Product Startup Podcast Episode 201: How to Build a Winning Amazon Listing

00:00:00 Kevin Mako: Hello, product innovators. Today we learn how to build a successful Amazon product launch from an expert who has put 50 products onto the Amazon marketplace.

00:00:08 Kevin Mako: This is the Product Startup Podcast, a show to learn from top leaders in hardware product development, prototyping, manufacturing, product selling, and everything in between.

00:00:17 Kevin Mako: Hosted by Kevin Mako, the leading expert on product development for hardware startups.

00:00:22 Kevin Mako: Welcome back, everyone. Today I'm very excited to introduce Robb Green to the show.

00:00:26 Kevin Mako: Robb is the founder of Solving Alpha, a company with dozens of products.

00:00:30 Kevin Mako: and multiple product brands on Amazon that also acquires other Amazon brands.

00:00:34 Kevin Mako: He also hosts the I’m The One Podcast to help people migrate to the world of entrepreneurship.

00:00:39 Kevin Mako: Today, Robb is going to share some valuable knowledge for inventors, startups and small

00:00:42 Kevin Mako: manufacturers on the importance of properly planning for an Amazon product launch,

00:00:46 Kevin Mako: the technical aspects of an Amazon listing, and how to succeed in launching and growing your

00:00:51 Kevin Mako: product sales on the Amazon Marketplace platform.

00:00:54 Kevin Mako: Now, on to the episode.

00:00:55 Kevin Mako: This show is produced by Mako Design, the original firm providing

00:00:59 Kevin Mako: end-to-end consumer product development services tailored specifically to hardware startups,

00:01:04 Kevin Mako: small manufacturers, and inventors. Take your product from idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com.

00:01:11 Kevin Mako: Now on to the episode. Hey, Robb, welcome to the show.

00:01:14 Robb Green: Hey, thanks for having me, Kevin.

00:01:16 Kevin Mako: Well, we're excited to have you on today to talk about successfully launching on Amazon,

00:01:21 Kevin Mako: not just listing on Amazon, but truly launching a new consumer product on Amazon in a successful

00:01:28 Kevin Mako: a way that builds brands. And who better to bring on the show than yourself,

00:01:31 Kevin Mako: who's launched numerous brands. So before we get into all the weeds of what makes for a great

00:01:37 Kevin Mako: Amazon launch and scale, just give us a quick backstory of how you got to the success that you are today.

00:01:42 Robb Green: Yeah, I started in corporate America. Everybody says, find your passion. I found mine. I

00:01:46 Robb Green: I hated corporate America. I wasn't a great employee and didn't really want to be in

00:01:49 Robb Green: corporate America too much bureaucracy for me. So started drop shipping e-commerce in 2011 and then

00:01:55 Robb Green: shifted over to creating my own brands in 2015. So I've been selling successfully on Amazon

00:01:59 Robb Green: since 2015. So a handful plus brands, had a few exits, and we're continuing to launch

00:02:05 Robb Green: and list products on Amazon today. Yeah, amazing. Well over 50 products that you've launched there.

00:02:10 Kevin Mako: So you've learned the ins and outs. I think you're just at Amazon headquarters last week as well.

00:02:14 Robb Green: I just was one of four panelists up at Amazon headquarters in Seattle talking voice to the seller

00:02:19 Robb Green: program, talking to a bunch of executives, directors, and VPs about how they can bring some of their

00:02:24 Robb Green: data to us so that we have a better chance and actually perfect for this of launching on

00:02:29 Robb Green: Amazon. They want new products and they want successful new products. So they're trying to alter

00:02:34 Robb Green: the information they can provide to us. And then also maybe play around a little bit with the search

00:02:39 Robb Green: results and how they look so that it's something that we can actually penetrate that market.

00:02:43 Kevin Mako: That's amazing. I'm really curious to dig into that today on the show to figure out like in

00:02:47 Kevin Mako: 2023, what are the best practices now on Amazon from the source themselves. I find it very interesting

00:02:53 Kevin Mako: what you mentioned. I think this is inspiring, especially to emerging hardware startups.

