#544 – Amazon & TikTok Shop Seller Strategies

Listen in as we welcome Delaney Del Mundo, a veritable goldmine of e-commerce expertise with a rich background from Walmart to the pulsing beat of TikTok Shop and the competitive arena of Amazon. Our conversation traverses her journey from the sunny streets of Los Angeles to the pioneering days at Walmart.com post their Jet acquisition. Delaney is now the Director of the Amazon strategy team at Vendo, where she masterfully balances profit and loss management, SEO support, and listing optimization. As we explore her current role, you’ll discover the ins and outs of her approach to fostering brand success across diverse marketplaces.

Tune in to hear Delaney shed light on the complexities of affiliate networks and content-creator partnerships that can make or break a brand’s profitability. With the ever-evolving landscape of e-commerce, we tackle TikTok Shop’s growing influence on content strategies, emphasizing the critical shift from keywords to engagement. Delaney also provides valuable insights into Amazon’s new inventory fees, offering strategic advice for navigating these changes without sacrificing the bottom line. The conversation pivots to a holistic view of business health, focusing on the vital lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio.

In our discussion, Delaney takes us through the intricate process of using Amazon’s Search Query Performance, revealing how strategic analysis can lead to improved visibility and sales. By leveraging tools like Helium 10’s Cerebro and Market Tracker 360 for competitor analysis tools, she unveils techniques to stay ahead in the competitive e-commerce landscape. Delaney’s enthusiasm for these tools’ potential to revolutionize market analysis and her anticipation for future enhancements are infectious. Whether you’re a seasoned seller or just starting, this episode is packed with strategies to propel your brand forward in the dynamic world of selling on Amazon.

In episode 544 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Delaney discuss:

• 00:00 – Strategies for E-Commerce Success
• 04:14 – Strategic Amazon Management and Planning
• 10:32 – Walmart Marketplace vs. Walmart Stores
• 13:09 – E-Commerce Strategies and Amazon Inventory Fees
• 20:58 – Search Query Performance for Sellers
• 21:09 – Search Query Optimization and Market Analysis
• 26:16 – Market Analysis Tools and Travel Tales
• 28:04 – Utilizing Time Tracker for Competitive Advantage
• 32:00 – Maximizing Brand Visibility and Cross-Sales
• 36:05 – Upcoming Event in Manila

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we’ve got an industry expert with a lot of experience on Walmart, TikTok shop and Amazon who’s gonna be giving us tons of cool strategies, including some that no one has ever talked about on this show before. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Sellers have lost thousands of dollars by not knowing that they were hijacked, perhaps on their Amazon listing, or maybe somebody changed their main image or Amazon changed their shipping dimension so they had to pay extra money every order. Helium 10 can actually send you a text message or email if any of these things or other critical events happen to your Amazon account. For more information, go to h10.me/alerts.

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s completely BS free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And now we are having for the first time in the show, Delaney. Welcome to the show.

Delaney:

Thanks, Bradley, happy to be here. I think it’s long awaited on my side, so glad to be joining you today.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, yes, Now we first met at least you know, I’ve known about you because we’ve worked with Vendo a lot in the past, and I think I met you first at the maybe in Puerto Rico, at the billion dollar seller summit, and I looked across the room. I was like she looks like a white flip like me, which, for those who don’t know us, half Filipino and half American, and that’s what I am. I don’t look like it. She does, and so I was like are you just what Filipinos do? Like? There’s that Jokoy’s joke where they’re like oh yeah, my mom was Filipino when she sees somebody. But I did that exact same thing. I’m like Filipino, American. And she’s like, yep, I’m like, oh, I could. Then me too. And anyways, we bonded there and I was like all right, a fellow Filipino American in the Amazon world, we got to have you on the podcast. So no, that’s not the reason why I had you on the podcast. I heard from your boss that you are an A player and know your stuff and I’m like that’s the kind of person we want on the show. But anyways, Delaney, enough about me and my rambling here. Let’s just start with where I mean we met Puerto Rico, but where in the world are you right now? Where do you live?

Delaney:

Yes, Bradley, I’m out in Los Angeles, so actually not too far away from you today. But speaking of the Filipino American, yes, you’re right, it seems like my mom’s genes might be stronger than your Filipino side. I got the Sinigang and the Adobo in the fridge. Don’t worry, I’m more than I think.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes. There we go.

Delaney:

But yes, I’m out in LA.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, is that where you were born and raised?

Delaney:

Yep, born and raised in LA, lived for a few years out in New York but made my way back here. So, plans, where do you live? In New York? I lived in the city for a few years and then also in the upstate New York area, so Nice.

