Vendor Summit | The Perfect Product Launch

Session Transcript

Paul Sonneveld
Our final expert session before we head to the panel is with Ryan Craver. Ryan is the co-founder and chief strategy and data officer at Podean. Ryan's going to break down for us what a perfect Amazon Vendor product launch looks like, and really how to set up product launches for scale. He's also going to cover some of the common launch missteps and things that quietly kill momentum. And of course, how to avoid them, most importantly. Ryan, it's great to have you here today. The stage is all yours. 

Ryan Craver
Paul, great to see you. Thank you for having me. I must say this is a pretty impressive roster you've got. You've got a whole bunch of agencies. We compete in some respects. But it's definitely pretty impressive. However, I am going to pick one bone with you. I was told no branding, and you put me last. How are you going to put me last when we're talking about the perfect product launch? How are you going to do that? 7 a.m. in the morning there in Australia? 

Paul Sonneveld
Yeah, 7:10. You know what they say, save the best till last. That's why you're on now. 

Ryan Craver
There we go. 

Paul Sonneveld
All right, the stage is yours. 

Ryan Craver
Okay, so what you're going to see here is you're going to see a bunch of checklists. You're probably going to see a little bit of hacks to help you try and navigate the 1P world. I purposely made it so it was in three slides so that you could use this as a checklist, throw it up on your refrigerator, do what you need to do to just keep this in the background so that you've always got it. 

So let's talk about launching on 1P. So we're talking about an instance where we know that the catalogue and or the brand is either brand new to 1P or it's something that is augmenting what you're currently selling on the 1P account today. The first thing to think about from my perspective is what catalogue you're going to put up and how you're going to set it up. This is the point at which you are going to hopefully be setting up a sustainable program. for the foreseeable future or into perpetuity, or until Amazon is no longer the dominant beast that it is today. 

So the first thing to think about with that catalogue selection and that setup is what you're going to do in terms of your list price. So the list price, as most of us know, is the price with which Amazon determines the initial price that they're going to launch at. And it's usually the price that stays unless they're doing some price following or you're running any particular price discounts to that product. That list price ideally is a list price that is in parity to the other channels with which you sell. 

Now, sometimes we have clients, they try and run a list price that is going to be at a higher price than other channels because maybe it's not as profitable as a channel relative to other retailers. Sometimes we have clients that have a product that is say sold in a Walmart and has the ability to do buy online, pick up in store that comes at a lower price point. And sometimes we have clients that are loading product that is clearance product that they hope to generate a significant portion of business relatively quickly. However, if you're thinking of building, again, a long-term, sustainable, profitable business that stands the test of time, I highly encourage you to try and gain price parity across all the channels with which you sell. That's the first point. 

The second point is Amazon wouldn't even be in this game if they weren't making money, if they weren't making a decent retail dollar after everything is sold. If you look at the last couple quarters, Amazon has very clearly indicated that they are focused, not entirely growing the top line because we've seen it grow anywhere from eight to twelve percent, which is low relative to where they were before. But they are interested in growing the bottom line. 

Now you're getting a bunch of business from the advertising side of the business. You're getting a bunch of business from the AWS business that's driving a lot of that profitability. However, it's very clear that if they are owning inventory in this 1P model, they're trying to focus on profitability. Therefore, when you're creating your list prices and the wholesale with which you're going to sell, you do need to make sure that you are at least within range of the net PPM for your relevant categories. You may ask, what is that relevant net PPM? It varies by category, and I'm happy to give more detail by category on what we see across our large portfolio of businesses, but you need to be at least within range. 

The third thing to think about is what's coming down the pipeline. So I've heard some discussion about GMMs. I've heard some discussions about how do we mitigate any tariff increases? How do we mitigate any terms increases? What I would encourage again, is if we think this is a long-term sustainable product that we keep longer term, you want to try and add in what you don't know yet. 

So, as we know, future terms increases are always inevitable. They'll at least be pitched. Your ability to mitigate them is the difficult part, but know that you're going to have future terms increases, or if you don't have future terms increases, you have an AVN, or you have an additional ask on sales discounts, or you have some other term that will be invented that you're not yet aware of that will come into play. So know that when you're pricing those wholesales, leave some room for some future terms increases. 

The second thing is because this is a launch, you're likely going to have some Vine-associated dollars that are going to need to be spent. And you may even need to do a bit of an ad hoc sales discount that you hadn't planned. So you might be an everyday value product that prices at the same rate throughout the entire year and doesn't play into tentpole events. However, I still would have a little backup kitty money. And then the third thing is we all know it's pay to play. So sustainable media, not launch media budgets, but sustainable media longterm for the price, the wholesale price to be included. 

Second bullet here is around multiple variations. So generally, what you see is there's multiple variations for every listing. If say you're selling apparel, and you have a singular, it's pretty cold in New York. If you have a singular base layer product that is only four sizes and it's only one colour of black, you're not putting forth your best foot forward. So you do need to ensure you've got multiple variations just beyond size or just beyond a particular feature set. When you're thinking about building the actual product, I highly encourage you to start with a keyword list. 

Now, we're going to talk a little bit about content in a bit, but start with that keyword list that tells you all of the various keywords that you'd like to see yourself building into your bullets, building into the specific descriptions, building into the backend alt image tags. But it's all those keywords that you know that you need to rank for in a decent way once you launch. 

The next thing to think about is what's the category like? What is your offering within the category relative to the top sellers? What is your offering like relative to those that are in the middle of the road? What is your offering like relative to vertical factory brands that aren't pushing product that might be at a lower price or a higher price that includes increased advertising? What is your product like relative to the big brands that you want to steal market share for? All of those will give you an indication of what you want to push in terms of pricing, what you want to push in terms of content, keywords, bullet lists, et cetera. 

And then the last thing and this one is the one that's that's moving a little bit fast, and we need to make sure that we are looking at how it changes but take a look at how Rufus is being used across various competitors with which you will compete. Are those competitors answering the types of questions that you need to answer within your descriptions, within your content within your pictures within your featured images. Those are the types of questions that are going to differentiate you from others as we see Amazon start to lean in a bit harder on Rufus and start to highlight those products that are converting best via Rufus, and they add Rufus to even more advertising prompts. 

Now, the third one, and this is for the boring supply chain portion of this conversation, but it might be obvious. The smaller the product, the more efficient the product, the less hands that need to touch the product, the better position you're going to be in to ensure that longer term your freight and your damages rates won't increase. And Amazon will be doing the least amount of touching with the highest yield on anything that's returned. So make sure you're thinking through that product in terms of frustration-free, optimised dimensions. Can you vacuum seal it? Can you put it in its own container? Does it have the ability to withstand the drop test? Will it be a product that will resell relatively easily if it is returned and in a position to just reuse the packaging that it was in? Think through all of those items because all of those items will impact you in terms longer term. 

Fourth bullet down, let's talk a little bit about content. So try to keep it short and sweet here, but the general takeaway is make sure you're using every slot you've got. So if you think through all those various slots, the six or so key ones to consider, of course, you've got your product shot from the beginning, maybe a second or third around product, but then you start to talk about the features. What's unique to the actual product? Differentiators would be a us comparison versus them. So, do you have something that's a differentiator relative to the competition that you're trying to sell on or the competition that you're buying ad spots on within the product ads that you're purchasing? Be careful, though, because this is a fine line. You got to make sure that those differentiators are an effective showcase that aren't branded in any way to highlight the competitor. 

Next one is lifestyle. So tell the story of the brand or at least show your brand in action. Make sure that they can envision that product either on them, with them, or near them, using it in some way, shape, or form. Guide, and this is highly, highly particular to products that are more technical. Ensure that you have the ability to access the guide in a relatively easy way, not just on the PDP, but also within the product as they receive the product. 

And then the last thing, and this one surprises me all the time, but check the box for video. And what a lot of clients we typically hear say is, well, we don't either have the budget to create a video for every single item, or we don't have a video to be shot for that item and didn't plan to do so. Throw on a simple video that's tied to your branding. It will at least check the box on the Amazon algorithm and help gain a better quality score for that PDP. Last one, and this is a little bit more controversial and generally one that our clients are upset to hear the answer to or the recommendation to. But again, you are cultivating a 1P relationship that you want to ensure you're selling your best possible product that is profitable for you, but also profitable for Amazon with the best overall fill rates, lowest return rates. 

If you're in a position to clear product, either because it's excess product bought for another retailer, if it's wind down product, obsolete product, any reason for which you would do no further selling of that product in the next year or in the next six months, and you likely would impact your overall metrics, we highly, highly encourage you to avoid selling clearance product. Stay away from it on your 1P account. If you're keeping your 1P account, the main way in which you're doing business with Amazon, potentially evaluate a 3P account. 

So now you've taken your catalogue, you've looked at your catalogue, you've started to figure out where you want to price it. How are you going to keep pricing parity to the rest of the channels with which you sell? You've started to think through all of your creative assets, and you're starting to put all that in motion. Let's start getting to the dirty work. So first and foremost, how could this not be an Amazon slide if it didn't say set up brand registry? We know we need to set up brand registry, not just for the intellectual property, but also because a lot of the product the product offering will be tied to how the brand is represented and shown. This gives you the tools that you're going to need in order to make it look its best. 

Then, directly below, there is an incredibly important step from my opinion, and it's Mystery Shop the Competition. And when we say Mystery Shop the Competition, I mean a complete review, browse, add review, and also purchase. Buy that product and make sure that you have the ability to understand what it's like to be a customer. And don't just make it you or your team do this purchase. Make sure you're getting opinions from others about what they think about the product, especially if you're not typically the target market for that product. Mystery shop, mystery shop, mystery shop, and don’t stop. Continue to do it over time. Because we know that the market evolves considerably. 

Okay, so now you've gotten your first round of POs, and the warehouse or the 3PL is getting ready to ship some of those POs. And you're starting to think through what else you need to build out. So we start to get to some of the enrichment of the brand. First and foremost is the designing and building of the brand store. And of course, you could be doing this in parallel as you're enriching the PDPs. But my number one piece of advice is seek to mimic your DTC with minimal creative differences. You can certainly create an entirely different program that looks different from your DTC if you want, or from other retailers if you're selling customised or individual or unique products to Amazon and therefore do it.

But for the most part, try and showcase your brand consistent across all the platforms with which they sell as best you can. Similar to the pricing parody, try for brand parody. With that said there are a few quirks that you could use on your overall brand store the first one to point out is the follow call to action so as you know you have the ability to follow a specific brand that then flows through to the rest of your funnel. Make sure you are calling the ability to follow it it's generally a very quick and easy thing to do with a simple banner. 

Next thing is try to push your cleanest hero that you believe will be the one that's going to stand the test of time or the best showcase of your brand. If your brand is new to the platform, you want to put forth your best foot forward. You want to make sure that they're gaining access to the best product you have so that it then translates into additional loyalty sales further down the road. If it's not a brand new product then show or it's not a brand new brand then showcase it as a new product, new revamped product or a new collection that you have come out with. 

Third thing here video flash rule make it quick, make it easy. When we say flash, we mean nine fifteen seconds at best, don't take them through the entire brand because you're probably not going to get the entire view if it is a new brand to the majority of the shoppers that you're pushing it through. So catch them quick, make it sexy make it short and sweet. And then the last part on the brand store is there are a number of brands worldwide that we come across that haven't thought through a different customer by country. Right.

So generally, what you see is if it's an English-speaking country, it doesn't change much. However, I would highly encourage you to think about the customer that's within those particular countries and have one individual Store, look for each individual country. Of course, for those that are running under a different native language, you would definitely want to have them being completely separate so that you're speaking to that particular audience. But make sure you're speaking to the right customer. 

Okay, let's start to talk a little bit about the hacking portion. So now you've got your store built, and in parallel, you're working on your A+. So as you'll see, I've crossed out A+. The general takeaway here is if you're going to build A+ once, build it in the premium version. The premium version is incredibly compelling relative to the old version of A-plus that we all grew up on. You've got much better content in terms of being able to tell the brand story in a completely separate module than before. 

You've got more room for meta tags so that you can, on the back end, ensure that you're getting additional keyword harvesting and or additional languages for those countries that have multiple languages that are being pushed. You've got the extra-wide layout, so you're taking up the full value of the desktop screen, and it's mobile-looking, relatively optimised. And then you've also got interactive elements, so you have the ability to tell the story about the features in a much better way and or things like dimensions and showcasing it so that they can see it within their living room, say, if it's a particular piece of furniture. It's just a better overall experience for everyone. So if you're building it once, build it in the premium version. 

Now, a lot of people say, well, I can't build Premium A+, because it's going to cost several hundred thousand dollars from Amazon. Well, the first hack here is, guess what? You can build Premium A+ in Seller Central. I heard earlier that a number of accounts here are hybrid accounts. If you're not even a hybrid account today and you don't plan to sell on Seller Central anytime soon, set up a simple Seller Central account and still tie it to the brand registry so that you have the ability to manipulate listings and then push Premium A Plus through Seller Central at zero cost. They don't charge today. I've been saying that for several years, but continue to push it through there as best you can. 

Now product is shipped, it's landed, and you've got it there in the Amazon warehouses. So what do we have? We have to get it reviewed. Of course, we will tell you not to use friends and family reviews, although I know no one's going to listen to that. However, for Vine, which I'm sure we're all familiar with, it's typically a program in which you're being charged for it on the vendor central side of the business. 

I think first and foremost, ask your vendor manager if you have access to a vendor manager for credits. And if you cannot gain any credits, try shared support. I've seen it work a few times. However, try shared support and or case if you'd like to get even more dangerous to try and gain some credits. If that doesn't work, go back to that same Seller Central account, and make sure that you've got a product that, or the same Seller Central account that you had built the Premium A+, make sure that you just pull that amount of product into that account, ship it in, and then depending upon the number of Vine units you have to do, push those in into FBA. So I believe it's, thirty potential reviews is a cost of two hundred dollars per parent ASIN, ten is considerably cheaper, I believe it's seventy-five dollars. So just run your vine if you can get it for free through your Seller Central account that you had run the premium A+ on. 

The last piece, and this is more controversial, so you've now got the product up, you got it reviewed, many people will argue you want them to land on a product that's showing a sale price at the start. I say no. I say don't run with the sale price until you start to monitor and see whether the product has traction or not. You don't want to push any sales discounts unless you know that something hasn't worked. If something hasn't worked, then there's many other ways in which we can figure out how to skin this cat. But Sales discounts to start don't make a ton of sense. 

So you've now got the product up. You've got it selling. You're starting to see some reviews posted via Vine. You've got its premium A+ up via Seller Central. We're now going to start some media. And this group of comments could be considerably longer. It could be an entire session in and of itself. Paul probably has a session on this. But I thought what I would do is just give you a few bullet points to think through the media strategy. Granted, it needs a lot more dependent upon product. 

But first and foremost, the number of accounts that we go through that we see no one utilising a bid optimisation tool continues to boggle my mind. Make sure you're using some form of a bid optimisation tool, not just running through Ad console itself and using the rules that Amazon has allowed you to set up. That doesn't mean don't use the ad console for any optimisation. I'm not saying that in any way, shape or form. What I am saying is there will be certain sustainable media that you would like to run through an optimisation tool. We all know there's weekends and optimisation tools for select products and for select bidding types can run very successfully, 24/7, 366. 

Second thing to think about, everyone knows how to set up the automatic campaign. But what a tool and or you could manually do if you really wanted to is take those manual campaigns or those automatic campaigns that are identifying successful conversions for keywords, for products so competitors and for specific subcategories and harvest those as frequently as possible. I'm saying daily here and i highly recommend doing it daily because this is the launch this is where you're trying to figure out where you're going to be successful because you want to gain a new release badge you gain the initial launch you force feed some of the advertising and you start to see some traction relatively quickly and badges start to come with items like new release. 

Second thing that comes in is your sponsored brand in your video, right? We all know not only is it pay to play, but for a lot of those brands that are only running sponsored products in that first bullet, they're not being seen because they're not at the top of search. We can certainly buy bid plus to gain top of search, but that top of search isn't necessarily going to be vibrant enough like the sponsored brand campaigns that you have, or as you scroll midway through the search results to see the video, or when you're on the actual PDP of a competitor. So make sure that you're looking to do so to push not only to the PDPs with varied PDPs and also your store, but make sure when they land on those particular store pages, whether they're collections or new releases or just the main page, that it's a splash page that is customised for exactly what you want. 

Third thing, couldn't have an Amazon pitch unless we talked about Amazon Marketing Cloud. So Amazon Marketing Cloud is something that you want to make sure that you've got set up, right? Incredibly powerful tool. It's something that you can use just based on your sponsored product stuff. It can take DSP if you'd like, and it can also take on first-party data. If you're willing to load those three things, some of the data that comes out of there for various audiences from awareness, at top of funnel to consideration, to conversion, to loyalty is incredible. And it's something that I would highly, highly encourage you to utilise. And it's something that most agencies are using on behalf of clients today. 

Last thing, and this is probably a little bit early to introduce DSP because we have yet to figure out our exact audience, but we need to build the top of funnel awareness around the program. If you're running a net new brand, this starts a little bit later than normal. However, if it's not a net new brand, you're going to probably already have some DSP running to drive some of that awareness. You just wanna make sure that through those audiences, you're pivoting off that awareness. 

Now, there are a couple secret menu hacks on the side of media that essentially gives you free placement. If you look at certain brands, certain brands have search ribbons directly below search results that will then show the various classifications. One of our very large apparel brands, if you search that brand, you're going to see every classification with which they sell an apparel, and that is essentially free real estate. That is a sponsored brandesque look, but it's telling that customer that there's individual tiles of what types of silhouettes and products that they're selling. Always ask your vendor manager if you can gain access to that if your brand is of a sizable number. 

Last thing here, around monitoring just and adjust. This is probably the most important thing after you've figured out which catalogue you want to sell. But I would highly encourage you use a software. There's many of them out there. They can daily monitor and track your bestseller rank, your share of voice in your media and your organic rankings tied to specific keywords that you care about. Those things can be set so that you get pushed them every single day, or your brand manager gets pushed them every single day, but they're so incredibly important to figure out why sales eb and flow over time. 

Last piece, which is the only piece that usually I would say doesn't necessarily need to be daily, more so weekly, would be those brand analytics search query performance items that would tell you how much search volume you're getting relative to the competition in terms of share. On the weekly basket, make sure, excuse me, on the weekly monitor and adjust, make sure you're checking into that weekly because it's going to tell you what other products are being bought with yours, but it's going to give you the identification of certain competitors that you didn't realise you compete with. It's great to figure out how else you can leverage that via media to go against other competitors, as well as figure out which potential bundles that you want to launch. Monitor weekly, keep it within the team monitoring as best they can. 

And then bi-weekly so bi-weekly our agency currently we're running a bunch of manual we're doing about a thousand or so a week, manual runs of rufus to figure out how that's being used is customer reviews the most important is bullets the most important is titles the most important is it pulling off your purchase history is it pulling off of the top sellers. That is a fast-moving generative engine optimisation that you definitely need to stay focused on to make sure that you are answering those questions as well as outperforming those competitors that are answering Rufus questions better than you. 

Almost done. Point is, it never ends, right? So you may launch a product, but guess what? This is the fastest-moving type of business in retail. It's not like a brick and mortar sale, brick and mortar store, very obvious point, but it continues to move. So you need to know that there needs to be an initial push for advertising that then moves into a sustainable spend budget longer term. You don't wanna continue to send dumb traffic that doesn't convert. You've got to continuously A-B test content and advertising. 

I would encourage this to be done biweekly. Continue to test, test, test. Third, and it was discussed in the last session, you've got to cut the tail. Again, Amazon needs to make money, and you need to make sure that you're doing the dirty work of figuring out what products don't work for them, even if they control the pricing. You have to clean their house for them. Do that at least quarterly. 

Fourth, make sure you realise those items that may not work for Amazon continue to build either via 3P or via some other means, as you want to ensure that your entire product portfolio is showing up in Amazon in some way, shape or form. And then don't be afraid to add additional variations. What variation are you not selling today that adds net new products to the overall listing or the PDP? Don't add a second black, but maybe add the colour green. 

Controversial. Do not take bulk buys. If you're looking for a long-term sustainable business, bulk buys are not in your best interest. I have said that for the most part for probably about ninety percent of our clients. There are cases where I do think it does make sense. However, they're very rare. And then last but not least, ending the slide with what it says at the top, test, refine, test, refine, test, refine, keep testing, testing, testing. Paul, would you like me to address some of these questions? 

Paul Sonneveld
I think, well, first of all, Ryan, I just want to, let me just say my thanks, first of all. You know, I really appreciate how you've walked us through this, you know, really how you clearly mapped out the journey, really end to end and really pre-launched the fundamentals, pricing readiness, and then sort of this never-ending testing and optimisation. I really appreciate it. And I think, I think probably of all the sessions we've heard this morning, and I risk offending anyone else, I love the number of hacks. 

I think you are clearly leading number one here. The number of hacks and practical tips, really super valuable. So we do have a couple of questions here, Ryan. But because we are running just on schedule, what I'm going to do instead is carry these questions over to our panel discussion, if that's OK with you. And we'll tackle them there. 

Ryan Craver
Let's do it. 

Paul Sonneveld
Cool. All right. Well, I'm going to pop you backstage, Ryan, and then I'll let everyone know what is next. We'll see you very, very shortly. 

Ryan Craver
Thanks for your time, everyone. Thanks for the invite, Paul.