Be ready to be inspired and get great invaluable insight from Nick Young on how to succeed on Product Launch Amazon Strategy. He is the CoFounder of MarktplaceOps, Nick came from tech, where as Head of New Business, he helped his company grow from $4M to $50M in revenue. Today he will talk us through his approach when it comes to Amazon product launch strategy and how he used Amazon giveaway launch strategies successfully on some of their products.
Tomer [00:00:00] I just finished recording with Nick Young, our new guest here for this video, which we’re talking about product launches. But what I can recommend you guys take from this video, aside from the actual tape that he’s talking about for product launching, is the mindset the way that they look at things?
I learned a lot. He inspired me a lot to think out of the box. And I think that you should focus on that when you think about your business and how to grow it and how to scale.
And with everything that you do know before we’re moving into the video, make sure that you subscribe to the channel and click the bell if you want to see more videos related to Amazon FBA. Also, if you want to get tips and updates that I don’t share here, go through sourcing-monster.com and subscribe to the newsletter. And let’s start with the interview that we had with him.
Tomer [00:01:02] Welcome, everyone. We have a new guest today, Nick Young, co-founder of Marketplace Ops, and he’s also the father of Fernando Compass, which was a guest on this channel. If you watch that video a couple of weeks ago, I told Nick about this earlier before we started the call. But this is someone that I follow since I started to sell on Amazon and started my journey in Amazon, eBay.
Product Launch Amazon
And he got some really crazy numbers and a nick. Welcome again. Can you share a little background about yourself and what are you up to these days?
Nick Young [00:01:40] Sure, sure. Thank you so much, Tom. So, yeah, I guess I’ll give you just a quick intro. So Fernando and I, we’ve been selling on Amazon since twenty fourteen. And so we have had a lot of experience, so many different phases of running an Amazon business. But we started twenty fourteen and at our peak we had about 250 different products that we sold under our own brands, grossing roughly 30 million a year.
And by about twenty, seventeen, twenty eighteen, we realized that there was really a natural synergy between our skill sets, what we had done and our ability to help brands grow on Amazon. So that’s really been a primary focus for us since then.
We still sell some of our own products. We mostly focus on us based domestically domestic products, but generally we really focus on helping brands grow on Amazon, leveraging our team. We are about 50 people globally who work on Amazon, work on our brands that we work with, and yeah, we’re really involved in the community.
So some people might know me as one of the faces for sell or trade craft, which is what I think you talked about. So there we created course, we help people launch their first products on Amazon and then also we created Pixel as well, which is a super.
You are you are a tool and pixel tracking tool that Amazon sellers use as well. So got our hands on a lot of pots. But really, for me, the main focus is marketplace ops, where we help CPG brands grow their sales on Amazon.
Tomer [00:03:05] And when you say CPG brands, what does that mean? If you can.
Nick Young [00:03:10] Yeah, so. So CPG stands for consumer packaged goods. A lot of times these are consumable products, products that you might see on retail shelves in the store. And so usually they’re there, Target or their credit, CVS or whatever.
They have their own website. But a lot of these brands don’t really know how to be successful on marketplaces like Amazon. And, you know, originally they had the option of not being an Amazon, let’s say, like three or four years ago. But now with covid and everything that’s happening, they realize, wow, I really need a strategy around marketplaces because Amazon represents one of every two transactions online in the US. So it’s just something that they can’t ignore anymore.
Tomer [00:03:48] Yeah, definitely. Definitely. That’s really cool. And, you know, your guys seems like to take so much action, everything that you do like massive action in the buys, the Amazon, now this agency. But now it looks like your focus is one thing and that’s really cool.
And I know that your expert in launching products, so I want this call, if possible, to be focused on how to rank products out to launch products. I know it’s a topic that everyone, especially retailers and even advance sellers always trying to improve and learn and get information on.
Tomer [00:04:29] So with with with what do you think is the currency the best strategy, in your opinion, to launch new products? What’s working for you guys lately?