00:02:57 Kevin Mako: Amazon wants your product. If you build a great product that solves a pain point or creates

00:03:03 Kevin Mako: opportunity for the world for a certain demographic, it can it be very, very niche demographic?

00:03:09 Kevin Mako: They want it because that's how they grow. They grow through more products so that they can sell

00:03:14 Kevin Mako: more things to more people around the world. So Robb, Robb, let's dive into the details. Let's talk first

00:03:19 Robb Green: about listing. So the way I think about this is if back in the day,

00:03:23 Robb Green: we just get these paper catalogs in the mail, right? And when you list a product on Amazon,

00:03:28 Robb Green: essentially what you're getting done is you're getting put into this catalog. And that's it.

00:03:32 Robb Green: So you list a product, you create a listing, you go out there, you're now in the catalog.

00:03:36 Robb Green: The reality is there's thousands, if not millions of products in that catalog, right? So that's what

00:03:42 Robb Green: your average seller does or the average person who launches a product. They just listed on there. And to be

00:03:47 Robb Green: honest with you, that's not really the key to success because you're now in the catalog, but you're in the

00:03:51 Robb Green: back of the catalog. You're on page 400, so you're not discoverable, right? So I always say you've

00:03:57 Robb Green: got to launch a product as opposed to list it, right? And we'll dig in a little bit on what that means.

00:04:01 Kevin Mako: Yeah, that's excellent. Launching a product is key. We want things to explode. We want them to be a big

00:04:06 Kevin Mako: success. And we want them to scale over time, especially as people get to know the market as you start

00:04:11 Kevin Mako: collecting the reviews and so on. That's what really a hardware startup should be all about is building

00:04:16 Kevin Mako: great products. So let's dig into what that actually looks like. Let's dive deeper into the actual list.

00:04:21 Kevin Mako: prepare for a great list that is a launch and not just a list. Great question. So you start

00:04:27 Robb Green: with preparation, which is the key operative word in what you said there. So you've got to actually do

00:04:32 Robb Green: your research. So creating a great listing is like telling the story. A lot of us product guys,

00:04:38 Robb Green: maybe not great storytellers, but we can be great storytellers by getting a few things right. And

00:04:42 Robb Green: understanding the marketplace that we're playing in, if you think about any type of like physical

00:04:47 Robb Green: real estate, Amazon is not only the anchor store at a mall, but they're also the source.

00:04:51 Robb Green: store on every street corner, they have that digital real estate. How do we capture eyeballs

00:04:57 Robb Green: once we have the visibility and get people to go through the funnel, right? And that starts

00:05:02 Robb Green: with your main image. Main image is the most important thing. Try to differentiate your main

00:05:07 Robb Green: image. Obviously, do the basics. The basic would be making it large enough, fitting the requirements,

00:05:12 Robb Green: making it attractive, making it grab someone's attention. Then people typically go to

00:05:16 Robb Green: title with their eyeballs. Then they make a decision to make a click. Once they have a click,

00:05:21 Robb Green: they're into the listing, and they either do one of two things, either read the bullet points,

00:05:25 Robb Green: which I find is very rare, but mostly they go through the left-hand side, which is your stack image,

00:05:30 Robb Green: is to understand the story. And then they'll go to reviews. So the idea is you want to create an

00:05:35 Robb Green: optimal listing. Main image is number one, title is number two. And then what I do and what we do here

00:05:41 Robb Green: is we write for the algorithm, but we tell the story for the consumer in the pictures. What do I mean by

00:05:47 Robb Green: that? You've got to have the right keyword. So keyword research is optimal.

