#753 – The 6-Figure Amazon Launch Sprint

What does it take to bring a decades-old retail brand onto Amazon and turn it into a six-figure channel in its first year? In this episode, Bradley Sutton welcomes Spencer Gordon, an e-commerce operator who has built Amazon businesses from the ground up, including a premium beverage storefront and, most recently, the Amazon channel for Leanin Tree Greeting Cards.

Spencer shares how he went from working in his family’s logistics and beverage business to launching Amazon operations for a legacy greeting card company that had never sold on the marketplace before. Instead of randomly uploading products and hoping for the best, he started with proven retail winners, used Helium 10 to identify high-value keywords, and built his launch strategy around branded search, long-tail keyword opportunities, and strong catalog positioning.

The episode gets tactical with Spencer’s Amazon launch process, including how he uses test listings to check Amazon relevancy before launching a real SKU, why he relies on Amazon Vine for early reviews, and how he structures PPC campaigns for ranking momentum. He also breaks down his use of branded campaigns, product targeting, long-tail exact match keywords, fixed bids, and bid rules that raise or lower bids based on sponsored and organic rank.

Bradley and Spencer also dive into listing optimization, especially why the main image can be the difference between winning and losing the click. Spencer shares how AI tools help his team generate image concepts, while Bradley recommends pre-launch audience testing to avoid wasting traffic on weaker creative. The big takeaway? You do not need to be a brand-new startup to win on Amazon. Whether you are launching from scratch or bringing a legacy brand into the modern marketplace, growth comes from testing, learning, adjusting, and taking action before the opportunity passes you by.

In episode 753 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Spencer discuss:

• 00:00 – Introduction To Spencer’s Amazon Story
• 03:00 – Learning Business From The Ground Up
• 05:03 – Launching His First Amazon Store
• 09:18 – Moving Into A New E-Commerce Role
• 11:21 – Inside Leanin’ Tree Greeting Cards
• 13:34 – Starting Amazon From Scratch
• 15:59 – Hitting Six Figures In Year One
• 16:41 – Choosing Products And Keywords
• 22:03 – New Product Launch Strategy
• 23:05 – Testing Amazon Keyword Relevancy
• 27:37 – Long-Tail PPC Ranking Campaigns
• 37:06 – Main Image Optimization Strategy

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we talked to a seller who’s grown multiple brands from zero to six figures in their first year and we’re going to talk about his keyword research and launch strategies as well as how he can automatically adjust his PPC bids based on keyword rank. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host Bradley Sutton and this is the show that’s a completely BS free organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world and we’ve got a longtime listener first-time caller first time on her podcast here Spencer. Welcome to the show. How’s it going?

Spencer:

Great. Thank you for having me. 

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. Now something you were telling me offline is that you’ve actually been listening to this podcast for a while. How long you’ve been listening to the podcast?

Spencer:

Actually, I signed up for the tool in 2020 at the end of 2023 and I actually haven’t missed an episode since I am loyal very loyal listener. Every day I go to the office twice a week and it’s about a 45-minute drive and I listen to the podcast on my way and I pull out of my driveway and I press play and I love it.

Bradley Sutton:

Any favorite guests over time or ones that really inspired you or had a random strategy that really made a difference or anything that sticks out in your head.

Spencer:

I love the Bali Blast launch strategies. Those are always fun to listen to and great information in there. But yeah, there’s always gems in these episodes. So you can’t miss one. You got it. You got to listen to them all.

Bradley Sutton:

Where are you located?

Spencer:

I’m located in Superior, Colorado 

Bradley Sutton:

Colorado, what was I like near Denver? I mean anybody knows Denver, but they don’t know anything else about Colorado than that. 

Spencer:

Yeah, it’s about 15 minutes from Boulder 25 minutes from Denver. So kind of in the middle.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Let me tell you I’m sure you’ve flown in and out of Denver many times. Whenever I go there it’s like the worst turbulence in any American city. I think I’ve ever had is that like just bad luck on my part or or is that like a common common thing?

Spencer:

No, it’s definitely a common thing. We have a lot of wind here. So that definitely affects the flights that come in and out of Denver.

Bradley Sutton:

Your crazy Amazon sales in the location just causing all kinds of environmental issues I guess over there. Yeah All right, and is that where you were born and raised?

Spencer:

No, I was born and raised in Long Island, New York and moved out to Colorado in 2022 with my wife and my son and haven’t looked back since we love it here. 

Bradley Sutton:

Nice. Yeah, definitely a different vibe than New York. Where did you go to college at?

Spencer:

I went to the University at Albany. It’s a New York State School.

Bradley Sutton:

Never heard of that one. What’s the mascot there? 

Spencer:

The mascot is the Great Dane.

Bradley Sutton:

The Great Dane, Albany. Great Dane. Okay. All right. I learned a new one today. Well, what did you study? 

Spencer:

I studied marketing and business. 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, so like along the lines of e-commerce a little bit in that direction. Did you get into that at all after graduation?

Spencer:

So after graduation I joined my family business, which is a it’s called Mitchell’s NY started in 1946 by my grandfather. It’s a newspaper magazine delivery company and the logistics company and also has a division that sells beverages to consumers online. And on Amazon and I started that store back in 2017. And I worked at night. I worked nights before then since when I got out of college in 2008 and I learned all the operations from delivering newspapers and magazines to you know handing out paychecks and dealing with the carriers on a day-to-day basis. And getting to know them and going over complaints from customers and you know working from the bottom up at that business. And then in 2016, I decided I needed a little bit of a change. So I decided our beverage website. The beverage universe.com needed a replatforming because it was on a platform that was no longer going to be supported.

Spencer:

And so I learned a ton about e-commerce and tried my best and I put out an RFP and met with about 20 different companies and picked one to rebuild our website on a new platform. And at that point in time my uncle who is also involved in the business. He asked me if I thought selling on Amazon might be a good idea and I was like, yeah, I think so let’s try it. So I just got my feet wet and started selling on Amazon. I opened up our storefront and it was a third-party seller for competing with other sellers on all different types of beverages and I started selling there and grew that business to about two million dollars in revenue annually until per year.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, so before you started that there was no Amazon like operations for them.

Spencer:

No Amazon operations. I created it from scratch. Became a merchant fulfilled prime seller so we were shipping two-day shipping throughout the country.

Bradley Sutton:

What kind of beverages is this?

Spencer:

So we sell all different types of beverages, but our niche is premium waters. So fancy waters from all over the world that you know people rich people drink. 

Bradley Sutton:

Are you still operating that or are you doing? 

Spencer:

Yeah, it’s still an operation. I’m no longer with the company. Okay I still have a stake in the company.

Bradley Sutton:

Did you ever like, you know, keep up with it and just see if it’s going up or down 

Spencer:

Oh, yeah I watch the sales I get emails every day. The revenue from each day and I track it on a regular basis.

Bradley Sutton:

Have they been able to maintain your trajectories since you left or?

Spencer:

Yeah. Good place and I was able to, you know, confidently get them to be confident about how to sell on Amazon and online.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, and so by that point was that kind of like your full-time? Are you were you full-time e-commerce then or were you still doing other things on the side?

Spencer:

Yeah, I was full-time e-commerce running the website as well as the Amazon store starting in 2016. 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, and then did you go to start this company that you’re currently working on or was there? There’s some things some gigs you had in between. 

Spencer:

No, so I was looking being at a family company is not always the easiest thing. So I decided it was time for a change with Covid. It was living in a one-bedroom apartment in Long Island City, Queens was with a with a 11 month old was not the easiest of times. We were in and out from living with during that time while daycares were closed moving in with my in-laws in New Jersey.

Bradley Sutton:

How far from Queensborough Plaza station?

Spencer:

We’re not far at all. And I miss for it was about two minutes from there.

Bradley Sutton:

Alright, I lived in Brooklyn Heights for a few years 20-30 years ago almost and I would always go to Long Island City and I would get off on the 7 train Queensborough Plaza. I get some pizza at one of the stands like right there on that street and so like very familiar with the area and then I just went to Long Island City. Maybe two or three months ago and there was somebody else on the podcast. I was recording and I drove there in an uber from actually I went from Brooklyn Heights I had gone to my favorite pizza place in Brooklyn Heights got in an uber and I was on my phone the whole time because that’s how I always am and then I got out and I thought I was in the wrong place. I was like this cannot be Long Island City I hadn’t been there like maybe 10-15 years like all these new developments and it was like nothing like, you know I remember I had friends living in the Queensbridge bridge projects, you know, we’re Ron Artest and NASA, you know grew up it and I was like, this is the Queen.This is the Long Island City. Remember but it was like I was like am I in lower Manhattan here like what’s going on.

Spencer:

It’s amazing the change that’s happening. Especially where Vernon Boulevard is. That’s where I used to live. It’s totally different than it used to be. It’s amazing.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Now nice, nice. All right, so then what brought you to your current company that you’re working at now?

Spencer:

Yeah, so we ended up my sister-in-law has lived in Boulder since 2010 and we used to come and visit every year. So we always my wife and I always talked about like how much we loved it here in Colorado and how we wanted to you know make a change eventually but we could never figure it out and then Covid hit and we were in the one bedroom moving in and out with our it with my wife’s parents and staying with them and we were like finally like we can’t do this anymore. We need to change. Let’s move out to Colorado. Let’s make this happen. So we did it. I stayed with my family company for a bit. They don’t. they’re kind of old school.

Spencer:

So I ended up they didn’t really love how I was working remotely 100% of the time I used to go into the office because it was super close to my apartment. So I decided to start looking for a job. I was very specific about what I wanted. I wanted an opportunity with a high upside where I could grow in the company because you know I want to continue my trajectory of becoming you know a very important person in the company. I want to help grow and I want to be a big part of it so that was one of my sticking points on finding a job. So I was kind of particular about it found Leanin Tree greeting cards, which has been around since 1949 and I Interviewed for them with them and I got the job and I was happy with with the CEO and talking with him and my boss who has since retired but it went very well and I was happy about how things looked with being with that company and I ended up signing with them.

Bradley Sutton:

I’m showing some of the Amazon storefront here. Tell us a little bit about this company like how long it’s been around and what you know. It’s pretty pretty self-explanatory. It seems like it’s a bunch of like greeting cards, but like what what’s the you know? Is there anything unique about it or talk a little bit about Leanin Tree?

Spencer:

Yeah. Leanin Tree is actually a very unique company. It’s a ESOP, which is employee owned now.

Bradley Sutton:

I’ve worked for a ESOP like 25 years ago, and I never heard one company about that, you know before so that’s pretty cool. 

Spencer:

So I love that fact that everyone’s an owner. Everyone’s got you know skin in the game. We’re all in this together. Everyone has that ownership mentality. So it really changes the dynamic of the company, which I absolutely love another unique part of our business. So we’re in about 20,000 stores nationwide. They’re mostly independent stores we are in like tractor supply and Ace Hardware you’ll find our cards.

Bradley Sutton:

Ace Hardware not a place that I would think would be big on greeting cards.

Spencer:

Yeah, it’s very interesting because great. It’s like these hardware stores are a big market for us. Grocery stores, obviously you’ve seen there. I’m sure cards there. Sure. I think like what? Wholesale feed dealers and stuff like that places you wouldn’t expect. Yeah. People go to these stores like contractors or something would go but they’ll bring their wife and their wife’s not a contractor. They have no interest. But their wife’s at the store looking at the car make sense. So that’s really where that ties in. So it’s interesting how that works out but another thing that’s interesting about the company is that all of our art on the cards all of our cards are made by independent artists so we commission artists to create the art for the cards and we pick we we have a whole product team that picks the art and picks the products.