Nick Young [00:04:39] Yeah, I mean, you know, I don’t think it’s a one size fits all approach, obviously. You know, it really depends on the category. But I think it comes down to it used to be when we started twenty fourteen, we used to just like source products.
Right. That we what I call me two products, let’s say someone was selling, I don’t know, a mug. We would sell a mug as well and do it at a better price, maybe a little different and it would would work well. Right. Things have really changed and I think it depends on who you’re talking to. If you’re talking to a private label seller, one of the things I always say is it’s important to really start from the very beginning, even before you launch a product, to really think about how your product is differentiated from the competition.
And that means making it very unique, making your offer something that’s immediately valuable from the main image. Right. So from the get go and people are seeing your offer against the keywords that you’re targeting. When they see the image, they say, oh, that’s a great offer. I want to click and I want to make a purchase. You know, whether it’s better branding, whether it’s better value, maybe both.
That is the first most important thing, because if if you have a unique offering, well, branded a good quality product, everything is going to be much easier to launch. Right.
And so it really starts from that point. We really invest so much time in making sure that it looks very good. And that means even going as far as like AB testing what our packaging should look like against the competition.
So that’s what. We do in the very beginning, we’ll actually take our competitive competitors knowing before we even source a product, hey, these are our top competitors in the market, we’ll use a tool like Pictou and then actually run polling campaigns to say, why do you click on this product over everything else before we even put our own product there?
And then we’ll actually get that feedback, send that to our designer, to our design team, and then say, hey, we want to put together a packaging that incorporates all this feedback and watching merchandise and offer to say, OK, it seems like this is important, it’s organic is important or vegan is important.
Let’s make sure that that’s in our offering. And then and then we’ll again get that prototype of what that packaging looks like. We’ll run it through campaigns again and keep running campaigns until we get an offer that actually really resonates and gets the most clicks and the most choices among that polling. Right.
Does that make sense so far? So, yeah. So that means that even from the very beginning, before we’ve even launched a product, we know because we’ve run tests that this product, if it’s in the search results, people are going to click on it. Right.
And that’s that’s really positioning yourself to win from the very beginning. So so that’s what we do. We’ll make sure that we have an image that that we packaging looks good, that it really performs well. And then from then on, we start working on a campaign while we’re working, waiting for the product to arrive.
And so once a product arrives, one of the things we realize is that, you know, it’s really important that you’re targeting the most relevant keywords with the highest purchase intent. Right. So making sure that you have a very, very closely linked book of keywords that are really relevant for your products. I’ll give you an example.
Like let’s say you’re selling a pan like a stainless steel cooking pan. That’s nonstick cookware is not a good keyword to target. Right. It’s just too broad. So you want to make sure that you have a very specific, highly relevant keyword that you’re targeting with obviously ideally high search volume, but really make sure that you understand what those keywords are and also that you’re in the right category, because those two things can really impact how Amazon sees your listing.
And so ultimately, relevancy is the most important thing. And so usually in the first two weeks of a launch, we’ll do a couple of things. Number one, we know we don’t have that many reviews because we’re just launching. So we’re going to do a very aggressive coupon code from the very beginning, maybe even break even.
And the reason why we do that is because when customers see this as an option in PBC, if you don’t have reviews, there’s no reason why a person would click on your listing over one that has thousands of reviews. Right. So you’ve got to give them a reason to click, which is like the like. Right, exactly. So we have a great image.
We also have a great coupon claim offer. So it gives people reason to click our listing. And so that’s in the first two weeks. On top of that, the first two weeks are really spent specifically targeting through PBC and through giveaways are relevant keywords. So our top keyword first and then seeing what movement is happening.
If we’re not seeing any movement on those keywords, it probably means it’s either not the right keyword or we’re not in the right category. So what we’ll do is we’ll continue to monitor our indexation, seeing if we’re getting any movement.
