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If you’re looking for some inspiration for your Amazon listing optimization then this episode is for you.
On this week’s episode we’re joined by Julian Lohse, co-founder of an Amazon listing optimization agency that lives and breathes all things conversion rate on Amazon.
In this episode, we talk about why listing optimization is so important…
And how to build a real brand on Amazon. Julian shares a great thought on brand building on Amazon that is worth the listen alone.
> Connect with Julian on Twitter.
> Subscribe (free) to the Brand Builder newsletter
If you got this far, there’s a chance you enjoyed the episode… if so, please consider leaving a review – we really appreciate it!
Ben Donovan 00:00
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of The Brand Builder show. This is going to be a great episode, I’m really looking forward to diving in all things Amazon listing optimization with Julian. Julian, someone that I began to follow on Twitter recently and taking the Amazon Twitter space by storm. Welcome to the show, Julian, great to have you.
Julian Lohse 00:20
Thanks for having me.
Ben Donovan 00:22
It’s gonna be a good one. Amazon listing optimization is something that as Amazon sellers, we talked about so much, and so it’s gonna be great to hear about what your thoughts are, especially as Amazon as a platform matures, and there’s more going on in the marketplace. You know, optimizing our listings is more important than ever. And so yeah, it’s gonna be great. But before we get into that, I’d love to hear a bit about your journey. What got you into being an expert on Amazon listing optimization? What’s been the last few years looking like for you?
Julian Lohse 00:51
Yeah, well, interesting question. How did I get into E commerce and Amazon? Yeah, first of all, I just never saw myself in the typical nine to five life. So I never I never kind of like matched the typical, go to school, go to university, then take just a normal job and work until you’re 65. I always had the dream of doing my own thing. used to work at the bank after after school. So when when I finished school here in Germany, and then I just took my to my best friend, his name is Justin. We just brainstorm what we can do. Because like I said, normal nine to five was not the thing was not our choice. started an econ brand, did some sustainable clothing. We did some non nice numbers and revenue, but didn’t didn’t make any profits. Because we didn’t know anything about digital marketing. And then it was pretty unsexy. How did we get into Amazon? We just looked at Where’s where’s the need? What do people need on Amazon? What can we can we offer, and then we kind of like, got into a call into Amazon got into his service based business. So we have our growth agency, which means that we do two things for people. One thing listing optimization, which mainly focuses on their visual content in their branding. And the second thing is typical, like growth, PPC, strategy advisory, typical air marketing approach on how to how to help brands grow in Amazon. How do we help? Like, I don’t like the word expert. How did I gain the knowledge? Working with good clients working with little clients working with huge clients speaking of 8 9 10, figure retail brands from from Germany, mostly of things. Which is, which is part of the journey, learning, networking? And staying humble?
Ben Donovan 03:16
You said you had 8 9 10 figure clients, how did you get clients like that? That’s incredible.
Julian Lohse 03:22
Yeah, well, the the eight, nine figure clients referred most of the time. Because I would say that getting like the bigger the client is the harder it is to to kind of like get the connection because I would not I would not call DM or call 989 If you got clients because those guys have so much on their plates. Like they don’t they don’t want to see your your cheesy. Hey, man, I want to make you money. So most of the most of the big client works from referrals. So making good work for smaller clients, and then it’s just like a compound effect. And the fun thing about the biggest client we have is the biggest client we have is a 10 figure client. So they make 10 figures revenue. But in total, like not only on Amazon, right, yeah. So in total. And I just I just reached out to them with cold message on LinkedIn. Like with the loom saying, your man, your listing sucks. We used to ABCD make it better. It was like the hell of E commerce. And he responded. Yeah, man, you’re so right. Let’s have a chat.
Ben Donovan 04:44
Wow.
Julian Lohse 04:45
But at the end, I just provided value for free and it’s the same thing with with Twitter, which is why I like Twitter so much. You can just provide so much value for free and the more value you put Why’d I heavily believe in that the more value you provide? The more comes back. So yeah, yeah, to answer your question referrence network and over delivering probably provide some value.
Ben Donovan 05:13
That’s awesome. And what does the agency look like? Now? How many of you are involved in it? And what is what do you do day to day?
Julian Lohse 05:21
I would say I do everything. Because they, I feel like there, there are two aspects of how you can change your approach to owning an agency. The first one is scaling with like a huge team and huge number of clients, huge revenues. But that’s not my approach, or that’s not our approach. Our approach is keeping the agencies small in terms of the number of clients we work with, at the same time, in terms of the team, in terms of everything to keep everything lean, just because I like the worst feeling I could imagine is having a client, I don’t know, right? So I do some client communication. I do sales. I do, like talk to clients when something doesn’t work. I’m involved in everything, because I, but not because I have to more because I like to. I just want to keep the quality as high as possible. So yeah, I’m, I’m the guy for everything in our agency. Even if even if I’m the owner is probably not the most like sexy thing to say, as an agency owner. Not as fun. Yeah, I like to be involved in everything. Yeah.
Ben Donovan 06:40
Yeah, different strategies work for different people don’t answer. That’s your that’s your way of doing it. And sounds like it’s going really well. So who is anybody else to judge how you’re doing it? So that’s good, man. That’s good. Moving on to Amazon listing optimization, then because a lot of our listeners will be either selling on Amazon want to sell on Amazon, selling elsewhere and want to bring that over to Amazon. Obviously, Amazon listing optimization is a topic that gets talked about a lot. But why is that? Why do you see that? Just at the very core, why is Amazon listing optimization? So important?
Julian Lohse 07:15
Money?
Ben Donovan 07:17
Expand?
Julian Lohse 07:18
Yeah,
Ben Donovan 07:19
of course, that’s a short podcast episode otherwise?
Julian Lohse 07:23
Yeah. Yeah, money just because every every product that you’re selling, should be, should have, should have huge potential, right? Because otherwise, you did some mistake in the sourcing process. So from my perspective, every product that you sell, should have the potential to make good numbers, in terms of revenue and profit per month. And the problem is, what many people do is they list their products, and they start making sales organically SEO, paid by PPC, and so on. And they the listing starts growing, growing, growing, and they never touched the listing again, that’s what most people do. And the problem is that just if we, if we look at numbers, click through rates, conversion rates, return rates whatsoever. Only, like, if only a few people max out the potential of every product they they’re selling, even if those listings make 10 20 30 40 50 100 200 Whatever, K revenue a month. And the the issue with that is that you can you can scale through advertising and launching new products. But then it’s just like quantity, quantity, quantity game. And you have to rely on crazy AdSense crazy ad revenues. And I feel like if you optimize the core, the foundation, and if you try to max out everything before scaling, before turning like the numbers higher and higher, it’s just a more sustainable approach. Because your brand probably grows like more profitable, and you don’t have like 10 products at the same time, which don’t generate any revenue. Instead, you can have like two or three products, which generate probably the same revenue, right? So I just believe in quality over quantity. That’s basically the Yep.
Ben Donovan 09:34
Yeah, that’s good, man. I mean, we teach a principle I got from James clears book atomic habits, and he talks about the growth of agriculture. And it was much easier for agriculture to grow on an east to west plane than it wasn’t north to south because of the the similarity in climate. And he talks about the humans have this. You know, the law of least effort is called that humans will find Find a way to do something in the easiest way or, you know, they say, don’t they, you know, if you want a job doing give it to someone who’s lazy, because they’ll find the quickest and easiest way to do it. And, and growing a brand, I think, you know, as exactly as you said is you want to maximize the stuff that’s working for you already before you go out and launch other stuff, you know, don’t launch a product to 30% of its potential, and then launch another product, make sure you get that product at 90%. Of course, it gets to a point of diminishing returns, but make sure you maximize it as much as you can before you move on.
