The first guest with so many insights we had to give him two episodes to discuss it all! We are psyched to have Andrew Morgans, the founder of Marknology, join us for an all-out discussion about Amazon selling. Andrew is a seasoned pro in e-commerce, with years of experience building and supporting brands on Amazon. At Marknology, Andrew and his team specialize in comprehensive brand management services, from product launches to marketing strategies. In this episode, Andrew offers some spectacular ideas and practical advice for any brand looking to thrive on Amazon. Read the full transcript below and subscribe to the podcast to catch the next episode with Andrew (we get into both the science and art of content).
Episode 20 of The Seller’s Edge, Andrew and Jonathan talk about:
- 00:00 Intro
- 01:38 Common Mistakes by New Brands on Amazon
- 02:01 Realistic Expectations and Amazon FBA’s Complexity
- 03:08 Other Platforms Do Not Translate to Amazon
- 03:46 Resource and Expertise Demands
- 09:07 Planning for a Successful Launch
- 09:56 Anticipating the Need for Good Content
- 10:37 Be Ready and Give Yourself Lead Time
- 11:18 Off-Amazon Assets are Essential
- 15:08 Causes of FBA Launch Failures
- 24:32 Finding the Right Support
- 36:49 Unconventional Marketing Tactics
- 41:17 We Need Like Creative Advertisers
- 42:16 Value of Originality
- 43:09 Explore Uncommon Channels and Opportunities
- 44:17 Recap and Outro
Key Takeaways:
- Set Realistic Expectations: Launching on Amazon is complicated. Understand that it requires careful planning, lead time for implementation, and diverse resources.
- Have a Strong Team: Selling on Amazon is a uniquely demanding process. Make sure you have the right manpower and expertise to handle it.
- Customize Your Approach: Every product and market is distinct. Tailor your launch strategy to the specific needs and context of yours.
- Leverage Off-Amazon Assets: Many successful brands supplement their AMZ strategies with efforts on social media and other external platforms.
- Avoid Copycat Strategies: Doing the same thing that competitors are doing will keep the lights on. It is important to be aware of their strategies but try new approaches.
- Leverage Innovative Tactics: Use creative strategies like the in-person plays with QR codes or running ads on unique platforms to enhance your brand’s visibility and engagement.
Full Transcript of Episode:
JONATHAN: New brands when they just start out, what are the most common mistakes that you’re seeing people make and how can they kind of mitigate them and avoid them?
ANDREW MORGANS: Well, I think a lot of what I like to share with new brands, if we’re talking about brands launching on Amazon, they could be established brands in retail or direct to consumer, just not on Amazon. So I don’t want to leave anybody out, but let’s just say that it’s a young brand. I think they just underestimate the lift that is Amazon. I think they, they kind of come in with, I think expectations are everything and everything that you do. You know, if you’re going to watch a b rated movie, if you’re expecting a b rated movie, you have a great time and you think that your $20 is worth it or whatever, right? If you’re expecting an a and you get a b, you’re frustrated with it, even if it was a good movie, you know. So I think the same thing with Amazon and how you approach it and your expectations and how you feel about Amazon for a long time afterwards really comes around your launch and being prepared for that. I would say one of the biggest pitfalls is them just not having the right expectations for what Amazon is feeling that their content person or their guy or girl is handling, you know, their e-commerce for them in general, can just take on everything that is Amazon by themselves. The biggest companies in the world, some of them have, you know, four or five person teams that are just, there’s not enough. So one is to just have expectations around what the lift is and like, you know, really having a good grasp around what you need to do to be prepared or who you need on your team or what your staff needs to do. So that’s a mindset one, I think just kind of like, or an information gathering one. The other one would be thinking that what they’ve been doing on the other platforms, other marketplaces, website, retail, whatever, is going to translate directly to Amazon. And while it might get you 60, 70% of the way there, if you’re doing well on your website or something like that, there’s still this nuance that is Amazon marketplace. There is this education right there from the get go. There is this like science behind cross selling and how to set yourself up for success and inventory planning and just, there’s a nuance to Amazon that isn’t the same on Walmart or chewy or your website or anything like that. So I think it’s expectations, okay. I think it’s expertise around the nuance that is Amazon. And then I think it’s simply manpower. A lot of them lack the manpower coming into the launch mixed with the expertise to really just be successful. And I’m not trying to be vague, but I like to be as tactical as I can for people on podcasts. But for me, those are the things that really, like, are misstated or underestimated or, you know, very rarely do I see a brand just come in for a new launch that’s just, like, knows exactly what they’re getting into for sure.
JONATHAN: I love the B movie analogy. And it’s. It’s a scenario that I run into again and again because as soon as I mention to people what I do, they’ll have a product idea or they’ll have some sort of business, and they’ll be like, oh, like, I want to get on Amazon. And they’ll think it’s as easy as just uploading a photo, putting it on there, and then they don’t have to worry about anything. It’s all automated. And I’m like, no, that is absolutely not it. I grew up in a bakery, a family owned bakery. And my mother would always say it was like having a baby that never sleeps. And I was just like, yeah, this is. That’s more like what it’s like. It’s like having twins or triplets that don’t sleep.