And if we still aren’t getting any movement, we’ll make those adjustments. And then after two weeks, we’ll we’ll be able to see, OK, well, we need that category change now. We’re starting to stick for these keywords. So now we can start going more aggressive with our giveaway campaigns.
We really look at I’m sure you’re familiar with what the honeymoon period is. Right. So basically, you know, the first 90 days of a launch, which is the most crucial. And so we look at launches as over a period of just 90 days. So a very extended launch.
It used to be that you could promo over two weeks and that’s enough. But we really do our giveaways over a period of like 60 to 90 days because we see the Amazon looks at consistency over a long period of time as a really crucial factor of whether or not this product deserves placement for the keywords that you’re targeting.
So that’s what we really do. First, two weeks spent creating good app offer, making sure we’re index, making sure we’re sticking, and then after two weeks, we start really aggressively targeting our are very relevant keywords with high exact match bid campaigns. We run giveaways.
We try to get people to purchase on those ads so that we can trigger more relevancy using many shot. And then we try to use various sources of traffic. So sometimes we’ll send people through Twitter to click into our listing.
Maybe we’ll send them through Pinterest to click through into our listing. And that way we’re getting diversified. Sources of traffic going to our listing, not only from Amazon and Amazon sees that ultimately as as high domain domain authority sites.
And therefore, you guys, you deserve that that rank or that position that you’re getting. So really, that’s what we’re trying to get to. So first month of launch indexation relevancy category, making sure those are all correct and then those high exact match campaigns and also reviews. So we try to get to, let’s say, 30 to 40 reviews before we’re.
Even adding any more additional keywords, right, because we don’t want to drive too much traffic to our listing and have low conversion rates or clickthrough because that indicates to Amazon that it’s not relevant.
So if we have more reviews that are very well rated, then that means that when we start adding more and more traffic, the conversion rates are going to be good. And really from then on, it’s all about layering more and more traffic, whether it’s through giveaway campaigns, whether it’s through more and more PPC, whether it’s through adding more video ads. And really like, you know, as we move through the barrier, let’s say we go from twenty thousand to ten thousand BSR.
We add one other thing. So maybe it’s a new set of manual campaigns, then it brings it down to eight thousand and BSR. And then let’s say we send some influencer campaigns go through, we’re sending more traffic than it goes down to six thousand BSR. So just really seeing where the resistance is and then layering in more and more pieces of traffic and not blowing your load all at once.
That’s really, I think, what’s working for us, because Amazon wants to see a gradual uptick in traffic and sales, not something that happens all at once and then goes away because then that looks like abnormal behavior. Yeah, yeah.
Tomer [00:12:03] And to those of you that didn’t really understand everything that Nick said, we can easily make a video for every stage in our lung and get into it in a deeper level.
But, you know, just be sure the answer that the launch product, which is very similar to the process that I do, except the giveaways that do giveaways and the I don’t do the part where you before designing the packaging, because I also have packaging for all of my products to stand out, like you said.
Tomer [00:12:36] But I don’t do the peak for pools before the design. I usually just go and just scan the first page results. It can, based on that, give instructions to the designer.
But you’re always more based on data which are like following data and numbers and that I’m going to do it for the next products, just running some balls on pixel and stuff like that. Now you mentioned something about the honeymoon period, like 90 days, which Amazon look at your product is a new product, can give you a full opportunity to sell and rent, can give you exposure.
So what happens? And it happened to me as well and to many other people I know, is that in their first 90 days, they might sell out their product and it went so well that they couldn’t really predict there will be out of stock and they went out of stock. And after they come back, the conversions are not the same.
Like everything is messed up, which doesn’t make sense because to me, in my eyes, I can’t really figure out how Amazon look at it, because you know what? How well, how come the conversion is going down? What, like Amazon like algorithm, like, say, OK, this product is not good anymore. Do you have any, like, information or something to share about this this thing that happens?