Julian Lohse 10:32
Another thing is, we we talk a lot with brands who are interested in selling their brand at some point. Yeah, we know people who support like sellers when they when they’re ready to say to sell. We even know some aggregators, we work with one of those aggregators especially. And the thing is that whenever I talk to these guys, they tell me that if you’re interested in selling your brand, which is interesting, from what I’ve heard for big part of people out there, yeah. They really look at how strong your like your brand is, in terms of the branding. Yeah. And that that kind of like, gets me gets me back to listing optimization. If they look at your product portfolio, they’re like, Yeah, you make a million in revenue per month. But you have like, 200 skews, generating those, like the million they like, huh, it’s not safe to invest there. Right. On the other side, if though, if the million is split on, like a couple, a few good, really good listings, because it’s just like good images, brand, feeling. high conversion rates, high click through rate whatsoever, like really profitable listings, the chance of selling your brand is way higher, in terms of the probably what you’re what you will get from the, for whoever’s interested in buying them.
Ben Donovan 12:03
Definitely, you mentioned about not wanting to update a listing that you’ve optimized once, I think is a really important topic. And we’d love your opinion on that, from what you said before, I can imagine what your answer may well be, but to give some, I suppose, confidence to people, because once you have a high selling hero SKU that you rely upon in your business, it can be daunting to change the title, the keywords, the images, but at the same time, you know, people will say you should always be testing. What’s your Do you have a view on how much you should test? You know, can you give some, I suppose, peace of mind to those people that don’t want to touch the heroes queue
Julian Lohse 12:47
Yeah. Bigger the listing is the smaller the changes should be. Right, great. Which means that we have a client. It’s, it’s, it’s a brand from Germany make around 100 50 million revenue a year. And we started, we started working with them for their American, like their expansion to America. And they have they have a trash can which generate which Jen has like 90,000 Set sales, like over the last year, it’s like, it’s like a basic trash can right? two or three images, very basic, but it’s just like a big brand. Yeah. And when we started working with them, they they told me, are you sure that you want to change something on the listing? Because it’s it’s generating? Like, good revenue, right? That was like, Yeah, we like if you’re, if your product generates good revenue, without even optimizing the potential of what you could reach in terms of revenue and profits is so high that you definitely should test it. Yeah. But the approach is keeping changes small because you can like Amazon’s weird sometimes, and you don’t want to change too much at the same time. So if your listing makes like 1000’s of sales every month, try to probably try to implement another image in it, try to implement probably another a plus on it. Once once it works, then you can optimize more and more and more, but I would not recommend going like crazy going directly because if you like mess it up. It can backfire on you pretty fast.
Ben Donovan 14:42
Yeah. So if someone was wanting to change their images you say like one image at a time?
Julian Lohse 14:50
Well, like I said, depends if it’s if it’s a listing that generates probably somewhere between 10 to 50k. I don’t see like a big risk of changing everything directly, because as long as you’re not in the supplement niche, the you’re you’re able to do that, right? Because, yeah, it’s hard to to say things in general, because it really depends on the specific needs. I have, I have clients that that are scared of changing every like everything, just because their niche is so competitive, and they’re scared of their competitors. Like doing some black half things or whatsoever right? Now, the on the other hand, their niche where you can do basically everything, which you want to do, and Amazon doesn’t really care about the TLS.
Julian Lohse 15:39
So I would I would start slowly, depending on what the problem is, is click through rate, the problem do you get like, do is your click through rate too low, you’re paying like crazy amounts on that, you will click price is very high whatsoever, then maybe think about okay. Test testing your title image, try to get the click through rate high of conversion rate is the problem. So people click on your listing, but they don’t really understanding why they should buy you can be perceived Oh, you do you? Do you? Do you manage to give the customer every information they need to make the buying decision. Very important point. People write everything they want to they want to tell their their potential customers database in the product description, but nothing visually visible, right? So do you give enough perceived value so enough USPs enough information about the product in your images, so they make the buying decision? If your conversion rate is pretty low, most of the time you lack on perceived value. And what people do, instead of working on their foundation is that listing doesn’t work. Let me launch a new product. Or let me like just spend more nets. But that’s the wrong approach. The right approach is work on your listing, try to get your click through rate and your conversion rate as high as possible to make it as profitable as possible. And once you’re once once you’re done, then you can start expanding new variations, new colors sizes whatsoever, on total, like new products. That’s that’s the approach I would recommend.
Ben Donovan 17:24
Yeah, good. Okay. We’ve talked about the importance of listing optimization, about changing, you know, listings that are doing well, what’s some of the biggest mistakes, the biggest failures you see people make with their listing, trying to optimize the listing, you know, with clients that you might come in and try and help them? What were some of the biggest mistakes that you see when trying to do this?
Julian Lohse 17:46
First mistake, not even optimizing biggest mistake, especially big brands just throw their product portfolio on Amazon? And they’re like, Yeah, whatsoever. And the sad thing is, most of the time they make they make good revenue. Yeah. Are they like, they could make so much more, right. So that’s the that’s the first one don’t even, like not even optimizing. Second one is optimizing but not relying on data. That’s probably probably when you’re willing to optimize the most important part, don’t rely on your unlike on any opinion, just rely on data on Amazon? What do I mean by that? For example, if you want to if you want to change your images of your product to increase your conversion rate, don’t look look at your product, look at your USPs and be like yeah, I have four five USPs, one USP per image done, right? That’s the wrong approach. Look at your data. Look what people are searching in terms of keywords that what people like and dislike reviews look like? Where like where does the revenue come from in terms of keywords as well. So you get like a good database of why do people buy, Why don’t people buy, and based on this you can really create like a good funnel of how to structure your listing to jet like to get the most conversion rates.
Julian Lohse 19:16
So let’s say you’re selling let me take the trash can example right? A majority of sales came from the keyword dog poop trashcan. Don’t ask me why, like, no clue at all right? But it seems that people in America like to throw their dog poop in the trash can. So what we did is we implemented an image showing somebody throwing the dog poop in the in the garbage like in the trash can. Quick headline also perfect for dog waste, and conversion rate conversion rate went up just because people when people look for specific usage, they have a specific need. You’re right. And if you show them that you you solve their specific need. It’s just logic, illogical that conversion rate will increase because they’re like, ah, yeah, that’s for me, I’m going to buy. Same product, different keyword people look for different locations. So trash can garden trash can, office trash can indoor outdoor. So we implemented an image showing an indoor and outdoor location at the same time, probably send you the listing afterwards. So people understood that you could use the trash can indoor and outdoor, right? So they like, ah, yeah, I want to use it indoor and outdoor, I’m going to buy this one. Even if all trash cans probably work for indoor and outdoor. It’s just about what you communicate with the people looking at you’re looking at your listing. And why do we focus so much on visual content? It’s very easy. Amazon is probably the, like the unsexiest website alive. And it’s and the focus of Amazon is very clear. More and more visual content, video ads, brand ads, Amazon posts and whatsoever brands store images, a plus, it’s getting more and more visual, and especially mobile, like the space the space you’re seeing. It’s less and less text and more and more images here banners there. So people people buy because of your images and not because they read your the your SEO text, right, which is just for ranking and not for it’s not say it’s copied, right. So yeah, like I said, rely on data. And don’t very important if you want to change your listing, especially images, don’t hire product photographers. Those guys are so expensive, and they don’t know anything about Amazon. And they will make you aesthetic images, but those aesthetic images will not sell. Yeah. Right.
Ben Donovan 22:06
Great tips. You, what do you recommend instead?
Julian Lohse 22:12
Besides my agency,
Ben Donovan 22:14
ya know, for people that can’t afford you, what do you recommend?