Bradley Sutton:

I lived in Brooklyn myself for a couple years. Where’d you go to high school? In LA?

Delaney:

High school. I went to Burroughs High School out in Burbank.

Bradley Sutton:

In Burbank? Okay, nice. And then how about college?

Delaney:

College, Hamilton College in upstate New York.

Bradley Sutton:

So a really very rare that somebody gives me a college or university I have never, ever heard of.

Delaney:

Yeah, there were 1800 kids in the entire school. So super small community, but small and tight.

Bradley Sutton:

Well, what do you study?

Delaney:

I studied economics.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting Now, when you graduated, did you work at all into there, or did you already find e-commerce by that time? Or what’s your journey to e-commerce like?

Delaney:

Yeah, so I actually got my start over on the Walmart side of the business, so working for Walmart.com as soon as Walmart had acquired Jet. So I was part of that group of individuals and then found my way on the brand side for a few years working at Walmart.

Bradley Sutton:

What did you do at Walmart?

Delaney:

So you might have told me that, but I forgot it. No, no, no, I managed the beauty category there. So on the dot-com side worked closely with the store merchants and grew the beauty channel.

Bradley Sutton:

Interesting, okay, and then how did you get to the Amazon side of things?

Delaney:

Yeah. So then from there, ended up shifting over to the brand side. For a few years worked for a beauty brand and at that beauty brand managed all their retailer.com channels, so Zulily, eBay, Walmart.com, Amazon.com, etc. So a bit more full circle. And now here at Vendo, leading, of course, the Amazon team as well as TikTok shop, which is one of our newer channels that we launched just a few months ago now. And then, of course, as you know, Bradley, you’ve had some of our Walmart.com teammates on the podcast as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, and then what do you specifically do, like what’s your specialties? I guess what’s your daily? I know actually you actually do a podcast as well, but outside of the podcast, what are you doing for clients?

Delaney:

Yeah, so I’m the director of Amazon strategy, so I lead our team of account strategists here. But in terms of what Vendo does everything from P&L and forecast management towards direct management of the Amazon channel, managing advertising, marketing etc I’m more on the strategic side. So a lot of what you would look at from listing optimizations, SEO support, ranking, impact and really just understanding what strategies were implementing to hit brands top line and bottom line goals, both on the three-piece side and our one-piece side of the business through vendor central.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. All right, we’re going to start broad here and then go narrow as we go on. But you know, since you have, you know, your company and you yourself have dabbled, I guess you could say, in a lot of different marketplaces. Be it, you know, amazon, Walmart, TikTok shop is kind of like the top three. What’s just your state of the union in 2024 about the trajectory of each of these? Are all still going up. Is one skyrocketing over the other? Is one of them going down, one of them staying flat? What’s your outlook for this year?

Delaney:

So I think, as far as trajectory, TikTok shop has the greatest potential Just being. Their affiliate network is so strong and the platform itself is extremely simplified, so it’s not hard for a lot of sellers to join TikTok shop right now, and just in terms of their affiliate network. We obviously know that creator connections on the Amazon side has been in beta for quite some time, but I think TikTok shop has the upper hand when it comes specifically down to affiliate, just because of the ease of the platform and the fact that you can set these targeted collaborations per item, per creator that you reach out to. So Vendo has an in-house influencer and affiliate team which we’re able to leverage, of course, but that allows us to glean great insights on the targeted collaborations and the open collaborations on TikTok shop.

Delaney:

Amazon specifically, I mean we’ll see. I think they’re always on an upward trajectory, given the amount of data that they have access to and just as far as shipping and logistics, they’re always ahead of the curve there. But we have to look out for specific categories. If we look at platforms like Temu, which I know generated a ton of buzz after the Super Bowl with how much they’re investing in different ads, Fashion categories, we know that Amazon referral fees are dropping in some of those categories. So we’ll see. Right, I think Amazon’s going to probably have to take some action across categories if Temu starts to undercut price and we’ll see if Amazon also starts matching there.