Nick Young [00:14:00] Yeah, I mean, I definitely think this is a common issue for a lot of sellers. That’s why I think it’s always important if you really feel confident about your offering to have enough inventory. That said, I mean, this is an issue we run into often. So it’s not something that we are able to always avoid.
You know, generally, I think what can sometimes happen is maybe there’s a couple of different situations that people have, maybe as their volume increases. Right. And when they still have inventory, they start increasing their price.
Right. And if they’re increasing their price, their sales are dropping. And so they’re trying to manage those sales. And then by the time they’re low on inventory, Amazon is not only ranking them lower because they have less inventory, but also the prices so high. So the conversion rates are lower.
And what happens is that now that you’re out of stock, Amazon is looking at your last 30 days and it’s recording maybe your lower conversion rates in your higher price point.
So that could be a factor that I’m thinking. So usually my recommendation is don’t drastically increase your price because that could negatively impact conversion rates. Let yourself run out of stock, maybe increase it by like a dollar or two dollars, but let it run out of stock, maintain that high velocity rate, then close your listed and set your listing to available in the future.
Like whenever you think it’s going to come in that way, the listing is down completely. And then what I would do is once you come back in stock again, do an aggressive coupon code you in dollar off maybe like if your product is forty dollars, do a twenty dollar off Cuban go to break even. Right. And then and then run really aggressive PPC on your exact match. Campaigns of the keywords are really relevant and what we’ve seen is within one to two weeks we start getting our BSR back.
It takes a while, I say it takes up to maybe two to three weeks to really get back to that peak velocity.
But for us, because we’ve been we maintain that velocity even towards the end of how much inventory that we have know. We find that we can get back to our original place pretty quickly.
Tomer [00:15:50] Yeah, OK. Makes sense. Makes a lot of sense. I see this a lot even on my accounts.
Tomer [00:15:56] Do it like sometimes you just don’t know when. To stop or sometimes even giving up too early. So how do you determine if your product is like a winner or a loser and like what time frame you guys give it? Because sometimes you can you believe in the products too much. You just lose and lose and lose or the other end you could stop to early giving up too early. But it’s a good product that could eventually wreck how and when. It’s like this sweet spot where that like as far as time frame in your body.
Nick Young [00:16:28] Yeah, that’s that’s a great question. So so we really ran into this issue when we first started the business because we were aggressively launching so many products. And what we ended up finding was that while we had a lot of products that just weren’t performing well, that we still kept and even and the thing is like I think each seller really needs to define what success means for them. Right. To start with, what margin profile are you looking for? Right.
And really making sure that you’re sticking to that. And so what we found for ourselves was that we needed at least one hundred fifty percent ROIC on our products. NetNet for us to really say that this product is worth continuing.
Generally, our goal was to break even on the first Piao and if we at towards the end of the cycle can get to an organic one or 50 percent ROIC, then that means it’s something that we should continue and anything that falls below that does not meet our margin profile and therefore we’re just going to discontinue that.
So, so really making sure that you’re evaluating on a personal basis what your numbers are super important. I think the thing that you talked about really believing your product, I can really relate to that because initially I might think, oh, I’m married to this product. I’m really I’m in love with this product.
I want to keep going. And I think that does not help, because when you get emotionally tied to a product, you’re not thinking about things rationally. So I think really using Excel or whatever data analysis tool that you’re using to make sure that you’re maintaining those numbers is important because you’d rather have five skewes at one hundred fifty percent ROIC hitting those metrics rather than 15 skews. They’re taking up your cash right now. Cash is something that a lot of sellers don’t think about, especially if you’re sourcing from China.
Your money is sitting on inventory, assuming you’re shipping by sea for like forty five or sixty days. Right. And so if you have a product that’s only like a 50 to 70 percent are why you’re really like the return on your cash is very low and you’re not turning around that cash fast enough. So the goal is really to find products where it has a high rate of return, whether that means sourcing domestically with a lower Arawa or sourcing internationally with the higher Arawa.