Bradley Sutton:

Nice. Nice. Now when you came to the company like how long had this company existed and then were they had they never sold on Amazon before you if you can talk a little bit about that.

Spencer:

Yeah, the company was started in 1949 by the Trumbull family and..

Bradley Sutton:

Did you only work for companies started in the 40s that our family.. 

Spencer:

Yeah, and in 2022 they sold the company to the employees and yeah, it was that’s when the company… 

Bradley Sutton:

Never were on Amazon before you?

Spencer:

Never was on Amazon I started this store from scratch and I didn’t use Helium 10 until until I started with Leanin Tree. So I was not using any tools prior except for solar central prior to joining Leanin Tree. The funny thing about Helium 10 is the way I found out about it. So during my time interviewing for new positions. I was interviewing for a agency an Amazon agency because I knew I like I really like being on Amazon and selling on Amazon and I thought why not, you know find a job that’s selling on Amazon and I ended up applying for a job at an agency and we got our they asked me to put a presentation together and I and and they asked me if I’ve ever used Helium 10 and I told them no. I’ve never even heard of it but then I started looking into it and I was like started watching your videos and I was like wow, this tool is really cool and I think this would really help me grow and you know learn learn a ton about how to sell properly on Amazon and I ended up not getting that job, but it definitely was a pivotal moment in my job in my in my career where I was able to you know jump in and learn the tool and you know help grow my in my new my new role.

Bradley Sutton:

So this was you know, like launching a you know from scratch almost I mean sure. There’s probably I’m sure you saw in Helium 10 in the beginning. There was probably a I mean, I don’t know about a lot but you tell me but like search volume or something for the actual brand, you know because of people who saw it in Ace Hardware or whatever, but it was basically from scratch, we’re able to grow up pretty fit pretty fast.

Spencer:

Yeah, we grew pretty fast through to six figures in the first year and have it continued to grow since then.

Bradley Sutton:

Nice. Nice. All right. Talk about that first year about how you launched like did you just do a spray and pray method? Hey, let me get all of the SKUs on there. Did you have some kind of cadence you were doing like let me let me start with what the best sellers, you know from other platforms or offline are and just you know, do X number per month. Like how did you, you know growing to six figures in one year doesn’t just you know happen at the snap of a finger.  So what was your strategy there?

Spencer:

Yeah, so we have our I saw assortments of cards. So 20 cards per box that retail for 19.95 and we chose I chose the top 20 Sellers for the company for so our trade side where we sell to stores I had our product team compile a list of our top sellers and I started with those I did keyword research on greeting card boxes and greeting cards assortment box was one of the top keywords that I found in Helium 10 with about 10,000 searches a month and I was like, okay, that’s probably my primary keyword I need to go after and I added that’s my titles I added and then I found like longer tail keywords in Helium 10 that I was able to add to campaigns start ranking for for those and grow on those and we also people were searching for Leanin Tree because we’re known sure us so I did branding campaigns and there’s about probably a thousand searches a month on our just our branded name so there was a some low-hanging fruit there that I was able to take advantage of.

Bradley Sutton:

You started Amazon. Did you start any other marketplaces for them or like what kind of marketplaces do they sell on?

Spencer:

So we sell on our Shopify site which is our own website as well. And then last year I launched on Walmart.com and I use multi-channel fulfillment to fulfill those orders through from our FBA inventory. 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, did you just start that recently because Walmart changed the rules. How is the profitability on that? You know, you don’t need to say the number but I’m just wondering like for a lot of people they find that the MCF is sometimes expensive. Are you still able to do it in a profitable way? I assume your profits probably not as much as just your raw orders on Amazon since the shipping is more but it’s still good enough for you to keep going and not want to switch to like fulfilled by Walmart. 

