were all saying how much there’s a need for really strong writers to help create fantastic listings that they could actually sell these products. I was a little skeptical and it took a bit of pushing. But luckily, my husband is is a is persistent.

And eventually, I understood what he saw and I realized how much need there was for this type of service. And so it was something at first it was just me doing the writing. And then, fortunately, people were happy with the work that I was doing.

And so more and more people just started approaching organically. And now here we are over four years later. And we have a small team located here in Columbia, Missouri, and we are really trying our best to create fantastic work.

A really great experience for our clients, helping e-commerce businesses create copy that connects with their customers and of course, helps them convert as much traffic as possible.

Tomer David [00:04:52] That’s really cool. When you said that at the beginning, you didn’t think that you can open a business, it’s like sometimes you just need, like one person that really believe in you and push you and you just you start to see the success and you gain this confidence. And that’s really good story.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:05:11] Yeah, yeah. My my husband is definitely a huge cheerleader of mine, and I am very fortunate that he’s so supportive and has that belief before I really had it myself.

So definitely I think if you’re going to get in business, find somebody doesn’t have to be family. It doesn’t have to be friends even, but find somebody that can help. See, sometimes the things that you may not be able to see it.

Tomer David [00:05:45] Yeah and support you.

Tomer David [00:05:46] And if you’re like you need to consult it’s super super important, especially in Amazon too where it’s so competitive and you have so many opinions, sometimes if you even consult with someone that is not really the best, but you just stick to one person’s opinion and you go with it.

Tomer David [00:06:03] I think it’s better than really nothing. It’s super important to success. You do copywriting only for Amazon listings or to, like just standalone websites and Shopify and all that. Oh, you will you know, maybe percentages like your work, like Amazon is mostly about customers.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:06:24] We do have a very large base of clients that are selling on Amazon. However, we do also help people with everything from their website copy to developing their brand story.

Anything, any of those kind of I like to call them foundational texts. So there’s pieces of writing that communicate who you are, that help you really connect with your customers on a deeper level.

So less of things like blogs or social media that are you know more about just exposure and really those who who you are, what why you’re doing, what you’re doing and why that’s something that people should care about.

Tomer David [00:07:08] So less like content, like really content marketing, but more on content that actually like for people to take action or.

Tomer David [00:07:20] Creative content, right?

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:07:21] Yup, exactly.

Tomer David [00:07:23] OK, all right.

Tomer David [00:07:24] So let’s start with a couple of questions. It’s OK. I did prepare a couple of them, you would say, for an Amazon listing job to create a copy for Amazon listing with like the titles, the bullets, the actual research, all of it.

How long usually it takes you to do the research and complete like a full listing from like zero to hundred?

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:07:49] Oh, that’s a great question. And it’s pretty in-depth. And it also depends on exactly, you know, everything from what the specifics of that project require to the space that a product is in.

Some products are much more straightforward. For example, a washcloth. There is not necessarily a lot of additional research that needs to go into understanding the function of a washcloth.

We all still want to do our competitor research and understand how we can position those washcloths to differentiate them in a pretty. Saturated, sorry for the pun, saturated space, but if it is a more complex item than there may be additional research that needs to be done just to really understand that space specifically.

But we are sticklers for detail and we really want to make sure that we are doing the very best job that we possibly can. So that all starts from the very beginning with our how we actually do our brief intake process into keyword research.

If clients are asking us to do that, then into the writing, the editing, any additional revisions and then sending that out to the client so it can vary quite a bit. But I would say anywhere from.

Oh, you know, I don’t even know, it’s just so because of all the different people involved and variety, there can be such a wide breadth, but maybe 10 hours for a typical project with everybody involved.

Tomer David [00:09:31] Before the revisions.

Tomer David [00:09:33] Right. So let’s say that.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:09:35] Yeah.

Tomer David [00:09:36] Because that will slow down.

Tomer David [00:09:37] Of course, the process sometimes would have more requirements, revision, stuff like that. But a good point you mentioned that you do research.