Julian Lohse 22:20
Just talking? Honestly. I would, especially when you when you’re starting out, I would recommend doing the whole research and data scraping, like I said, by yourself not because you want to because not as bad like not directly because of the money part. Just because when you start when you start, you should understand what you’re doing. And you should learn and you should get knowledge in the space. Yeah. And the problem with hiring agencies to early is that you won’t learn anything. If you you make $10,000 revenue month and you start you start hiring agencies for PPC will start hiring agencies for design whatsoever, because you don’t learn if you directly like take your first profits and hire somebody. So what would I recommend? Try to write like a briefing suited to your your data, which I covered. So keywords, reviews, everything that you should implement into your listing. And then look for talented designers. Honestly, you can find though, I would recommend Behance very good data, a very good platform for talented designers. Lots of Amazon designers out there as well. Yeah. And you can get them pretty cheap on sleep. Yep, hire them just to do the editing. And for the raw images. Honestly, go to the go to the next store. take like three 400 bucks, get like a semi professional camera and do those raw shots, like lifestyle images, probably by yourself because if a listing does not make, like I recommend optimizing the listing once it makes some like like fully optimizing right? Once it makes probably 10k revenue minimum amount because otherwise if your margins aren’t like crazy high it’s just not worth it right like profit wise to to invest money into it.
Ben Donovan 24:35
Yeah, there was some great tips that you shared about on data mining, you know, going into reviews. The dog peed one was I think it’s such a great example that people a is memorable, right that’s really good. But I’m hoping that people really take that away and consider that for their product because it’s such a clever thought you know, looking in your you have searched a report for your PPC. What are people searching when they click on your product, because that shows the search intent the buyer intent. And if they are searching that then clicking on your products, it shows that there is a clear link there and being able to satisfy that intent with those images is just obvious, right? It’s going to lead to higher conversion rates.
Julian Lohse 25:20
And the big part I forgot to cover is doing doing, like very boring work, but very important to understand the customer journey. Look at the SERPs of the keywords you’re ranking on right? To like really understand? How do I look like in the SERP right, when people look for whatever keyword for my product? Where do I rank? Like, how does it look like, because that’s the most important part probably. And the first part, your title image, if you ring next to four competitors, and all of you have like the same boring title, image presentation, just the product standing, everything looks boring, different, boring, same blah. Of course, you can’t, you can’t like stand out, right. And to get the click, you just need to stand out. And it’s all about having like the most aesthetic title image, it’s not about having the most fancy title limits. Image, it’s just about standing out, right could be effects. If you make it if you make it smart, the algorithm doesn’t catch you. It’s not you can you can make it more dynamic. So the product could like whatever it could, it could lean it could fly whatsoever. You could work with badges. If you have a packaging, put your packaging in the title image put like, even if it’s fake, it’s not an issue, put a badge on it. For example, with a call to action or USP. So for example, if you’re, if you’re selling, let’s take the trash can next example. And it’s just for example, more durable, you could you could put a badge on the packaging, on the title image saying more durable or highly durable or whatever. So when people look for highly durable trashcan, they will see your title image with the word they’re looking for. And people are getting attracted by by kind of like looking at what they searched for, right. Which is why, for example, we have a client that sells glass bottles. And very important keyword is glass bottle, a glass bottles for sparkling water was mocking water, glass bottle, blah, blah, all those sparkling related keywords. And we implemented just like a sparkling water effect in the bottle. So the lids kind of like popped off and there’s sparkling water going outside. And people clicked like crazy just because they look for sparkling water. And his listing his title image looks so different. Besides all the boring Yeah, I have I have a bottle title images, right. So the probably the biggest part of work could be done just by optimizing the title image to the maximum. Yeah,
Ben Donovan 28:30
that’s good, man. You’ve talked about flying out popping out all this kind of stuff. I assume that you’re a fan of 3d renders.
Julian Lohse 28:38
Yeah. If they’re if they’re done well, yeah, I’m a huge fan, just because it’s easy to optimize them afterwards. Right? Just because you can change. You can change ankles, you can change with facts, you can change colors. You can change everything very easy and fast. And personally, I just like to work fast and efficient. But on the other side renderers are only good if if they’re really good, because if you can tell directly that those are renders, it looks like this typical fiver Amazon cheap look. Yeah. And that’s what you don’t want because if things like if it looks unreal, people won’t click on it. Because it just looks maybe people will click on there. You can test it. But from my experience, if it’s a bad render you will just lose potential.
Ben Donovan 29:42
Yeah, for sure. Are there any product types you would say? Don’t work with renders.
Julian Lohse 29:49
Man we did everything but depends on the artist, right? We for example, we hired an X architect for doing the renders. Yeah. Because that’s like the most talented group of rent renderers I’ve met in my life. But I would say everything that’s that’s small and and has it easy shaved things like bottle like shakers, small, like cases, whatever. Although small electronic products, for example, supplements, those are perfect for renders, I would not, I would probably not render a trashcan. I will not render trash cans. But for example, we we did render things like clothes, things like, like covers for for E bikes. So we like we rendered whole bikes and stuff. So it’s possible. But I can tell you, as long as your rent, like, as long as that’s not my guy, it will will not look like you want.
Ben Donovan 31:00
Yeah. And how much should someone be expecting to pay for a 3d render, like a good quality 3d render?
Julian Lohse 31:11
depends on the shape. I would say that, if we just talk about the title image, you can get good render. With modeling, because that’s like the majority of the work right, modeling the product? I would say you can get two to three renders for around $150.
Ben Donovan 31:31
Wow, that’s cheaper than I was expecting.
Julian Lohse 31:34
Well, well, I’m I have to say that I am thinking of like going into sites like Behance, Upwork, and so on, and look for like the highest quality for the lowest budget, right? Yeah, you can you can you spend like 1000s of dollars on renders? Yes, you can. Yeah, that’s that’s the thing. Coming back to listing optimization, you always have to look, what’s the potential uplift? And therefore what should I invest? Because if you’re like I said, if you’re listing, we have a client, one listing does around 200k revenue. Of course, you can invest probably 5k into that listing lifestyle, shooting this and that. Make it make it fancy. Because if you make 25% 30% more conversion rate, yeah, you make the money in the first month, right? But if your listing does like five to three, four or 5k revenue, I would always recommend going for the budget version to probably get 80% of the potential uplift. Yep, not 100. But 80%. Yeah, once you want to make more revenue, you can get the last 20%. Yeah. But most of the time, like I said, it’s, it’s good to go kind of like get cheap. Cheap is not the right word. To go. Affordable. Affordable, right? Yeah. People The problem is that people think that to get a good listing, they need to spend 1000s of dollars, right? And people come to our agency and be like, Yeah, I know, you’re expensive. I don’t know. I’m like, man, okay, let me look at your listing. You need to do this, this and that. Go to this guy, go to this guy, go to this guy, budget, whatever, whatever is affordable for you. You can make it right. It’s possible. It’s just, that’s the thing. It’s more work. Yeah. And the problem is people want to you people want to get the easy way. People like to pay more money, even if it’s not worth it. Instead of doing the work on their own, according to the affordable version. Yeah. So I would recommend put in the work, understand your listing, understand your data. And then it’s easy to get to get like a budget version. I know people make making millions in revenue on Amazon. And they still work with like, very small budgets for the listing optimization. Yeah. Because they have the time honestly, you don’t have the time. Give it to somebody else. If you have the time to do it on your own, because then you become a killer in your niche data. Data Wise, optimization wise.
Ben Donovan 34:15
Yeah, definitely, man. If any of our listeners are thinking, I’d like to get some help from an agency like yourselves, what kind of clients do you work with?