00:05:51 Robb Green: Because if you think about any time you put a product into the catalog, Amazon doesn't know what

00:05:54 Robb Green: your product is, right? It's a widget to them. How do they reference that product from a search

00:06:00 Robb Green: perspective? And so you've got to think from their perspective, what you're doing is you're seeding

00:06:04 Robb Green: that product in Amazon's eyes and their algorithm to say this product is relevant to these keywords. And

00:06:12 Robb Green: you're doing that by creating the listing. So that is by far step one to give you the best opportunity

00:06:18 Kevin Mako: to have success. Wow, there's a lot of stuff in there, a lot baked in. I really appreciate

00:06:23 Kevin Mako: that you giving the priority of how somebody's eyeballs typically track through an Amazon ad

00:06:27 Kevin Mako: because I think for a hardware startup out there, like first of all, with a new proprietary

00:06:32 Kevin Mako: product, you should be working with their designers to create amazing hero shots or user case examples

00:06:37 Kevin Mako: or videos or pictures or whatever else of your product. If it's designed recently, which typically

00:06:41 Kevin Mako: a new consumer product is, that means it should be modern, sexy, sophisticated, but also, of course,

00:06:47 Kevin Mako: solving a major pain point or creating an opportunity for that end user. So reflect that

00:06:52 Kevin Mako: in your images. You only have a handful of images in a video in order to paint the picture and tell the

00:06:57 Kevin Mako: story. But the listing goes so much deeper than that. And I want to kind of break down the concept of,

00:07:03 Kevin Mako: I think everybody can understand putting a great picture is paramount. And that goes across platforms

00:07:08 Kevin Mako: as well. It's not just for Amazon. That's any way that you're trying to sell your product. The hero shot

00:07:12 Kevin Mako: is critical. And then how you tell the story on subsequent pictures or video is critical.

00:07:17 Kevin Mako: well. But let's assume we've done that right. Talk a bit more about how the Amazon algorithms

00:07:23 Kevin Mako: look at a listing via keywords. How does it index? How does it sort? How does it prioritize

00:07:28 Robb Green: based on those keywords? Yep. So now you're in the catalog, let's say you're the back of the

00:07:34 Robb Green: catalog. And now have you been indexed? What that means is, does Amazon find you relevant for that

00:07:40 Robb Green: keyword? So now, let's say you're on page 20. Let's start with something easy.

00:07:44 Kevin Mako: Now, for Amazon to move you up,

00:07:46 Robb Green: It's a relative game. And what do I mean by that? There are 20 pages worth of products that are ahead of

00:07:52 Robb Green: you for a, let's use an easy one. So cell phone case, right? And you're on page 20, which means you've got

00:07:58 Robb Green: probably 700, 800, 800 products ahead of you, right? So now Amazon, as the proprietor and the owner of this

00:08:06 Robb Green: digital space, they care about making money. So what we want to do is we want to give them the signals

00:08:11 Robb Green: that our iPhone case is better for them to put earlier in the search results. So what does

00:08:19 Robb Green: that mean? That means there's a couple key metrics that they're looking at. They're looking at

00:08:23 Robb Green: sell-through, which is conversion rate. And they're looking at click-through rate. The easiest way

00:08:27 Robb Green: to think about this is put yourself in Amazon's shoes. If Kevin's got a cell phone case and I have a

00:08:32 Robb Green: cell phone case and Kevin's gets a higher click-through rate and a higher conversion rate,

00:08:36 Robb Green: why would Amazon ever put me higher than Kevin? It wouldn't make any sense.

00:08:40 Robb Green: So what we need to do when I say launch is we need to drive traffic to our listing.

00:08:46 Kevin Mako: Now, again,

00:08:47 Robb Green: we hopefully have an optimal listing that is getting better click-through rate because of the better

00:08:50 Robb Green: image and better title than our competitors. And then we're driving traffic in which people

00:08:55 Robb Green: click and buy our product on a relative basis more than our competitors. What happens then is

00:09:02 Robb Green: Amazon's, they're not dumb. They know what to do. They're going to move you up the rankings, right? So how do we

00:09:09 Robb Green: do that. The easiest way to do it is Amazon ads on their own platform. That buys you visibility.

