Russell (00:06.91)
What's up everybody? Welcome back to the eCommerce Unlocked podcast, where as you know, we cut the fluff. We discuss all the good stuff about eCommerce. You know, those tactics, those details that you can implement in your business today to take your eCom business to the next level. Today, we are interviewing and talking with Will Hare. This guy, he's got a ton of experience when it comes to marketplaces. And to use his words,
Amazon is the end all be all of marketplaces. So we're going to talk specifically about how to become profitable on Amazon using your PPC and DSP advertising strategy. So, Will, give us a quick intro to yourself, like, you know, the 30 second who is Will and then let's go from there.
Will Haire | BellaVix (00:47.094)
Heck yeah, man. Hell of an intro. Thanks so much for having me. I'm Will Hare. I'm the co-founder of Bellavix. I have 10 plus years experience in advertising, working at agencies. I've been hyper-focused on Amazon since 2013, give or take. So, seeing tremendous changes on the platform. I've worked with small businesses to enterprise-level brands, and I definitely understand some of the challenges of being a seller on these platforms. And I'm excited to be here to talk about advertising,
favorite topic to talk about.
Emerson (01:21.562)
Oop, boop!
Russell (01:21.72)
Which is good, the world needs people like you who get and love advertising. Well that's.
Will Haire | BellaVix (01:24.574)
Yeah.
Emerson (01:28.124)
Yeah, I guess maybe questions starting off for us on this.
Will Haire | BellaVix (01:28.391)
Yeah, I hear, I think advertising.
Emerson (01:32.884)
Go far well.
Will Haire | BellaVix (01:33.834)
Oh no, that's what I mean to cut you off. Say, advertiser has a negative connotation. So I've been meeting with friends in the space and they go by media planner now. So I'm debating if I need to make the change because I've been an advertiser for so long.
Russell (01:45.621)
Ah.
Emerson (01:45.736)
Ha ha.
Emerson (01:49.672)
That's the way to do it, man. So again, question, as we're starting off, Will, you talked about doing PPC and DSP. I am on the supply chain side of stuff. I don't understand anything marketing, advertising. What do those acronyms mean in general? Like what are we talking about, I guess on that side of stuff.
Russell (01:49.783)
No, I think that's a, yeah.
Will Haire | BellaVix (02:06.486)
Yeah, great question. So super simple, PPC, pay per click, and the best way to think of this, this is your bottom of the funnel traffic. These are people who are searching your brand, they're in category, and they're looking to buy products in IOL or your product directly. DSP, demand side platform, that's programmatic advertising, and that's a CPM model, so it's an impression based system.
And it gives me the ability to build audiences and serve those audiences' ads on and off of Amazon using Amazon's data. So I like to do these examples. A perfect opportunity when it comes to DSP is like anybody who added your product to cart but didn't make a purchase. Or anybody who's in aisle or looking at competitors' products but didn't make that purchase, I can chase them around the internet whenever they're checking their phones or they think they're safe and they're in their bed and I'm gonna show them those ads and try to get them.
to make a purchase, because that's what we do.
Russell (03:03.276)
That
Emerson (03:03.308)
My wife last night just bought, I don't know, a couple hundred bucks worth of stuff on Amazon. I woke up this morning, I was like, oh, you weren't going to sleep when you said you were asleep, huh? That was a late night purchase you got there. So well, I guess thanks for that. I guess probably it was you.
Russell (03:14.594)
Will, yeah, Will was over there just blasting ads.
Will Haire | BellaVix (03:16.662)
Yeah, you're very welcome and
Yeah, I thank your wife too, support my people. More consumers on Amazon.
Russell (03:28.934)
Oh, that's awesome. So a lot of our brands, our listeners, they, I'll say some are just getting started out. They haven't jumped onto Amazon. And my personal brand, I want to get on Amazon. I haven't actually gotten on Amazon yet. So that's kind of one group. The other group is they're on Amazon and they're wanting to scale. So let's take the kind of that first group really quick. And I'd love to kind of highlight, there's one specific brand I was talking to that they just barely got on Amazon. They're doing...