Julian Lohse 34:28
Basically, anybody who’s willing to grow, that’s the most important part. Yep. But because mindset is mindset, and like, cultural fit is everything for me. I don’t look at certain revenue numbers. I don’t look at marketplaces. We have clients from all over the world. But it just has to make sense. So it like sometimes we take on brands that are small, but for example, they’re just small now on Amazon and they’re big outside of Amazon. Yeah. So we can make them grow pretty fast on Amazon, right? On the other hand, we take on big brands who are stuck at a plateau. And we just crushed the plateau blocked by optimizing their listings, optimizing their, their PPC data, and so on to crush that. But I would just recommend talking to agencies, honestly, because if you if you talk to a good to good agent agency, they will figure out if your need suits their service. Yeah. And agents like working with an agency is hard, because you have to focus on communication and focus on if they’re loyal if they’re friendly, because that’s very important, from my perspective, my experience.
Julian Lohse 35:43
But then if there’s a fit, it’s a great thing to work with an agency because they most of the time, make you more money, more profit, whatever and save time. Yeah, but it only makes sense. If you have the same goal as they have. If you start out if you start out over on Amazon, before working with an agency, you probably should invest if you want to waste money in the course. Right? Or in coaching to get knowledge. Yep. But for example, if you make 100k revenue on Amazon, profit margins are good. And you just want to like, get the work done by somebody else. Talk to an agency, tell them what your situation is, what their need is, what your need is, and then see if there’s a fit. And a good agency. Like I said, we’ll always say it’s a bit of it’s not like I decline majority of leads we get just because I don’t see a fit and what they need and what we what we offer. Yeah. Right.
Ben Donovan 36:43
Yeah, that’s, that’s good. And it’s helpful for obviously, people that might want to connect with you, but just the general mentality of using agencies and freelancers and outside help to grow your business. So that’s super helpful, man. Appreciate that. Before we kind of wrap things up, is there anything that I maybe haven’t asked that you think is important that people know? On the front of Amazon listing optimization? Are there any golden nuggets? You haven’t dropped yet?
Julian Lohse 37:08
Yeah, well, the only thing I can think of is branding. Yeah. Because branding is like getting more and more important on Amazon. Like I said, especially if you’re interested in selling your company at some point. And the thing, like branding is a whole, like, it’s a whole different topic. And it’s way too big to cover. But just to, to kind of like, give you the most important information about that. The mistake people make is that people think that branding means I need the craziest Brand Book, the craziest logo, the craziest, like brand identity CI whatsoever. Yeah, that’s not the case. Brand like branding. From I know, it’s, it’s not the classic definition of branding. But branding for me on Amazon means that if I look for a specific product, and I see your product, your product should look like a product, which has high quality and is from a brand instead of drop shipping Alibaba, yes. Whoever did that. Basically the stupid explanation of branding in my, my, my words.
Julian Lohse 38:24
So how do you how do you get a good branding on Amazon? Look like a brand? What does it what does that mean? Starts with have the same look for every product in terms of the design. Don’t have like three fonts, five colors on your listings, implement, implement your logo, and even if even if it’s a cheap logo, even if it doesn’t look perfect, implemented, it’s like a budget branding version. implement those logos below the brand store. Very important in terms of cross selling. Yeah. And especially if you if you grow and grow and grow, try to keep especially when when you when you already built the brand. So there you’re not in the in the process of what I would have covered. So you already built the brand. Tell them like tell the cup. Tell the customers who you are. And I don’t I don’t mean you Hey, I’m Jack. I’m the owner of the brand. That’s not That’s not necessary, but just tell them that you care about your care about your bought your products and your customers. That’s why a plus was made a plus was made because Amazon wanted to give you more space to talk about your brand. So you Who are you what do you what do you do whatsoever. So let’s say let’s let’s take again the trash can. The trash can. They’re like famous in Germany. So when we created ABC, we just told them, hey, we’re like a big German brand. We’re not from China, right? And we make products. And on Amazon, since competition is 24/7, next to you, branding is not like on Instagram being like, crazy, fancy, crazy aesthetic, it’s just about standing out in terms of hey, like, all your all our competition, everybody is like from China or whatsoever, which is not a bad thing. But to make it easy, but we’re the brand. And if you generate the feeling of, hey, that’s the brand. People are willing to spend more for your products. Yeah. And they, especially if you’re, if you’re not more expensive, there’s just no reason to like not to buy you if your product is good.
Julian Lohse 40:55
Because branding gives trust. And people don’t buy brands, most of the time, as long as you don’t sell like hoodies, fashion shoes, watches, people don’t buy directly because of the brand name. People buy because they they estimate a certain quality, which is generated by the brand, feeling behind the product. Because I don’t buy I don’t buy the quote, like the quality bottle at the brand bottle. Because I like the brand. I buy it because I think that the brand at the bottle, like lasts forever. Yeah. Right? Yeah, if you if you manage to do that, people will just be more likely to buy you. You can even build up customer relationship. It’s possible on Amazon, if done right. It’s just the quicker you start implementing branding, the more the more uplift you will see long term in terms of your growth and so on.
Ben Donovan 42:00
Yeah, and I think that’s a really important distinction. And I think you articulated it really well. Because people do think why is it worth doing branding on Amazon? Can you even do branding on Amazon? Do you have the space time etc to build brand identity with people? But you’ve nailed it. It’s not about people, knowing your brand is about people knowing that you are a brand. Yeah, yeah, time they will come to know it. And I think that’s really important distinction and super helpful for people.
Julian Lohse 42:29
Because like, especially when we start working with big brands, you wouldn’t recognize that it’s a brand. Yeah, most of the time. Yeah. And next to them. They’re like three people having branch and radar names. And people can’t, like they can’t make a decision. Yeah. But once the ultimate goal is being the brand for your niche. So whenever somebody thinks of a niche, they think of you. So whenever they look for a product from your niche, they look at you. And you’re like the go to brand for the niche. Yeah. And there’s so many brands that made it right. There’s so many brands for specific niche, who are like, Yeah, fine. Look for this niche. There’s like this brand. You want to be like the Temple of Amazon, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Donovan 43:22
Yeah, that’s really helpful. Really helpful. Listen, this has been super helpful, more so than I expected to be honest, I was looking forward to it, because I know you’re a genius. But I think just real practical stuff that people can take away. It’s not just been, you know, make the product look good, or find good keywords. It’s some super real, practical takeaways from this. So I really appreciate you coming on. What if people want to sort of find out more about yourself the agency where’s the best place to follow you get in contact, etc.
Julian Lohse 43:55
Yeah, Twitter. I’m pretty new to Twitter. So don’t mind me if I forgot to respond to everything. I’m still not a Twitter expert, but it’s just my my social network of choice. Just like to provide value. I will not slide into your DMS and selling stuff. In advance. I heard that some people do that. Yeah, value is key. Twitter. Twitter’s the place to be. Yeah. People like I have people hitting me up just being like, Yeah, can you look at my listing? Give me a quick quick, like overview on what you think. Yeah. Like and I will always do that. Right. I do that for like for free. Just because the more like I said, the more value I give, the more I get back. So if anybody is like, Yeah, this guy talks way too much way too fast. I don’t I didn’t understand anything sent You’re listening, I’ll give you a quick, quick audit on what you can what you can implement what you can optimize. And then I can help you growing without charging
Ben Donovan 45:10
is a dangerous commitment to make because you know, we’re a small podcast now but you know, when we got 1000s of listeners, you’re gonna be getting deals every day, bro.
Julian Lohse 45:18
Honestly, I didn’t finish the event I am I told you about I told you about people came like in here here in Germany came like every every three to five minutes with their like their listing on their mobile phone. They were like, Hey, man, can you get this? So like, I’m a nerd for the topic. And wherever I can help, like, I just like to provide value. So that’s awesome, man. I make the commitment.
Ben Donovan 45:48
Good. Now love to hear it. Well, we’ll leave a link to your Twitter profile in the show notes so everyone can check that out. Julian, thanks so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.
Julian Lohse 45:58
Thanks for having me. And sorry for taking like 60 minutes more.