So that cash flow is so important because you have to look at everything as an opportunity cost. If it’s not meeting your your requirements, then it’s coming at a cost of being able to invest that money into something else that’s returning. Better numbers for you?
Tomer [00:18:44] Yeah. Yeah, great answer. I have two things to say about your answer. So one, I think that, like you said, if you have a specific criteria that you prefer ahead of time strategically and saying, OK, these are the metrics that I’m going to follow, then you leave aside all the emotions because you just have like, OK, didn’t meet the criteria that I said to myself, let’s give up on this instead of don’t really have a great year is just going without any goal or just don’t know where to do when a product when you have this situation that you are not sure, you don’t get them a map or something to follow. Right.
That’s something that I will actually be prepared. I will have some great theories and it’s a very good point. The second thing about the cash flow, this is something that is really struggled. Last year, my goal at the beginning of twenty twenty two lunch, twenty five thirty products, that’s what I did.
Tomer [00:19:43] But I felt that I have so many failing products and all this cash flow is not really distributed enough well enough. So this year, two thousand twenty one, I really give up on many products, even products that are profitable so I can focus and having more inventory on my best selling items. And I will actually January and February. These are the the best months ever because I don’t lose money on some items and I have enough inventory to support them. And so, yeah, that’s a great advantage.
Nick Young [00:20:19] And I think there’s like a there’s a common pattern that I’ve seen. I think the same principle applies in investing. Right. A lot of investors will say No. One to cut your losses if you’re stuck on a stock because you want to make your money back, you know you’re going to get emotional about it. You need to just cut your losses and focus on the winners. Right.
And even I used to work in sales. And one of the things that I struggle with initially when I started going was, you know, I would talk to clients like, oh, maybe this person could fit. It doesn’t fit all the criteria, but maybe this person can come aboard and sign. And eventually what I realized was the people that I sign on board that maybe I made a discount for originally, maybe they couldn’t afford our fees, they weren’t qualified, and they ended up being more trouble than they were worth.
And I found that there are certain certain people that meet a certain profile, and that’s called qualifying in sales, it’s like making sure that they fit that profile because otherwise it’s not a fit. And you need to make sure that you cut them out because operationally it’ll be more of a hassle, bring them on board than to actually just continue to find people that fit that profile. So there’s limitless opportunity. I mean, there’s there’s like hundreds of millions of products that are available online. So you really just got to be straight. You don’t get married, you know, let the data tell you what’s working, what’s not.
Tomer [00:21:26] Yeah. Yeah. And the way that you think, I think that’s what set yourself and people like you from all of the rest of the seller, not the rest of the salesman, but unsuccessful sellers. It’s really the way that we think will determine our success.
It’s not the halogen techniques and all this that this is like I love the way that you think I and I try to improve always the way that I think and analyzing the situations and, you know, just laying down all the options and getting decision based on me thinking, you know, and that’s really smart, you know, with your it’s very similar to me what I was shipping some Wal-Mart and eBay orders myself. And then I was saying I’m wasting like an hour, two hours a day for finishing on money.
Tomer [00:22:12] So let me make or lose a couple of dollars or they’re just sending it to people like the library or things like that. Then I make much more sales and I’m freeing up my time. So, you know, whatever is said about the sales and then it makes a lot of sense to me.
Nick Young [00:22:30] Yeah. And one thing I want to add also sorry, I know I’m terrible at this, but, you know, you had mentioned that you wanted last year launched twenty five products. Right. And I think it’s really interesting because, you know, I can relate to that. We had a similar kind of mindset initially and we realized that was the wrong way to look at things because you know, those twenty five products like what if each one only did a thousand.
You have to invest five thousand. Right, in profit instead. Now we actually do our goals based off of. OK, well we want to shoot for an additional fifty thousand dollars a month in gross profit by the end of this quarter or whatever. And it doesn’t matter if it’s one product or if it’s three products that or two products, obviously the less is better. Right.