I think there are about $15 million in annual revenue on their Shopify. And they really waited the first three or four years before they put anything on Amazon worried that it was going to cannibalize their sales over on Shopify. And I guess for you, is there anything on the advertising side that we can do to kind of mitigate that cannibalization so that brands who are contemplating the jump can feel more confident about the switch?
Will Haire | BellaVix (04:23.51)
Oh yeah, that's a really great question. And honestly, like it's not unusual for a brand to launch their DTC on Shopify, wait a year or two and roll it out to Amazon. I feel like that's pretty common. You own your customer data, the cost per acquisition and the lifetime is easier to measure. But if you were worried about catabolization, and I like to think that it all works together, the end of the day, the shop are shops where they're gonna shop, so the brand experience and that quality product plays a lot into it.
But we have the ability to pixel your website and then negate those audiences. So we can completely set up your advertising campaigns to be new to brand. And we can kind of build audiences around that. So that would be probably the number one way I would exclude existing customers if I was working with your brand.
Russell (05:11.975)
interesting. So yeah.
Emerson (05:12.072)
Something I would say about the marketers and advertisers and stuff in general is, again, I'm on the ops side. I'm on shipping logistics is what I focus on. When I kind of got more involved with some marketing aspects, I'm like, dude, marketers, you guys are stalkers. You take stock into a whole new level. If I ever need to find someone, I'm not gonna call the FBI or PI, I'm calling a marketing agency. I'm like, hey, where's this guy? What is he looking at? What's he browsing on? You guys have everyone's data.
on everything. So it is insane how much you can do with that. And that's amazing. You can be like, Hey, this person's visit your site, let's tailor that differently than like an Amazon customer. So that's amazing that we're able to gather that data and utilize it because there's so much data at your fingertips. So that's Congrats on the stalkerness levels. That's awesome.
Will Haire | BellaVix (05:54.494)
Yeah, I appreciate it. I'll take the creeper points. And what I will say too is come to the dark side, Emerson. This is just the beginning. We're looking for motivated people.
Emerson (06:09.29)
That's an employment pitch right there.
Russell (06:12.422)
Um, the, uh, honestly, it does get a little creepy. I mean, I've been doing, um, marketing, um, for, for quite a while. And I've, I've been pitched by some, uh, I think there were DSP vendors, but they're like, yeah, and if you want listening data, just let us know. We're like, wait, like Amazon Alexa is recording me right now. It's weird.
Will Haire | BellaVix (06:32.402)
It is weird. There's actually some litigation going on that some universities did. Google and Amazon got in a lot of trouble for essentially recording data that they shouldn't have been. So we have the ability to advertise via audio, but I don't have access to listening. And the other thing too, so for you to be aware of, I'm joking around, we stalk you, but as an advertiser, we really don't know who you are. We know the gist.
based on your demographic information and your profile. So a lot of times you just get put in buckets. We're joking around on this show, but in all seriousness, that's kind of how it works. And there are safeguards in place that the government put in to protect your personal information, of course. So I just want to get that out.
Emerson (07:07.88)
Mm-hmm.
Emerson (07:12.247)
Yeah, I'm fucking sure.
Russell (07:19.822)
That's a good qualifier there, a good clarification, Will. I mean, yes, there are jokes, but in the end, it's not as creepy as it might sound. I kind of want to dive into, for those brands who are on Amazon, right? They're wanting to scale, but not cannibalize anything on their DTC site. We've kind of already talked a little bit about that, but what are kind of your top three tips for brands who are either getting started or just doing some advertising on Amazon?
Emerson (07:20.082)
No, it's good.
Will Haire | BellaVix (07:29.186)
Yeah.
Will Haire | BellaVix (07:49.506)
Beautiful. Yeah, so if you're, I'll start with if you're already advertising on Amazon. So you're on the platform, you know, at the minimum you should be doing pay-per-click. And what I find, so we believe in bidding on brand terms. So you want to make sure you're protecting your brand in a defensive strategy and you're in categories, you're making sure you have a presence and aisle and you're conquesting. Love going after competitors and our brands love it when they see we stole sales from some top competitors. So when you're on the platform.
A lot of it comes down to what's your efficiency standard? And you want to make sure that whatever that KPI is, so we use tacos, total advertising cost of sale, and that's your total ad spend by your total sales. And Amazon, unlike Shopify and some other websites, the advertising sales influences organic ranking, which is why we kind of group them together. So a lot of times when we work with brands, and this is such a typical story where it's like...