ANDREW MORGANS: I couldn’t agree more. And right now, we also manage TikTok brands. We have a couple. I’m building my own brands. Like, I’ve got eight or nine of my own in addition to the agency. Stable brand, so to speak. And I’ve been having a warehouse for the last three or four years. Okay. Since 2020. So we’re on four, almost five now. And moving into TikTok as we’re trying to build our own brands for launches. I like to. I like to be able to do an off Amazon effort with my launch. Okay, setting ourselves up for a question, probably later, but so really been pushing into TikTok the last two years and absolutely crushing it. The last. Since about the 14 August, we’ve gone viral and stayed viral, you know. So for context, like, in my warehouse, we might do anywhere from 50 to 100 orders at pick pack ship a day. So a smaller operation that’s on website or for Walmart fulfillment or some FBM, but, like, you know, generally pallet in, pallet out, prepping for Amazon FBA, you’re just. We’re just not picking that many off the floor every day while we’re doing upwards of 800 to 1000 orders a day since the 14th of. So we’ve almost ten x. Like we had a good launch basically, you know, we basically ten x what we normally do in the warehouse. So we’re just in there like it’s, I’m like literally like getting my text from my sister like hit a new record day and it’s like 11:00 p.m. or 01:00 a.m. and I’m just like, it does not stop. Like people don’t stop buying. So I’m living it like in the best way, but kind of like we’re all in the warehouse after hours lately. So it’s been kind of fun the last couple of weeks, kind of a little crazy.
JONATHAN: I mean, I feel like it’s one of those things that we were talking about before where you’re going to like miss the good old days where you were like getting your hands dirty and it’s like at some point you’re going to need more manpower and you’re like, I enjoyed being in the warehouse.
ANDREW MORGANS: I do, Jonathan. Like I, I like was in there. I used to work at ups like 330 to 830 shift, you know, before the restaurant, before my, before school. And I was in a band touring too. So I had this crazy schedule ups I have like worked a us toy company which is a medium sized toy retailer for two and a half years I was blowing up Amazon. This was 2013, blowing up their Amazon. They had four brands, eight retail stores and boom, we were all going down to the warehouse and packing orders around Christmas and that was a lot of fun. My very first startup we were crushing where you entered tracking numbers manually at the end, you know, you’re drop shipping like tonneau covers and car parts, but also shipping off these trailer parts. I was my very first like e-commerce business, packing order, shipping them. I haven’t done that, I think in like I don’t know, ten years. You know, I think it’s been like ten years or so since us toy where I was really down there in the warehouse and it’s been a fun attiring, but a fun the last two weeks just getting my hands dirty, just pushing pilots around, assembly line in the team, you know, because we have everybody just cutting out of here a little like an hour early to go help the warehouse team and kind of crush it for an hour over there too. It’s been fun getting my hands dirty. It really has been.
JONATHAN: Yeah, that’s awesome. That speaks a lot to your work ethic, which I really like. Yeah, I mean, I mean it’s just anybody who likes getting their hands dirty is, I feel, like, more trustworthy than the people are. Like, I’ll let somebody else do it.
ANDREW MORGANS: Oh, it’s just the brain break that you get. Like, it’s not saying I’m not thinking. We’re not thinking in there because I really am trying to help the team, like, systemize, optimize all that stuff. But it’s a newer side of our business, the warehouse, so we’re still learning there’s something just getting in a rhythm. Like, we get the music going, and we’re just like, got the, you know, we’re getting in a rhythm on an assembly line trying to pack these different sizes of orders. There’s so much thinking in ecomm and Amazon and thought leadership around this space, and what am I doing in my agency and really working on the agency that it’s like, man, you can work out a lot of stuff just rolling up your sleeves and working through something simple and just like, boom, all of a sudden, light bulb on that thing you’re working on, you know? But I try not to just do work to stay busy, you know? So it’s like, look, I should be working on other things. This is, like, taking our priorities. So it’s like, forcing me in there. It’s just been fun. Plus, we’re in the caves. Missouri has a lot of caves, and our warehouse is in the caves. So that’s kind of fun. It’s just like, a little bit different environment down there. You can’t tell what the weather is, like outside, say, 70 degrees, you know, all day long, all year long. You know, it’s just kind of a little fun.
JONATHAN: You just intrigued me in, like, a hundred different ways. I’m like, I want to talk about warehouses. I wanted to talk about TikTok. Now I want to talk about Kansas City. I mean, the launch that’s gone well on TikTok. I’m curious, just in general, is there a specific scenario that you think of when you think of, like, a really successful launch that you did and what were the major contributors to that?