Delaney:

And then Walmart.com is a silent killer. I mean, they have their stores that they’re able to leverage. So with their store specifically, that opens up a ton of opportunity. I think that oftentimes a lot of Walmart.com sellers don’t realize that if they are, or if they have the potential to sell on the one-piece side of the business, that opens up a whole new avenue with online pickup and delivery. And many times Walmart.com sales are grossly underreported because unless you’re investing in to illuminate, you don’t see those OPD sales naturally. So you might think the channel is smaller than it is, but it’s really larger than what it appears to be on paper, just given the level of data that Walmart actually has versus what it discloses.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, I know you’re a little bit out of the Walmart game, but I’m going to ask you a Walmart-specific question because I just want to see how relevant this is. This is something that I’ve been telling people, but my experience is about six, seven years old now. So I used to work for this company that does supplements and they’re kind of like a famous company. They would do infomercials and things like that and I was their sales manager and people don’t understand the size of Walmart brick and mortar because it was like, you know, like I was so proud of myself, I grew their Amazon sales from like $500,000 a year to like $3 million. I would have Walmart PO. That was for 20 SKUs, by the way. I would have Walmart POs for their one SKU that were like in the one to $2 million, just because of how many stores you know Walmart has, etc. So it was like it dwarfs Amazon, you know, unless you’re like a huge whale on Amazon. Now, that being said, like what I, a couple of things I did was I started a couple brands or not a couple of brands a couple of products on the brand on Amazon, and then I moved it to Walmart. First of all, we already had a somewhat of a relationship with Walmart and then Walmart.com buyer, you know saw that I was dominating one of the subcategories and they’re like all right, let’s bring this I don’t remember what it was called, but it’s kind of like what Amazon calls vendors, a vendor central or something, where it’s like, hey, we’ll buy this from you, so that’s shipped and fulfilled by Walmart because it’s doing well. And they’re like cool.

Bradley Sutton:

And then they’re like hey, it started doing well there. And they’re like, hey, let’s take this and let’s add this to brick and mortar. And that’s when, obviously, you know, sales blow up. Now For me that’s what I tell people of that story about like, how, why? Even though maybe if you just start something on Amazon or Walmart, you know sales could be 10 to 150 to one Amazon or Walmart. But the reason to start on Walmart is if you start, you know, making some waves, you can start selling to Walmart and then potentially, you can just get in front of a buyer because you can’t, you know, just come in off the street and say, hey, I’ve got this cool new product, you know, would you just put it in Walmart brick and mortar? You know, unless you’ve got connections, is that still valid in 2024? Like is that kind of like the process that could potentially not guaranteed, obviously, but that could potentially happen.

Delaney:

Absolutely 100%. And I think that is sometimes what a lot of brands make a mistake with on Walmart.com or just in Walmart stores in general, is they go to Walmart stores too early. And if you go to Walmart stores too early then that really does a number to your brand from a profitability standpoint. So that’s why Walmart marketplace is a great avenue for you to start, because you can even get Sam support, which is a strategic account manager on the Walmart three P side of the business who can help you and make sure that you’re pulling those levers and in growing your brand on Walmart.com to go to stores. So yes, Bradley, 100% a great avenue to start. And looking at again just Amazon versus Walmart strategy, it isn’t just let’s go bring all of our Amazon’s use over to Walmart, because both algorithms are getting a lot better from a pricing standpoint at identifying different prices. So we’ve seen pricing down to the price per ounce standpoint. So it doesn’t even matter sometimes if you’re launching completely different UPCs, they’re still matching. So it’s really important that before you launch on Walmart.com even if you’ve been selling on Amazon for quite some time you think about maybe differentiating different pack sizes or just different flavors of your product. That way there is a difference there that you can grow a completely new set of products.

Bradley Sutton:

Before we get to your specialty, which is Amazon, let’s talk a little bit about TikTok shop. It’s a different marketplace in that I’ve never sold in TikTok shop, so please feel free to correct me if any of what I’m saying is wrong, but to me it’s different because it’s not like something that you could do traditional keyword research. I know there’s some tools and helium tents working on some things now that can analyze hashtags and things like that, but you don’t really have control over what’s necessarily indexed or getting to page one. It’s like so just dependent on just the virality of something or a famous influencer showing it. Is that kind of what you see? It’s kind of like completely hit or miss, where you have the least amount of control over your success. As far as on just regular TikTok shop, obviously you have control over how you advertise and how many impressions you get, but as far as just a post going viral and getting a lot of sales from it, do you feel like you have not as much control as on other platforms, or is that changed?

Delaney:

No, 100%. You’re correct in that as well. I think that’s why the affiliate network is so powerful, but is also. You need a defined strategy there. You need to know your exact demographic. You need to know which subset of creators you’re looking to target, based on their engagement rate, their follower count, et cetera and you really need to do a deep dive into their content to make sure that they fit the brand, because you can reach out to as many creators as you want to through there, but at the end of the day, if they’re not gonna generate sales from your brand, you’re now giving away free samples and that could impact your bottom line. So I think yes as a whole. Definitely from a ranking standpoint, I think TikTok shop’s going to evolve in that sense. When you’re setting up items, there’s specific keywords that they want you to be focusing on, but those are all of the benefit driven keywords or the main claims and the listings, so it doesn’t appear that, from a ranking standpoint, those hold as much weight. It’s literally how many pieces of content are you pushing out and how is the engagement of that content? So it is incredibly important that you have a solidified content strategy, and TikTok shop allows you to. There’s like a get inspired section and you can see a bunch of content that’s currently working on the platform that you could pull from in different categories and get ideas on how you can be capitalizing on that for your brand too.

Bradley Sutton:

Moving to Amazon. I’m not sure if you have experience in this much at all or if you’ve looked into it, but last night I for the first time, kind of like, took a deep dive into the new inventory placement fees that are coming. I was just seeing here and there, like some I don’t know, I don’t want to say horror stories but people are getting really scared, like, oh my goodness, my shipping is going to be 2x, mine’s going to be 3x. I’m like what, for reals? So I went and what I did was I looked in my own account and by the time this episode is airing it’s going to be in full effect. So I’m sure we’ll know more. But I was like, yeah, there was a shipment that I had sent to one location only. I didn’t choose to just, amazon had me do it. I guess it was like a hundred units of some coffin shelves, right, and it was like 77 bucks or something, because it was like shipping from San Diego to LA and so you know like it’s obviously 77 cents per unit. And then I was looking all right in under the new world if I shipped to one location in California, which is obviously my preference, because it took probably a day to get there right. And it was cheaper. It was like a 68 cents per unit charge. So I was like, wait a minute, it is like double. You know what it is Like. Have you looked into this at all and started like thinking about for your clients, like what you’re going to have to suggest to them to do or if they’re going to have to change the way that they send replenishment?

Delaney:

Yeah, I mean most of them right now don’t send to a single location, but it is very category dependent and so that’s what we’ve seen. So for some categories specifically, there’s actually a savings attached to it, but others, like yours, of course, Bradley, you’re seeing a steeper charge there. So I think it does 100% matter and that’s something in which we keep PNLs on an item level and are updating those PNLs whenever a new FBA fee is introduced, whenever a new inventory placement fee is introduced, just so we can understand the impact of some of these newer fees. But majority across the board, we are seeing increases due to the inventory placement fee. So it’s just something that now a lot of our brands that do ship to a single location they’re really going to have to evaluate whether that is worth it for their business or not 2024, what is different than a couple years ago or even then, then last year?

Bradley Sutton:

like what are your? You and your clients having to do a lot differently. There’s a lot that’s the same. Hey, keyword research is keyword research. Sure, I you know there’s some people who might are predicting changes that might happen when Amazon rolls out new AI stuff. My personal opinion is that might, may or may not happen, and even it does happen. I still think traditional, like you know, keyword research and stuff is still going to be important, because you still have to let Amazon know what the product is. But, aside from speculation and stuff, just what are you having to do differently nowadays, whether it’s advertising, whether it’s listing optimization, whether it’s a plus content, whatever that you weren’t doing last year, maybe a year ago or two years ago?

Delaney:

The biggest change, I think, has just been the continued focus on profitability. I think that into last year as well, profitability was at the forefront of the business, where maybe a couple years ago it was more so focused on top line growth. But now really, as brands diversify their channel strategy, their understanding that, you know, with some rising Amazon fees, their bottom line maybe doesn’t look as good as it did a couple years ago. And that’s where, on the vendor side of the business, we’re really looking at LTV to cat ratios, because a lot of our brands might be more hesitant to discount.

Bradley Sutton:

I know what that means, but explain it to everybody else out there.

Delaney:

Yeah. So LTV lifetime value, cat customer acquisition costs. So you want the LTV versus cat ratio to be healthy. A lot of agencies will probably tell you a three to one ratio is more so on the healthy side, which basically just means that what you’re paying to acquire for a new customer, they’re generating at least three times that rate in their overall lifetime value. In other words, they’re coming back to repeat purchase from your brand. And I think that as we run promotions and we participate in some of these tent pull events, we’re getting more and more pushback from brands who don’t want to engage in, let’s say, a Prime Day or a Black Friday, cyber Monday or any other tent pull moment that exists for their brand. But we’re able to pull reports in which we analyze okay, how many new customers are we generating during these periods? And then for that cohort of new customers, what is their lifetime value in the next six, nine, 12 months? And in many cases that metric is healthy. And if you look at Helium 10 Market Tracker 360, Search Query Performance, keyword tracker, you’ll see that in keyword tracker, your non branded keywords are experiencing an increase in overall organic rank during that time. Because of that increase in organic rank Search Query Performance, your purchase share is growing on that particular subset of keywords. And then you pull back a larger time horizon and for many of our brands looking at Market Tracker 360, they’re doubling overall market share, while brands that aren’t participating are decreasing in market share, and for extended periods of time. So thanks, Bradley, for all the innovation on that side, because that has helped tremendously. But it’s really understanding what are the dynamics in the market and when we’re not participating in these events, how does our market share change?