Spencer:

Yeah, I mean, we’re already investing in FBA. We already have a lot of inventory in AWD and it’s a big investment for a company to you know, throw more inventory at Walmart and Add to their fulfillment network also, so we’re starting slow Amazon’s doing well, so we’re gonna focus on that for now and you know, let those orders just roll and we’re not losing money on them for the Walmart orders. but we’re not making a ton. Yeah, it’s not it’s still you know still more on top.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, okay. Yeah, so anybody, you know, like maybe if you had one product SKU or two SKUs make sense to do. Hey, let me do fulfilled by TikTok. Let me do fulfilled by Walmart. Let me do, you know fulfilled by Amazon, but when you have you know, such a wide variety of products. It’s probably not great from a cash flow to like oh now I got a you know put a hundred units across, you know hundred SKUs or something, you know on all these platforms just keep it in one place. Okay now what is your process as far as deciding new products like is everything decided by you know, I don’t know corporate office or something that they’re looking at just the business overall or has there ever been a case where? You’re spotting some trend on Amazon and you’re like, hey, this is a niche that we’re not in, you know, can we look into this?

Spencer:

Yeah, there’s a product team at the company that comes out with new product every twice a year. Usually, sometimes three times a year. They come out with new product and I’m only selling the assortments at the moment on Amazon and They’ll come out with like two or three new ones, maybe four new ones each year. So I’ll just add those and find the best keywords and try to rank for them quickly.

Bradley Sutton:

So when you launch one of these new products, what is your launch process like do you I mean obviously no matter what you do when you have an established brand and like you said, you know thousand or thousands of people are searching for your brand. You launch anything and people eventually buy it but at the same time you still you know determine with Helium 10. What your main keywords are you you’re obviously just you want to start ranking for it. So what is your strategy as far as launch when we’re talking about, you know, getting to page one for your main keywords. Is it a hundred percent PPC? Are you sending outside traffic, you know to kind of like get some momentum up or social media or what’s your basic strategy there?

Spencer:

Yeah, so we’re not sitting any outside traffic. Where we have our own website that we’ll make a higher much higher margins on then using FBA and selling on Amazon. So we focus that we focus our sending traffic from to that website instead of Amazon. Although it could help with sales for sure. I definitely see that but we yeah, my launch strategy is to create a test listing just like you said and see where the relevancy is from what I created before I launch it. I always launch with the vine program once I then I launched it with a real SKU and real UPC and right off the bat. I was able to start ranking nice. 

Bradley Sutton:

What are some of the things that you’ve done to like quote-unquote fix the relevancy like where Amazon was obviously confused and you probably knew that. Oh, man I’m not probably not gonna get impressions on this because the Amazon recommended rank is low like did you change the structure of the listing? Did you like send a little traffic to the keyword or what did you do?

Spencer:

Yeah, I would send traffic to the keyword. I would add maybe that the keyword to my title. Make it even more relevant and then I’d have someone at my company do it like a search find by. 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. So again people this is not don’t you know, don’t get it twisted That’s not against Amazon terms of service If he’s trying to get 20 people to do search find by for a keyword and try and rank for that keyword that is against Amazon terms of service but to do like one or two just to get some relevancy signals that is not against what Amazon says so, okay. Oh music to my ears to finally hear somebody like to me this has always been one of the most overlooked features that you know all plans of Helium 10 even the Platinum, you know has access to this Amazon recommended rank. But I would say 99% of Helium 10 users are ignoring it good to see somebody taking advantage. All right. So you say you get it up there you do a launch. Do you do like 30 vines all the time?

Spencer:

Yeah, I do 30 vines to just get up there. You need to otherwise you’re so far behind your competitors and nobody wants to buy a product with no reviews. Have you tried that pre-launch vine thing?

Bradley Sutton:

Sometimes it’s been hit or miss for me to like get it to work like it always has errors. But have you tried that or do you just do vine once the product is live?

Spencer:

I do want to try that but I have only done it with once the products launched.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so you got vine running and then we’re talking about for initial traction 100% advertising?

Spencer:

Advertising. Yes so I’ll obviously put the branded keywords and my branded product targeting with all my other products to try to you know, do some brand protection there defense ads and on the listings once they get there.

Bradley Sutton:

Let me ask you about that really quick because I haven’t talked to many people about this when you’ve got a big catalog is yours. And you initially start targeting ASINs? Your other AsINs, first of all, are you doing just both the sponsored product ace in targeting or are you also doing sponsored display ace in targeting and any of the sponsored video ace in targeting or all of the above.

Spencer:

We’re doing the sponsored products targeting.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, and then you’re just choosing like a wide variety in your catalog and then like do you just know how much your other campaigns you are targeting so you’re not trying to like, you know drive up or you’re not you already know like what would it take and then do you just know? And you just start with a standard bid there or how do you decide what bid to put from day one?

Spencer:

I’ll put a lower bid usually to see where I land if it’s if I’m getting not getting impressions. I’ll raise the bid and until I start getting impressions, but they usually are coming through pretty soon. 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, and so now you’ve got vine working. You’ve got you’re targeting your own ASINs and you’re targeting branded keywords. Are you starting with any non branded exact match from day one? And if so, how do you decide what those are and what your bidding strategy is?

Spencer:

Yeah, so I’m gonna find five long-tail keywords that I’m showing relevancy to Amazon and the making sure that recommended rank is there is a recommended rank at least and it’s not blank in the Cerebro and I put my own ASIN in there and then. Yeah, I use those long-tail keywords. I usually try to find word counts that are five or more.

Bradley Sutton:

 Oh, wow, super long tail. I like it.

Spencer:

Yeah. Well, it’s you know, it’s a very competitive niche so the longer the what the longer the count of the of the word count is the better because there’s higher higher Probability I’m gonna be able to rank quicker on those yeah, and then I use fixed bids on my ads for those and I call them ranking campaigns to start and recently I’ve been using the new keyword tracker bid rule to help me see where I’m where I’m landing on the sponsored on the on the sponsored rank. 

Bradley Sutton:

What’s what’s your rule? Well, what do you do like you like you throw, you know the ones you’re trying to rank for the ones that you know you want to maintain your rank for. I assume you throw those keywords into that ads rule. But then what’s your like structure? Like are you saying? Hey if it’s the consecutive checks, or are you using the averaged keyword rank or using the median keyword rank and then what is the action you’re taking on what scenario?

Spencer:

Yeah, so I’m using the consecutive checks seven days and seven consecutive checks and if I am not in the top three positions for sponsored I am raising my bid by 10% every day and until I am there and then when my organic rank is in the top five. I have another criteria to lower my bid by 10% each day until to make sure I’m not. I don’t need to show up twice if I’m there.

Bradley Sutton:

And so then if you do drop below though. The other rule picks it back up and would raise it up. So you’re able to keep staying your sweet spot so I assume you’ve always done something like this before but it was just a manual process of going in and having to look at Keyword Tracker and then going back to ads to adjust your bid or or is this something you weren’t even doing because there wasn’t enough time.

Spencer:

No, I was doing that and that was my manual though and taking a long time to go back and forth and check every single time and makes it way way simpler.

Bradley Sutton:

Nice. Nice. Nice Just you know, since you’re talking about it anything you’d like us to add to that feature that’s one of the newest features Helium 10 has like something that would even make your life even more easier as far as PPC and keyword ranks.

Spencer:

Yeah. I mean there is something I would like to add. I don’t know if it’s possible. I think something that would be helpful for sellers to rank on specific keywords is and would be can we do a pricing discount based off keyword search? Can we gotta go 50% off for my hero keyword that I want to rank on top of the page? But I don’t want to spend. I don’t want to give that discount for someone that is searching my brand name. There’s no reason.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. That sounds like a request for Amazon because we can’t but that’s a pretty decent idea. You think that Amazon might be be open to that because they’re gonna get their commission, you know, they want momentum you know, that’s why Amazon does all the deals and offers all the discounts and prime deals and stuff like that, but that would make sense.You should let Amazon know I don’t know if Amazon has a feature request like Helium 10 does that’s a decent decent idea. I like it. Okay. What else on the launch like. Are you launched speaking of that? Like are you launching at full price? Are you launching with coupons discounts at all until you get momentum? What’s your strategy there?

Spencer:

Yeah, I’m launching at full price and then I’m about a month later. I’ll start pushing a discount in order to get that strikethrough. 

Bradley Sutton:

Nice, okay now. It sounds like you’re using Helium 10 Ads using Helium 10 Cerebro, which of those two or something else is your favorite?

Spencer:

Helium 10 tool like what’s your top like for Helium 10 tools that you and your team are using well Cerebro, obviously is. One of the most valuable tools you could you can use but I use that. Regularly I need to see where I’m right. Are any of my keywords ranking or my indexed super important for keyword research. Keyword Tracker is an absolute gem without that. You’re kind of running blind. You’re not seeing where you’re ranking I mean, how are you supposed to run ads when you have no idea where you’re right where you’re showing up on the page? So definitely a valuable tool that I check in with daily and I use boost in order to check those browsing scenarios seven times per day and then I do use Helium 10 ads and I run my bit I have bid rules that Bradley helped me create in the past in our.

Bradley Sutton:

How in the world I what how come Bradley’s doing one guy Spencer is an Elite member. He gets to have one-on-one calls with me. So that’s what we’ve been working on.

Spencer:

And then I’ve been using Listing Builder since before the new update. Yeah, and super helpful definitely easier now with all that keyword research basically in one place and you don’t have to jump around. And check Search Query Performance and you don’t have to check your you know, anything. It’s all pulling in that data, which you guys have done terrific.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you use the AI or do you like to write your own listings. 

Spencer:

I use the AI then just tweak it a little bit or something. Yeah, we get it’s not you know, I’m not a content writer. So I’ll use the AI I’ll use that and it will definitely. 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, okay. Sometimes it’s hard. I mean like maybe with ads you can say hey we were able to lower a cost 5% or X amount of dollars or something but a lot of the tools in the intent a lot of this stuff is kind of like hard to measure the effects I like alright you find a keyword but you know, would you’re all you know would your auto campaign have found it six months later on its own like how much money did we make you? If you can put like a dollar value or something like on what you think Helium 10. Using helium 10 tools has made you or the hours weekly that you saved. Could you give any rough estimates?

Spencer:

Yeah, I mean definitely a savings in time like I don’t know if I could put a dollar about value on it right now, but definitely time savers especially going into Helium 10 ads and being able to adjust bid so quickly and see you like. What like even by filtering just by my bid or by my ACOS and being able to lower bids on hype, you know high spending targets that recommendation tab that we have now also is very helpful to you know. It’s telling you now that you have unharvested keywords that need to be harvested. And you could go through those so easily now if there was one thing I would want to add to it. I would like to know in the suggestions tab, how many like what campaigns the Keywords actually in so I yeah, I could I could you know decipher whether it needs to be added right off the bat or not because I have other guys it recommends campaigns, but those campaigns are the ones that I don’t want it in most of the time. So like a branded campaign, I wouldn’t want a you know, all occasion cards keyword to be in but it’s recommending that which makes sense. But I’d like to just see in that one of the fields like these are the campaigns that it’s live in right now 

Bradley Sutton:

In the suggestions tab or the analytics?