00:09:14 Robb Green: So you're paying a cost per click. You're bidding on specific keywords, which you've already

00:09:18 Robb Green: done the research for. And then that will allow you to get visibility. You'll get data. You'll get

00:09:23 Robb Green: clicks, which is effective your click-through-rate. And then what's going to happen is you get conversions.

00:09:28 Robb Green: That conversion rate and click-through-rate is relative to your competitors for that specific keyword.

00:09:33 Robb Green: And as you, the best way to think about it is buy product, buy keyword strategy. If you have

00:09:39 Robb Green: that type of granular strategy. That's how you can move up in the rankings. Very useful.

00:09:44 Kevin Mako: This really strikes a core too because there's an adage in product design that if you can make a product

00:09:51 Kevin Mako: 5% better than a competitor, you will start to erode them. If you make it 10% better, you will start to conquer

00:09:59 Kevin Mako: them. And if you make it 15% better, you create an empire, essentially. So if you look at this in terms

00:10:05 Kevin Mako: of what Amazon is doing, you just have to be slightly better than a competitor. Now, a lot of

00:10:11 Kevin Mako: hardware innovations out there are fairly unique. Maybe it's an entirely new solution to an existing

00:10:17 Kevin Mako: problem. But there's still competition in that space for keywords based on alternative products

00:10:23 Kevin Mako: that somebody might buy to solve the problem a different way or whatever else. Or it might be a direct

00:10:27 Kevin Mako: competitor. Either way, if you could just be slightly better than your competition, you will get the

00:10:33 Kevin Mako: edge on Amazon. And if you continue to improve that, you'll continue to grow that and get

00:10:37 Kevin Mako: higher and higher in the rankings against not only your direct competitors, but indirect

00:10:41 Kevin Mako: competitors are alternative products that Amazon might want to serve for those specific keywords.

00:10:46 Robb Green: Yeah. And the one benefit about this from a marketing perspective is these slight improvements or

00:10:51 Robb Green: relative advantages your competition, they stack. So let me talk to you about what I mean by that,

00:10:56 Robb Green: Kevin, real quick. If you think about it as a funnel, and what do I mean by that? You've got impressions,

00:11:00 Robb Green: So visibility, if I get more impressions than you do, and let's use you and I competing again,

00:11:06 Robb Green: then I'm slightly better and I get more eyeballs. Then I'm slightly better on clicks or click-through rate.

00:11:12 Robb Green: So now I've got more impressions, plus I've got a better click-through rate than you.

00:11:16 Robb Green: Then the next level of the funnel is what they call add to carts. People go to the product detail

00:11:21 Robb Green: page and then the number of people that add that product to their cart. And then the final piece of the funnel

00:11:25 Robb Green: is the actual conversion where they buy the product. So if I'm slightly better than you,

00:11:30 Robb Green: At each piece of that funnel, it compounds. And I'm selling far more units than you are,

00:11:36 Robb Green: which at the end of the day, that's what Amazon really wants, right? And now they actually

00:11:41 Robb Green: release some of this data in their brand analytics and their SQP data, search query performance data,

00:11:46 Robb Green: that allows you to see at each step of that funnel, how your ASIN is performing relative to the market.

00:11:52 Kevin Mako: That's amazing. You can actually start driving deeper into those details. How much of this can you

00:11:58 Kevin Mako: apply towards A-B testing or how does that work in terms of really improving all of those

00:12:04 Kevin Mako: layers of your listing, which is your advertisement, basically. And a little bit of the challenge,

00:12:09 Robb Green: there's all these opportunities. So it's not like there's a shortage of opportunities to improve.

00:12:13 Robb Green: It's like, where do I put my time and energy first, right? A real live example is just last weekend,

00:12:17 Robb Green: my sales and marketing manager, he just changed our listing to be more relevant for some other keywords.