And so really being flexible about how you get there and but focused and clear about what you want, because in an ideal world, like let’s say you wanted to add additional I don’t fifty one hundred thousand dollars profit if you could do with five products that be better than doing it with twenty-five. Right. So yeah. So just saying oh I want to buy products isn’t as good as saying oh I want to add this much an additional profit. Let me work backwards to see how many products that might be. Yeah. Yeah.
Tomer [00:23:37] To those watching, make sure that you really pay attention. Well what we say here I really think that this is like what’s the difference between successful sellers, two unsuccessful sellers? It’s the way that you look at things. OK, great. You know, I know we’re limited with time, but they do have just two or three more questions. What do you think about like variations, multiplex bundles within the listing to grade those like these additional revenue without too much afterwards? Oh, you guys looked at it and still looking at this.
Nick Young [00:24:11] Yeah, that’s a that’s a really, really good question. I mean, I think the answer is it really just depends on the category. Right. You know, if it’s a very new category, maybe you’re better off having separate listings because you could take up more real estate. Right. But if it’s a very mature category where there’s not as much space, the people on page one are doing really well.
Having variations is a good way to differentiate your listing. And so one of the things that we play around with is differentiation. I think colors is obviously something that people do, but also based on price points. Right. Like pricing strategy. So, for instance, if everyone is selling a product for twenty dollars, we might come in with a product that’s a lower quantity and we’ll launch new products at the same time, one that’s a lower quantity, but it’s like fifteen dollars. And the other one that’s a higher quantity. That’s twenty five dollars.
So that way on Amazon it shows us fifteen to twenty five. And, but we’re also showing other people that we have this fifteen dollar offer, which is a fine deal. It’s better than what other people have, but the twenty five dollar is actually an even better deal. And so it allows us to strategically guidance that we look like the best offer from the search results, but also it drives people to the twenty five dollar price point. Right. So that’s that’s a way that you can play with variations from just a pricing strategy standpoint. Yeah. So does that answer your question?
Tomer [00:25:27] Yeah, definitely. I actually didn’t do it strategically, like you said, but that’s what exactly did I add the twenty four dollars item and I ended the thirteen dollars item and daksh that the 13 dollar item. I didn’t do any PPC and just started to sell like hundred units and they just need competition. So I was able through variation. That’s why I asked you because I was amazed, you know, just testing it out, just testing again, they didn’t really have plans to increase it. And I saw these results. So, you know, I think that if you strategically. Do it and plan it.
Tomer [00:26:02] You can have this advantage over your competitors, which are not aware or know how to do it. Yeah, great answer. Thank you. I know that you guys sell your Amazon business very quick with employees and with New Skewes and all of that. Can you. Sure. Maybe one or two tips after getting your business that’s best. That would really help sellers to grow and scale their business in twenty, twenty one, like in a quick way, but maybe not like really focusing on the right things. Like you said before, I always wanted my products, but I was focusing on a number of products, but not at the end result, which is revenue or profit.
Nick Young [00:26:45] And there’s so many things I could talk about. I mean, number one, we already touched on, which is like looking at the finances of your business and making sure that you have a criteria and that you stick to it. Right.
I think that’s the first thing, because that’s going to determine your cash flow. And the cash flow is what determines where you can invest your money, whether it’s an employee’s or whether it’s in new products. Right. So that’s the first thing that I would do, just making sure that you’re sticking to that very diligently. The next part that I would look at is really thinking deeply about your time and about where you think your time should be spent and where it should not be spent. You know, I think when we first got started with me and my business partner, I was the guy doing the design work.
I was a guy like, you know, working to set up the listings, you know, to fix issue issues with the listings. But what I really think about it, that stuff is not really a big value add to the business. Right. It’s not stuff that’s going to drive more revenue or grow the business. And so usually when it comes out an Amazon seller, what I usually say is, you know, your time is best spent finding new products because the best way to grow your business is to find new products that you can add to your portfolio. Right. And that’s something that probably you’re the only one best positioned to do within your business.