Ben Donovan 46:02
Not as fun. No, it’s all good. There’s so much value in there. I didn’t want to cut it off. So it’s good. Amazing, guys. Thanks for joining us on this episode. Be sure to like subscribe, all of that stuff, check out Julian’s stuff below in the show notes. Honestly, it’s really, really helpful content. And we’ll see in the next episode real soon.
Hey guys, welcome to another episode of The Brand Builder show. This is going to be a great episode, I’m really looking forward to diving in all things Amazon listing optimization with Julian. Julian, someone that I began to follow on Twitter recently and taking the Amazon Twitter space by storm. Welcome to the show, Julian, great to have you.
Julian Lohse 00:20
Thanks for having me.
Ben Donovan 00:22
It’s gonna be a good one. Amazon listing optimization is something that as Amazon sellers, we talked about so much, and so it’s gonna be great to hear about what your thoughts are, especially as Amazon as a platform matures, and there’s more going on in the marketplace. You know, optimizing our listings is more important than ever. And so yeah, it’s gonna be great. But before we get into that, I’d love to hear a bit about your journey. What got you into being an expert on Amazon listing optimization? What’s been the last few years looking like for you?
Julian Lohse 00:51
Yeah, well, interesting question. How did I get into E commerce and Amazon? Yeah, first of all, I just never saw myself in the typical nine to five life. So I never I never kind of like matched the typical, go to school, go to university, then take just a normal job and work until you’re 65. I always had the dream of doing my own thing. used to work at the bank after after school. So when when I finished school here in Germany, and then I just took my to my best friend, his name is Justin. We just brainstorm what we can do. Because like I said, normal nine to five was not the thing was not our choice. started an econ brand, did some sustainable clothing. We did some non nice numbers and revenue, but didn’t didn’t make any profits. Because we didn’t know anything about digital marketing. And then it was pretty unsexy. How did we get into Amazon? We just looked at Where’s where’s the need? What do people need on Amazon? What can we can we offer, and then we kind of like, got into a call into Amazon got into his service based business. So we have our growth agency, which means that we do two things for people. One thing listing optimization, which mainly focuses on their visual content in their branding. And the second thing is typical, like growth, PPC, strategy advisory, typical air marketing approach on how to how to help brands grow in Amazon. How do we help? Like, I don’t like the word expert. How did I gain the knowledge? Working with good clients working with little clients working with huge clients speaking of 8 9 10, figure retail brands from from Germany, mostly of things. Which is, which is part of the journey, learning, networking? And staying humble?
Ben Donovan 03:16
You said you had 8 9 10 figure clients, how did you get clients like that? That’s incredible.
Julian Lohse 03:22
Yeah, well, the the eight, nine figure clients referred most of the time. Because I would say that getting like the bigger the client is the harder it is to to kind of like get the connection because I would not I would not call DM or call 989 If you got clients because those guys have so much on their plates. Like they don’t they don’t want to see your your cheesy. Hey, man, I want to make you money. So most of the most of the big client works from referrals. So making good work for smaller clients, and then it’s just like a compound effect. And the fun thing about the biggest client we have is the biggest client we have is a 10 figure client. So they make 10 figures revenue. But in total, like not only on Amazon, right, yeah. So in total. And I just I just reached out to them with cold message on LinkedIn. Like with the loom saying, your man, your listing sucks. We used to ABCD make it better. It was like the hell of E commerce. And he responded. Yeah, man, you’re so right. Let’s have a chat.
Ben Donovan 04:44
Wow.
Julian Lohse 04:45
But at the end, I just provided value for free and it’s the same thing with with Twitter, which is why I like Twitter so much. You can just provide so much value for free and the more value you put Why’d I heavily believe in that the more value you provide? The more comes back. So yeah, yeah, to answer your question referrence network and over delivering probably provide some value.
Ben Donovan 05:13
That’s awesome. And what does the agency look like? Now? How many of you are involved in it? And what is what do you do day to day?
Julian Lohse 05:21
I would say I do everything. Because they, I feel like there, there are two aspects of how you can change your approach to owning an agency. The first one is scaling with like a huge team and huge number of clients, huge revenues. But that’s not my approach, or that’s not our approach. Our approach is keeping the agencies small in terms of the number of clients we work with, at the same time, in terms of the team, in terms of everything to keep everything lean, just because I like the worst feeling I could imagine is having a client, I don’t know, right? So I do some client communication. I do sales. I do, like talk to clients when something doesn’t work. I’m involved in everything, because I, but not because I have to more because I like to. I just want to keep the quality as high as possible. So yeah, I’m, I’m the guy for everything in our agency. Even if even if I’m the owner is probably not the most like sexy thing to say, as an agency owner. Not as fun. Yeah, I like to be involved in everything. Yeah.
Ben Donovan 06:40
Yeah, different strategies work for different people don’t answer. That’s your that’s your way of doing it. And sounds like it’s going really well. So who is anybody else to judge how you’re doing it? So that’s good, man. That’s good. Moving on to Amazon listing optimization, then because a lot of our listeners will be either selling on Amazon want to sell on Amazon, selling elsewhere and want to bring that over to Amazon. Obviously, Amazon listing optimization is a topic that gets talked about a lot. But why is that? Why do you see that? Just at the very core, why is Amazon listing optimization? So important?
Julian Lohse 07:15
Money?
Ben Donovan 07:17
Expand?
Julian Lohse 07:18
Yeah,
Ben Donovan 07:19
of course, that’s a short podcast episode otherwise?
Julian Lohse 07:23
Yeah. Yeah, money just because every every product that you’re selling, should be, should have, should have huge potential, right? Because otherwise, you did some mistake in the sourcing process. So from my perspective, every product that you sell, should have the potential to make good numbers, in terms of revenue and profit per month. And the problem is, what many people do is they list their products, and they start making sales organically SEO, paid by PPC, and so on. And they the listing starts growing, growing, growing, and they never touched the listing again, that’s what most people do. And the problem is that just if we, if we look at numbers, click through rates, conversion rates, return rates whatsoever. Only, like, if only a few people max out the potential of every product they they’re selling, even if those listings make 10 20 30 40 50 100 200 Whatever, K revenue a month. And the the issue with that is that you can you can scale through advertising and launching new products. But then it’s just like quantity, quantity, quantity game. And you have to rely on crazy AdSense crazy ad revenues. And I feel like if you optimize the core, the foundation, and if you try to max out everything before scaling, before turning like the numbers higher and higher, it’s just a more sustainable approach. Because your brand probably grows like more profitable, and you don’t have like 10 products at the same time, which don’t generate any revenue. Instead, you can have like two or three products, which generate probably the same revenue, right? So I just believe in quality over quantity. That’s basically the Yep.
Ben Donovan 09:34
Yeah, that’s good, man. I mean, we teach a principle I got from James clears book atomic habits, and he talks about the growth of agriculture. And it was much easier for agriculture to grow on an east to west plane than it wasn’t north to south because of the the similarity in climate. And he talks about the humans have this. You know, the law of least effort is called that humans will find Find a way to do something in the easiest way or, you know, they say, don’t they, you know, if you want a job doing give it to someone who’s lazy, because they’ll find the quickest and easiest way to do it. And, and growing a brand, I think, you know, as exactly as you said is you want to maximize the stuff that’s working for you already before you go out and launch other stuff, you know, don’t launch a product to 30% of its potential, and then launch another product, make sure you get that product at 90%. Of course, it gets to a point of diminishing returns, but make sure you maximize it as much as you can before you move on.
Julian Lohse 10:32
Another thing is, we we talk a lot with brands who are interested in selling their brand at some point. Yeah, we know people who support like sellers when they when they’re ready to say to sell. We even know some aggregators, we work with one of those aggregators especially. And the thing is that whenever I talk to these guys, they tell me that if you’re interested in selling your brand, which is interesting, from what I’ve heard for big part of people out there, yeah. They really look at how strong your like your brand is, in terms of the branding. Yeah. And that that kind of like, gets me gets me back to listing optimization. If they look at your product portfolio, they’re like, Yeah, you make a million in revenue per month. But you have like, 200 skews, generating those, like the million they like, huh, it’s not safe to invest there. Right. On the other side, if though, if the million is split on, like a couple, a few good, really good listings, because it’s just like good images, brand, feeling. high conversion rates, high click through rate whatsoever, like really profitable listings, the chance of selling your brand is way higher, in terms of the probably what you’re what you will get from the, for whoever’s interested in buying them.
Ben Donovan 12:03
Definitely, you mentioned about not wanting to update a listing that you’ve optimized once, I think is a really important topic. And we’d love your opinion on that, from what you said before, I can imagine what your answer may well be, but to give some, I suppose, confidence to people, because once you have a high selling hero SKU that you rely upon in your business, it can be daunting to change the title, the keywords, the images, but at the same time, you know, people will say you should always be testing. What’s your Do you have a view on how much you should test? You know, can you give some, I suppose, peace of mind to those people that don’t want to touch the heroes queue
Julian Lohse 12:47
Yeah. Bigger the listing is the smaller the changes should be. Right, great. Which means that we have a client. It’s, it’s, it’s a brand from Germany make around 100 50 million revenue a year. And we started, we started working with them for their American, like their expansion to America. And they have they have a trash can which generate which Jen has like 90,000 Set sales, like over the last year, it’s like, it’s like a basic trash can right? two or three images, very basic, but it’s just like a big brand. Yeah. And when we started working with them, they they told me, are you sure that you want to change something on the listing? Because it’s it’s generating? Like, good revenue, right? That was like, Yeah, we like if you’re, if your product generates good revenue, without even optimizing the potential of what you could reach in terms of revenue and profits is so high that you definitely should test it. Yeah. But the approach is keeping changes small because you can like Amazon’s weird sometimes, and you don’t want to change too much at the same time. So if your listing makes like 1000’s of sales every month, try to probably try to implement another image in it, try to implement probably another a plus on it. Once once it works, then you can optimize more and more and more, but I would not recommend going like crazy going directly because if you like mess it up. It can backfire on you pretty fast.
Ben Donovan 14:42
Yeah. So if someone was wanting to change their images you say like one image at a time?
Julian Lohse 14:50
Well, like I said, depends if it’s if it’s a listing that generates probably somewhere between 10 to 50k. I don’t see like a big risk of changing everything directly, because as long as you’re not in the supplement niche, the you’re you’re able to do that, right? Because, yeah, it’s hard to to say things in general, because it really depends on the specific needs. I have, I have clients that that are scared of changing every like everything, just because their niche is so competitive, and they’re scared of their competitors. Like doing some black half things or whatsoever right? Now, the on the other hand, their niche where you can do basically everything, which you want to do, and Amazon doesn’t really care about the TLS.
Julian Lohse 15:39
So I would I would start slowly, depending on what the problem is, is click through rate, the problem do you get like, do is your click through rate too low, you’re paying like crazy amounts on that, you will click price is very high whatsoever, then maybe think about okay. Test testing your title image, try to get the click through rate high of conversion rate is the problem. So people click on your listing, but they don’t really understanding why they should buy you can be perceived Oh, you do you? Do you? Do you manage to give the customer every information they need to make the buying decision. Very important point. People write everything they want to they want to tell their their potential customers database in the product description, but nothing visually visible, right? So do you give enough perceived value so enough USPs enough information about the product in your images, so they make the buying decision? If your conversion rate is pretty low, most of the time you lack on perceived value. And what people do, instead of working on their foundation is that listing doesn’t work. Let me launch a new product. Or let me like just spend more nets. But that’s the wrong approach. The right approach is work on your listing, try to get your click through rate and your conversion rate as high as possible to make it as profitable as possible. And once you’re once once you’re done, then you can start expanding new variations, new colors sizes whatsoever, on total, like new products. That’s that’s the approach I would recommend.
Ben Donovan 17:24
Yeah, good. Okay. We’ve talked about the importance of listing optimization, about changing, you know, listings that are doing well, what’s some of the biggest mistakes, the biggest failures you see people make with their listing, trying to optimize the listing, you know, with clients that you might come in and try and help them? What were some of the biggest mistakes that you see when trying to do this?
Julian Lohse 17:46
First mistake, not even optimizing biggest mistake, especially big brands just throw their product portfolio on Amazon? And they’re like, Yeah, whatsoever. And the sad thing is, most of the time they make they make good revenue. Yeah. Are they like, they could make so much more, right. So that’s the that’s the first one don’t even, like not even optimizing. Second one is optimizing but not relying on data. That’s probably probably when you’re willing to optimize the most important part, don’t rely on your unlike on any opinion, just rely on data on Amazon? What do I mean by that? For example, if you want to if you want to change your images of your product to increase your conversion rate, don’t look look at your product, look at your USPs and be like yeah, I have four five USPs, one USP per image done, right? That’s the wrong approach. Look at your data. Look what people are searching in terms of keywords that what people like and dislike reviews look like? Where like where does the revenue come from in terms of keywords as well. So you get like a good database of why do people buy, Why don’t people buy, and based on this you can really create like a good funnel of how to structure your listing to jet like to get the most conversion rates.
Julian Lohse 19:16
So let’s say you’re selling let me take the trash can example right? A majority of sales came from the keyword dog poop trashcan. Don’t ask me why, like, no clue at all right? But it seems that people in America like to throw their dog poop in the trash can. So what we did is we implemented an image showing somebody throwing the dog poop in the in the garbage like in the trash can. Quick headline also perfect for dog waste, and conversion rate conversion rate went up just because people when people look for specific usage, they have a specific need. You’re right. And if you show them that you you solve their specific need. It’s just logic, illogical that conversion rate will increase because they’re like, ah, yeah, that’s for me, I’m going to buy. Same product, different keyword people look for different locations. So trash can garden trash can, office trash can indoor outdoor. So we implemented an image showing an indoor and outdoor location at the same time, probably send you the listing afterwards. So people understood that you could use the trash can indoor and outdoor, right? So they like, ah, yeah, I want to use it indoor and outdoor, I’m going to buy this one. Even if all trash cans probably work for indoor and outdoor. It’s just about what you communicate with the people looking at you’re looking at your listing. And why do we focus so much on visual content? It’s very easy. Amazon is probably the, like the unsexiest website alive. And it’s and the focus of Amazon is very clear. More and more visual content, video ads, brand ads, Amazon posts and whatsoever brands store images, a plus, it’s getting more and more visual, and especially mobile, like the space the space you’re seeing. It’s less and less text and more and more images here banners there. So people people buy because of your images and not because they read your the your SEO text, right, which is just for ranking and not for it’s not say it’s copied, right. So yeah, like I said, rely on data. And don’t very important if you want to change your listing, especially images, don’t hire product photographers. Those guys are so expensive, and they don’t know anything about Amazon. And they will make you aesthetic images, but those aesthetic images will not sell. Yeah. Right.
Ben Donovan 22:06
Great tips. You, what do you recommend instead?
Julian Lohse 22:12
Besides my agency,
Ben Donovan 22:14
ya know, for people that can’t afford you, what do you recommend?