00:12:23 Robb Green: And our sales, and we've been selling this product for a couple years, our sales jumped up significantly

00:12:28 Robb Green: from a Saturday to a Saturday. We went from two Saturdays ago. We sold 55 units.

00:12:34 Robb Green: This last Saturday, we sold 103. And this is a product. We've got it. We've had it around for a while.

00:12:38 Robb Green: It's got more than a thousand reviews. He went in and changed using chat GPT. We already had the keyword

00:12:43 Robb Green: research to redo the listing, which created more visibility. And we are constantly doing this, right? We're

00:12:49 Robb Green: constantly keeping up to speed on what's happening, what's changing with the keywords. So that's a great news.

00:12:54 Robb Green: The great news is there's tons of opportunities to improve and constantly improve where.

00:12:58 Robb Green: where you can go and what you want to focus on to make it better. How do you do some of that

00:13:02 Robb Green: keyword research to figure out what to try? There are an abundance of tools out there nowadays. So

00:13:09 Robb Green: nowadays, you've got all these third-party tools. I would say your best option is on Amazon. It's the

00:13:15 Robb Green: most reliable data. It's called Product Opportunity Explorer, P-O-E. And that is on Amazon inside

00:13:21 Robb Green: the growth tools. So if you have an Amazon seller central account, that's easy way to go. We know

00:13:26 Robb Green: it's directly from Amazon. Everybody else's data is interpretations of the data from Amazon, right? So

00:13:30 Robb Green: Helium 10 is a big one. Jungle Scout is a large one. And these are just third-party apps in which you can say

00:13:37 Robb Green: you can give the ASIN, which is an Amazon-specific identification number. You can take the ASIN from a

00:13:43 Robb Green: competitor, put it in there, reverse engineer it. It'll tell you all the keywords they rank for. That's a

00:13:49 Robb Green: great starting point to say, hey, Amazon already determines these keywords as relevant for this.

00:13:56 Robb Green: product. Well, that's a great starting point, right? We don't want to reinvent the wheel here.

00:14:00 Robb Green: We want to take what's already out there and do a better job of what already exists.

00:14:04 Kevin Mako: How much does the quality of the product matter on Amazon? I know it's a bit of a obvious question

00:14:10 Kevin Mako: here, but I like hearing it from you yourself, who's right in the weeds on the sales side.

00:14:15 Robb Green: The product matters a lot. I think of it in time, right? It matters a lot in the beginning

00:14:19 Robb Green: because you need those initial reviews to be good. And it matters a lot in the long term because

00:14:24 Robb Green: it also, you need the ratings to be.

00:14:26 Robb Green: be good, right? So the ratings, there's two factors here. We talk about reviews. There's the

00:14:29 Robb Green: quantity of reviews and ratings, which is just a number. And then there's another scoring mechanism

00:14:34 Robb Green: on a one to five rating system. And you can see a difference between a 4.7 and a 4.2. It's not a true

00:14:41 Robb Green: average. They have their own scoring mechanism. I think they have a recency bias in the way that they look at the

00:14:47 Robb Green: actual scoring from a star rating system. So if you look at that, you want a high quality product because

00:14:52 Robb Green: people will always look at that and say, hey, I want.

00:14:56 Robb Green: a high quality product that I can buy, that the reviews are high quality. I think that it's easier

00:15:01 Robb Green: nowadays. You've got a lot of third party sellers that do just, they just throw anything on there,

00:15:06 Robb Green: honestly. And I think that's good news for people that actually want to put the time and energy to make a

00:15:10 Robb Green: a high quality product. I think it's actually beneficial that some of these low quality sellers,

00:15:15 Robb Green: lower-quality products are on there because it's easier to differentiate your product

00:15:20 Robb Green: against a low-quality product.

00:15:22 Kevin Mako: Powerful stuff. Any other last tips, words of wisdom for

00:15:26 Kevin Mako: especially hardware startups as they're on their journey to being a big success on Amazon.

00:15:31 Robb Green: It's one of those things that can be very complicated. This is a simple but not easy system, right?