Of course, research is a big part of the copywriting. When when I write, by the way, I write the listings myself and when I do that and start writing the copy, I do a research mainly on Amazon.

But in some cases it was really helpful, like doing research of Amazon, like on eBay, Wal-Mart and shopify side and get these points that they didn’t see that other Amazon competitors are doing. It’s something that you also do as part of your research.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:10:21] Yeah, that’s a,

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:10:22] We have we have processes for everything.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:10:25] And so we have a very detailed process for how to conduct competitor research. And part of that includes going off of Amazon for a few reasons. One is not always are the sellers on Amazon doing the best job.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:10:44] So if the only space that you’re looking at is Amazon, you may be really limiting yourself to truly understanding what customers care about.

I care about how to present a product, all of those different details. And so going off of Amazon is really essential. And my eyes, everything from the sites that you mentioned, just even doing a simple Google search.

And if you want to take it a step further, going into different communities and social media can also be a really valuable exercise to do so. Finding communities on Facebook, finding sub-Reddits on Reddit, going to Quora, going to all of these different places can really help to inform you how our customers engaging today around something.

What kind of language are they using? What are the things that they care about? What are they interested in? Like, I personally have a really deep, just personal interest in the beauty space. So in skincare and makeup and devices and all of those things.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:11:54] And I recently got on to clubhouse, which are, you on clubhouse?

Tomer David [00:11:59] No, I prefer not to I’m scared of, you know, I’m full with my time.

Tomer David [00:12:03] So not a thing in my life.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:12:06] It’s definitely an addiction, but it’s an awesome, awesome space. And so I’ve had an opportunity to just listen into all different types of conversations.

There everything from influencers to just regular consumers and you know hearing about the products that they’re excited about, hearing about the ingredients that really work for them. And all of those different things are so important.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:12:34] Even if you’re not going to utilize it directly in the listing itself, it’s helping you really get into the mind of the customer so that you’re not just sitting there writing on a blank screen to a nonexistent person, but you’re able to really clearly envision who your customer is.

And then being able to write something that’s going to be effective in communicating and connecting with them rather than just saying, this is what I think I need to say in order to describe my product or say why it’s the best.

Tomer David [00:13:12] Definitely. And also when I do the research, I start even when, you know, when when I source a product it, that’s when I after sourcing and when it’s on the way to Amazon I start working on the copy and I thought even if I thought that I know about the product when I actually do the research, I discovered so many new things.

I like to analyze the customer reviews on Amazon. It tells me, like really, you know, using the same customer’s language, the language and just using my own copy. But you mentioned also a good point about like different communities, Facebook, Youtube like whatever your audience is at.

And for me, I found it really destructing thing. Like, it’s very hard. So when you do it, how you keep yourself focused on on searching like those right things?

Because a lot of time on Facebook groups, you have those conversations that are not really related sometimes to the product that they are talking about.

All of that’s just extracting all the data and like filtering it’s a very time-consuming task for me, like you have any system for that or how you approach it?

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:14:18] Part of it is practice, I would say.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:14:21] And time limits, I think that excuse me, Rich research is one of those places that you can really fall into procrastination disguised as action.

And so you feel like you’re doing something and you’re making forward motion. But in fact, what you’re actually doing is putting off moving forward on the task. And so I think it is helpful to set time limits.

However, also understanding that if this isn’t something that you’re doing regularly, you’re going to need to spend more time doing it. Because, for example, and this may sound like a strange analogy, but in some ways I look at preparing to write a piece of copy as an actor, preparing for a role.

So really being getting a sense of who is this character that I’m needing to embody in order to be able to channel the right type of emotion and the right type of language and make all that seem natural rather than forced.

And and so because I have a lot of practice doing that and I’ve played many different roles, it is easier for someone like me or for someone that’s on our writing team that is doing this all day, every day to be able to get into that role quicker.