They're doing good, maybe they're half a million to a million dollars a year on Amazon, but they're losing market share. And they're like, we're doing everything we've been doing, we don't understand. And then a lot of times when we connect with those brands, what we find out is like, they've just been solely relying on pay-per-click and outside advertising efforts to grow the brand. And what we find is that Amazon is a major player, it's a very competitive marketplace.
So if you're not doing anything outside of the bottom of the funnel to grow your brand, you're going to get caught in sales stagnation. And then worst of all, you're going to start losing market share. And this is where like the introduction to DSP makes a lot of sense because it gives us the ability to build audiences for you, um, using Amazon's data. So like actual shopping behavior and customer data. So we, we generally know like contextually intent like we have
all these indicators to say this is a good customer and we should pepper them with ads to try to get them to make a purchase and try our solution. So that would be for just a brand that's actually firing on all cylinders. And before I jump into the startup brand, I don't want to talk too much. I love to just pitch it back to you guys. Any questions or anything that you might want to add?
Russell (10:09.37)
Yeah. I just want to double click a little bit on what you said. I was having a conversation with a marketing agency yesterday and they don't do Amazon. They're more full service marketing agency, but we kind of had a full on discussion about how a lot of agencies will kind of just dive in and say, to get like quick wins, they're just flushing the bottom of the funnel. And they're like, yeah, look at what we can do. But then one, two months go by and then it's like empty. The funnel's gone.
Will Haire | BellaVix (10:31.308)
Yeah.
Russell (10:36.938)
because you flushed the whole thing and you're not refilling it. So double clicking on that idea of the DSP being your top of funnel, getting people brand awareness. I know it's one of those like almost taboo, not taboo terms, but just like a kind of a cliche term of like, yeah, you're doing top of funnel, you're doing brand awareness. It's really hard to kind of, to quantify exactly the ROI on that. But when you have a full funnel strategy, you know, you got your top funnel, you're pushing down into your.
Will Haire | BellaVix (10:40.238)
Thanks.
Russell (11:04.17)
You're more PPC bottom funnel, and then you're getting conversions through and you're looking at your tacos. Love that term. But looking at your tacos, you get a full funnel there. And it really, that's the strategy that wins, not just the quick wins of some marketing agencies.
Will Haire | BellaVix (11:21.078)
Yeah, now I love that show.
Emerson (11:21.172)
Well, I guess question on that when you're running like PPC and stuff like that. Um, how do you determine those keywords? Like for me, I ran, this was like way a while ago on that. Like, I don't know, it was eight, 10 years ago on Amazon. And again, I'm the ops guy, like Emerson, can you run our Amazon for this small startup? And I was like, of course it can't be that hard. And we sold like wallets and I'm like, uh, the key word would be wallet. Like, I'm not sure what other like term I could use. I'm like, we are only putting on wallet and like,
red wallet, small wallet, like, I don't know, there's like 10 words that came to mind in general. So I'm like, are you chat GPT in this thing? And you're like, all right, what should I use my keyword for? Or how do you know like this is the keyword I should be using and identifying those buyers or using those keywords and whatnot.
Will Haire | BellaVix (12:06.826)
Yeah, great question. And what I'm taking from this is like Emerson, gotta come in, I know you wanna learn this. Totally kidding. But when it comes to pay per click, yeah, I mean, I'll share exactly what we do. And hopefully your audience gets some value out of it. So we do like a combination. So we actually, we do use Google Keyword Planner to get intent of like how people generally search for products. We get an idea of like.
Emerson (12:14.248)
Hahaha!
