The Amazon Jungle

The Truth About Amazon, The Seller's Survival Guide for Thriving on the World's Most Perilous E-Commerce Marketplace

Jason R. Boyce, Rick Cesari

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781631952807
• eBook ISBN: 9781631952814
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: E-Commerce
• Index: Business

Within The Amazon Jungle, Jason R. Boyce and Rick Cesari combine their expertise and experience to demonstrate how brand-building is key for Amazon success.

Jason R. Boyce has nearly 20 years of experience as an Amazon Top Seller selling on Amazon, and is founder of a prominent Amazon agency, Avenue7Media. Rick Cesari's innovative Direct-To-Consumer strategies create more sales while built brand awareness for products like GoPro, Sonicare, OxiClean, and the George Foreman Grill. Together, Jason and Rick's Amazon book show how to pick a winning product, get it made, become a seller on Amazon, get it listed, and get it selling?on and off Amazon is the best way for how to sell on Amazon.

How do you sell on Amazon? Within The Amazon Jungle, they share that the right strategy is key to Amazon success and the truth about Amazon, which is not widely known. The Amazon Jungle helps Amazon Third-Party Sellers how to start selling on Amazon and how to sell products on Amazon build credibility and staying power by creating a winning brand?the superpower that can give them back control. Jason's expertise in identifying winning products on Amazon and Rick's success building brands off of the platform make them a formidable team and the answer to today's question: How to succeed on a platform you can't afford to avoid? If you're asking, how do I sell on Amazon or how to become an Amazon seller this book is for you. It's great for existing sellers and for how to sell on Amazon for beginners.

SECTION III:

Set yourself apart

Chapter 7:

BUILDING YOUR BRAND ON AMAZON

“MOST PEOPLE DO NOT LISTEN WITH THE INTENT TO UNDERSTAND; THEY LISTEN WITH THE INTENT TO REPLY.”

STEPHEN R. COVEY

I knew of Rick Cesari well before meeting him thanks to a common friend, Dr. Jeremy Weisz. Jeremy is the founder of INspired INsider, a popular podcast out of Chicago, where business owners and experts talk about their biggest business challenges and successes. Rick and I were guests on his podcast at separate times, and realizing that we both lived in Seattle, Jeremy encouraged each of us to reach out to the other and make a connection. At the time, Rick was advising clients about branding and marketing, but had relatively little experience selling on Amazon. Conversely, I knew Amazon from years in the trenches as a Seller, but I wasn’t as familiar with the Direct-To-Consumer (DTC) techniques for which Rick was a master. In separate interviews, months apart, Jeremy realized that Rick was the yin to my yang. Plus, he had a hunch we’d become fast friends.

I was excited to meet Rick, but due to business commitments, I let time get away from me. It was a year or so later that we finally met when we were both invited by our mutual friend James Thomson to speak at the 2016 Prosper Show in Las Vegas. James had asked Rick to be the keynote speaker and to present on how to build winning brands. At the time, Sellers like me were cranking out listings, without much thought about branding, and we were making money at it. Getting items at low prices and listing them fast was the game back then and margins were a heck of a lot better than they are now. Many products at that time used price-cutting as a way to win the Buy Box, which triggers the “race-to-the-bottom” phenomenon I talked about in the first chapter. Having worked at Amazon for many years, James fully understood the impact price-cutting tactics have on 3P Sellers, and he created the Prosper Show to help them become more sophisticated in resisting the “Amazon squeeze.” James viewed Rick—and his years of brand success through DTC marketing—as a positive role model for Amazon Sellers, and he believed Rick’s expertise could really help Sellers build deeper relationships with their customers. I was especially grateful for Rick’s appearance at the conference because it was my opportunity to make an overdue connection.

Everything Rick said in his 90-minute branding and marketing presentation that day hit me like a lightning strike. Just like the sudden burst of insight I experienced at the Klaristenfeld’s dinner table, Rick’s branding message sparked what I can only describe as a spontaneous understanding of what was missing from my own online selling strategy—how to build a brand. Rick was mobbed after his talk, so I caught him in the hallway later. I had so many questions! We exchanged business cards and we set a date to grab coffee the following Friday. It was the start of a weekly ritual that continues to this day, four years later, and it was a turning point in my entire approach to selling on Amazon.

