56. Kfir Abud: Using Amazon Attribution Insights To Drive Growth

Ben Donovan  00:00
Well, hi folks, welcome back to another episode of the brand builders show. Today’s episode is going to be all about attribution, learning how we can take the data that we’re getting from external traffic campaigns to Amazon, and optimize those for greater profitability and growth in your brand. It’s gonna be a great episode. And to talk through that we have Kfir on the show with us today, Kfir. Welcome to the show today. Thanks for coming on.
 
Kfir Abud  00:23
Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
 
Ben Donovan  00:25
First question is, did I get your name right? I forgot to check if that’s a pronounced
 
Kfir Abud  00:30
it’s always the first question, you know, people struggling with my name. And I’m used to it we have, by the way, the meaning of the name is a lion cub.
 
Ben Donovan  00:38
Nice. Yes.
 
Kfir Abud  00:39
You can call me Simba.
 
Ben Donovan  00:40
Yeah. I like it. I like it. Good stuff. Well, welcome to the show. We’re going to be, as we said, talking about Amazon attribution, the potential weaknesses of it and how you can really deal with that in order to be able to get more insights into driving external traffic is a big topic nowadays is obviously something that Amazon really rewards is something that growing brands need to have as part of their strategy. So I’m really looking forward to that. Before we dive too deeply into that we’d love to hear more about you your origins in the world of Amazon and Ecommerce. So give us the elevator pitch of your life. What have you been up to? And where are you up to today?
 
Kfir Abud  01:21
Sure. So I’ve been in the Ecommerce industry for over 10 years now. I started as an Amazon seller, and I’m still an Amazon seller. We all the three partners of mine had to button well, two or three. And the two partners of mine are also Amazon sellers. And I know and during the years, we’ve been doing a lot of things on Amazon when I started to sell on Amazon, it was kind of a heaven. It was so it was quite it was quite easy. I mean, unlike what happening today, completely different story. You know, we didn’t do any PPC nothing. We just listed our items and started to sell. But today, as everybody knows, it’s completely different story. And along the years, I also started to consult a business that he used to work with businesses that wanted to sell on Amazon. And I’m still doing it, you know, as a side hustle. But our main thing now is a attribution insight. What we are doing is we will this is what we’re going to speak about.
 
Ben Donovan  02:30
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, for sure. That sounds good. And then just to guess sort of kicked off as well. I love to ask people their favorite five, it’s a little bit of an intro slot we do your favorite five of particular topics. So first one, do you have a favorite ecommerce brand?
 
Kfir Abud  02:47
My favorite ecommerce brand? Well, that’s a big question. And well, there are quite a few. But if I need to pick one. As a as in a former athlete, I used to buy a lot online, my shoes and all the equipments or to do all my practice. So I like to buy Nike online. I think the experience of buying and the approach of marketing online is really cool. So if I would need to choose one day, that would be Nike.
 
Ben Donovan  03:30
Yeah, definitely. That branding is up there with the best in the world for companies and products are pretty good too. Okay, number two, your favorite software or tool that helps you run your business or your life other than the one you’ve developed? Of course.
 
Kfir Abud  03:48
Well, if you know, there are so many, so many out there and you can use and actually help you manage your business. But the one that I’ve been using lately in the last year, which is also software that was made in Israel. It’s a CRM platform that called Monday monday.com Yeah. I love it. I think it’s really really intuitive and it’s easy to use, and manage projects and manage if you’re working with clients so it’s really easy to work with clients over there. So I love it monday.com
 
Ben Donovan  04:31
a bit of a tangent but what is it about Israel that is it just a lot of innovation because it seems to be a lot of software and innovation coming out. Like I know the guys at triple whale it’s a big like Shopify you know tool that’s they’re based in Israel monday.com I didn’t realize that that’s in Israel, but there’s there’s a lot of innovation. What do you think it is about the places that the culture is, you know, entrepreneurship, what’s what’s what’s so special,
 
Kfir Abud  04:58
I think is like combination of few things, you know, basically, we all were always looking to be, like, you know, the most How would How would I define it, and something like most, and I forgot the word. The most advanced, or most, you know, it’s also you know, something in our culture that we always looking to do a new businesses and you will bring it out to the world. And, and we are well, that at least in my environment, I can say that the people around me are very creative, you know, and think about new things and how they can impact the world in a bad way and how to change the business world and it’s really cool environment. So maybe this is something like that, you know, that. Drivers.
 
Ben Donovan  06:05
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I said to you the other day, when we had a bit of a chat, I’ve been to Jerusalem, I love the place, but the people are special people as well. So it’s also exciting to see so much development coming out. Okay. So next one is your favorite organic marketing channel?
 
Kfir Abud  06:23
Well, you know, I would say, you know, like Google, but everybody probably saying a Google. And it’s, I mean, there isn’t much that I can think about which is organic, because of well there is, you know, there is Facebook and social media and all that. I would prefer social media. I mean, I think social media is a better place to to rank a like that. And nowadays, I think the Tiktok is right rising, and it’s a very good place and it’s a massive place to be if you are in the Ecommerce, not only in commerce, you know, but if we’re speaking today about e commerce Oh, yeah, definitely a place to be. And it’s not only organic, you know, so prepaid, you know, paid ads on Tiktok is much cheaper than all other venues that you can walk on. So, simplicity.
 
Ben Donovan  07:24
That was my next question paid marketing channel, but would you say Tiktok for that?
 
Kfir Abud  07:29
This is the place completely tick tock is growing insanely. And the ads are quite the prices right? Until for at least for now we know it’s reasonable. It’s not unlike a you know, it’s still other platforms like Facebook, or Instagram or Google. And of course, you know, Amazon, it’s way much expensive to advertise over there. So the tick tock, if you know how to tweak it, and how to work with it, when you’re driving traffic to your Amazon store, you can do magic. Completely.
 
Ben Donovan  08:08
Yeah, yeah. Good. And then finally, of the five, your favorite business book,
 
Kfir Abud  08:13
my favorite business book? Well, I’ll be honest with you, I’m not reading a lot. But if I need to pick one, I think it will be a reach that imploded. That that was one of my my first books that I read when I started my whole business journey, you know, when, like, 10 years ago, and thinking Grow Rich. Also, you know, when Napoleon Hill that is also one that I like,
 
Ben Donovan  08:46
yeah, definitely two classics that everyone’s gonna read for sure. Good stuff. Okay. Well, let’s get into the topic, then Amazon attribution is become a very necessity, necessary skill to learn to be able to interpret the data that’s coming through attribution, as you run external traffic campaigns. For anybody that’s new to the concept of Amazon attribution. Can you give us a bit of an overview of why it was developed, what the solution is it provides and how sellers can use it?
 
Kfir Abud  09:18
Sure, of course, I will give a little bit of a background before the attributions or people will understand a little bit better. So until like two years ago, when you used to track when used to send traffic to Amazon, you didn’t have any method that you were able to monitor and track your your traffic and your sales. And it was crucial because many people are doing many students are doing it and I’m doing it and all my partners are doing it. And basically we had no data that we will be able to actually know what’s going on, unless you had like an amazing campaign. So you knew, Okay, that that thing was worked. And we can do that again. But you couldn’t leverage it, it was very, very difficult. And like, two years ago, something like that. Amazon came out with a tool that called Amazon attribution. And, and, and that tool would give you the ability to see the impressions, your Add to Cart, purchases, and all that. And at the beginning, we were so happy, and we thought that it’s actually working, but we start to use it, and then we saw that it’s not. Yeah. And then, so we, you know, we just continue to do our thing, and it’s right to search for other venues, how can I we can do that. And like a year ago or something like that a colleague of mine told me that it’s working well, and the at least the the little data that you’re getting over there is actually accurate. So
 
Ben Donovan  11:10
Yeah, definitely, yeah. In terms of the weaknesses of attribution, what are they? And if so, attribution, I’ve not actually with how the technology works? Is it like a Pixel similar to the Facebook pixel? How is it working? Is it running on cookies or
 
Kfir Abud  11:29
so we wish it was like a Pixel, because Pixel is much more accurate. I wouldn’t say much more accurate, it just can, it gives you much more options that you can know much more of the customer customer journey, you know, on your website, or any landing landing page or whatever. So it’s not like a Pixel. I would say it’s the same family, but it’s not the same thing. Attribution gives you much less data. And the data that you’re getting from Amazon, right now is basically impressions, add to cart purchases, and that’s about it more or less. So it’s, it’s not like a Pixel or Pixel, it’s something completely different, much more wide. This is, you know, one of the things that people don’t like on television, when Amazon with Amazon, because you don’t have a lot of information over there. But we are going to speak about the solution. So yeah, definitely.
 
Ben Donovan  12:34
Yeah, definitely. And the data, you said, it’s not particularly accurate with attribution. So if people are seeing, you know, 10, sales attributed they could be, in real terms be seeing 20 30? What, how inaccurate would you say is that right out of the box,
 
Kfir Abud  12:53
it’s a it’s much better, and it’s getting better every time. According to our record, and what we saw what we check and what we saw, it’s like, let’s say 90-95%. Accurate, really good. And so you can rely on it, you know, we can say, okay, you can make conclusions and say, Okay, this is working, this doesn’t work, and then make your decision what to do. So it’s getting better, it’s getting better. Right now, it’s much, much more accurate than what it used to be.
 
Ben Donovan  13:28
And so would you say the weaknesses around attribution then are more the amount of data types that can give you because it’s limited?
 
Kfir Abud  13:38
This is one of the things that we wanted to solve.
 
Ben Donovan  13:46
And so let’s talk about attribution insights, then you you started that, did you say a year ago?
 
Kfir Abud  13:52
Yeah, something like that a year ago, a bit more. We as as we said, right now, we saw that attribution from Amazon. And there is a lot of lack of information over there. And we need we need more, we need much more than that in order to be able to scale what we are doing. So we sat down and thought about the solution. And one of our one of our friends, which is a software engineer, he told us, we told him about the problem that we have, and we must find a solution and all that. They told us, okay, give us give me a few days and I will come back to you with the solution. He came back after a few days with the solution. Which is very, very cool, because it’s not like we invented something it’s not like we invented a we invented a technology. He just took all the data that he has from all around from the external traffic that you’re generating from your social media or Google ads or influence on all that, and information that you have from attribution, and we are crossing all the data and calculating it. And then you’re getting all the echos your tacos, your CPC, which key role in which keywords, you’re ranking your best on Amazon, you can create the campaigns from the platform, you know. So basically, you have a platform that you can work on without leaving it, and you have all the data and you can launch the campaign stop the campaigns, modify ad. Budget, you can increase budget, decrease budget, basically, whatever you need to do, you can do it all in one stop shop.
 
Ben Donovan  15:48
Yeah. And it’s integrated with attribution. You’re not replacing Amazon attribution with something new, you’re integrating with the existing platform.
 
Kfir Abud  15:56
Right.
 
Ben Donovan  15:57
And so then you talked about creating campaigns are these like Google ad campaigns? Tick tock are campaigns what are we talking about here?
 
Kfir Abud  16:04
Yeah, so we are talking about all the social media campaigns. But basically, our platform gives you right now the ability to create campaigns on social media on Google, and influencer marketing, but you have the ability, basically, to create any campaign that you like. Also, if you’re creating, for example, a post on on your social media, which is organic post, you can add to that post your attribution link that you created on Amazon. And then you can import the campaign, the campaign that you created on Amazon to our platform, which is there is a feature over there, that’s called link existing campaign. And it will show you all the campaigns when you’re clicking, when you’re clicking it, it will show you all the campaigns that you right now you have on your Amazon account. And you can basically import all your campaigns to our platform. And then you can see it over there. So right now you have the ability to create all the campaign’s that I said, which is a social media, Google and influencer, but you basically can create any content that you like, but not on our platform on on Amazon. And then yeah, and then important.
 
Ben Donovan  17:23
You mentioned obviously, the extra insights, a call stack OS, you know, the things that are going to really help you inform decisions at a campaign level. So rather than just is this working or not, you can drill down into which Google ad campaigns are working, or if Google is performing better than Tiktok or social media is better than paid, you know, you can, once you see all the data you can, you got a lot more insight into into as the name suggests attribution insights.
 
Kfir Abud  17:55
Exactly, yeah, exactly. You can drill down a per campaign, you can see which campaign is working, what is working, you can see the whole picture. First of all, at the dashboard, the upper side of the of the dashboard, you can see the whole picture, it will tell you how much what are your echoes and all that. And overall, that then you have all the campaigns, you can break it down, you can see which campaign is working, you can see which platform, the campaign is form. You can modify it from there, you can see keywords, if it’s a Google campaign, you can see it’s a if it’s a Facebook campaign, or any social media campaign, if it’s campaign with influencers, so you can know if the influencer brought any impressions if he brought or she brought any sales. You can see the echoes of the campaign with the influencers. And one more thing that we did with influencers, we created a specific tool for influencer marketing, because we saw that there is a huge demand for it. Yeah, because a lot of people are using influencers when they’re trying to rank better on Amazon all day trying to launch new campaign and new items on Amazon. And as we already said, you didn’t have any option to know if it’s actually working unless it was amazing. You know, we’ve had great success. So right now what we did is we create, we took our platform and we broke it down to a few parts. And you have a platform specifically for influencer that in one side, the influencer can see all the campaigns that they are running, they can see a no as we said, all the impressions, took out sales, etc, etc. And on the other side you have the seller or the agency whoever hire the influencer. And over there, they can learn to the campaigns, they can see also all the data and all that. And that creates transparency between the two sides. And it’s very easy to manage campaigns with influencers like that.
 
Ben Donovan  20:15
So they get visibility on all of that as well.
 
Kfir Abud  20:17
Exactly. And they can get also, if the center wants to, he can give the influencer permission on their account to create the campaign. They want the attribution campaign on their account. And then a makes the lives much more easier because the influencer don’t need to wait for the seller to create a campaign and send the link and all that the seller basically needs to tell the influencer, okay, this is the asset that I want to create the campaign to go to the account, create the campaign and start work.
 
Ben Donovan  20:51
Yeah. In terms of the costs for influencer marketing a then putting in the amount that you’ve paid the influencer as like a one time cost and then it averages out across the
 
Kfir Abud  21:03
exactly the amount that you’re paying them. Or you add an option also for percentage if you decide to do a percentage. So
 
Ben Donovan  21:12
I saw on Twitter this week, someone talking about combining your attribution link with an Amazon Associates link, you doing it like that? Or is it more of a manual percentage based on your insights,
 
Kfir Abud  21:25
it’s more of a manual percentage
 
Ben Donovan  21:29
just thought was interesting. Because obviously a lot of influencers, like the idea of sending them to someone to Amazon, rather than your own website, because Amazon is just really good conversion rates. But the the Amazon Associates percentage that they pay is generally quite low. So if there’s a way to work with influencers, to pay them a bit more, but still get the good conversion rates on Amazon, then it’s a win win for everyone. That’s good. It’s good in terms of I’d love to sort of have a brief chat about just some of the best practices for attribution. For people that are setting up, say they listeners are looking to run campaigns from multiple different sources, Google Ads influences, social media, you know, you mentioned about creating a social media post creating a link for that. How granular do people need to get with the links? Should it be a separate link for every post separate link for every campaign within a platform like Tiktok? Or is it just one tick tock link, one social media link? What’s the best practice there?
 
Kfir Abud  22:34
Well, it all depends on the stage that you’re at, if you are only getting better, the best practices will be different than if you’re already done. And you’re in the process of running a attribution campaigns. And you’re in it already. So let’s say that you are starting right now. And you want to start to generate traffic with the air conditionings and all that. I would create a few ad sets. And I would create like three campaigns with different ad sets on on social media. See, whichever works better. And something that I didn’t say that is, of course, it’s all depends on your budget. So it’s all begins, it’s all begins with an eight, enter with that. But let’s say you know, the average seller that doing the campaigns, I would go with, I would start with social media, great, a few campaigns, like two or three campaigns, and few ad sets for each campaign, see which one is working better, and then start modifying and scale it. And same with Google. Also, I will create a few campaigns, as many keywords as I can, and then start to modify it and see which one is performing better, you know, and see which keywords is performing better adding keywords every time it is decreasing, or increasing budget for each keyword. I would start with that with both both channels, social media, Google. And I think that that would be the best way to go.
 
Ben Donovan  24:18
And so the Insights tool is giving you the level, the granular level of sorry, the data at a granular level, like keywords. So you can see the conversions that are coming from keywords down to that level. Okay. Yeah. Okay, which is for especially for Google ads, that’s a game changer, because, you know, to know which ones are driving the conversions. Previously, you couldn’t do that, obviously. Unless you were going to set up why you couldn’t, unless you were going to set up single keyword campaigns in Google and create a different attribution link for every campaign which is just crazy. So yeah, that’s that’s really, really good. And then in terms of you Are your clients the what you’re seeing? As the most successful clients right now? What are they using this for? Is it primarily ranking new products? Or do you have clients that are able to run these kind of strategies indefinitely, profitably? How has it because obviously, conversion rate coming from external traffic is generally much lower? What are the strategies that people are using for this?
 
Kfir Abud  25:25
Well, I would start with something that I will in the project that we are working on in the last month with some US agency that they are doing email marketing for Amazon sellers. When we are saying lower conversion rates, that that is not the case. Because if you have an email list that you can work with your clients generating traffic to Amazon through email list, you will see amazing results amazing. And that will benefit you also, because there is also the brand are filthy bonds. So if we are speaking about that, I would strongly recommend that if people are doing already doing email marketing to their clients, they can use our platform to track and monitor it and see how they can leverage it, they can see all the results. And it’s a great way to do that. And it’s a great way to actually bring in more sales. In and other things that I see clients do a lot of social media, a lot of video. Yeah, video is working very, very well. So I would strongly recommend running a video ads. Also, you know, an Amazon seller, when you’re selling on Amazon FBA and videos are performing usually much better, just on our niches of what we are doing. So, yeah, those things.
 
Ben Donovan  26:58
Okay. So what do you see, you know, looking forward to the future? Where do you see external traffic? Is this something that you remember a few years ago, when the sort of scene shifted, and you as an Amazon seller had to get good at PPC, five years ago, as you said, at the start of the episode, you hardly even had to run PPC, let alone be good at it. You know, you throw on an automatic campaign, and maybe a manual campaign if you really want to go the extra mile. And you do well. Whereas, you know, a few years ago began to shift and to be successful, you needed to get really good at PPC. Whereas you know, now, even if you’re really good at PPC is very difficult at scale to get lower than 30% A cos, you know, I remember the days of 30% feeling high now, I’m pumped up about 30% A cos, you know, and so did you see the same thing with external traffic as Amazon sellers? Do we have to get really good at this to succeed? Is it something that will be here today gone tomorrow? Or what do you think?
 
Kfir Abud  27:59
Well, first of all, I hope that it will be here. Because I really don’t believe in putting all your eggs in one basket. So yeah, you know, it’s all about your strategy of your business. I think that external traffic is crucial for any business, by the way, not only on Amazon, I’m doing other things, you know, like Shopify and all that it’s very crucial to know how to drive the traffic to your website, slash Amazon. And so I think, and I’m almost certain that Amazon will continue to develop that, because Amazon wants to bring as much traffic as they can, to the platform, even though you know, they already have quite a big chunk of the market. They are constantly looking for new ways to do that. And also the, the prices or the PPC on Amazon is increasing is increasing dramatically every year. And it’s very, very expensive. And it’s very, it’s much more difficult. And when you’re doing Google ads, for example, it’s much way cheaper to drive traffic to Amazon. And it will also gain you know, the organic ranking on Amazon and and you will get a ahead of your it’s another way to get ahead of your competition. You know, it’s all about how you beat your competition and you need to be creative because everybody does PPC, everybody knows how to do PPC there is a endless agencies that knows the best everybody knows the best tactics you know, and how to scale on Amazon and to bring you the best results. But nobody nobody now nowadays you know, people was speaking about a lot about external traffic. And there is a reason for that. Because as I said, the prices are increasing on Amazon, it’s very difficult. And you must find new ways to bring the traffic. And I do think that it will be something very, very hot. It’s gonna be very hot topic in the next few years.
 
Ben Donovan  30:21
Yeah, definitely. One thing I forgot to ask you, when we were talking about best practices, is where you tend to send people, is it straight to the product detail page? Do you do much to storefront or external landing pages?
 
Kfir Abud  30:36
Well, we are still, I’m still testing it. I mean, I’m not testing it. But you know, there are a few ways that I am doing it. And I prefer to send the clients directly to our webstore, to our Amazon to our Amazon store, we are creating a specific page for that. It’s a product feature page. And without, you know, without all the competition that you have on Amazon, it’s only one product, your product, the product that you want to sell. And then it’s converting much, much better. But I saw, I saw cases that that few clients generated the traffic to a landing page. And like an
 
Ben Donovan  31:26
external one. So collect an email. And
 
Kfir Abud  31:30
there is an option also, which is also good. If you want to build your email list, you can create it by that way, you know, you can do something like that, and maybe even offer some kind of a coupon code or something like that. So there are several ways you need to be creative, but I prefer to send the customer directly to Amazon.
 
Ben Donovan  31:54
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I was just looking because it would have been amazing if you could add to cart straight from storefront. But I don’t think you can can you know, that would be that would be great. And that would make it the best place to send people for sure. Because like you say he doesn’t have all of the competition around it. But interesting. Hopefully Amazon changed that. Good. Okey doke. And then just last question on the topic, if you had to choose one method of, you know, external traffic that you’re doing, are seeing the most impact with most effectiveness. You know, you’ve mentioned influences, paid social media, et cetera, et cetera. If you had to choose one right now, what would you say people should start with?
 
Kfir Abud  32:41
I would go with social media, I will go into video on social media, Instagram, or Tiktok. I think those ads are converting the best. And it’s the fastest way to get sales. So it’s all depends on your goal. First of all, what do you want to do? What do you want to say? So sometimes you want to do you want to achieve awareness and all that. So that’s a different story. But if you want to gain sales, I would go with social media, video ads, this is very good, you can see very good conversions over there. And but my approach is very much more wider. I mean, when I’m doing campaigns, I prefer to do a few kinds of campaigns. Not only as I said, right now, you asked me about one, but you know, we want to it’s important for me to say that. It’s very important when you’re when you’re creating campaigns to do it as wide as you can, and and select as much a platform as you can. But I think that if I had to choose only one, I would go with what I said.
 
Ben Donovan  33:56
helpful, very helpful. Where can people find out more about attribution insights, and if they want to explore it some more,
 
Kfir Abud  34:02
and they can find us at attributioninsights.com. And they can see all the information about the plans that we have, and everything that we are offering. And also, we’re on social media on LinkedIn, and they can find us we are getting very active on LinkedIn. And those are the places most of the places that we are perfect.
 
Ben Donovan  34:29
Perfect. Well, we’ll leave links for those in the description, and the show notes of the episode as well. I prefer thanks for coming on. This has been good to geek out about this, this topic. It’s quite a, you know, a nerdy kind of topic, you know, all these data points and numbers and, as we’ve talked about. It’s essential for Amazon sellers who want to be successful over the coming years to to really get to grips with this. So appreciate your time. Thanks so much for coming on.
 
Kfir Abud  34:55
Thank you, Ben. Thank you very much. I appreciate you for having me.
 
Ben Donovan  34:58
No problem. No problem. Hey guys. Well thank you for listening to this episode today. Hopefully you’ve got lots of value out of it, definitely check out attribution insights down in the description. Let me know how you get on with it. I am going to be taking it for a test drive over the next few days as well with some campaigns we got running. So I’ll be reporting back as well. And I’m sure it’s going to be a super helpful tool. So check it out, and we’ll be back with another episode same time next week. Take care bye