Russell (12:14.466)
Hahaha
Will Haire | BellaVix (12:34.422)
Is it a transactional? Is it educational? And I forgot the third category for the types of searches. We use Helium 10 reverse ASIN lookup. We use brand analytics, which is Amazon's backend. And then if we're advertising the product, we're gonna use the search term report. And between those tools, we come up with like a pretty loaded keyword.
list essentially and then our job is to segment those based on where we think they fall in the funnel And then that's kind of how we go about it and pretty typically what you would see especially if you're a launch brand like a wallet You'd be like, what's the long tailed or like the unique proposition? So is it an RFID wallet or is it a brown leather wallet with a chain Etc etc. Like those are kind of how you piece it together and when we like if you're
advertising now and you're like, you're trying to figure it out and you wanna grow. There's like the pyramid effect, I like to call it. And it's like you go after a long keyword. But at the end of the day, at the top of that pyramid, there's like a root keyword that you really want. So maybe it's like brown leather wallet has millions of views a month and you're like, I wanna rank on the first page for that. But you know the competition is just stacked. So that's where you kind of go with like a long trail.
philosophy, build ranking, get authority, and then work your way up. And then as you get more ranking, more reviews, more sales velocity, you'll start indexing for that root keyword, and then we have SEO and advertising working together, and then couple that with a DSP strategy, and you're really firing on all cylinders.
Russell (14:17.726)
Is that why I think you kind of mentioned the tacos, you know, your total advertising with revenue. I kind of go by on my Shopify store, I go by blended ROAS, which is a similar idea, but is it basically because almost like a rising tide raises all ships, is that the term that like advertising helps you rank and your rank is higher so you get more organic sales and then all of a sudden your ads are performing better and then you get more reviews and then all of a sudden your ad goes out or you know, everything's working a little bit more. So is that why you go for that tacos number?
Will Haire | BellaVix (14:46.882)
Yeah, exactly. Yep, and it gives me the ability to be flexible. If we're always stuck in a tight band, then you're gonna get stuck on the bottom. And like I said, then we're only going after branded and maybe a couple competitors, but then you're just gonna lose out to market saturation and then you'll be the victim of the market that moves on. So it's just a way to stay ahead. And this is how you stay ahead now in the game. I mean, geez, with chat, GPT and everything else, it's gonna be a lot different. That's just the nature of the beast.
Russell (15:17.646)
Absolutely. So I see that you're working with some pretty big brands. You've worked with Instant Pot, you've worked with Pyrex, like some really household names. I mean, maybe you can share, maybe you can't, but are there anything like interesting things maybe out of the norm that they're doing, or is it just kind of run of the mill what everybody's working on? Like any good insights from those brands?
Will Haire | BellaVix (15:39.472)
Yeah, so what I know about enterprise brands is that there's a lot more segmentation into the roles when it comes to strategic execution. So typically we work with a lot of, I would say, mid-size, regular businesses where maybe I'm working with an e-commerce manager or even sometimes the owner. There's not as many people involved, which is great. When you work with these enterprise brands, it's like...
PR, social media, ops, advertising, pay-per-click advertising, it goes influencer, it's crazy. And what you realize, especially with our experience with some of these larger brands, is they just have a lot of money to put behind millions. It's insane how much money they have for some of these tentpole events to push awareness. And you could really see...
how fast and the amplification of doing full funnel tactics, like what it means to have brand awareness on point. And you gotta think about it too, like brand awareness, sure, I'm talking about ads, I'm talking about DSP, and I'm talking about this, but when you're in an aisle, you know what I mean, like when you're at an end cap at Target, like right here in Raleigh, North Carolina, like my local Target is 3000 eyeballs, multiply that by every Target inside the United States, like that.
that is insanely powerful and like the amount of people, the validation, then you layer in commercials, influencer marketing, being on QVC, like all of these things, they spill over to Amazon, they spill over to the marketplaces. So that's why like some of the brands, like we had a brand we took on that did journals and they was great, but it was like a too skewed catalog and they did see some of our case studies and they were under the impression that like,
Russell (17:07.266)
Mm-hmm.
Will Haire | BellaVix (17:31.786)
we could take this catalog and do what we did with some of these enterprise level brands. And unfortunately, without the finances, the know-how and having all these people in all these places, it's a lot harder to do and it takes a lot longer. So that's why the strategy and how we approach a small and mid-sized business is just way different than some of these enterprise level businesses. So...
When I do talk a lot on some podcasts and do some of the influencer stuff, I usually talk more small to mid because it's more real. And let's be real, like what 90% of US businesses are small businesses, like they fall into that category plus smaller businesses are funner to work with. It's great to get the feather in the cap we work with Instapod, but like it's a lot of attention. It's a lot of hours. It's a lot of pressure. I'll take brands you've never heard of all day over some of those enterprise level brands.