Whereas if you don’t have experience doing that, you are going to have to spend more time practicing.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:15:50] I think there’s this assumption that if you write in a language, then you should be able to write a great piece of copy easily.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:16:01] It should just come naturally. And it’s not that you can’t do it, but understanding that it is a craft.

And so if it’s something that you haven’t really invested the time into learning, that it will take you longer to really get a great piece at the end.

Tomer David [00:16:19] Yeah, yeah. Research is a big part of it.

Tomer David [00:16:23] Do you have specific times over, like setting up your environment so you can really be like really focused and productive when you’re actually writing?

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:16:33] So I’m actually not doing much of the writing anymore, as I’m sure any business owner knows that once you start hiring a team, your position changes.

So now I’m more in a supporting role to the copy. So I help train all of our writers and I’m very available for questions and I also review everything before we send it out.

But I think that question is still a worthwhile one of asking, and it’s definitely something that I’m constantly trying to figure out and make sure that I am really setting myself up for a productive day. And for me, that actually starts before I even get to the computer.

So every morning I. Set the coffee to brew, I take my dog out and then I pour myself a cup of coffee and I sit down on the couch and I read for half an hour to an hour.

And I find that valuable for a few reasons. One is it allows me to just kind of center myself for the day. But to it’s it’s like fertilizing my mind. I might be reading about something that is totally unrelated to business or to whatever brands we’re working with, but it’s getting those different inputs, stimulating the creativity.

Allowing me to be able to bring in different ideas and find new ways of connecting them that I find incredibly valuable. So for me, I notice a big difference when my days don’t start that way versus when they do start that way.

So then when I do walk into my office in the morning and I sit down in my computer, I’m more focused. I feel like I’ve had that time for myself. I’ve gotten my brain in the game and I’m ready to get to work.

Tomer David [00:18:22] Got you. That’s really interesting what he said about like 30 minutes an hour. Usually I read, but because I’m so busy, I try to find those moments where I don’t really I mean, I can listen to an audio book and just do some other things as well.

But I like a year ago, I was doing the same thing, not for an hour or 30 minutes, but 20 minutes before I started my day. And I think that I should get back to this serves as a reminder of your question, like your answer about the theme that you don’t write your listing anymore makes a lot of sense.

When you grow up, you need to have a theme. How will you make sure that your theme quality is according to your standards, like to,  are you doing some random quality checks like you give them, like you train them every couple of months or weeks?

How you keep them, like the quality high and how you check like the deliveries are you know [inaudible] standards.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:19:27] Yeah. So that’s one of my biggest things that I focus on. And so it starts with training. I’ve had team members like in our training to a college course. Just to give you a sense of how thorough we are with training.

Training typically lasts one to two months where they’re not actually creating any client work they are going through extensive reading and practice practice listings and different exercises.

And there’s a lot of conversation and additional learning so that by the time they are given a client project, they’ve demonstrated an ability to do a good job on this. So that’s first and foremost, we also have multiple levels of quality control and also like team contribution, which helps to with that as well.

So everything from the person that’s doing the initial brief intake and is making sure they’re asking all of the right questions, that they fully understand the product so that by the time the brief gets to the writer, that’s all thought through.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:20:45] So, like, to me, that’s that is incredibly important.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:20:50] Before you ever start writing, if you just ask a few questions and there are a lot of gaps, then you’re not going to be able to do as good of a job as if you have a really thorough understanding of what the product is.

So then the writer writes the project and does all the necessary research. And then we also have an editor and an editor for every single project that they are editing.

There is a form that they fill out and the writer is graded on a variety of different categories. So that’s something that the writers responsible for, if they drop below certain scores, then they’re required to figure out what they need to do in order to lift those scores back up.

And so we have a very involved process for that. And then after the editor reviews saying, I also am reviewing every single listing before sending it out.

And if it needs to, I will go in and spend an extra hour. That’s very rare. But if but sometimes I do realize that or say I don’t think this was the right module to choose.

More tips from an Amazon Copywriter

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:21:56] And so even though maybe some people would see that as a little bit of a perfectionist or control freak, for me, I just feel like at this stage of our business that is really important and something that I plan on continuing to do.