ANDREW MORGANS: Well, let’s go back to Amazon. This was, this is TikTok Shop, guys. Like, you know, and we just, we’ve been creating content and posting, using influencers, running ads. But, you know, I still have my 15 years experience as Amazon, so I’m going to bring that to the table if I can, and just know that we’re learning on TikTok Shop. On the Amazon side, a team that has thought about from the beginning, a year, a year out, like what? What if success? What if we are very successful? What does that look like? A successful team has thought of that and they’ve planned for that and they understand invest costs into launching a product from scratch or getting customers from scratch versus just capturing existing customers. Huge difference. Teams that know that and have their math built for that are teams that are ready for the game. Teams that have thought about their content coming in to the Amazon launch. So they’re not launching with just, you know, white background photos and six different angles of the product. Maybe, you know, like they’ve got, even on a D2C site, you know, they’re launching with, with lifestyle images, graphics that sell. Maybe they’ve used PickFu or ProductPinion to a b test their top main images of their hero products. They’ve just come in ready. They’ve got a storefront ready to go. We have a go to launch plan. You know, we’re getting launched in buying reviews and, you know, they’re thinking about content. They’re thinking about what happens if we’re successful. They’re thinking about how many products are we launching with? You know, what’s our strategy around getting reviews early? They’re doing all this prep and they’re not behind. That’s something else that the best launches are. The best launches are not behind, meaning we’re nothing. Waiting to, let’s say, engage with an agency till January knowing we’re launching in February. They’ve launched in November, October, let’s say, and just slowly cruising to February. I’m thinking of that because I have a brand in mind that like, you know, we’re really going heavy in February, but we have a couple of products and could be launching now. And just like that time you can get to be ready for a real launch versus just like we’re behind. We’re trying to catch up. We’ve hired you because our team can’t do it. Jump in and like, you know, no. So planning stuff out really being planned and coordinated across your teams. And then the last part, I think is on top of having a good product and ready for Amazon, if you have some degree, some level of assets off of Amazon that you can use to flame the fire, so to speak, on Amazon, I think that is like the most successful launches I’ve seen in the last five years probably are paired with a YouTube strategy, an Instagram strategy, a TikTok strategy, a rumble.com strategy, a press release strategy. They’ve got some level of assets or plan on off Amazon and we’re going to use that to supplement what we’re doing on Amazon with PPC and all the tactics we can use there.
JONATHAN: Yeah, that’s great. Are there specific sorts of ancillary content that you think are good for specific product categories or you think it could be mix and match with anything?
ANDREW MORGANS: You’re right. That’s a great question. Let’s say you have a product that isn’t really good for social media and you guys can use your imagination a little bit. There’s just, you can’t post every day on Instagram or Facebook and have real relevant content. Like, I mean, you can, but let’s just say generally you don’t. You built this Amazon brand, let’s say it’s doing 800,000 a year on Amazon and like, it’s not really made for a DC site. No one’s going to like the store just to buy this type of product. Like they’re buying it along with something else. That’s, those are the products that don’t do well off Amazon, I think. Well, for that one, I would say maybe like gift buying guide or like a press release like article. Getting featured in other people’s articles is a great way to use your energy, your time and effort off Amazon without building your whole own ecosystem. So that’s one I use. For mine, I have a product just like the one I described that for us, one of the best things we can do is it’s an eco-friendly product. So we’re trying to get in these gift guides or like meal prepping guides or like eco friendly sustainable stuff for your kitchen, and we do a strategy around press releases and getting in those guides. Another one would be if you have an invention type of product that people don’t know about, doesn’t have search demand yet on Amazon or not allow people know how to use it. Think about like the fidget spinner. You know, people might have been looking for like anxiety toy or like ADHD device or like, you know, I don’t know, something like that. But that’s so vague, right? We only started buying when we knew of the fidget spinner. Then we call it a fidget spinner. We made up a word or whatever, right? And then went for it. Those types of products, I wish I had known this 15 years ago, you know, with all the brands I worked with. But those are products where like Facebook or TikTok, where you can demonstrate the product and people, people looking at other things, just come across it and they’re like, oh, that looks like a fun toy or something. You can hit them with a video. I think those are great products, great mediums to then push to Amazon. If you’re trying to do an Amazon launch and you need some of that off Amazon ways of getting in front of people, the other ones could be, let’s say you’re selling, I hope this is okay, like, you’re selling adult toys. I’ve worked with a few brands in the past selling adult toys. A strategy I’ve seen recently is like, you can’t advertise on like, faith-based stuff or like religious stuff or adult toys or like, things like that. You just can’t advertise on them. And now, like, you know, a strategy I see a lot is like adult content meme sites on Instagram, they might have like a swipe left. You swipe once and then there’s like a second photo there that’s like advertising an adult toy or a product or something like that. So it’s like a joke, but naughty. Like kind of like a naughty joke. And I think that they feel like that’s their customer base follows those types of accounts, if that makes sense. And so while they can’t lead with that photo, they’ll have a ton of followers. Well, the brand is not running that account. The brand is paying that account to be an ambassador or an affiliate or an influencer for their product. So that’s a creative one I wanted to come up with of like a category you can’t advertise in, you need some kind of help strategy on the launch side. You can use like meme or adult content type of like funny joke sites that are linking out to your product on Amazon and buy some traffic that way.
JONATHAN: 100%. How about a time when a launch didn’t go according to plan and how did you kind of recover from that?