00:15:36 Robb Green: It's a marketplace. It sounds simple. We're going to list it. We're going to sell products. I would get

00:15:40 Robb Green: somebody either employ somebody as a contractor or an employee that stays on top of this because it does move

00:15:45 Robb Green: quickly. So find somebody that can help or assist you with this. I think this is one of those opportunities

00:15:51 Robb Green: where you will you will reap high ROI on getting somebody who's an expert at this.

00:15:56 Robb Green: this. Because it's such a fast moving. It's not like you learn it once and you never

00:16:00 Robb Green: have to change over the next two years. So my recommendation, anybody that's getting started

00:16:03 Robb Green: that doesn't have expertise on it is actually get somebody is or a contractor or be a part of a

00:16:09 Robb Green: group or something along those lines so you can actually leverage their knowledge to have a greater

00:16:13 Robb Green: chance of success. It gives you a higher probability success. Absolutely. Especially if you're

00:16:18 Kevin Mako: new to online selling. It could only help you to have some experts on board with you helping you through

00:16:22 Kevin Mako: those processes. Now, there's a lot you've talked about in this episode that

00:16:26 Kevin Mako: it just gives a powerful framework for somebody that's kicking this off for the first

00:16:29 Kevin Mako: time. But of course, there's lots into the weeds that everybody should be understanding on a

00:16:35 Kevin Mako: real-time basis. And it is changing. It adapts. It modifies. It moves. This is a real-time interactive

00:16:40 Kevin Mako: organic platform. So they're constantly trying to improve a variety of things on the Amazon platform

00:16:45 Kevin Mako: so that they are competing with other platforms like Walmart Marketplace, etc. So before I let

00:16:50 Kevin Mako: you go, Robb, I just wanted to talk a bit about on the one podcast that you're running. Tell everyone a bit

00:16:55 Kevin Mako: about what you're doing and where they can click to learn more about that. Yeah, thanks so much.

00:16:59 Robb Green: We just launched a podcast. I'm the one a couple months ago. And the concept really is we talk about health,

00:17:04 Robb Green: wealth, and relationships, right? So I think being an entrepreneur is the key in the recipe to an

00:17:09 Robb Green: extraordinary life. And so we just talk about my experience of becoming, going from corporate America to being

00:17:14 Robb Green: an entrepreneur and designing my life the way I want, talk about health and trying to say that optimal.

00:17:19 Robb Green: I want to win in each of those categories throughout my entire life. I want to be an A in every one of

00:17:24 Robb Green: those categories without having a deficiency. Too many people actually focus on one or two,

00:17:28 Robb Green: and they really fall down in the other two categories or one of those three categories. So that's what

00:17:33 Robb Green: we talk about. If I can be of any help to anybody on this, please reach out. LinkedIn. It's Robb Green,

00:17:38 Robb Green: R-O-B-B-Green, and then I'm the one podcast. Robb, thanks so much for all your words of wisdom today.

00:17:42 Kevin Mako: As always, I'll put those links in the show notes below for anyone that wants to click through. Thanks again,

00:17:47 Kevin Mako: Robb. Robb, appreciate having you on the show. Thanks, Kevin. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Take care.

00:17:54 Kevin Mako: of the Product Startup Podcast. If you found some value in the show, please do us a huge favor and hit

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00:18:05 Kevin Mako: feel free to reach out to us anytime at our email, podcast at MakoDesign.com. This show is hosted by

00:18:12 Kevin Mako: Kevin Mako, North America's leading expert on product development for hardware startups. And the podcast

00:18:17 Kevin Mako: is produced by Mako Design, the original firm providing end-to-end consumer product development services,

00:18:24 Kevin Mako: specifically to hardware startups, small manufacturers, and inventors. Take your product from

00:18:29 Kevin Mako: idea to store shelves at MakoDesign.com. That's M-A-K-O-Design.com. Thanks for joining and see you again soon.