Spencer:

Yeah, I’m like  in the new keywords tab when I’m looking at the keywords to see what harvested.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, well one thing there is something new like let’s say you might not have known this but in Helium 10 ads. If you have like, you know, like obviously you have many different types of campaigns for one product You know, like you got your maybe your broad campaign your ace in targeting your video campaign, etc. If you all have it in that one keyword harvesting group, there’s a button at the very bottom that says I forgot what it says. This is like turn on. It’s not keyword isolation, but there’s a word it’s at the very bottom and basically what that noise is is like it’ll make sure that hey if it’s suggesting to do something it’s not going to tell you to duplicate it, you know, like you just won’t get that suggestion. So that’s something that you could use potentially.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, let’s switch gears. Maybe a non Helium 10 tactic, something unique that you’re doing like something that you do for prime day, something that you do for discounts, something that you do for just advertising in general or how you make your listing or your a-plus content. Like is there any kind of a unique strategy, you know, not everybody will say oh, yeah, I try and lower my ACOS but you know I don’t want to hear something like that. But like something that makes you and your team unique you think. 

Spencer:

Yeah, definitely. I started using listing optimization dot AI. 

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, that’s one we’ve had them on the podcast before come all the aims not one step people. 

Spencer:

Yeah one step and I saw an interesting post on LinkedIn the other day that said that Amazon is a knife fight. It’s like showing up to a knife fight and your only weapon is your main image So now your a-plus content now your secondary images now your bullet points not your title Your main image because when someone searches that keyword and they see your product and they see your competitors product your only advantage right there is to win that click and yeah. The the tool listing optimization AI I am also not super creative and I am not able to imagine what the image should look like in my head and generating the concepts for these images, main images and all the other images, but the main image is so important that. It has helped my click-through rate improve. By optimizing and running AB tests and manage my experiments and I think that is so important and it’s crucial for success.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Okay, do you ever do like PickFu slash you know Helium 10 Audience for the split testing before you launch or you only strictly use the free AB testing on Amazon managed experiments.

Spencer:

I’ve only used the AB testing on managed experiments. 

Bradley Sutton:

I would say that going forward especially since now you’re using listening optimization. I would highly recommend for your next launches is I’m assuming what you mean is you make like three four or five variations or something of your main image and see which one works. The best but if you’re running it on a live listing, which is good. You should do that after a year but by definition. You’re not optimized, you know 30% of the time or 66% of the time that you’re running this experiment. You know by the very nature of what you’re doing and so what I always suggest is hey go into Helium 10 Audience before you launch your product. Run, you know to your target market say hey if you’re you know, searching for a blankety blank keyword, which image makes you want to click on it the most and then from day one at least you are gonna have the most optimized and then like later a year from now now you do the manager experiments because because it’s like, you know you figure it’s probably still good that what you had picked, but you never know. So that would be something you can think about for your future there.

Spencer:

Yeah, that’s a great idea. I’ll definitely look into that.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Well, you know it’s been great having you on the podcast and and learning about your story and also doing these one-on-one calls by the way guys if you’re wondering how to get one-on-one calls with me and and carry and and get on these, you know on networking calls it’s if you’ve got the Diamond plan. It’s only like $99 to add the Elite. So h10.me/elite you guys can look into that book some one-on-one calls with me. Cop on our networking calls and there’s monthly trainings. I hope you sit on the monthly Leo Segovio training sometimes or watch the replays. Spencer?

Spencer:

Yeah, you know, of course. 

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Good. I love it. I love it. So you get tons of great exclusive information So, I look for you know, what’s your goals for the future? You know, what like are you like? Hey, I just want to keep growing this brand. I want to expand to TikTok or other platforms. Well, what’s on the roadmap for you guys?

Spencer:

Yeah, I’d love to expand the TikTok. We’re working through that and internally now and grow our Amazon channel to, you know, keep doubling sales every year and using Helium 10 to help us.

Bradley Sutton:

Love it. All right. Well Spencer best of success I wish to you and let’s bring you back on the podcast next year and hopefully be able to recap how your TikTok launch went.

Spencer:

Thank You, Bradley!

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• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
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