ANDREW MORGANS: Um, well, guys, like anyone listening, as much as I talk about, like, what to do and I’m being bossy about, what do you think about when you’re launching? I can tell you that I have failed more times than probably the last ten people on this show. 15 years in this space. I have had a lot of attempts. I’ve been going hard and have failed a lot. So some launches that didn’t go well, I, I would say for like the last, I don’t know. I want to say like six years. Any launch that didn’t go well, generally on the brand’s fault. Not saying that we don’t have fault at some level. But, like, you know, if I’ve been, if the team, the company turns eleven this year. We worked out a lot of the kinks of what not to do in the first four or five years of doing this, trying trial and error. And now we’re like, we know how to launch a brand. There’s a whole bunch of other things that can come up, but, like, we know how to launch a brand. And most of the things that come up now are either outside of our control or are some kind of issue with the brand. So let’s talk about it. Once we had one brand we launched, it was a manufacturer going direct. Couldn’t keep up with manufacturing, couldn’t keep product made fast enough to sell on. Amazon lost the client that way. He’s just like, I gotta pull back. Like, I can’t keep up with demand, and I can’t be paying an agency if I can’t keep product stock, you know? So I think somewhere they came out with the ten commandments of Amazon. My team came out with that, and it circled around the web a little bit. But, like, commandment one, two, and three are like, don’t run out of inventory. Right? So a lot of launches go wrong because either there’s too long of a lead time to get more product back in or they haven’t planned for success. Like, what happens if. Sure. Our website took this long to get up and going, I don’t care. This is Amazon. We might sell through a pallet in two days. If you get a new product in a niche that the keywords. Right. And I’ve seen that so many times through the years. We launched these antimicrobial sponges. One time when they first came out, we were like $14.99 for a four pack, and the next best thing was $9.99. So we’re like a third higher. And we just screamed product out, like 40% conversion rate, price higher than everyone else, good profit margin. We just sold through pallet after pallet after pallet. So some of it is like, a lot of launches go bad. I’ll try to shorten up. A lot of launches go bad for inventory and inventory planning and not being really, my therapist would say, what if everything goes right, Andrew? You know, have you thought about that? What if everything goes right? And most times I don’t. I just think about all the things that can go wrong instead of planning for what happens if things go right. And I think a lot of our launches that don’t go well are based on inventory planning. Some of it can be resource. Like I said earlier, with what goes right. The same things are with what goes wrong. So poor resource planning or management internally, they think they’ll have enough time, but they don’t. Or they think, you know, someone on their team will have enough time or they haven’t. Set aside intentional effort for Amazon. They just want to like push an easy button and have a, have an agency help or something like that. Other ones can be people don’t like the product. It doesn’t review well. And I think one of the, I’m gonna just leave it on this one because there’s so many I can go with here. I think one of the worst ones is. Worst ones are like ones I just can’t help is pricing when the pricing is not right on a product, regardless of quality, regardless of preparation ahead of time. As an agency, we only have so much control, right, and suggesting things, trying different things. There’s so many products that if we had gone from 29.99 to 21.99, like that price difference really, really, really mattered and we were screaming out product at $21.99 even if we weren’t profitable. And at $29.99 we could barely move units. And it’s just they’re coming in with cost of goods too high, or they haven’t, you know, they haven’t figured out how to really sell that difference in $8 or we haven’t figured out on our end, too. We can try and try and try, but, like, pricing can be such a huge factor when it comes to a launch and making sure your pricing is right and having flexibility, ability to move your price around to the point of like, yeah, we would like to be at these margins, but this is the margin that we actually sell at. Let’s sell here, get going, get momentum, and then go figure out how to get our costs lower or figure out how to make up that difference in four or $5 that we need to make. So I know that was a lot I threw at you, but when you asked me, some launches have gone bad, just like, I just had a thousand things hit my brain.
JONATHAN: No, I appreciate all of that, especially the part of you sharing that you’ve had many failures. I try to pride myself on only having people on the show who have failed and learned wisely from their failures because people who have just come out of the gate and succeeded without any sort of friction or obstacle, I’m like, I can’t trust you. And I don’t. I feel like, I only, I feel like the best people are the ones who have gone through the failures and learned from them. Like, I just can’t relate to people who have had just unprecedented success.
ANDREW MORGANS: The Amazon space is actually quite full of kind of that Cinderella story that like, you know, just first time doing it, boom, you know, million dollar brand or eight figure brand or something like that. And, and as an agency, I hate working with those, those teams, usually husband wife teams are my favorite to work with. They’re just the best. I think they balance each other. Instead of one owner, there’s two. And they kind of got voice of reason in there. I don’t know. I just like husband wife teams. But the worst teams to work with are generally the ones that have, like, had a lot of success and they’re either, like looking for help to take over or looking to launch their second one. It’s like the person that’s never hit a big low in their life, you know, because the biggest growth in a human a lot of times happens after a low, you know, the loss of a loved one or a relationship or something like that. That just like, you know, really sends you perspective on life. I think same thing in business and relationships, too. One is just like the relationship of this was so easy when I did it. Like, oh, my God, like, I can’t, they don’t value your worth as another expert or an agency owner because they’re like, I did it and it was so easy. The other one is just the perspective of, like, appreciating a team, appreciating, you know, what it, what this space is and the category, I think working on a ton of different categories and even failing on those categories, for me to be honest, not just the wins really opens up your mindset, too about like, it gives you positives and cons. Like, you know, sometimes other categories are, like, so easy to launch in or were at one point that you’re just like, oh, wow, Amazon. I got faith in Amazon again, you know, if you’ve been butting your head against supplements or something. But anyway, just like those sellers that have really tasted a lot of success, you know, maybe they got out of the game for a little bit and they’re trying to reboot their brand or whatever the case is, those are the hardest because they just haven’t taken those gut punches and then push through it or gone through those lows of Amazon and came back on the other side or whatever it is. Those are the ones that I, that’s why I love our space and meeting, you know, we’re talking about it just being like, close knit and community minded and get missing a little bit of the olden days. But, like, most of us have all those same struggles around Amazon. And that was something that for the longest time, I didn’t have anyone I could actually relate to early on in this space. And then, you know, starting to meet people that been through those same lows, those same failures on Amazon and that were still kicking it, still going with it. We’re like, oh, my God, I found my people. Jeff, no, yeah, you’re right. You’re right. I guess I’m going to flip the mic back to you. You’ve been in this space a bit around a lot of companies that do what we do. What would you say are a couple launches that went bad and why? What are some that come to mind when you ask me that question?
JONATHAN: I mean, a lot of them are the same things that you’ve pointed out, which is usually inventory constraints. There was one that, I don’t know if it was pricing or promotion, but there was somebody who, over the course of like a week, I feel like, had their entire inventory depleted because of, like, a bad price that just went live on Amazon and they couldn’t change it. Or if it was. If it was a promotion of some kind, I mean, it put them in the hole, like, immediately. So that something like that is something that comes to mind.
ANDREW MORGANS: We used to do that with viral launch, remember? Like there was like some stupid little radio buttons or like some nuance in a setup. And if you were trying to scale your team or had someone new trying to help and set up a promotion, you could make it where customers could get too many products at a discount because that’s what we were doing, was essentially giving out samples and trying to get reviews and things like that. Right. Which has existed in retail since the beginning of time. We were just doing it early in Amazon, early in e comm. And, yeah, I actually had my sister. My sister and I, we’ll share it, we’ll share it. But it was early on, we were trying one of our first products, and we were discounting some of them, getting them going, and someone figured out that they could get unlimited quantity. I think they made two purchases of like 100 or 200 each. And it was pending. We couldn’t clear it out, you know, couldn’t cancel as much. And they just cleared us out of inventory. And so then we weren’t stocked, had to wait to get more. And it was an early. It was early for us. So it was kind of devastating. But that just makes. Makes my heart hurt a little bit when I, when I hear of people’s just inventory getting cleaned out about.
JONATHAN: Yeah, that’s one of those things that, especially with the way that Amazon FBA handles it. I don’t. Those going back to the nuances that people don’t think about before coming into the Amazon space. That’s one of them. And then you mentioned price, and I think pricing on Amazon is just a beast in itself and that no one could really understand because normally you’d have products in a retail store that have competitive pricing, like, within the same ballpark. But you’ll be on up Serp on Amazon and there will be, like, a product that’s like $0.50 against products that are $20. And that just throws everything out of whack. And it’s having to approach things like that that I don’t think people really consider or know about going into Amazon.
ANDREW MORGANS: Yeah. To really be good at all the things that we’ve mentioned, you need a small army. You know, you need a mixed bag of expertise, that’s for sure. You know, from the advertising and marketing. You can’t just be an analytics person. You need to be an advertiser, a marketer. Think like a marketer. That’s a huge difference than someone that’s operational. And a lot of times people are wearing these same hats. Right. You have to think about copywriting and sales copy and inventory planning and pricing and competitive analysis and catalog database issues, storytelling, you know, just on and on and on the different tasks you need to think about. And it’s super hard to do that as one person or one man or woman. I think you really need a team. I mean, that’s honestly why I built my Marknology was just like, I have done all the things all the way down to being in the warehouse myself, you know, so I like to think that I can lead from a place of, like, perspective. And I’ve been. I’ve done every job. So I. I think that’s a good thing. I like that about the way we do things here is that we don’t have people in power, in positions of power or leadership that haven’t done the thing that they’re leading. So I try to lead like that. But there’s so many things that I mentioned there that I’m not good at. Even though I was, even though I can do it, I’ve done it. I am horrible at Photoshop or canva or whatever, you know, even trying to tell a designer what I want is like chicken scratch. Like I’m communicating like a baby, you know, I have the idea. Just communicating it is hard, right? I’m great at PPC. I’m good at that. I’m good at looking at opportunities of beating competitors and things like that. And so I just started loving this game so much more when I started building a team around me that could solve for those other things and be good at it and just allowing me more time to focus on the things on Amazon, you know, that I was good at. And so for a lot of people, get that help, you know, it doesn’t have to be an agency like Marknology. It could be a consultant. It could be, you know, software like prophecy for pricing or something like that. You know, I think of that or like ProductPinion to help you with content designs when you’re stuck. Or like Elizabeth Green at Junglr to help you with PPC. If you hate it, just find what that is. Be honest and think about how important Amazon is to you as a channel. Be realistic with yourself. Be honest with yourself and your team. And if it’s very important, please don’t go at it with like Fiverr budget and just thinking that your graphic designer is going to be able to set you up on Amazon and dominate, like, go into it with realistic expectations and take it seriously. And it can, it can change your life, change your business, for sure, man.
JONATHAN: As soon as I get off this podcast, I’m gonna go do a deep dive of all of the episodes that you’ve done previously on your own podcast. Because you, I just really appreciate the way that you explain things and approach things, and I think that that’s extremely useful and valuable to people. So I just want you to know that I greatly appreciate that.
ANDREW MORGANS: Thank you. I actually care about helping people. I really do. And I care about, you know, Amazon’s changed my life, my family’s life. So when I think about Amazon, as much as it is a pain in the butt, I’m. I just think of. I think of gratitude around it, even though it’s such a challenging thing. And me helping people, me serving people, like, I built our company to help serve brands around the Amazon. The marketplace space, there’s help out there. You know, there’s help out there. Like, it’s really hard, but we’ve built it in a way that, you know, it’s, whatever your problem is on Amazon, there’s someone out there that can help you can, that can help you solve for it, you know, and the right one should be telling you if it’s a bad idea too. You know, if you know it’s a bad idea and everyone’s telling you it’s a good idea, please listen to your gut, you know, check that out. There used to be ways of launching if you had a bad product, that you could make it a good product on Amazon, right? Those ways exist less and less and less today. Like, you actually have to be a pretty, pretty great product, I think, and an even better team to win on Amazon. But if there’s any way I can help people, whether it’s through this podcast or value, I just like to try to explain a way that people can grasp because I see so much explanation around what we do, content, around what we do, that’s just repeating the same thing over and over, you know, maybe with a little different slang or something. But there’s ways of looking at this space that I think make it exciting and make it tangible. Whether you’re new to the space or you’ve been in it, you know, ten or 15 years, I’m still having a lot of fun. I really am. I’m still having a lot of fun. Even though I’m on day 16 in a row in the warehouse. I know I said it earlier like that, getting our hands dirty, but it’s exciting. I literally turned on it’s TikTok Shop to Shopify. I’m working on a direct TikTok shop to my warehouse management system so I can skip silk and shopify and everything. It’s just slow for connections. It’s slow, but I have a TikTok, the Shopify app turned on on our phone in there, and it’s just like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding ding. I don’t know if anyone remembers their first sales in e-commerce, Amazon, but, like, when I first started putting products up, it was like I was doing car parts on eBay and Amazon, and it was like trailer hitches, trailer wiring, ball mounts, and I was making these like combos with like a blue banner on paint, putting the individual pictures in there, making a little combo. That was like my first set of products I was working on. And I. Our pricing wasn’t better than competition, so I needed to combo them to get a better pricing. And it was like our bundled shipping was like a better rate. So that’s for anyone thinking about that. I was creating bundles in the early days and being able to put a product up and then just hear it go ding. Like, oh my God, someone just sold like, bought this from me in like, Florida. What? Like in within 15 minutes this is crazy. It was blowing my mind back then, Jonathan. Like, it really was. And it was just exciting to be creating something that provided value to other people. And I think that’s why a lot of people have created brands in the first place. So if you’re creating the brand to provide value to people, which you should be the method in which you’re selling it in the marketplace, you need to think about the same things and bringing value to those customers. So I’m still getting a lot of fun out of it. Hopefully. This, this is useful to some people, too, around. You know, what to think about when launching your brand on Amazon.
JONATHAN: Yeah, 100%. And kind of digging deep into that. When you approach a launch on Amazon, is there a specific way that you kind of go about it every time? Are you looking to make the biggest splash right away or are you subtly laying some groundwork for a stronger performance over time?
ANDREW MORGANS: I think it’s like there’s a silly analogy. I’m waking up, Jonathan. But, like, think of it like carving a piece of wood. Like, if you’re, if you’re carving something out of wooden, you really have to go with the wood. You have to give what the wood’s giving you. You can’t just force your will. It’s like you’re really carving with the wood, really thinking about what you’re shaping. And I do the same thing with any brand that we get. Nothing is the cookie cutter. Nothing is exactly the same. We have, like, the commonalities that a launch has. But every team, every brand is going to have their own nuance. And so instead of coming in with just my, like, set template, my set starting, I’m really like, trying to understand where they are, right? Do they already have product on hand? Do they have own overstock? Do they have a team that can push hard and heavy? Or do they have, like, we need to baby step them to getting to knowledge? Where’s their knowledge at already? Are they advanced? Are they beginner? Do they have a hundred SKU catalog? Do they have a one SKU catalog? You know, what’s their PPC budget? Do they have the ability to go ham right from the beginning? Do I think they’re probably going to review, well, is it fine jewelry because we probably can’t do 30 vine reviews on an expensive piece of jewelry? Or is it a kid’s toy? Right. You know, all on and on and on. I’m taking into effect all these factors to really come up with, I think, like, the plan to launch and saying, like, you know, what should we do. Are they, you know, own, self owned and operated, you know, type of team? Are they a husband wife team? Are they a private equity firm that really needs to hit numbers and launch and hit dates and hit budgets and a million dollars by month six might not even look like success for them. And so that one, we’re going to come in hot and heavy. Do they have off Amazon assets that we can use to help us launch or do we need to, like, push them into some partners, into directional stuff like that? Has someone already been reselling their products on Amazon and we need to clean up the space, or are we coming in absolutely clean and we get to kind of do what we want and launch how we want? That’s a big difference, too. A lot of times it can be a hybrid of that, of like, launching some new products, but then there’s like three or four other products on the, on the Amazon catalog that we got to grab and kind of clean up. So really, I said all that just to say that there’s like, it’s not a one size fits all. It really is kind of a custom approach to a launch. And a lot of that comes down to just like, you tell me where you are and I’ll meet you with the best plan. I think the best plan for you. You know, are we launching before Q four? Is there plenty of time? Are we launching in December? Because that’s just, you need to launch when you can. All of these little things make a difference. And so in the first few conversations, you’re just getting to know each other. You’re just really getting to understand where the brand’s position, where the team is. Have they already been trying and failing? And they’re just frustrated and that’s why they’re reaching out. Is it a clean slate? They asked around for good firms and heard of you, and so they’re coming in and they’re just, like, ready to do things right, really just trying to meet the brands and the teams where they are, and then we come up with the best plan together.
JONATHAN: I love that. That’s an honest answer because I think that every guru on the Internet wants to tell you, like, do these three things. I’m like, that doesn’t work all the time.
ANDREW MORGANS: If you’ve ever worked with fine jewelry, you know that you can’t just give away $500 watches all day or whatever the case might be. You know, it’s not the same as a widget or whatever, you know, so there are nuances to like some of the products that you’re selling. I’ve worked with Faith based and you can’t just use PPC to launch them. You have to use other tactics and other strategies and really think about the launch completely differently. So, you know, maybe have one product, it used to be like you couldn’t use headline ads with one, with one SkU or whatever, right? So you’re like, well, I can’t use this top of funnel strategy. I can’t use this. I’ve got, got to come up with a custom approach to what we’re going to try to do. Are we launching a product that doesn’t have a lot of keyword demand or maybe too small of a keyword demand? There’s already competitors there. If you go out the gate, hit it against strong competitors and you’re going to lose. Like if you just, if you just go, there’s a small amount of keywords to really describe your product. There’s a couple competitors already in the space. It looks like potential, but if you go right in at those top five, top ten keywords that another brand has been there, established and running for a while, you’re going to blow all your budget and you’re going to lose and be disenchanted with Amazon or need a bain and ship. And as an agency owner, I can take your money, but reputation is just as important. I like to think of myself as like a public like the DA, and I’m trying to just pick winning, winning cases, you know, I want to pick brands that like, want to win. I do believe we can win together. And all those things come to mind. It’s like, you know, I just really need to, I don’t ever say, like, you need to be doing this in revenue or like have this type of budget or like, because a manufacturer could be the biggest company we’ve ever talked to and never have sold a product and be like going direct. And if I said, well, you need to be doing this already before you come talk to us or something, it would leave those major players out or an international brand that’s not on any of our markets or something like that. There’s always an exception in this game and it’s really just about when I meet them, are we at the same mindset and methodology in regards to like, how we want to attack this thing with the level of excellence we want to attack it. And if we’re on the same page there, I think we can win.
JONATHAN: I’m sure brands, I’m positive that brands appreciate that.
ANDREW MORGANS: Yeah, I always think about business in regards to, like, dating analogies, like relationship analogies, because it’s so relationship based. You know, a brand is a living thing too. It has its own brand voice. It communicates. It’s like if you stop building it, it dies. Like, a brand is not like a real estate, an investment property that you like, flip and fix up or whatever and put a renter in there and leave it. Like you have to be communicating as this brand, you know, feeding it new product, growing. And a lot of times I do feel like brands just want to hear, they just want to hear what they want to hear, so to speak. They want to be told that this is possible. They want to be told that you’re open to marriage even though you’re just trying to go home with them. Like, you know, like, you’re like, no, I’m going to tell you the truth. Hopefully, like, you guys didn’t think that was too much, but for me, like, I really think about that. I really try to lead with honesty. You think brands want to hear that, but sometimes they just want to be promised the world and chips and cake and ice cream and everything all together, right? And you’re like, guys, that’s just not realistic. Like, so much of what we do, you know, I led this, this show with talking about mindset around launches, right? And I’m like, because so much of what I feel like I do is literally mindset coaching around how to frame this problem and like the expectations around it. And if the expectations are right and the mindsets right, we really, I can, like, feel like I can always win on Amazon. It’s just a matter of, like, our expectations. Right. Is our mindset around this problem right? You know, and so many want to just be told they look good, even if they don’t look good.
JONATHAN: Is there another really innovative strategy that you’ve used for marketing that you can call out? I’m just really curious because that shows a great deal of innovation and creativity on your part.
ANDREW MORGANS: Thank you. You know, where there’s a will, there’s a way kind of thing, right. And I really do. I approach things kind of white hat. You know, I might, I try to think outside the box. I was raised in Africa till I was 16. Cameroon, Botswana, Congo. I came back at 16 years old. So, like, outside the box is just like my framework. It just is my default setting, for better or worse. Right. And I try to think outside the box but also within white hat because, you know, we’re an Amazon partner. I’ve been in this space long enough to see that if you do black hat stuff, it’s going to come around and bite you. It’s a shortcut. Shortcuts don’t pay off. We’re brand building here. We’re doing, we’re building good businesses. I went to school for networking and security. I got out of college and just hated the job that was networking at that time. Good money, but I just hated it. And that was when I made the leap into ecomm to try something else. I was like, if this is all that it has to offer, I’m not going to like it very long, but I fell in love with EcoM, but I’m white hat, so. So anyone listening, like, just like, you know, I talk about launches and all this type of stuff and I really do like to be creative within the framework of, like, what is okay and there’s some gray, but like, generally very much white hat. Try to keep brands out of trouble but still come up with innovation. Way to stuff in insert TikTok here because I think it’s like sign off Amazon search find buy super URL type of tactic that’s working. But when you’re thinking about like, what can you do off Amazon that really works? That like, we use the Onlyfans analogy. I think some of the other ones is like, you know, like the Instagram analogy I brought up of the meme accounts, the funny, you know, adult humor type of content. Funny dad. And then you swipe left and it’s like, you know, some kind of adult toy or something like that. I’ve seen that really work with people that get like creative in that way. Really fun in person plays to Amazon and we’ve used some before when we’re launching books as a strategy. So I’ve like, I’ve got a speaker or whatever that’s written a book or written a couple of books. And instead of leaving a book on every chair at their conferences and things like that, leaving like an insert card with a QR code brings them to a landing page which gives them an offer to the free book for attending the conference or whatever and really kind of turning that into like a landing page that links out to Amazon. So it’s like a search find buy kind of, kind of angle there. They’re saving on those books costs. You don’t get as many redemptions, but I feel like the ones you do get can really help your Amazon listing because he’s going to sell way more on Amazon than he ever would in these in person events. Right. You can use an in person event instead of just giving your product there. Maybe they don’t want to walk around the show room floor, the whole conference with a book or whatever. And instead the people that do want it are going to take that QR code, oh, I’m going to go download this book. It’s free. And turning that you can even get email from that way versus, you know, something else. So that’s a, that’s an example of a white hat way of using kind of in person, you know, Rumble.com was a case study I shared recently at the billion dollar seller summit in Hawaii with Kevin King. I brought like four or five case studies from different avenues off Amazon to Amazon that we use for launches that were very successful. And Rumble.com, i don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but it’s basically like a, think of it as a more free YouTube in regards to free speech. So you can have like gun holsters. Like I launched a gun holster brand. So we had like ads on Rumble and regular content posting on Rumble, whereas YouTube kind of like is against policy against ToS to push that kind of stuff. Rumble.com, comma, really cheap CPC’s or CPM’s, able to kind of push that type of product. A fun little marketplace. So if you can jump on like a Reddit, if you have the right product, Reddit will, will tear you apart. If you’re not, if you’re not good. Ready for the nerds, right? But Rumble.com, comma, Reddit, I don’t know, like who’s hearing here, but, you know, pornhub.com, comma, the number third search engine, it goes Google, YouTube and Pornhub, I think in regards to search engine. So, you know, if you’re looking for influencers and you have that type of product, like, you’re in that, like, that’s some innovative thinking in a way that, like, most people aren’t competing with you there. Like, you’re not on tick tock creator marketplace, trying to find the same creators as everybody else. Or, you know, these are like you’re going to places where they don’t normally get approached. And so it’s kind of like blue ocean there. Yeah. And I think, like the thing that people already know, which is just affiliates and influencers, and if you really can put in the time and effort to find real ambassadors for your product, think outside the box. Don’t just do what everybody else is doing. Find creative ways of getting exposure, like on your product. I saw an ad recently that just, I’m trying to tell people we’re advertisers. At the end of the day, everyone’s selling on Amazon. While there’s an operational component, I think so many people have forgotten that we are advertising. We’re Mad Men type guys and girls. We need to think in that way at all times. We’re selling from our images, our inserts in our box, to every element of it. And when you’re thinking about, like, truly advertising like that, what are the ways that you can reach different people? And I saw this ad, it was like, you know, the beer, happy dad. Happy dad is a beer that’s a new type of hipster beer in a can. His content is amazing, and he’s just going around, like, talking about, you know, that dad that, like, you know, does da da da da da da da. And it’s like, super humorous and funny and. Or he’s talking about just like, you know, the cool dads and what other dumb dads are doing, and it’s just like stand up comedy, and then it just like, happy dad at the end. And it’s like, this guy is not pushing beer, guys. He’s not selling alcohol. He’s not pushing beer. He is selling humor has nothing to do with beer. But people seem to forget, like, that they can go outside the color, outside the lines when it comes to marketing and strategies and things like that. It’s like, if you’re just going to look, I’m going to go look for an MMA fighter to push my beer or something, because I see everybody else doing that with alcohol or different things, it’s like you’re gonna just look like everybody else. But if you go to the, like the really overweight guy, super funny, got a family of five doing his thing on TikTok, DIY or YouTube or whatever, and your brand is about making dads happier, you know, happy dad. There’s a play there. It’s just made me chuckle, made me smile a little bit to see people doing marketing done right. And I think that it’s like when you can disarm people and leave them, disarm them a little and leave them with a smile or a chuckle or, aha, you’ve got it. There’s always something new coming out in, you know, 2024 and beyond. There’s always some kind of new channel, some new avenue. Just, you know, put your thinking hat on and really write down a lot of the different areas that you can be in and be playing. And the best brands are thinking about being where everybody else is not.
JONATHAN: Yes, 100%. And it’s funny. Because finding that angle is so important, and people forget that. And then the other part of it, and I’m sure you’ve run across this all the time, is that there will be something that comes out in marketing that, like, you know, the happy dad or something else that really gets it, and you’re like, oh, yeah, this win. This wins. And then everybody else is like, I want to do the exact same thing. And you’re like, no. Like, they did that first. You need to do that, but differently. You need to find a new angle. But it’s funny how people try to do the copycat thing, and having worked in agencies, that was one of my biggest pain points is somebody coming in and being like, we want the Mountain Dew commercial. I’d be like, no, you don’t want that. You want to do something else, but you want to do something original.
ANDREW MORGANS: Yes, original. Like Coca Cola.
JONATHAN: Yeah, 100%. Drew, this has been great. I really appreciate your attitude and your creativity. I’m very much looking forward to having another conversation with you about content.
ANDREW MORGANS: Thank you, buddy.