And then lastly, we are always engaging in additional training and we’re also always refining our processes.

So if you would have asked me this question six months or a year ago, I would have had a different answer because I’m constantly looking at everything and seem, how can we communicate this more clearly?

What I saw, this really cool thing that company did that has nothing to do with Amazon, but this is a great thing to have in your toolkit that for the right brand could be a really fantastic strategy to take.

So all of those different things and maintaining that curiosity and openness and desire to improve is, I think, what allows us to continue to deliver top quality work.

Tomer David [00:23:00] Yeah, yeah. That’s really amazing. I actually do the same with my team like feedback.

Tomer David [00:23:05] I tell them like I don’t like mistakes or things will happen. But feedback for me it’s something that every day I should get the feedback even on the smallest things ever.

So like it’s nice to hear that you guys like sharing between. You do what working, what doesn’t, and that’s how you improve, like just small steps each time, that’s really a process that you created there as far as, you know, as an Amazon seller for me, why I keep doing the copywriting, even if, you know, it’s a time-consuming task for me.

And if you look at it from delegating point of view, it’s not really smart to keep doing it. It’s better to outsource.

But I find that if I outsource and I outsourced a couple of times to copywriters, their work, what happened is that they had to do the entire process again because in order for me to check their work.

I had to really do the research myself I found. So how do you suggest to a client to check the work of the copywriter, you know, with time efficiency, without really spending so much time on doing the entire research?

What are the things that Amazon sellers or clients to ordering a piece of content or copywriting for Amazon for the listing should check but without spending hours?

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:24:31] You know, that’s a great question. And I think that it’s one that not enough people are asking.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:24:36] And I think it’s so important that with anything that you’re hiring out, you may not be an expert, but you still have to be able to, you know.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:24:47] Review it and determine whether it’s a good piece of work, and that can be even more complicated if it’s a skill set that’s very far outside of your comfort zone or your native language or whatever, like I feel that way with accountants.

Like, you know, it’s one of those things where you need a lot of trust because I don’t really understand a lot of the things that they were doing. But I’ve also learned through poor hiring choices with that. So what questions to ask and what to look for?

So I think one of this sounds crazy, but one of the first things you can do that I think it will be a good indicator of basic quality that could potentially be indicating bigger issues is run the listing through a grammar check, download something like Grammarly and see if there’s a lot of potential errors going on.

Now, Grammarly will probably flag some things even if it’s gone through 20 editors because.

Tomer David [00:25:46] Like comma, and stuff like that.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:25:46] Well, just certain formatting things and stuff like that. But I’m shocked by how often I look at listings that on the most basic level of proper mechanics and grammar, there are glaring issues.

And so in my mind, it’s finding those types of things that can serve as red flags for potential bigger issues, because to me, that’s a lack of attention to detail or perhaps not having that mastery that somebody may have or need to have in order to do a really good job.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:26:27] So that’s one quick and easy free thing. You can have a tool do it for you. So I would say start there. Also, you probably have somebody in your network that has is either in the customer pool that you’re trying to sell to, is knowledgeable about good writing or marketing or somebody like that.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:26:50] So if you have access to somebody like that, ask them to read it and just give you their feedback. Listing is not that long, so they can probably read it in five to ten minutes. So it’s not a huge ask.

If you feel uncomfortable about that, then you could even just find somebody that maybe you could do an exchange of some sort for that.

But getting some feedback from other people, because I think one of the challenges in reviewing the work for a product that’s yours is being able to take yourself out of it, because ultimately, while we want you to be happy with the work, you are most of the time, not the person that we need to be communicating with.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:27:36] So if we’re just trying to please you or you are just focused on making your product sound the most impressive, you could actually be serving a disservice to your ultimate goals.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:27:52] And so we’re not afraid to have those conversations with clients and say, you know we don’t think that this is in your best interest.