Maybe it’s your business partner, which is great. But if you don’t have a partner, that’s really what the seller should be doing, because it’s hard to train someone to do that. It’s even hard to do that on your own. But when it comes to customer support, fixing issues with Amazon, their support, you know, fixing a listing, going down, I mean, that could take hours of your time.
And it but it’s not the best use of your time. It’s not what’s going to grow your business. So really thinking deeply about that and not and also not getting distracted by a bunch of things like, you know, for Amazon sellers, a lot of them think, oh, I need to have my own Shopify, which I think makes sense if you’re really trying to build a strong brand. But if you’re trying to have an Amazon business, having a Shopify isn’t really that necessary. Right. And you have to drive. It’s a whole different segment and skill and skill.
It’s a new skill. Exactly. So your time is best spent finding more products that you can add into Amazon and then maybe hiring something, someone down the line to do that whole Shopify thing, if that’s what you think is important for your business. But focus on the things that you are really good at and only you can do and make sure that you get other people to come in.
And I think investing in really good people early on is one of the things I wish I’d done getting out of the mindset of like, oh, I need to find someone who’s cheap. I’m only going to get someone who does, you know, the graphic design or the customer support looking backwards. What I would have done differently is I would have hired a more senior person, maybe pay someone overseas fifteen hundred two thousand dollars a month from the get go, someone with leadership experience, someone who’s built a team so they can actually recruit people around them and do those things so they can offload that stuff from me. And I can focus on the things that are important. Right. That is really good because I’m no longer taskmaster. That person is the task master and I’m the person more thinking about the business and growth.
Tomer [00:29:33] Yeah, very, very interesting.
Tomer [00:29:38] So I think we talked about it, but last thing, can you share with us a little bit more about Marketplace Ops, the company you’re focusing on right now, what you offer?
Tomer [00:29:50] You know what? What are you you I know you said like you explain a little bit about before, like with the. Sure. Retail stores that don’t have exposure and stuff like that, but. Interesting.
Nick Young [00:30:04] Yeah. Yeah. So so we work with, you know, some marketplace ops is basically an Amazon or actually I should say marketplaces brand management agency. And so what we do is we work with brands. Usually they have their own channel, like their own Disney Channel, or they have presence in retail and they realize that Amazon is an important part that they need to put their products on, but they just don’t know how to tackle it because Amazon is just so many components and because we have this infrastructure in the team and the actual hands on experience, you know, we work with brands and entrust trust us to own that channel for them.
And we do everything from a disease that means managing the BBC, doing the content design changes, optimizing the listings, doing giveaways, promotions, improving and optimizing listings, virtual bundles, everything you name it, overall growing sales. That’s what we do for these brands. So generally that’s what we do. And and yeah, we really look to work with the CPG brands specifically because they really have the budget to invest in actually growing their presence on the platform. And so, yeah, that’s what we do in a nutshell. We’re turnkey solution and we do everything from A to.
Tomer [00:31:12] OK, that’s very interesting how you would say those brands, which I assume bigger and they have much more budgets, then use them as just starting with like then indicate how they approach Amazon differently than those like private labels that are like me. And when you guys.
Nick Young [00:31:32] How would they approach it?
Tomer [00:31:34] Yeah, that’s a really good question. They look long term like, wow, what is the way that works like?
Nick Young [00:31:40] So so they really look way more long term, know Amazon sellers because usually they’re bootstrapped or they’re smaller, a more small entrepreneur. They usually are looking at profitability. Very early on, a CPG company that’s vendor funded does not look at profitability early on.
They look at customer base overall top line growth and revenue because that’s an indication of future growth. And one of the things that they look at is how their brand resonates with the customer and whether customers are going to come back and buy again. So they’re looking at things like LTV, which stands for lifetime value.