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

Over countless cups of coffee at the Issaquah Coffee Company, Rick shared his wealth of knowledge about the human psychology of selling. For more than 30 years, Rick has tested and refined his direct response methods for video and television commercials that made products like the Juiceman Juicer, George Foreman Grill, the Sonicare toothbrush, and GoPro cameras household names. I especially love how nonchalant Rick is when he talks about how he built one billion-dollar brand after another. It’s part of what makes him accessible, as well as a great mentor. After a few of Rick’s lessons, I tested some of his tactics on a handful of my Amazon listings. I was completely floored by the results. In some cases, sales increase by as much as 40% compared to my previous features-focused listings. None of this surprised Rick. While the technology may have changed dramatically since his first TV infomercial in 1989, the underlying principles of human psychology that drive purchasing behaviors are exactly the same today as they were then. In fact, the advances in technology, and a growing emphasis on social media as a way to connect with people, have actually made Rick’s original brand-building formulas easier to implement and even more relevant today.

I’ll give you an example. One of the first listings I showed Rick was of a ping pong table. I hadn’t really thought about it then, but the listing copy read like a manufacturer’s spec sheet, filled with jargon and other information that was dull and unrelated to the benefits of the table. I used graphics, but they called out the same features that surely put Amazon shoppers to sleep. The part that really got Rick fired up, though, was the video I’d included on the listing. It showed a couple of unhappy guys assembling my ping pong table. I know why I did that. I thought it would be really helpful to see how to put it together! But Rick’s first comment to me was, “That looks like a lot of work.” The lesson here that I’ve never forgotten was that when someone buys something, they want to know the joy it brings, not the hard work involved up front. While an assembly video has its place, and Rick would agree, it is something better shared after the actual purchase. To create a new video for my ping pong table listing, Rick connected me with a photographer and videographer who had direct response marketing experience. We found attractive, aspirational models, with great smiles, who played ping pong together “as a family.” With these key changes, we turned our listing and messaging from a boring manufacturer’s specification sheet into key benefits, with headlines like Bring Friends and Family Together and Instructions: Play and Easily Folds for Storage When Not in Use. These were the benefits shoppers were searching for, and with the addition of aspirational photos and video, sales increased by more than 50%. In retrospect, this all seems pretty obvious, but Rick helped me understand what motivates consumers to buy and how to better use those tools to promote a more compelling listing.

Jeremy Weisz’s original hunch was spot on. What I was lacking in marketing knowledge, Rick had in abundance, and the reciprocating value of our unique experiences and compatible skill sets continue to help our clients across all of the retail channels—online and offline. In 2018, after my wife Ann received a job offer with Bristol-Myers Squibb, we moved the family to the opposite coast, transforming my Friday meetings with Rick from a casual chat at the coffee house to Friday morning Zoom meetings from Princeton, New Jersey. While web-conferencing technology can’t replace the ambiance of a Seattle coffee house, Rick and I are more connected than ever, blending our strengths to help our shared clients improve their sales performances and build better brands

Rick’s version

Before I met Jason, I’d caught a glimpse of the power of selling on Amazon when I was approached by two brothers who wanted to make an infomercial to grow their business. They were having a lot of success selling blenders online, moving about a container a month. At the time, there was no middle-range price for blenders. You could either get a cheap, underpowered blender (for under $100) or a high-end, powerful blender for $300+. The brothers had successfully carved out a niche in the middle-price range ($150) for a quality, powerful blender. I was impressed, and I was interested in their product because I had experience taking small product successes and growing them with direct response marketing campaigns. What further peaked my interest was that all of their sales were coming through Amazon. I remember thinking what kind of a platform can generate such a large amount of sales for an ordinary item like a blender? I’d been hearing other success stories like this one, and as a long-time DTC product marketer, I am always on the hunt for new sales channels.

Not long after the blender connection, our mutual friend James Thomson invited me to make the keynote address at the Prosper Show in Las Vegas. What an eye-opening experience that was! My presentation was on The 5 Keys to Building A Great Brand, which I’ll share with you later in this chapter. At the conference, I shared real-life examples from product campaigns I’d worked on. I guess I was bringing the right message at the right time because I was mobbed afterwards by Amazon Sellers like Jason, looking for branding secrets to give them a competitive edge on the platform. Competition was heating up and Sellers realized they needed to be savvier marketers. I was fascinated by the stories I was hearing at the conference, including a young man doing more than $100,000 a month with a charcoal-based teeth cleaner; another generating more than $20,000 a month selling toasters. I distinctly remember meeting Jason and exchanging business cards. At the time he had a successful, eight-figure business called Dazadi. In a separate presentation at the same show, he talked about his method for finding successful products. He was also mobbed after his talk, and I was one of his admirers! While I’d made a name for myself in marketing, I was new to Amazon. Jason was an Amazon Top Seller in his prime (no pun intended!), but he had more to learn about leveraging direct response marketing strategies to grow big brands. We were a perfect fit.