Russell (17:58.007)
Yeah.
Russell (18:05.964)
Yeah.
Russell (18:20.439)
Mm-hmm.
Russell (18:28.19)
Yeah, I could definitely see that. What, as you were kind of talking about that, my question is like, maybe this is hard, but what's the difference, maybe the ad spend difference between PPC and DSP that you would kind of recommend? I mean, enterprise, yeah, let's take that out of the hat because most of us are not at that level, but small, mid-sized business on Amazon, 50-50, 40-20. Just kidding, that's bad math, but 40-60, what does it look like?
Will Haire | BellaVix (18:54.194)
Yeah, typically 80-20, 80% paper click, bottom of the funnel. 20% is typical. Most brands will give us like 15 to 30% tacos to work with. So like that tends to be the ratio. Certain categories perform really well. And if you're in a saturated category, we may go heavier on programmatic in order to like build those audiences. And those will just be the nature of the beast. But typically we try to work for like an 80-20 split.
Russell (19:23.678)
Yeah, that definitely makes sense. And then you just, for my clarification, you recommend around 20 to 30% of your revenue in ad spend.
Will Haire | BellaVix (19:31.39)
Yeah, yeah, the tacos. So give or take if you could afford it, but it depends on the category because some categories, it's just different. You know, it could be as low as 10%. Some jewelry is like because it's subjective, like people window shop. So like you need to hire tacos to have an impression. Whereas something that is less subjective, we could have a lower tacos because it takes less eyeballs to get the purchase. And that's so I talk in generalities, like every category is kind of different. So
Russell (19:34.262)
Got it. Yeah.
Will Haire | BellaVix (20:00.642)
So it's hard to say.
Russell (20:03.594)
Yeah, no, that definitely, that makes sense. I mean, in my, historically, I try to keep my advertising around 20% of revenue, but granted, I'm operating Shopify stores. I personally have done a lot less on Amazon. So I'm just trying to get a bead for kind of how that compares with the Amazon fees and that kind of thing. Like, profitability is a little bit tighter over there. So I didn't know if that was kind of something that the brands change strategies.
Will Haire | BellaVix (20:23.97)
Yeah. No, that's a good point. About 35%. Yeah, 35% you're going to eat in fees and then whatever you're paying on advertising. So it's a much more expensive platform. But Amazon has a lot of eyeballs. It's close to 50% of all e-commerce in the US. So it's no joke. So I like to tell brands to focus on Shopify. Even if you aren't interested in Amazon, it doesn't hurt just to have a store. It doesn't mean you have to throw money at it.
Russell (20:44.886)
Yeah.
Will Haire | BellaVix (20:53.754)
What is not unusual is a customer will see it on the website and be like, Hey, can I get it from Amazon in two days? Is that available? And you don't necessarily have to send inventory into FBA. You can fulfill the orders from a third party and just have your listings up. There's great softwares. I mean, we're a professional agency, so we would recommend doing it differently. But listing mirror is an example. And there's a few others out there that'll just take your existing parameters and Shopify and just push.
pull it right to Amazon. So there are some streamlined options you can use to just test the marketplace, the validity of it, before you jump in with two feet and me and Emerson start doing advertising for you.
Russell (21:36.808)
Yeah.
Emerson (21:38.557)
I like the side hustle that's doing man. I'll ship it you advertise it how about that?
Will Haire | BellaVix (21:44.174)
Let's do that.
Russell (21:47.996)
So you mentioned softwares. I guess, what softwares would you recommend? Maybe for a brand that's doing it on their own versus you guys, do you have your own specific set of softwares? Or are you doing all this advertising in platform?
Will Haire | BellaVix (22:04.478)
We do a lot of bulk file uploads and we use a lot of macros because the software, they do what macros do. So we have a lot of custom macros that we use and we do a lot of bulk file uploads, which can be really challenging for a new to market brand or somebody who's not as familiar. I'm a big fan of Helium 10. I think Helium 10 is just a great research tool. And if you're looking for...
a software that can help you manage your advertising. An AI solution we like is Perpetua. We've actually recommended brands who like, owner operator where they're doing everything and they're like, I can't even wrap my head around it. They do a pretty good job generally, like humans, like we can outperform that, but for a straight AI solution, it's pretty good. And then we're big fans of either, Techometrics is a pretty good software.
There's one more that's really good. I'm drawing a blank on it. Oh, ad badger. I love Michael Erickson's, uh, podcast on Amazon advertising. Sorry to cross promote another podcast, but, uh, he's got a lot of good information if you're looking to get started on, uh, specifically advertising on Amazon, that's all he talks about, uh, and his software is pretty good too. So those would be the two softwares I would recommend. Um, and if you're really good at it, I would use bulk files and save yourself the money and just create a couple macros.
Emerson (23:33.172)
Question a little bit off topic maybe on stuff is, what's your thoughts on, I'm gonna say product quality, I guess on Amazon. A lot of people I hear on TikTok and stuff like that is doing drop shipping's a huge thing. I'm making millions on Amazon from drop shipping this crappy product pretty much. I've never met a drop ship millionaire personally or anything like that, but wondering how does that, obviously reviews are a huge thing, but this drop shipping type of mentality of advertising on.
Russell (23:33.894)
That's awesome.
Emerson (24:02.852)
Amazon is not like much of a maybe not understand that we're doing right. But is that like much of a thing like where that affects the advertising budget and stuff like that?
Will Haire | BellaVix (24:09.802)
So totally illegal. Dropshipping isn't allowed on Amazon and they actually, it's a problem for sure. And recently Amazon took some steps to mitigate how many dropshippers can be on the platform. I forgot exactly what they put in, but there's now like a software. Oh, they put timelines into shipping. So if the product doesn't reach its destination within a certain timeframe, it's flagging the accounts.
Emerson (24:25.684)
Mm.
Emerson (24:39.208)
Hmm.
Will Haire | BellaVix (24:39.214)
They're starting to weed out these dropshippers. And I'm unaware of any dropshippers that are killing it like that. And in all fairness, we work with brands. So it's hard to say, I'm not saying there is a model. I know like, for example, in the automotive space, I have a friend that does reselling there and they kill it. And I believe it's dropshipping, but it's all US based. So it's honestly kind of confusing because we don't do anything in those categories. So I'm not saying that you can't make a lot of money. I'm just saying I haven't.
Emerson (24:44.024)
And yeah.
Emerson (25:05.278)
Mm-hmm.
Will Haire | BellaVix (25:09.106)
personally seen it and I don't know what that would look like.
Emerson (25:12.72)
Yeah, I mean, interesting, yeah.
Russell (25:16.306)
I've seen those ads too. And honestly, those guys are making more money off of their course than off of their Amazon store, I'm sure. It sounds cool, sounds sexy, you know, like, hey, I can work from home, I can quit my job, you know, that kind of thing. And they pay a thousand dollars to this guy who just hasn't done it himself.
Will Haire | BellaVix (25:23.175)
Ah, pardon me.
Will Haire | BellaVix (25:32.894)
Yep. And you guys run brands and stuff, like, how easy is it just to do that? Like, you know, like what's the reality of it? Yeah, exactly.
Russell (25:39.39)
No, no, it's not, it's not easy. I'm curious, we've kind of danced around this a little bit, but with advertising, well, I guess, so I know on Amazon, there are brands that have a brand and then there are the no-name brands. And kind of my personal perspective on Amazon is like, I don't really personally look for a specific brand when I'm shopping on Amazon. I'm going for reviews, I'm going for, you know,
pictures look good, Prime, you know, the brand name doesn't mean a lot unless like, I'm very specifically looking off of Amazon and on Amazon for a specific brand. So I guess what importance does that play on Amazon, especially in tying it into advertising, having a strong brand, is it important or not on Amazon?
Will Haire | BellaVix (26:27.338)
I mean, it is and it isn't. So if you have a strong brand, your cost per acquisition is gonna be lower because you have brand awareness and you'll see a lot of branded search terms. So like it's more cost effective, we could be more efficient, we could choose whether or not we wanna participate in advertising. When you're around the brand, I mean, so we always wanna advertise like new brand customers, of course. But if you're a smaller, and this is what I love, like,
Technically Amazon levels the playing field and I'm a big fan of Shark Tank. You'll notice a lot of the startup brands, like where do you sell DTC and Amazon? Because the barred entries are so low and there's such a market there that the opportunity is there. So when it comes to like a brand that doesn't have, like if you're selling widgets, I always say widgets, lemon squeezers, garlic presses, like all that stuff that they use in examples, the brand doesn't matter. So then now we're competing on.
pricing reviews and the quality of the product or some type of differentiator in the product usage that's gonna separate it from the others. So that's the challenge and generally it's gonna take a little more funding to get eyeballs on those page, to get the validation and then eventually to turn those customers, shoppers in the customers. So it is a little different, but branding doesn't mean everything. And...
The smaller brands have the opportunity to really go strong and conquest, especially if they have something unique about their product. So it is and it isn't important. Hopefully I didn't just dodge that question on you guys.
Russell (28:03.05)
No, no, I mean, I kind of expected something along those lines. The way I see it is that like a brand who starts DTC Shopify store, they grow to a few million in revenue. They've got some brand awareness, you know, some followers on Instagram. It makes sense to really kind of lean into the brand on Amazon. Whereas like, I've got a few buddies that do a hundred percent Amazon. They're doing a few million dollars in revenue and they, I mean, that you've never heard of their brands and they've got like a tire thumper over here and then some, uh,
Airsoft BBs over there. And, you know, so just like the most random assortment that really the brand doesn't matter. So it's kind of like, what's your primary? I kind of feel like if your primary is Amazon, brand doesn't matter. If your primary is off Amazon, brand matters. That's my perspective.
Will Haire | BellaVix (28:46.859)
Yeah, yeah, in some degree, I agree with that too. And it sounds like this is a reseller. So it is a little different when you're, you don't own the brand or you just rebuy. And also the price point, like how much does it cost to, how much of an investment do I need or how much of a risk am I taking? So like obviously higher price point items, it takes a lot more to convince those shoppers to convert, which is why if you're an Amazon only or Amazon endemic, I think it's the right term brand, you'll.
you're going to want to do full funnel advertising because you need to get to those customers when they're in the decision making process. And DSP gives us the ability to drive traffic to specific landing pages. So we don't necessarily have to drive it to Amazon. We can, like we have a supplement company we work with who we kill it, can't like crush it with comparative marketing. Um, so we drive a lot of traffic to that, to get them in the funnel. Cause we know like generally it's one to one.
on the first purchase, but typically we get five to six purchases a year or so. It's all about getting that first purchase, getting them in, subscribe and save and getting that recurring revenue.
Russell (29:52.398)
Well, that's fascinating. Really quick, I guess my last question on Amazon is, and this is more kind of selfish. I have my own brand. I've been wanting to get on Amazon for a year and a half. I just haven't done it. I guess what's the minimum spend I should be looking at? Let's say I'm just starting out, so I'm going PPC specifically. What, like $5 a day is probably not going to do it, but what's the minimum spend I should be looking at to get started? And for how long should I be doing that before I can really
you don't call it a success or a failure.
Will Haire | BellaVix (30:22.942)
Yeah, I would say minimum spend, generally like when people ask me, I'm like very minimum, like 1000 to 1500 dollars per parent product is typical, which should give us enough to do the bottom of the funnel and some experimentation like mid funnel, because it does take, and obviously like some categories may have a lower cost per click, so it may not be much, but that's I would say, and then how long it varies. So when we launch brands, and like especially,
A lot of brands might launch Amazon only and then expand to DTC. So typically what we say is like you could expect in the first six months that 90 to 100% of your sales is going to be a result of advertising. So you're likely going to lose money. By six to 12 months we should start seeing improvements and we should be pushing more to like 50 to 80% of your sales are coming from advertising and now we're starting to get some organic sales. And then 12 to 18 months we're going to be around.
Hopefully 35 to 55% would be the ideal situation. And it always varies, like I'm talking at hypotheticals obviously. But that's kind of where we pull. A mature brand on Amazon, I mean I hate to do the 80-20 again but about 20% of their sales is gonna come from advertising and the 80% is gonna be organic. So we're gonna start out one to one but our goal is to get you in the next 18 to 24 months to be at that point where you're an 80-20 split unless you're being
aggressive and you're going after top line growth or something like that.
Russell (31:53.186)
Got it. No, that's perfect. I mean, that's a detailed answer that exactly what I was looking for. I appreciate that. Thank you. So as we wrap up, I've got one last question for you. I said last Amazon question, so this is now potentially my last question. If you were going to start an e-commerce or physical product business today, what would it be and why?
Will Haire | BellaVix (31:58.849)
I hope that helps.
Will Haire | BellaVix (32:09.288)
Special as well.
Will Haire | BellaVix (32:19.978)
I would choose jewelry as a category because the margins are really strong on jewelry and I know that I could create enough audiences to build the full funnel experience that in a shorter period of time will be profitable than if I launched some other products in other categories. So personally, and I would probably have my wife come in as my co-founder for it and it would be fun just to sell some jewelry and give her an excuse to buy some jewelry and try it on and all that other fun stuff.
Who says e-commerce can't be fun?
Emerson (32:50.096)
What kind of bling are we talking about? Yeah, what kind of bling are we talking about? Are we talking about big brooches or what? Ha ha.
Will Haire | BellaVix (32:52.702)
I'm thinking grilled, gold grilled, big chains, you know, if I could get like the flavor clock, I think that's, I think there's a market for that.
Emerson (33:07.641)
I'm looking out for that one. Will's bling coming at you soon. I like it.
Russell (33:07.65)
You're not wrong.
Will Haire | BellaVix (33:09.291)
Yeah.
Will Haire | BellaVix (33:13.199)
I like the name too, that's what I'm talking about.
Russell (33:13.635)
So.
Emerson (33:15.525)
Yeah, yeah.
Russell (33:17.858)
So, I mean, my answer to the question, which I was not planning on doing, but I've been looking at cold plunges lately, and I'm getting ads, like every other ad I get is a cold plunge that's, you know, they got some cheap ones, they got some really expensive ones, the nicer ones are super expensive, crazy expensive. So I'm looking on Amazon, like what can I cobble together? AliExpress, Amazon, like I'm just looking for whatever, you know, Temu or whatever it's called, I'm looking at all these platforms trying to find the right one. There's not a good option on Amazon, I feel. However, we're su-
Will Haire | BellaVix (33:24.29)
Oh
Emerson (33:45.62)
Those things are massive. Ha.
Russell (33:47.562)
Well, I mean, you can get some blow up like some really nice inflatable ones, like you can get some good stuff But you want to get it then you get a chiller and that's the biggest part is the chiller so that's kind of the more expensive but it They also work for aquariums. And so all I find on Amazon are aquarium chillers not cold plunge killers So I'm like, okay, there might be a market there However, you know a 35% Amazon take and cut, you know, and it's kind of an electronic, you know that kind of thing it's like
Will Haire | BellaVix (33:51.22)
Oh, there you go.
Russell (34:15.234)
Would it even be economic to put it, and maybe that's why other people have not done it yet. So someday I'd love to.
Will Haire | BellaVix (34:20.206)
They're big, I know that.
I think it's a cool product at a cool niche. And my business coach told me this years ago and I think it still reigns true today. The riches are in the niches. So that sounds like a pretty niche product. So you never know.
Russell (34:33.389)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for jumping on with us today. Honestly, we could go for forever. I know that we could dive so deep into these things. And so where can our audience find you if they have more questions?
Will Haire | BellaVix (34:48.47)
Yeah, definitely. So definitely check out our website. I'm pretty act bella vix.com. And you could also find me on LinkedIn, I post something every day and we have a pretty impactful newsletter that we send out every other week on changes to the platform and how it affects sellers. So check out our website will hair like on your on your head with an E and you can check me out on LinkedIn. I put stuff out all the time and if
If you found this really valuable, I'd be really grateful if you subscribe to our newsletter. And thanks for having me, guys. This was fun. I got to talk about media planning and I think we made some progress.
Russell (35:19.864)
be awesome.
Russell (35:27.237)
Thank you Will, we appreciate it man. You know, we'll be following up.
Emerson (35:27.565)
That was fun.