And we understand that you think that this is important. But through our research and our expertize, it this is not this shouldn’t be communicated in this way or this isn’t a detail that people will care about at this point in the in the journey.

And so you may not want to to include that in there. So that’s why having somebody else read it that doesn’t have that same emotional buy in can be really helpful in determining whether something is of high quality or not.

Tomer David [00:28:28] Yeah, that’s a great answer. Question related to that, when you deliver the work to a client.

Tomer David [00:28:35] Do you also explain how like the point or explain? OK, we did this research and that’s why we would emphasis the first bullet is here, because we did like that.

Not crazy in-depth, but I think that if I would get a copy that explained me just maybe one paragraph, the process and the research, it will give me much more confidence in knowing that they put the work and they did the research.

Because what I found a lot of times, and I’m sure it’s not the case with you, because the processes and the way that you explain things shows that you’re professional. But some people, the some copywriters, they just don’t do the work on the research. And you see it on the listing itself.

You see the bullets that are very general and vague and not really talking about what’s the issues that people come to this listing’s want to solve. And for me, that’s really work the best.

When I really find myself on why this person wants to like what is the issue that they’re trying to fix and just addressing this in words and giving them confidence that that’s the product that’s going to solve it. That’s for me, what really lifting conversion rates.

And I see some like some of the copywriters that I send some work to they just like the basics of copywriting. And I felt that you know, I don’t really know what’s what they put there and how it works. And it just if I would get an explanation behind the work, it would make much more sense. But I when I hear, like, are you doing something like that?

Tomer David [00:30:11] And if not, maybe it’s an idea for, you.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:30:14] No, we’re not I think that could really easily like I don’t I’m not sure how we would do that in a way that would not end up being overwhelming, first of all, because we could describe every single choice we make.

So figuring out what that line is of explanation also without just like telling people our full process process. But what we do do is let’s say that somebody requests something. It could even be something like including something that we know is against Amazon’s TOS. Yeah, we may choose not to do that.

And then we would also explain why we chose not to do that. And then the client has what they’ve asked a response to why we didn’t do that, but also the opening that if they still feel like they want to take that risk, then we will make that edit for them during that revision. So we do in that way and gauge around things.

But as far as actually describing every single choice, I think also some of that’s complicated to put into words because some of it is really about feel. It starts to become something that it’s a muscle that you train. And so that’s why we hire really skilled writers.

We don’t hire people that are that don’t know how to write. We hire people that are creative strong writers and we still train them for months. Yeah. So that’s indicating that there are a lot of things that they need to learn about how to do this job really well.

And so I would say, you know, even when you’re hiring somebody thinking about what is most important to you, and so if you’re hiring somebody and they’re a one person show, they may do great work, but they’re not going to have that same level of collaboration and and quality control that you would have if it if there is that those processes in place and that team there.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:32:21] So I’m not saying that there aren’t fantastic solo writers out there. There are without a doubt. But, you know, a lot of the really good ones, they actually contact an editor to review their work because.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:32:35] They understand that it’s always good to have at least one more pair of eyes on anything, even the best writers know that.

And that’s just and so if that if that’s not happening, that that is potentially an issue. Writing is also sort of commodities in a lot of people’s minds. So there’s this race to the bottom to to do the listing for the cheapest amount possible.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:33:05] And so you also get what you pay for. You know, if you’re if you’re paying somebody a price that you think, well, you know, I’m telling you how long it takes our team to do this.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:33:17] So if you’re thinking about a highly trained writer spending that much time, does it make sense or is it going to be somebody that is living in a different country and is able to pay much less, or are they going to have that same care and quality control and maybe they’re just throwing something together?

So those are just questions to be asking yourself. And it can be very tempting to go with the cheapest for anything. But there are different price points for a reason.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:33:49] Not to say that just because something is more expensive, it’s better. That’s also not the case.

Tomer David [00:33:54] But that’s true. Well said, yeah, you know, I think it should be followed not just, you know, in in the copywriting. It should be applied for everything, now, like a general question.