So how many times a customer comes back and how many times they purchase from them over time so they’re not looking to be profitable on the first sale, maybe not even on the second sale, but really on the third fourth of this sales and everything that happens after that. So when we work with a brand like, let’s say maybe a protein bar company, one of our clients sells protein bars. You know, their product normally sells at twenty four, ninety five for like a 12 pack.
Not many people know their brand. And so twenty four point ninety five is very expensive for someone who doesn’t isn’t familiar with the brand. Right. And so what we do is we help them merchandise a fourteen ninety nine offering. And the reason and that’s like a sampler pack. And the reason why that’s valuable is because in groceries you get an eight percent discount on Amazon referral fees. So your margins might even be greater if you’re under 15 dollars. And so what we do is we merchandise an offering like that. The goal isn’t to be profitable on that offering. It’s really to get the offering as many people’s hands as possible. So we’ll promote that offering. We’ll do giveaways.
We’ll also do lightning deals, best deals on that offer. And what we’re looking at isn’t the sales or the revenue of that particular SKU, but really how that impacts subscriptions over a longer period of time. So that’s really what we’re looking at. Like how many more subscribers can we get that are coming back, returning to the brand? Because we want to get this product in as many hands as possible. And if we can do it at break even or even at a loss, that’s fine, because over the long term, they’re thinking one, two, three years down the line from now.
Tomer [00:33:33] Yeah, yeah. That’s very cool. Actually, I’m doing some I’m planning to do something very similar. So I do I do have a niche that they have like six or seven products and I’m trying to really dominate the needle. And my plan is to create and actually started with this executing this plan, creating an item that costs seven dollars I’m not going to make a penny on decided only creating it to create these crazy sales velocity. Hopefully I’m going to sell thousands a month of this product just so I can lead them to my website to purchase and sell because I cross-sell some of the related items. That’s my plan and I’m really excited to see how it’s going to work.
Tomer [00:34:17] I you know, it’s I think it makes sense. You know, it’s something people sometimes neglect or don’t look at and they say, oh, if it’s not profitable yet, I’m not going to do it. But if you think out of the box and you can create an advantage over your competitors, like thinking out of the box, trying new things because it might not work, I don’t know if it’s going to work or not, but if it’s going to work, I really discovered something that is is a big Katamari.
Nick Young [00:34:49] Sorry I got disconnected just now. You’re talking about hopefully you sell thousands of units. Oh, I apologize for that.
Tomer [00:34:56] No Problem, I will repeat that. So what I said is that I’m trying to create these cells, velocity’s so many orders and then lead them to my website cross-sell with some other related items that I know there is demand. So I really looked at the customer feedback and I saw that people that purchased this item, they really want this complimentary item. So I’m not making any money on this or they’re getting reviews, getting credibility, brand awareness, all of these. But just to get the profit with the related the complimentary items. Totally. That’s my plan.
Nick Young [00:35:33] Yeah. Yeah. So this great plan. Yeah. I mean, I think one thing people don’t tackle enough is, is targeting and doing product targeting and time products together within Amazon’s ecosystem. So if you have a product that is relevant to your other products, having an cross-link, so one is high sales velocity and then you’re directing them somehow to this other product, maybe it frequently bought together. So those are some interesting things that you could use to go about that. Yeah, that’s good tips for me, for you, Nick.
Tomer [00:36:04] Thank you so much. Really, it was really a pleasure. I learned a lot and people like to watch it watching, what, a couple of times there are a couple of the way of thinking of Nick is what you really need to add up. And I love it to those that want to contact you or learn about your services guys, how they can do that.
Nick Young [00:36:25] Yeah, you can go to Marketplace Ops dot com and you can email me as well. Nick at Market.
[00:36:31] Forbes.com, very cool, thank you very much again, Nick. It was a pleasure to have you as a guest here again in the future, because I feel we have so many things to talk about and yet they care. Good luck with your new agency. I’m sure it’s going to be very guys be very successful at this with you.
[00:36:51] So much appreciate. Yeah. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye.