72. Tyler Gregg: Using Google Ads To Grow On Amazon

Ben Donovan  00:00
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of The Brand Builder show. And if you want to run Google ads to your Amazon products effectively, which by the way is one of the best ways to rank products on Amazon these days, then this is the episode for you. I’m joined by Tyler from Ampd. Tyler, welcome to the show today. Great to have you on. 

Tyler Gregg  00:19
Hey, Ben, thanks so much for having me. And looking forward to talking shop and sharing a bit of tips and tricks around Google ads to Amazon today. 

Ben Donovan  00:26
Yeah, no, I am pumped. You were telling me before you’ve helped over 3000 brands get sell with Google ads, Amazon attribution, etc. And so there’s a wealth of experience to be shared here. running Google ads is a topic we’ve been talking a lot about in our community recently, just because it is such a good driver of organic ranking on Amazon. And there are so many parallels from Amazon PPC, over to Google ads that I think a lot of Amazon sellers are going to be very familiar with. So it is a great bolt on to any Amazon sellers, sort of tool sets as such. And so it’d be good to do a deep dive into it today, with the pros, with the experts. I heard a lot of good things about Ampd in the community. Seen you guys on a bunch of other summits and presentations and that kind of thing. So it’s it’s an honor to have you here. And I’m looking forward to chatting about the subject matter today. But before we do that, give us a bit of a background on yourself on Ampd, what you guys have been doing in the in the community and bring us up to speed and then we’ll dive into it. 

Tyler Gregg  01:25
Sure thing. Yeah. So Ampd actually been around for about seven, eight years now. We actually started as a company called Metricstory. Our founders went through Techstars, which is an incubator program, where you kind of get a crash course on how to build a company, how to raise money, and how to kind of start from the ground up. Coming out of that our founders started actually, with the concept of how do we help DTC ecommerce brands better leverage their Google Analytics and Google Ads datasets through a data science engine. So we actually built out a data science engine focused on helping DTC brands. We did that for about five years. And then we saw this huge opportunity to take that technology that we built, but direct it towards helping brands, understanding better utilize Google ads to Amazon, that put us in partnership with Amazon ads, and specifically the Amazon ads attribution team. Because we have this technology to create, launch and optimize Google ads. And all of a sudden, we could send it to the best converting website in the world, which is obviously Amazon and actually see what was converting. 

Tyler Gregg  02:30
So let’s see here, it was 2021. I think summer 2021 was when we kind of started launching the Google to Amazon product. And that’s where we rebranded from Metricstory to Ampd. And that’s where we are today. But it’s actually interesting because we launched and the entire premise of our technology was, can you send Google ads to Amazon? And does it impact ranking, we didn’t even have an attribution component. We just were measuring the impact on rank. And then as we launched, we started sending a lot of traffic, we caught the eyes of Amazon, and they said, “Hey, wait, actually, not only can you do that, but here’s our API access, here’s our formal partner program. Now you can actually get conversion data on top of the impact you’re seeing on ranking”. So we’ve been doing this for about a year and a half, maybe a little over a year and a half now, specifically focusing on just Google ads to Amazon. I kind of joke, you know, we don’t do anything else. Just Google Amazon. That’s all I know, I don’t know anything else. Don’t ask me anything else about anything, because I only know Google to Amazon. And that’s been our focus for the last year and a half coming up on two years now. 

Ben Donovan  03:39
Yeah, very cool. Lots of questions that are coming up there, just as you’re talking about the attribution of Google ads. And, you know, the additional insight that gives to sellers, there’s loads we can dig into there, which will be really good. But first question out of the gate that a lot of Amazon sellers are going to want to know, can you say conclusively that external traffic, Google ads running out to Amazon does increase organic ranking? 

Tyler Gregg  04:06
Yes, we can. And there’s a few ways to kind of answer this one. First off, we saw it in our data set and very consistently across a ton of different products, when we were just measuring the impact of ranking. Then Amazon actually came out with case studies where they actually said that it does impact ranking, we always refer to it as the halo effect of Google ads. Amazon came out with a case study that referred to it as the, quote, snowball effect of external traffic on ranking. So we saw it, Amazon confirmed it. A lot of sellers talked about it. And we actually just recently published a case study, really a more of a white paper, where we ran a very controlled experiment to measure the impact of Google as Amazon on ranking, and we saw that it increased, sorry, not ranking, but organic sales, which is obviously a factor in ranking. But we saw that on average, it increased organic sales on Amazon by 31%. So very, very conclusive, very controlled experiment, a bunch of people on my team, our data, scientists ran the experiment. So they can go into all those details there. But what was interesting was that, on average was 31%. And it was across a wide variety of products and a wide variety of categories. But the trick, though, is you need to run a control experiment when you do it for your own products. So often, what we’ll see, unfortunately, is brands will come in understanding the premise, but what they’ll do is they’ll take ad dollars from Amazon ads, and move it over to Google ads. And what that does, unfortunately, is first off, it creates a to two variable changes, right, you’re adding Google while subtracting Amazon. But when you subtract Amazon ads, that’s, that’s the legs supporting your stool, right. And the way to think about it is you want to have a leg supporting the stool, and then you want to add Google ads on top of it. So you can help raise the stool up. So we always encourage our brands to do is we see in the data, that it does have a pretty big impact on ranking and total sales and organic sales. But for you to test it for your products, try to run a controlled experiment, pick a product where you’re setting on Amazon ads, and you’re going to use this incrementally to increase increase the impact on it. Don’t rob Peter to pay Paul, you got to keep everything as consistent as possible. 

Ben Donovan  06:28
You mentioned organic ranking and organic sales is two separate things there. The traffic that’s been sent externally, is the traffic alone enough to move the needle on any organic positioning? Or does it have to convert into sales? 

Tyler Gregg  06:42
It’s great question. You know, if it converts into sales, that’s a bigger impact. Obviously, with Amazon’s ranking algorithm, they’ve got the micro conversions of just, you know, engagement on the page, add to carts, etc, then the actual conversion, which is the sale, right, so the bigger impact is if you’re seeing the product actually sell. But we’ve seen a ton of examples where brands will do it for a product launch, right, you know, it’s just getting eyeballs to that page, or they’ll have a product that’s kind of stagnated. And they’ll add in Google ads. And we’ll look at it from our side. And we’ll say, you know, the conversion rates really not great, your ACOS is pretty high. And then the brands will say, “Hey, actually, my total sales are increasing”. It’s kind of interesting, because we have a done for you program called Ampd Pro, where we actually run the campaigns for our customers. And we launched that kind of running, like just like an agency would – run campaigns and then we would pause campaigns if we didn’t like the output that we saw. But so often, we would, you know, pause a campaign that had like 300% ACOS, and then a week would go by and the customer would, you know, send an email saying, “What did you guys do? My total sales are dropping” Right? So there is a correlation to be clear of, you know, good, strong traffic coming from external and Google ads. But it’s not Amazon ads, right? You don’t need the Amazon ads conversion rates for it to be impactful. So we usually optimize for around 100% ACOS or better that usually is a pretty good telltale, that that traffic is good quality. It’s positively impacting the ranking algorithm. But then you’re also getting those direct sales as well. 

Ben Donovan  06:44
Yeah, yeah. And I do want to kind of break it down from the beginning, because you’re talking about a lot of things there that, yeah, 100% ACOS that will be raising some questions, how does this fit into our strategy. So I do want to get onto that. But just to tie up on this initial subject that we’ve landed on somehow, just when it comes to say launching a product, some people will be concerned if I send all this flood of external traffic, but it doesn’t convert very well, that could be a negative impact on listings. But from what you’re saying, it sounds like external traffic, just in and of itself is generally a positive signal. 

Tyler Gregg  08:55
Correct. And what happens there is we’ve never seen it negatively impact a product, even if it has low conversion rates. And the reason is because we’re taking it with Amazon attribution. Amazon attribution signals to Amazon that this is external traffic. Amazon is smart enough, obviously, to know that external traffic is going to convert at a lower rate than on Amazon traffic. What happens though, is that traffic, whether it comes in and buys your product, or whether it buy something else from the marketplace, that’s about a 30% conversion rate of buying something from Amazon. For Amazon says, “Hey, you’re bringing in external traffic, maybe it’s buying your product, maybe it’s not, but we know that it’s going to come into the marketplace and buy something from Amazon.” So that’s why they treat it differently because it’s been having a positive impact on the marketplace. And the root of that right is Amazon ads needs more people in the marketplace. You know, you look at Amazon PPC, the costs are rising crazy amount because there’s more competition on the bids, but there’s not a huge number of increase on the consumers actually clicking on those ads. So Amazon is trying to get more consumers into the marketplace so that they can sell more ads to the brands. 

Ben Donovan  09:59
Yeah. And it’s a smart move by Amazon to incentivize sellers to do that, because they’re effectively, you know, arming their tribe of external traffic drivers. So. 

Tyler Gregg  10:19
Exactly, exactly. 

Ben Donovan  10:21
Okay, so bringing it back to the beginning, then for anybody that’s new to the whole process, what makes Google Ads such a good option for Amazon sellers specifically? 

Tyler Gregg  10:30
Yeah, it’s the buying intent behind the searcher. And I do want to be clear on that point, though, is Google Ads can be a really good channel for a lot of products, but not every single product. And the reason is, is because of the search intent behind it. If you sell a product, and you go and look at Google search volume, and no one is searching for that product on Google, that’s a pretty good indicator that maybe that’s not the right channel for you. You probably need to go to an awareness focus channel, like a social, Facebook or meta or an Instagram, right, where people aren’t quite searching for your product, but you’re able to put your cool product in front of them and create awareness. On the flip side of that, if you go to Google and say, your advert or your product is so hard to think of products on the spot here, you’re selling again, an airpods, airpod procase. And you Google or you look at the search find on Google, and it goes, “Oh, 10,000 searches per month for airpod pro case”. There’s buying intent, right? Consumers are telling Google, “hey, I know I need this product. Now I need to go buy it”. Now that search term is obviously very different than a question, right? If someone’s searching on Google, how do I keep my air pods clean? Well, the answer isn’t as a case, but that has no buying intent behind that search term, right? So it’s really important to look at the search, the search volume and the search intent on Google. And if people are clearly asking for your specific product, that’s a really good indicator that it can be a strong channel for you, because they’re telling Google they’ve done their research they’re ready to buy. Now you’re gonna show them the right ad at the right time. 

Ben Donovan  12:11
Yeah. Aside from search intent, are there any other key factors that make a product either a good or bad product for Google ads? 

Tyler Gregg  12:19
Yeah, this one’s a hard one to like, really put your finger on. But the way I kind of describe it is, personal products are difficult to advertise on Google. Because if there’s like a certain aesthetic to it that’s unique to that consumer, it’s not going to be applicable across thousands of searches, right? So think, for example, like, wall art, right? If you Google, maybe painting of a sailboat, you might be thinking like impressionism or something, right? Whereas if I Google it, I might be thinking like a modern, picturesque picture, right? And there’s such a certain aesthetic that you’re looking for, and that I’m looking for, and they’re probably going to be very far apart. So very personal or aesthetic driven products can be really difficult to do. Another example would be like a wine rack, right? There’s a lot of wine racks on Amazon. And if you search Amazon, go to Amazon, you search wine rack, you can look through the pictures and find the one that fits your aesthetic. If you do that on Google, and you’re selling a very nuanced cast iron, very, very nuanced, aesthetic wine holder, that’s gonna be hard. Because your conversion rates are it’s gonna be lower, a lot of people are gonna click on it looking for a wine holder and realize, “oh, that doesn’t fit my aesthetic”. Yeah, so those types of products are a little bit difficult, whereas products that are, you know, a DustBuster, that and like you Google dustbuster, I google dustbuster. We’re thinking the same thing for that specific product. 

Ben Donovan  13:57
Yeah. And that’s very similar to Amazon PPC, as well as there will be products that have a very low conversion rate when yeah, they’re going after a great example, by the way, your wall art, something like that. Because, yeah, someone says you have a wall art, doing the research, you might think well, Walmart’s got 100,000 searches a month, it’s a massive opportunity. But actually, you could be looking for thousands of different things within that one search. And so it’s very difficult to then, you know, get good conversions on that. So, yeah, it sounds like it’s very, you know, similar to Amazon PPC in that nature.

Tyler Gregg  14:29
It’s similar in that nature. But the metric that always kind of catch me catches me off guard a little bit when I talk to brands is a click through rate, right? And it makes sense when you take a step back, but click through rate on Amazon is probably really, really low 1% maybe lower. Whereas on Google Click through rates going to be five to 15%. And it’s interesting because click through rates are important metric no matter where you’re at advertising, but you need to put it through the lens of how consumers are shopping and interacting with your ad. On Amazon ads, you search something, you scroll through pictures, and that picture is qualifying you a lot, right? So wall art, if I search wall art on Amazon, I’m going to scroll through and find, “oh, there’s my aesthetic and I’m going to click on that”. So the click through rate is so low on Amazon, because the picture does the qualification. And then the conversion rates high, because I’ve already been qualified. I click on that ad in the bottom right corner. And then now I’m pretty much ready to buy because it fit my aesthetic. Contrast that with Google, especially search ads on Google, which is what you’re able to do as an Amazon brand. You search wall art, you see a text ad that says, wall art Amazon, lots of reviews, whatever, right? Not a lot of qualification. So you click on that pre qualification oftentimes. So the click through rates higher, but then you get to a new and you go “that’s not exactly my aesthetic”, and then you leave or you continue browsing. 

Tyler Gregg  15:58
So for Google, what you want to do is, you want to think less about click through rate, but you want to do everything you can to qualify your ad, qualify that consumer with the text that you write in your ad. Yeah, so I would never advise advertising on Google for your picture of a sailboat, right? But if we’re going to, you’d want to be very clear in your ad copy. This is a 47 foot sailboat with a white hole, etc, etc. Because you got to describe that picture. So anyway, you mentioned click through rate and conversion rates and all that it’s important when you think about those metrics on Google ads, similar to Amazon, because it’s the metrics. But they contrast very differently because of how consumers shop the different brands and what the ad actually looks like, to a potential customer. 

Ben Donovan  16:48
Yeah, really important clarification there. And a great segue into what I wanted to talk about next, which is actually setting up the Google ads and best practices, common mistakes, etc, that you see, obviously, I realized that you can’t cover every minut detail of it, because it is relatively nuanced. We do have like a walkthrough guide of how to sort of set things up on our website, but I’m hoping you’re gonna give me some extra unique tips here. We can add to that, to that guide, in terms of, yeah, best practices for setting up Google ads, generally, we’ll get into kind of launching products, and then the whole, you know, long term sustainability of it, but just in terms of the fundamentals, what are the core things that sellers need to be aware of when actually setting up those Google ads? 

Tyler Gregg  17:31
Yeah, longtail keywords, that’s the biggest thing. On Amazon, you can get away with middle of the funnel, probably even higher up the funnel keywords because the pictures do a lot of qualification in your ads. With Google ads, focus on those longtail keywords. Start there and if you can find success there, then create new campaigns down the road that goes higher up. And I know it’s similar to Amazon, where you have different keyword groupings and different campaigns and whatnot. Same strategies there. But you have to start with those longtail keywords. It’s interesting, you know, and I get it because a lot of people come from the Amazon ad side of things. But I see keywords all the time in campaigns that are like gift ideas for dad, or Mother’s Day gift ideas. And those are such research based search terms, I can see how they can work on Amazon ads from a consumer shop. But on Google ads, you know, if you’re selling a drinking glass, like your keywords got to be like glass, crystal drinking glass, right? Very longtail keywords. So that’s the first one that I always talk about. And the second one is ad copy. Ad copy, you know, you probably not doing a lot of ad copy on Amazon ads, if any, not entirely sure. But Google build, take the time to write really good ad copy because what that’s going to do is it’s gonna help qualify the traffic, avoid click baity things. See it happen all the time, people get in to build their ad copy. And they’re thinking, “Okay, it’s marketing, how am I going to increase this click through rate? How am I going to draw attention to this ad?” But then what does the ad end up looking like, like, best price by now like, you’re going to love this product that will get someone to click the ad. But that’s not the goal. The goal is to get a qualified customer to click the ad. So you know, put your price in there. If you’re selling an expensive, premium product, put that price in your ad copy. So the customer knows, I’m not someone’s like, I want to spend $20 on this product, but yours is 100, tell them that before they click the ad so that they’re they’re qualified and they don’t just hit your page and go “ooh, that’s way too expensive”.

Ben Donovan  19:45
We’ve actually been doing that, recently putting the price in there because yeah, that was the thought is qualification there. They don’t click on it if they’re not interested at that price. That’s probably the only thing that I’m doing in terms of qualification. Are there anything other things that we should be doing to qualify in terms of I don’t know, what does it mean materials or use cases? Is there any other kind of key ones you can give us? 

Tyler Gregg  20:07
Yeah, we like putting in review counts, especially because people buy on Amazon. They care about reviews, right? Everyone knows that, right? So whether you have we used to actually say, “Hey, if you have over 100 reviews, put it in there, if you have less than 100 reviews, don’t put it in your ad copy”. Now we’re starting to say, hey, you know what, if you have 25 reviews, you should tell them that you only have 25 reviews before the click, because there’s consumers like me, who will get to a product, especially on Amazon, and they’ll go, “oh, 25 reviews, let me go see if there’s a similar product with 1000”. And I’ll probably default to the thousand one. So yeah, quite honest, frustrating to hear as an Amazon brand, but that’s how consumers shop, right? But on the other side, some people were totally fine with something at 25 reviews. So tell them that before they do it. So we really recommend putting reviews in there. If you have a low, like a low star rating, you know, like two out of five stars, you know, you could say or you could put it in the ad copy to qualify or not. But if you only have two out of five stars, like Google probably isn’t a channel for you. It’s probably hey, focus more on the product, focus more on getting those better reviews on Amazon. And then once you’ve nailed that, then start looking to branch out to external traffic. So that is one of the other things, right? Google ads is not a silver bullet, it can definitely have a huge impact on ranking and total sales. But it’s not going to save a product that just isn’t working on Amazon. Yeah. 

Ben Donovan  21:36
Obviously, you’ve talked about the the recommendations, best practices. Are there any common mistakes that you see sellers making? Or is it just not doing everything you’ve already talked about? 

Tyler Gregg  21:47
Yeah, a common mistake is people just try to replicate their Amazon ads. And while there are a lot of similarities, because there’s search intent and buying intent, and it is similar, you can’t just take your Amazon ads and replicate them on Google ads. People just search platforms in different ways. So that’s something I always kind of harp on is don’t just do that. Be creative. Think about what you do on Google. And most Amazon brands and advertisers on Amazon, they search Google, right? So put yourself in the shoes of how would you search Google for your product, right and then go from there, don’t just replicate what you’ve done on Amazon ads, because it can work. But I’ve seen it be a recipe for disaster. Many times people will, you know, ping us and say, “Hey, these ads aren’t working.” And we’ll look at the ads and go, “I think I know what you did here”. This looks like an Amazon ads, these look like Amazon keywords, not Google keywords. So definitely, I always harp on that. One is take the time to build from the ground up on Google to new channel, it’s gonna take some time to test. That’s the other thing too, is it’s not a silver bullet, as I was saying, but it’s also not going to give you overnight success. Usually see it takes about two to three months to really nail Google ads. And the reason is you have to collect the data, you have to invest in keywords that aren’t going to work. So you can find the keywords that do work and effectively convert for you. So be patient. If you get to 90 days, and you’re not seeing the success, that could be an indicator that maybe that channel is not right for you. But if you get to a week or two weeks, and you’re not seeing success, that’s not conclusive data, right? 

Ben Donovan  23:28
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. In terms of the product lifecycle, it would be good to talk about different stages of the journey. And what sellers should be looking for, because you talk there about it gets to 90 days or two weeks, and you give up? Well, it’s the metrics that are going to cause people to give up I suppose, and just working out. What is a healthy way to approach things. So firstly, for a product launch, for instance, what are you doing when you’re going into a new product launch on Amazon, and Amazon Seller has that goal to drive traffic, get visibility. They’re less concerned about hitting a target ACOS, per se, more worried about just driving sales? What are some kind of unique approaches you go into with that, in comparison to maybe another stage of the lifecycle? 

Tyler Gregg  24:13
Yeah, so we usually split our campaign strategies based on product launches, and established products. So it’s a product launch and your focus is building the reviews and getting traffic and eyeballs. And you know, those first few months, that honeymoon period, as I know that a lot of Amazon brands talk about, it’s just critical to get good, high quality traffic to that page. So again, do your keyword research on Google and see what the search volume is. If there’s high search volume for your specific product on Google, that’s an opportunity to send that traffic into that listing because if it’s bottom of the funnel, longtail keywords, that’s going to come in and hit Amazon, hopefully buy your product, but it’s going to buy something from Amazon. As Amazon sees that, they’re smart enough to say “hey, let’s keep that river flowing in, and they give those rank rewards. So for product launches, it’s not about conversion rates, it’s just about good, consistent long tail traffic coming in hitting your listing page. That contrasts very differently if you have an established product, you know, high reviews and good commercial on Amazon, that’s when you probably want to start looking at optimizing towards that 100% ACOS or better target threshold, I say 100% ACOS, by the way, because that’s kind of that metric where when we see that very consistently, brands are saying, hey, like, my total sales are going up, I’m having a positive impact on this listing. That’s not like the end goal. You know, the end goal is to get you down to 10, 15 20% ACOS which can certainly happen. But it’s always that question, especially for an established product, is it growth or profitability, I was just talking to someone the other day, and you know, he was looking at like, 150% ACOS. And I was kind of expecting him not to be super thrilled. But what he was explaining was, “hey, actually, I’m looking to exit my company. And for 2x multiple and Google ads is bringing in an extra $20,000 a month in my product. So a 2x Multiple, that’s actually a $45,000 beneficial to my multiple my product and my valuate”. So it’s just different ways that you want to look at it. And the question always comes down to are you looking for growth or profitability? And I think that question applies to both product launches, as well as established products, because you’re coming out of the gates on product launch, expecting profitability, I’m going to say, “hey, focus on Amazon ads”, if you’re looking to kind of stick that landing, I’m going to say, “hey, layer on Google ads, $10, $15 a day low budget, just that steady flow traffic can help with that growth.” 

Ben Donovan  26:44
Yeah. You talked about not being too worried about conversion rate when you’re launching a product, and then equally not looking too much at ACOS. Are there any metrics you look at for a product launch? Or is it just a case of just working out your budget ahead of time? And just throwing it all out relevant keywords for the launch? Or do you kind of adjust as you go? 

Tyler Gregg  27:04
Yeah, it’s really more of that, you know, for product launch, we’re always coming with our customers saying, “hey, just it’s a low, steady, consistent budget”. That’s why it’s $10 or $15, a day for product launches. Established products, you know, we’re starting in $25, or $30 per day, collecting that data as quickly as possible and optimizing on it. But what we’ve seen with product launches is if you can just consistently bring in good quality traffic from external sources signaling to Amazon’s ranking algorithm that this product is serious about being on the Amazon marketplace. That’s what we see as a pretty good sign of success. And a lot of good results come out of that. It is difficult, right? Because there aren’t a lot of metrics to really look at to understand is this really, really impactful? Or is this not impactful? Without a ton of conversions and a ton of add to carts? You know, it’s it’s hard to say, a single that we do look at though, is those added carts, right? If we’re seeing on a product launch, a good amount of add to carts coming in, but maybe those add to carts aren’t converting, that’s actually a pretty good sign. Because it’s signaling that “hey, this customer is buying stuff from Amazon, they’re coming into the marketplace, they’re engaging with your product”, that’s a really good leading indicator as good quality traffic. 

Tyler Gregg  28:16
Yeah. And then benchmarks for longer term. You talked there about 100% ACOS, which would alarm most Amazon sellers thinking about that with their Amazon ads. But as you alluded to, there is growth versus profitability. Aside from ACOS, are there any other again, you know, metrics, you’re looking at any benchmarks you’re looking to try and hit? Yeah, so we actually just launched into our product, or we’re actually just about to launch into our products, I should say. The ability to connect to Seller Central, and we’re very close to actually visualizing total sales and total revenue both on sorry, both on unit sold and revenue, also looking at ad cost, and also looking at TACOS. So combining Amazon ads, and Google ads to get you your true TACOS. For a year and a half and doing this we’ve always been reliant on, “hey, we’ll take care of Google ads, but we need you guys to be looking at what’s happening to TACOS. We need you guys to be looking at what’s happening, organic sales, and total sales, etc. or bringing that into our platform”. I’ve started to see it show up on some of our accounts. And that’s a really, really good metric. Because what you can now visually see in the platform is how does Amazon ads and Google Ads fluctuate and oscillate, working together to drive that top line there. And what happens, right is if you can get good effective traffic in, it’s awesome to see that organic sales, take a nice little lift, you know, I mentioned that 31% on average, that’s what we’re seeing in these charts. Now as we’re able to bring that all that data in together. Another metric that we look for to you know, is TACOS, right? If you have a 10% TACOS, before turning on Google ads, and you turn on Google ads, and you have 10% TACOS afterwards, when you combine and Google into that equation and revenue is going up. That means you’re able to add a channel, increase revenue, while maintaining your overall efficiency. So that’s also a really important metric to keep in mind and something that we’re super, super excited to bring into our platform here.

Ben Donovan  30:15
Have you got any case studies, you don’t have to obviously mentioned the brand names and stuff. But how that kind of ties this all in together, that helps Amazon sellers, kind of, I suppose see a picture of what it could look like if they’re to bring this all in anything, sort of the that you’ve recently been working on at all? 

Tyler Gregg  30:34
Yeah. Jungle Scout actually just did a case study with us. You can see it actually, they they tagged us in on socials. But I don’t know if we’ve actually reposted it yet. So but if you go to Jungle Scout socials, they have a big YouTube channel. It’s like 250,000 subscribers. And they just did a case study with us. They called it “Does Google ads actually helped ranking?” I think it’s what the title of it was. And it’s about a 10 to 15 minute video that walks through how they used Ampd over the course of three months, and how they measure the success of it. And they saw a pretty, pretty big organic lift on their total sales. So that’s an incredible case study. It’s third party too. So you can go check it out. It’s not just me telling you it. 

Ben Donovan  31:17
Just that little Jungle Scout. 

Tyler Gregg  31:20
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So check that one out. That one’s a really, really good one. And then on our website, ampd.io/case studies, there are several other examples. Some we talked about ACOS and show like, “Hey, here’s how you can get a really efficient and profitable ACOS”. And others talk about organic rank as well. There’s obviously a few big case studies there. On the ACOS side, it’s it is an important metric, for sure. But because Amazon attribution is still in beta, it’s not the end all be all metric. We talked about ranking and total sales and all that stuff. Some of that to be perfectly honest, stems from Amazon attribution, to where it’s accurate enough for us to make decisions based off it. But we also, you know, with iOS issues, and all that you can count on attribution not being 100% accurate. So we’ve seen situations where under counts as well. And some of that does play into, you know, organic ranking and organic sales, because you bring in traffic, follow this example, you go on your mobile device, search a product, click a Google ad, go to that product, add it to cart, but then come back to your desktop two weeks later and buy it from your cart. That’s a really, really tricky conversion path for attribution to really try to be able to connect those dots. It can get it for sure. But do you really think it’s going to get it every single time, right? So that seals still happens for you, but it can go into, you know, your organic sales bucket, right? 

Tyler Gregg  32:53
Another situation, right is there’s only a 14 day attribution. And with Google ads is yes, we’re looking for longtail keywords. But that does end up being a little bit more middle of the funnel, right? You’re creating awareness about your product. And if people look, click your ad, like your product, but then don’t buy it for three weeks, that’s outside of the 14 day attribution window, you successfully filled your funnel, right with an omni channel strategy. But you’re not going to see that direct sale when that converts, because Amazon said, so fortunately, attribution window. So that’s why when we talk about ACOS, or when we kind of give case studies, I always kind of caveat, ACOS is important. But it’s not the end all be all metric. 

Ben Donovan  33:34
Obviously, this is a big topic. We could talk about this for hours without running out of different streams of conversation. But are there any real major keys that maybe I haven’t asked you about any questions or haven’t asked that you feel would be good to touch upon any other tips that you can really give to Amazon sellers particularly I suppose that are looking to do this, your long term sustainably, not just try it for a couple of weeks and be done with it, but really add it as a successful channel for their for their business? 

Tyler Gregg  33:59
Yeah, the one that I really, really, really strongly recommend is using and leveraging your Amazon storefront. So you can send your traffic with Amazon with attribution to anywhere on it anywhere on Amazon that you want to. So the default would be your product listing page, right? It’s set up, it’s transactional, you know it converts because you’re probably sending Amazon ads there, etc. But what we highly recommend is set up your Amazon storefront to be transactional. And you have your Add to Cart button there. And what it does is now all of a sudden you can send Google traffic to a landing page on Amazon where it’s about your product, has the Add to Cart button there, but there’s no competition. The only place on Amazon where your competitors are not showing up. So leverage that, right? We see that storefronts Google the Amazon storefront convert about two to three times better than two product listing pages, but they need to be set up very specific ways. We actually have a help center article that describes what it looks like. So feel free to go to our website and ask for that, you can just ask the in app chat, and we can send it your way. But the trick there is you can basically recreate your product listing page within the confines of your storefront. So what it’s called is if you go to your Amazon Storefront Settings, it’s called a product section. And that product section is going to bring in everything from your product listing page except your competitors. So it’s going to bring in your pictures, it’s going to bring in your titles, it’s going to bring in your bullet points. And it’s going to bring in the Add to Cart button. And when when you can have that front and center at the top of your Amazon storefront page, send traffic there, the consumer has the experience that they’re familiar with, they have the Add to Cart button so they can buy it. And then what you can do below it is a product listing page below your product, what is their, its competitors, right. And then below your competitors is your A plus content. On your storefront, you can just get rid of the competitors of your product, put in your A plus content, and you’re good to go. So that’s something that I always always recommend is set up your Amazon storefront to be transactional, and then send your external traffic there. 

Ben Donovan  36:08
That is a pro tip. That was worth the entry fee just for that one tip. Listen to the whole point. Obviously, you’ve shared some gold in this podcast, but just that one tip alone is that’s real. Yeah, that’s a pro tip.

Tyler Gregg  36:21
Yeah, and if you have any questions on it, like we’re happy to answer them, but what you can do is a secondary tip to that is go to any DTC website brand that you know and respect. And look at what they do on their product pages. And you can just replicate that. So if you go to Nike, you go to, I’m using candle all the time, you what you’ll see is you’ll see their storefront setup on their DTC site and very similar to what they have on Amazon. So Yankee Candle is a great example, candle store that I’m familiar with. But if you pull up their Amazon storefront, and you pull up their DTC storefront, it looks very, very similar. And what it allows them to do is it allows them to send traffic to either destination, and allows them to let their customer choose, right? Would I rather buy from the DTC store or buy it from Amazon store? And now all of a sudden, that customer gets that the same brand experience or building their brand, even though they’re selling on Amazon? 

Ben Donovan  36:21
Very cool. Very cool. I love that. I’m definitely going to be trying that. Good. Okay, last question. What kind of changes do you see coming up for the future, whether that’s for Ampd or for Amazon and Google ads? You know, you’re right in there working with people every day? What’s the next 12 to 24 months looking like? Do you think? 

Tyler Gregg  37:40
Yeah, I think for Amazon brands, you know, it’s having a true omni channel strategy, right? Amazon’s doing everything they can to incentivize external traffic. And the reason they’re trying to incentivize external traffic is because they know that if brands can have multiple channels, driving growth, they’re becoming a brand. And they’re not just a seller on Amazon, if you’re just doing Amazon ads and whatnot, like, but you’re gonna have a successful business, don’t mean downplay that. But you’re selling on Amazon, if you can have an omni channel approach where you’re engaging with your customers, throughout their buying journey on multiple channels. That’s true brand building, right? And that’s why Amazon’s encouraging external traffic. That’s why they’ve given Amazon attribution as a resource for brands to go engage with their customers throughout the buying journey. So I think in the next year or so we’re going to see a lot of brands really start to leverage multi channel, omni channel strategies to drive their business. And then for the upside is we’re trying to be prepared to help brands think about that. And we’re about to release. We actually have a webinar coming up here, where it’s it’s TACOS for Google ads, right? And it’s our it’s our product release for the ability to show how does Amazon ads and Google Ads work together to drive total sales and organic sales? What are the costs look like together? What is the profitability of these two channels, and helping brands understand that if you can use these two channels together, and have them complement each other, there’s a recipe for success. There’s a recipe for omni channel growth. So that’s what we always talk about is omni channel strategies. That’s what we see as the future for selling in Amazon. And we’re doing everything we can to set our product up to help brands be ready for that. 

Ben Donovan  39:24
Amazing, amazing. Tyler, this has been so helpful. There’s been so much gold shared here, I think is going to be one of the really, really actionable practical, helpful episodes for our listeners. So thank you so much for coming on. Give us some more information about Ampd and how people can get set up and find out more about you guys. 

Tyler Gregg  39:44
Sure thing. Yes, you can go to amped.io and find us. We help with storefronts, but more importantly, we can help with setting up Google ads. What our technology does, I think we kind of skipped over that. But we do ad creation and attribution for brands. So what it enables you to do is connects Google ads, Amazon ads together and one click, you’re able to apply attribution down to keywords. That’s the big difference between what we do and what Amazon attribution does. Amazon attribution will like create tags and then go put them into Google ads. But the data will be siloed, you’ll have Amazon data and Amazon, Google data and Google. And believe me, they do not let you share their datasets. It’s against TOS on both sides to be sharing that data. Everyone knows that Amazon is very, very cautious of consumer data. So they don’t let you put it into Google ads. So what our technology does is we’re the middleman, the two datasets come into our platform, we marry the data back together down to the keyword level. So you can see what keywords are driving conversions, and what ones aren’t. So more about that on our website. 

Tyler Gregg  40:51
But the big thing that I would recommend for brands listening today is if you hit our website, you’ll see a little drop down called Ampd benchmark. And Ampd benchmark allows you to plug in your ASIN. And then our technology is going to analyze that ASIN, analyze how people search Google and then spit out a recommendation and indicator of whether we think Google ads is a good channel for that product. So think about it not as a crystal ball of is this like, yes, it’s going to work or No, it’s not. But it’s going to give you indicators of success. So think more like green light, yellow light, or red light. And we’ll tell you, if it’s a red light will tell you. And we’ll say “hey, you know, Google is probably not the right channel for you”. If it’s a green light will recommend it. If it’s a yellow light, we’ll kind of say, “Hey, here’s some things that we’re seeing. Here’s some things that we’re not seeing. And it might be a good channel, but you should probably talk to us before you just start throwing money at Google ads”. So it’s called Ampd benchmark. And it’s an analysis engine that provides indicators of whether Google Ads can be a good channel for your product. 

Ben Donovan  41:52
Amazing. Well, we will link all of that up in the description as well to make it easy for people. And they can find that and get in touch with you guys. Again, Tyler, thank you so much for taking time out to come on. This has been such a helpful episode. 

Tyler Gregg  42:06
Yeah. Awesome. Ben, thanks so much for having me. And hopefully, there’s some actionable tips in there. Yeah, that’s that’s the biggest thing right as hopefully someone can take away at least one thing that they can go implement into their business strategy here. Yeah, absolutely. I’m sure there will be and to everyone listening. If you do implement this stuff and get some results with it. Let us know. Let Tyler and the team know we’d love to hear back from you that you’re getting actionable insights from the episodes and applying them and growing your business. I think this has been super helpful. I’m definitely going to go away and implement some of this stuff into the Google ads we’re running right now. And it’s going to really be helpful. So I’m sure it will be for you guys as well. Thank you for listening. And we’ll see you in the next episode same time next week. Take care of yourselves. See you soon.