I looked forward to our first meeting back home. Issaquah is a small town about half-way between the two cities where Jason and I lived at the time. I’d conducted other meetings at the Issaquah Coffee Company and suggested it as a good spot for our first conversation. At the time I didn’t realize there’d be many more get-togethers there before Jason relocated to New Jersey. We hit it off immediately as we are both product marketers at heart. Jason wanted all the information I could share about my product marketing successes; I wanted all the knowledge Jason had about selling on Amazon. Following is a recap of some of the lessons we shared over coffee—lessons we continue to draw from as we work together to help our clients grow sales and expand their brands.

FEATURES TELL, BENEFITS SELL.

I know this keeps coming up, but this time it’s my turn to say it: features tell; benefits sell. Jason talks about it in terms of listing optimization in Chapter 5. He also shared his own aha moment at our first coffee meeting, when he showed me a product assembly video when he should have created an exciting demonstration video instead! Thirty years ago, I created the Juiceman Juicer at a time when popular brands like Braun and Krups were touting the quality German engineering features of their juice machines. These brands should have easily had an edge over a newcomer like me, but they made the same mistake most Sellers make. They focused on product features like stainless steel blades, a powerful motor, and dishwasher-safe plastic. When my company began marketing our juice machine, we took a totally different approach, focusing instead on the health benefits of drinking fresh juice, like weight loss, more energy, and healthier skin, nails, and hair. Positioning the product like this really helped increase sales exponentially, generating $75 million in sales for our company, Trillium Health Products, in just four years. While the competition was selling a sturdy kitchen appliance, we were selling a health machine!

Back to Jason’s “aha moment.” I knew right away that he was a natural brand-builder. The work he’d put into finding a great product was obvious; plus he knew how to set his products apart from the others, using fun, colorful designs, which really stood out against the boring monotones of the other products on the market. He just needed to prove to shoppers that he had what they were looking for. A quick-study, Jason took my advice and made a few simple changes, replacing dull photos with lifestyle shots of people having fun playing ping pong. It was a relatively easy change, with a major impact on sales. Leave the features for the spec sheets and talk about your product benefits where it counts most on Amazon—in your product listing and on your Amazon Brand Page.

READ THE REVIEWS

Jason has always relied on Amazon ratings to know whether or not he has a product with winning potential. As I learned more about his research process for finding winning products, I realized the obvious connection to how I built successful brands over the years—through authentic testimonials. I’d say testimonials are the primary reason for my marketing success. While Amazon doesn’t permit the use of customer testimonials in their listings, they do provide all the feedback you need to be successful in the form of their customer ratings. I look at these reviews as a modern-day version of the focus group, but much better because the person providing the feedback is not being paid to tell you what they think. Amazon reviews come from real people, using your product and talking about their experience. That information is worth its weight in gold, as Jason explained in Chapter 3. It’s how he builds a “better mousetrap” and it is how I’ve created winning brands for decades.

Prior to meeting Jason, my team used customer feedback with the George Foreman Grill to expand the product line. The original grill was small and could only cook four burgers. We added a six-burger grill, then an eight-burger grill. We eventually created an outside grill, plus added a timer and temperature controls because that’s what our customers wanted. Their feedback (and our willingness and ability to respond) helped turn the grill into a billion-dollar brand. Human behavior doesn’t change, even when the message delivery platforms do. When I was getting started, we used direct mail, then radio, then direct response television. Now it’s Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram. If you understand the human psychology and some basic direct response marketing principles, these branding and marketing ideas will work on any platform.

SHARE YOUR BACKSTORY

To build a successful brand today, you’ve got to have an origin story. I love hearing how a company got started. If I think about my favorite products—the stuff in my house that I use in some form or fashion every day—I can tell you about the companies behind most of them. I know Jason has addressed this already, and it’s something we tell our clients repeatedly—it’s just not enough anymore to throw something up on Amazon and expect good results. You must distinguish yourself from the competition, and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword by James Thomson
• Why I Wrote This
• Section I: Amazon: Why and How
• Section II: Let’s Get Started!
• Section III: Set Yourself Apart
• About the Authors
• Resources