Julian Lohse 22:20
Just talking? Honestly. I would, especially when you when you’re starting out, I would recommend doing the whole research and data scraping, like I said, by yourself not because you want to because not as bad like not directly because of the money part. Just because when you start when you start, you should understand what you’re doing. And you should learn and you should get knowledge in the space. Yeah. And the problem with hiring agencies to early is that you won’t learn anything. If you you make $10,000 revenue month and you start you start hiring agencies for PPC will start hiring agencies for design whatsoever, because you don’t learn if you directly like take your first profits and hire somebody. So what would I recommend? Try to write like a briefing suited to your your data, which I covered. So keywords, reviews, everything that you should implement into your listing. And then look for talented designers. Honestly, you can find though, I would recommend Behance very good data, a very good platform for talented designers. Lots of Amazon designers out there as well. Yeah. And you can get them pretty cheap on sleep. Yep, hire them just to do the editing. And for the raw images. Honestly, go to the go to the next store. take like three 400 bucks, get like a semi professional camera and do those raw shots, like lifestyle images, probably by yourself because if a listing does not make, like I recommend optimizing the listing once it makes some like like fully optimizing right? Once it makes probably 10k revenue minimum amount because otherwise if your margins aren’t like crazy high it’s just not worth it right like profit wise to to invest money into it.
Ben Donovan 24:35
Yeah, there was some great tips that you shared about on data mining, you know, going into reviews. The dog peed one was I think it’s such a great example that people a is memorable, right that’s really good. But I’m hoping that people really take that away and consider that for their product because it’s such a clever thought you know, looking in your you have searched a report for your PPC. What are people searching when they click on your product, because that shows the search intent the buyer intent. And if they are searching that then clicking on your products, it shows that there is a clear link there and being able to satisfy that intent with those images is just obvious, right? It’s going to lead to higher conversion rates.
Julian Lohse 25:20
And the big part I forgot to cover is doing doing, like very boring work, but very important to understand the customer journey. Look at the SERPs of the keywords you’re ranking on right? To like really understand? How do I look like in the SERP right, when people look for whatever keyword for my product? Where do I rank? Like, how does it look like, because that’s the most important part probably. And the first part, your title image, if you ring next to four competitors, and all of you have like the same boring title, image presentation, just the product standing, everything looks boring, different, boring, same blah. Of course, you can’t, you can’t like stand out, right. And to get the click, you just need to stand out. And it’s all about having like the most aesthetic title image, it’s not about having the most fancy title limits. Image, it’s just about standing out, right could be effects. If you make it if you make it smart, the algorithm doesn’t catch you. It’s not you can you can make it more dynamic. So the product could like whatever it could, it could lean it could fly whatsoever. You could work with badges. If you have a packaging, put your packaging in the title image put like, even if it’s fake, it’s not an issue, put a badge on it. For example, with a call to action or USP. So for example, if you’re, if you’re selling, let’s take the trash can next example. And it’s just for example, more durable, you could you could put a badge on the packaging, on the title image saying more durable or highly durable or whatever. So when people look for highly durable trashcan, they will see your title image with the word they’re looking for. And people are getting attracted by by kind of like looking at what they searched for, right. Which is why, for example, we have a client that sells glass bottles. And very important keyword is glass bottle, a glass bottles for sparkling water was mocking water, glass bottle, blah, blah, all those sparkling related keywords. And we implemented just like a sparkling water effect in the bottle. So the lids kind of like popped off and there’s sparkling water going outside. And people clicked like crazy just because they look for sparkling water. And his listing his title image looks so different. Besides all the boring Yeah, I have I have a bottle title images, right. So the probably the biggest part of work could be done just by optimizing the title image to the maximum. Yeah,
Ben Donovan 28:30
that’s good, man. You’ve talked about flying out popping out all this kind of stuff. I assume that you’re a fan of 3d renders.
Julian Lohse 28:38
Yeah. If they’re if they’re done well, yeah, I’m a huge fan, just because it’s easy to optimize them afterwards. Right? Just because you can change. You can change ankles, you can change with facts, you can change colors. You can change everything very easy and fast. And personally, I just like to work fast and efficient. But on the other side renderers are only good if if they’re really good, because if you can tell directly that those are renders, it looks like this typical fiver Amazon cheap look. Yeah. And that’s what you don’t want because if things like if it looks unreal, people won’t click on it. Because it just looks maybe people will click on there. You can test it. But from my experience, if it’s a bad render you will just lose potential.
Ben Donovan 29:42
Yeah, for sure. Are there any product types you would say? Don’t work with renders.
Julian Lohse 29:49
Man we did everything but depends on the artist, right? We for example, we hired an X architect for doing the renders. Yeah. Because that’s like the most talented group of rent renderers I’ve met in my life. But I would say everything that’s that’s small and and has it easy shaved things like bottle like shakers, small, like cases, whatever. Although small electronic products, for example, supplements, those are perfect for renders, I would not, I would probably not render a trashcan. I will not render trash cans. But for example, we we did render things like clothes, things like, like covers for for E bikes. So we like we rendered whole bikes and stuff. So it’s possible. But I can tell you, as long as your rent, like, as long as that’s not my guy, it will will not look like you want.
Ben Donovan 31:00
Yeah. And how much should someone be expecting to pay for a 3d render, like a good quality 3d render?
Julian Lohse 31:11
depends on the shape. I would say that, if we just talk about the title image, you can get good render. With modeling, because that’s like the majority of the work right, modeling the product? I would say you can get two to three renders for around $150.
Ben Donovan 31:31
Wow, that’s cheaper than I was expecting.
Julian Lohse 31:34
Well, well, I’m I have to say that I am thinking of like going into sites like Behance, Upwork, and so on, and look for like the highest quality for the lowest budget, right? Yeah, you can you can you spend like 1000s of dollars on renders? Yes, you can. Yeah, that’s that’s the thing. Coming back to listing optimization, you always have to look, what’s the potential uplift? And therefore what should I invest? Because if you’re like I said, if you’re listing, we have a client, one listing does around 200k revenue. Of course, you can invest probably 5k into that listing lifestyle, shooting this and that. Make it make it fancy. Because if you make 25% 30% more conversion rate, yeah, you make the money in the first month, right? But if your listing does like five to three, four or 5k revenue, I would always recommend going for the budget version to probably get 80% of the potential uplift. Yep, not 100. But 80%. Yeah, once you want to make more revenue, you can get the last 20%. Yeah. But most of the time, like I said, it’s, it’s good to go kind of like get cheap. Cheap is not the right word. To go. Affordable. Affordable, right? Yeah. People The problem is that people think that to get a good listing, they need to spend 1000s of dollars, right? And people come to our agency and be like, Yeah, I know, you’re expensive. I don’t know. I’m like, man, okay, let me look at your listing. You need to do this, this and that. Go to this guy, go to this guy, go to this guy, budget, whatever, whatever is affordable for you. You can make it right. It’s possible. It’s just, that’s the thing. It’s more work. Yeah. And the problem is people want to you people want to get the easy way. People like to pay more money, even if it’s not worth it. Instead of doing the work on their own, according to the affordable version. Yeah. So I would recommend put in the work, understand your listing, understand your data. And then it’s easy to get to get like a budget version. I know people make making millions in revenue on Amazon. And they still work with like, very small budgets for the listing optimization. Yeah. Because they have the time honestly, you don’t have the time. Give it to somebody else. If you have the time to do it on your own, because then you become a killer in your niche data. Data Wise, optimization wise.
Ben Donovan 34:15
Yeah, definitely, man. If any of our listeners are thinking, I’d like to get some help from an agency like yourselves, what kind of clients do you work with?
Julian Lohse 34:28
Basically, anybody who’s willing to grow, that’s the most important part. Yep. But because mindset is mindset, and like, cultural fit is everything for me. I don’t look at certain revenue numbers. I don’t look at marketplaces. We have clients from all over the world. But it just has to make sense. So it like sometimes we take on brands that are small, but for example, they’re just small now on Amazon and they’re big outside of Amazon. Yeah. So we can make them grow pretty fast on Amazon, right? On the other hand, we take on big brands who are stuck at a plateau. And we just crushed the plateau blocked by optimizing their listings, optimizing their, their PPC data, and so on to crush that. But I would just recommend talking to agencies, honestly, because if you if you talk to a good to good agent agency, they will figure out if your need suits their service. Yeah. And agents like working with an agency is hard, because you have to focus on communication and focus on if they’re loyal if they’re friendly, because that’s very important, from my perspective, my experience.
Julian Lohse 35:43
But then if there’s a fit, it’s a great thing to work with an agency because they most of the time, make you more money, more profit, whatever and save time. Yeah, but it only makes sense. If you have the same goal as they have. If you start out if you start out over on Amazon, before working with an agency, you probably should invest if you want to waste money in the course. Right? Or in coaching to get knowledge. Yep. But for example, if you make 100k revenue on Amazon, profit margins are good. And you just want to like, get the work done by somebody else. Talk to an agency, tell them what your situation is, what their need is, what your need is, and then see if there’s a fit. And a good agency. Like I said, we’ll always say it’s a bit of it’s not like I decline majority of leads we get just because I don’t see a fit and what they need and what we what we offer. Yeah. Right.
Ben Donovan 36:43
Yeah, that’s, that’s good. And it’s helpful for obviously, people that might want to connect with you, but just the general mentality of using agencies and freelancers and outside help to grow your business. So that’s super helpful, man. Appreciate that. Before we kind of wrap things up, is there anything that I maybe haven’t asked that you think is important that people know? On the front of Amazon listing optimization? Are there any golden nuggets? You haven’t dropped yet?
Julian Lohse 37:08
Yeah, well, the only thing I can think of is branding. Yeah. Because branding is like getting more and more important on Amazon. Like I said, especially if you’re interested in selling your company at some point. And the thing, like branding is a whole, like, it’s a whole different topic. And it’s way too big to cover. But just to, to kind of like, give you the most important information about that. The mistake people make is that people think that branding means I need the craziest Brand Book, the craziest logo, the craziest, like brand identity CI whatsoever. Yeah, that’s not the case. Brand like branding. From I know, it’s, it’s not the classic definition of branding. But branding for me on Amazon means that if I look for a specific product, and I see your product, your product should look like a product, which has high quality and is from a brand instead of drop shipping Alibaba, yes. Whoever did that. Basically the stupid explanation of branding in my, my, my words.
Julian Lohse 38:24
So how do you how do you get a good branding on Amazon? Look like a brand? What does it what does that mean? Starts with have the same look for every product in terms of the design. Don’t have like three fonts, five colors on your listings, implement, implement your logo, and even if even if it’s a cheap logo, even if it doesn’t look perfect, implemented, it’s like a budget branding version. implement those logos below the brand store. Very important in terms of cross selling. Yeah. And especially if you if you grow and grow and grow, try to keep especially when when you when you already built the brand. So there you’re not in the in the process of what I would have covered. So you already built the brand. Tell them like tell the cup. Tell the customers who you are. And I don’t I don’t mean you Hey, I’m Jack. I’m the owner of the brand. That’s not That’s not necessary, but just tell them that you care about your care about your bought your products and your customers. That’s why a plus was made a plus was made because Amazon wanted to give you more space to talk about your brand. So you Who are you what do you what do you do whatsoever. So let’s say let’s let’s take again the trash can. The trash can. They’re like famous in Germany. So when we created ABC, we just told them, hey, we’re like a big German brand. We’re not from China, right? And we make products. And on Amazon, since competition is 24/7, next to you, branding is not like on Instagram being like, crazy, fancy, crazy aesthetic, it’s just about standing out in terms of hey, like, all your all our competition, everybody is like from China or whatsoever, which is not a bad thing. But to make it easy, but we’re the brand. And if you generate the feeling of, hey, that’s the brand. People are willing to spend more for your products. Yeah. And they, especially if you’re, if you’re not more expensive, there’s just no reason to like not to buy you if your product is good.
Julian Lohse 40:55
Because branding gives trust. And people don’t buy brands, most of the time, as long as you don’t sell like hoodies, fashion shoes, watches, people don’t buy directly because of the brand name. People buy because they they estimate a certain quality, which is generated by the brand, feeling behind the product. Because I don’t buy I don’t buy the quote, like the quality bottle at the brand bottle. Because I like the brand. I buy it because I think that the brand at the bottle, like lasts forever. Yeah. Right? Yeah, if you if you manage to do that, people will just be more likely to buy you. You can even build up customer relationship. It’s possible on Amazon, if done right. It’s just the quicker you start implementing branding, the more the more uplift you will see long term in terms of your growth and so on.
Ben Donovan 42:00
Yeah, and I think that’s a really important distinction. And I think you articulated it really well. Because people do think why is it worth doing branding on Amazon? Can you even do branding on Amazon? Do you have the space time etc to build brand identity with people? But you’ve nailed it. It’s not about people, knowing your brand is about people knowing that you are a brand. Yeah, yeah, time they will come to know it. And I think that’s really important distinction and super helpful for people.
Julian Lohse 42:29
Because like, especially when we start working with big brands, you wouldn’t recognize that it’s a brand. Yeah, most of the time. Yeah. And next to them. They’re like three people having branch and radar names. And people can’t, like they can’t make a decision. Yeah. But once the ultimate goal is being the brand for your niche. So whenever somebody thinks of a niche, they think of you. So whenever they look for a product from your niche, they look at you. And you’re like the go to brand for the niche. Yeah. And there’s so many brands that made it right. There’s so many brands for specific niche, who are like, Yeah, fine. Look for this niche. There’s like this brand. You want to be like the Temple of Amazon, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Ben Donovan 43:22
Yeah, that’s really helpful. Really helpful. Listen, this has been super helpful, more so than I expected to be honest, I was looking forward to it, because I know you’re a genius. But I think just real practical stuff that people can take away. It’s not just been, you know, make the product look good, or find good keywords. It’s some super real, practical takeaways from this. So I really appreciate you coming on. What if people want to sort of find out more about yourself the agency where’s the best place to follow you get in contact, etc.
Julian Lohse 43:55
Yeah, Twitter. I’m pretty new to Twitter. So don’t mind me if I forgot to respond to everything. I’m still not a Twitter expert, but it’s just my my social network of choice. Just like to provide value. I will not slide into your DMS and selling stuff. In advance. I heard that some people do that. Yeah, value is key. Twitter. Twitter’s the place to be. Yeah. People like I have people hitting me up just being like, Yeah, can you look at my listing? Give me a quick quick, like overview on what you think. Yeah. Like and I will always do that. Right. I do that for like for free. Just because the more like I said, the more value I give, the more I get back. So if anybody is like, Yeah, this guy talks way too much way too fast. I don’t I didn’t understand anything sent You’re listening, I’ll give you a quick, quick audit on what you can what you can implement what you can optimize. And then I can help you growing without charging
Ben Donovan 45:10
is a dangerous commitment to make because you know, we’re a small podcast now but you know, when we got 1000s of listeners, you’re gonna be getting deals every day, bro.
Julian Lohse 45:18
Honestly, I didn’t finish the event I am I told you about I told you about people came like in here here in Germany came like every every three to five minutes with their like their listing on their mobile phone. They were like, Hey, man, can you get this? So like, I’m a nerd for the topic. And wherever I can help, like, I just like to provide value. So that’s awesome, man. I make the commitment.
Ben Donovan 45:48
Good. Now love to hear it. Well, we’ll leave a link to your Twitter profile in the show notes so everyone can check that out. Julian, thanks so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.
Julian Lohse 45:58
Thanks for having me. And sorry for taking like 60 minutes more.
Ben Donovan 46:02
Not as fun. No, it’s all good. There’s so much value in there. I didn’t want to cut it off. So it’s good. Amazing, guys. Thanks for joining us on this episode. Be sure to like subscribe, all of that stuff, check out Julian’s stuff below in the show notes. Honestly, it’s really, really helpful content. And we’ll see in the next episode real soon.