Tomer David [00:34:11] But if you would have to point on one thing in a listing that is really going to have the most effect for conversions, what would it be and why?

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:34:22] Oh, that’s such a hard question to answer, because I always just want to say a lot of different things. This may surprise you, I would say.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:34:34] Oh, how do I just say one thing? I say organization,.

Tomer David [00:34:39] Organization in the listing?

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:34:40] Is not a sexy, not a sexy answer, but here’s the thing.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:34:45] When you are a customer and I don’t think that Amazon sellers spend enough time really understanding the customer experience. So the next time you go on Amazon, really think about your experience as a customer.

And so you get on to the search results page of whatever query you enter into the search box and you see a bunch of listings and they all look exactly the same. You have the same composition and the main image and you have the same titles.

And so already there is a lot of frustration that’s starting to occur and the experience of the customer. And it’s happened so often. I’m truly almost every time I’m shopping for something on Amazon, I go through this experience, which is why a lot of times my purchases do not end up happening on Amazon at the end because it’s just really too much.

There’s too yeah, it’s too difficult to compare things. And so I actually tend to go for the places that have fewer options. But anyway, enough about me. I think that that is probably true for a lot of other people, by the way. So you get into a listing and all of these listings are set up the same way.

But when you’re looking at a product page as a customer, you have a certain set of criteria in your mind of things that you need this product to do or be in order for you to invest any more time in researching it. Right. So this could be compatibility with a with a piece of electronics. It could be size.

You know, even if you’re shopping for shoes, you’re going to look and make sure that they have your size in stock before getting into the photos. And so really understanding what are those key details and then how to organize everything in a way that is that makes it so that customers can find that information is so important.

And I guess the reason I chose organization is because I think it kind of piggybacks on some other concepts. So I’m cheating a little bit because alongside of that, if you’re thinking from the mind of maximum skimmability and really what the customer needs to know and making it easy for them to find that, then you’re also going to have to make really impactful text. That is short point.

Tomer David [00:37:03] Yeah, short and direct to the point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very amazing answer. I really like it.

Tomer David [00:37:09] You have something to say about this.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:37:11] I mean I could get into the things like what, what you were even speaking about.

So really being clear about what the benefits of your product is, what are the problems that it’s solving, understanding your customers. But the thing is, is that if you don’t have that organization and if you’re not writing concise, strong copy, then I don’t think those other types of things are as impactful as they could be.

That’s like the second tier of importance because you don’t want to have these hefty three hundred, four hundred character bullets that are overwhelming and hard to navigate.

They could have a lot of catchy text, but nobody’s going to want to read a bullet that long. And if that if a really important piece of information is in the middle or the end of that bullet, how likely is a customer to be going to be able to find that information?

Probably unlikely. If they can’t fight. Right. And so, like, you don’t want to spend 10 minutes trying to determine whether a product is right for you. You want to spend 30 seconds, 10 seconds, whatever the case may be, and then you say, OK, it checks those boxes.

Now, I want to read some reviews now. I want to understand this a little bit better. Now I’ll go to those second tier criterion that are also important to me. But you’re not going to get there if you can’t find that need to know information.

Tomer David [00:38:37] Yeah, that’s that’s really smart, actually.

Tomer David [00:38:39] And I didn’t look at it from that point of view. And I think that when you actually ask yourself this question and you maybe ask.

OK, what is the problem the person wants to solve and come to your listing if you can, like you said, if you can get out of, you know, emotions or get out of this listing and look at it like it’s not your listing and just answer itself, does it clear enough that it’s solving this issue?

And if not, then you can OK, maybe I can push this picture to be a second picture. Maybe I can move this bullet to be the first bullet. So it’s a really smart process and I’m going to adopt it.

So, yeah. Thank you for sharing this. Last question. What is your approach? I know that, you know, you you deliver copy that your your work. But big part I think of, like, you know, improving conversions, it’s testing.

Do you. Like, give your clients option off for like two titles or testing bullets or how you look at this, what is your approach about this thing?

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:39:47] So I think AB testing is great and important. We do not provide all of those things, but at times we will have people come back and say, you know what, I’d like to try this out. Can you create this?

And so we do work with those at times. I think the one thing you need to be really careful with, with AB testing is making sure that you’re setting up your tests in a way that you’re going to be getting statistically significant data.

And again, that’s just it’s one of those things that people don’t really speak about enough. But everything from using a tool like Pickfoo to even using the builtin AB testing that you can do in Amazon with your title and with your eight plus content, you need to think about not only getting a large enough sample sizes, but also making sure that you’re really controlling things in a way that the data is meaningful.

So everything from seasonality that is going to impact consumer behavior to making sure that you’re really having to only changing two main things. And that can be really complicated, especially with something like eight plus content where you have imagery and text.

And so being thoughtful and making sure that when you’re testing something like to me, something like a longer shirt, a short title is one of the the types of AB testing that you can get a lot of really meaningful data from.

But I think some other things, while you can do a good job, you don’t want to test one photo with a certain amount of text versus a totally different photo with no text. What is that telling you? It’s not really telling you anything.

Instead, if you want to compare two photos together, don’t include the text or if you’re trying to understand what text is more effective, then use the exact same image with different text and even then making sure that the general focus of the text is the same.

Because if you’re talking about two different things, again, it’s not necessarily giving you the answers that you’re wanting to find. And that just goes back to the large problem of correlation versus causation that we learn about in school.

And so I’m not suggesting that AB testing isn’t important. I think it is and it’s valuable. But you just want to be clear that whenever you’re doing AB testing, that you’re really thoughtful about how you’re actually studying your experiments up. But they are their experiments.

Tomer David [00:42:20] Yeah, I have a lot of experience with S.R.O., like before I was doing Amazon. I just I created tests all day long and you’re like totally right. You can test two things because you can really determine which change helped or, you know, make things worse when you test things.

I feel that Amazon is really behind in this space. You can’t really you don’t have enough tools. They don’t provide enough tools. It is also a big impact when you change title.

You don’t know if the new title will also cause you some indexing issues. It’s very complicated. I find it very complicated to do some test with Amazon, and it’s not something that I do enough because, you know, it just the the options are limited.

But I really hope that in the future they will give us more tools that we can test. It’s because of because if you don’t test, I actually today created a newsletter about this. I sent an email. If you don’t test something, you don’t know if it’s working well or not.

But, you know, people sometimes find it scary, the things that are already working. But who knows if you can let’s say you have 40 percent conversion rate. For me, it’s really scary changing the copy or pasting something because, you know.

Forty percent is amazing. So I’m risking hurting the conversion rate by changing it. So but still, I think that you still should test things. But, you know, when things are working well, you just need to do them a little slower and be more cautious. But it’s really, I think, big or just in business to just test and execute and try always new things.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:44:10] Well, and, you know, even if you’re not doing AB testing, a lot of the clients that we work with, they are.

Sellers that have been selling for a while, they understand the value of things like branding, and they really are wanting to make that extra push and see what’s the next level that they can achieve, maybe even in their desire to expand beyond Amazon or to prepare for an exit or whatever the case may be.

And so. Anyway, I don’t really know why I started talking about that, but what I wanted to say is that even without testing, the data also can speak for itself.

So if you know what your conversion rate averages and then you upload a new content and that conversion rate changes, then that is an indication that something is going on there.

And conversion rate isn’t the only thing to look at when you’re thinking about the impact that something like coffee can have. Obviously, conversion rate is one of the easier to identify and more attractive and exciting and enticing things.

But even something like your heart rate. Even something like your return rate can be really positively impacted by a good listing, because if you think about it, if you’re able to more clearly communicate who should buy your product and who shouldn’t buy your product, then you can avoid some of those purchases that are coming from a misunderstanding.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:45:50] Or maybe even one of the common mistakes you see people make when they’re writing their own copy is the kind of exaggeration that over the top everything is the best, the most innovative.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:46:04] I liken it to the late night infomercial kind of of a marketing writing.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:46:11] And so if you’re setting up these expectations in the minds of your customers, but you’re not able to fulfill those, then you are creating an opportunity for disappointment which can yield more returns.

And also, if you’re returning people if people are returning things because of that, then also negative reviews. So those are two other spaces that you may be able to really have a positive impact, among other things as well, that that you may not immediately think about, but that are worth considering.

And there’s evidence to suggest that Amazon’s algorithm is now a factor in things like salaries, health, the health of their salary account into things like Reinking.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:46:56] And so if that’s the case, then that’s not a metric that you want to be neglecting for sure.

Tomer David [00:47:03] Yeah, I actually have like I have this problem now in one of my listings.

Tomer David [00:47:09] It’s extra small item and people are really getting confused. I got to the beginning, really ton of reviews. So I added another variation, small size.

But on this extra small variation, I put really the first please check size before ordering it did her the conversions, but the returns were really, you know, like went down.

So that tells me I’m sure I can do a better job because it’s not really the right place.

They’re just putting it there in the title. And I put it also in the red. In the second image, you just have to find the balance between not hurting the conversions and still letting people know that it’s, you know, the extra small size so they don’t get confused.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:47:58] But images that actually show the product in like two-scale next to something.

Tomer David [00:48:08] Yeah, it’s a good point. And I think that, yeah, that’s the easiest way to really show the product close to something. And I’ll do that.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:48:16] That’s a great advice because a lot of people, myself included, like I’m not very good at understanding the size of something. Yeah.

Like I don’t have that kind of knowledge. And so, like, I was even I was searching for some wall art the other day on Etsy, and they had this really smart thing where they had a wall and then they had frames with the sizes of all of the different pictures.

So that when you’re choosing the size, you could see all of them next to each other and start to imagine, like, OK, that’s a standard poster size. That’s more of like a regular picture.

And so for those of us that have trouble with that, it can really help to match somebody with the correct one in a way that’s not like warning, warning, warning. This could be too small for you.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:49:08] So I know anything from clothing items to pictures to really almost anything, it’s helpful to be able to see the visual representation in contrast to something familiar so that I can you know, I don’t need to go get out a tape measure because that feels like a lot of work. But I can still have a more confident understanding of what the item is.

Tomer David [00:49:34] Yeah, that’s that’s really smart. Then I’m going to take this advice and work on it. Yeah.

Tomer David [00:49:40] Thank you very much. It was I really enjoyed this conversation with I’m sure many people here learned a lot of things, including myself.

So thank you for that. If people want to hire your services and I’m going to talk with you, I want to I have one listing that I want to use your services for. But for those that are interested to learn more about you, try you out and being your customer, hopefully they can find you so they can reach you.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:50:08] OK, so our website is marketingbyEmma.com. We’re also on Facebook at marketingbyEmma.

If you are on clubhouse, I’m at mXem some skim a lot of rooms there and I’m having a lot of fun connecting with people that way.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:50:26] And we also offer free listing analysis. So if you’re not sure whether your listing is doing what it needs to be doing, like some of the things that we’ve spoken about today, you can go to our website and fill out a short form and we will get back to you with some observations that we have.

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:50:45] And we’re also if you’re if you’re listing looks great.

We’re not afraid to tell you that either. So we’re not just nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking, but we’re really wanting to make sure that you’re getting an honest review of your product and whether you would like us to help implement those suggestions or you want to do it yourself or bring it back to the person you hire.

That’s your choice to do that,.

Tomer David [00:51:11] OK?

Tomer David [00:51:12] It’s a marketing by Emma. check out, thank you so much, Emma again. I hope we can have another conversation in the future. And do you have a good day!

Emma Schermer Tamir [00:51:22] Thank you. You too. This was great. I had a lot of fun speaking with you Tomer.

Tomer David [00:51:25] Thank you. Appreciate it. Bye bye.