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, let’s definitely talk in a little bit about some Helium 10 tools like Market Tracker 360, but Before then you mentioned, like Search Query Performance, how what’s your best use cases for Search Query Performance? And or, if you’re using it, product opportunity explorer in Amazon, because I think it’s so cool that Amazon has is releasing so much more data than back in the old days. Some people say, what at Helium 10, aren’t you scared of like? No, it’s great. Like every time Amazon releases something, it helps us make even our tools better and actually validate some of the things that we’ve always shown. So we love it when Amazon opens up new data points. So, how are you using like what’s the? You know you could probably have a whole episode about Search Query Performance or OX, but maybe the top, like one or two things that that you think sellers can be getting value out of.

Delaney:

Yeah. So on the Search Query Performance side, it’s really identifying. First and foremost we look at where is your click share greater than your impression share? This is going to be your probably subset of keywords in which there’s a ton of opportunity. There just might be a visibility standpoint You’re not showing up. Let’s see what we can do in terms of optimizing our listings for these keywords. Looking again into Cerebro and doing a reverse look up there to see what are my opportunity keywords in which I can improve my ranking on page one four and then tying that into okay, once I do that, how is Search Query Performance cleaning insights into changes in my overall click share, impression share, add to cart share, purchase share and what does that look like over a prolonged period of time? So a lot of people might look at okay, I want to look at a larger subset of keywords to go after, but really you should narrow this down to probably your top five to 15 at the onset subset of keywords that you’re tracking regularly in keyword tracker and also in Search Query Performance to see how that changes. So in Search Query Performance again, just understanding, is my purchase share growing on these terms as I prioritize them more and then putting that back into our ads. And where am I ranked in terms of my top of search impression share for these particular terms? Is my top of search impression share now growing as I want to invest more and two and more relevant for these terms? And then three, let’s look back at Search Query Performance and see how my purchase share is growing.

Delaney:

And then, on the opportunity explorer side, I think that’s a great tool. Just understanding, okay, how saturated is my niche? Looking at the top 90% of clicks, is there opportunity in this niche? If my brand is looking to launch a new item, that’s where we see the most value in it is okay. How many products have been launched more recently within this niche? What does the opportunity look like for pricing? What does the opportunity look like for reviews? Where do we need to be at within that particular niche to be at the category average so that our conversion rate is benchmarked within the category average? And then I really love the review aspect of things, so being able to really update your content to see positive review sentiments, negative review sentiments, and how are we tackling some of these things that are going wrong within the category as it exists? So, as you said, brad, that we could talk about it for probably three episodes, but that’s the basis.

Bradley Sutton:

Good stuff there. I’m just waiting in anticipation for it to be available, like in the API. Then that’s going to allow Helium 10 to do a lot more, even fun things, and combining it even more with Helium 10 data points I love looking at. For example, what is your impressions compared to the search volume? Because theoretically, the impression should be a little bit higher than the search volume, because if you’re showing up at the top of the page, maybe an organic and in sponsored, you would have that more. But then it’s like all right, let me bring in the exact two graphs of sponsored and organic over the last week or month and like oh okay, this is why it’s not where I need it to be. I need to improve. You know there’s just like so much fun stuff that that could definitely happen.

Now, another tool you mentioned Market Tracker 360, a lot of you know, or some of Helium 10 users out there, might not be familiar with that tool, because it’s actually one of the first tools that I think Helium 10 has. That’s kind of like really for large sellers or agencies. You know, like you guys like almost everything Helium 10 has. You know we’ve got billion dollar companies like Lego or something using it, and it’s just as applicable to a brand new seller. But this is one of the probably the first tools where I was like wow, I’m not sure I need this. Personally, I’m not that huge of a seller anymore, like maybe only I think I might have only done like half a million or 750,000 last year. I’m like I’m not sure this is for me, but some people just like yourself, you really get a lot of use. So for most people they’ve never even seen what it does. Can you just briefly talk about how you guys use Market Tracker 360 and how it helps you guys?

Delaney:

Yeah, absolutely so. In Market Tracker 360, you can either choose a subset of products so oftentimes you’re going to choose your competitors or you choose some top keywords within the space. Those are the two most heavily used use cases that we use here. So we’ll choose a bunch of the non-branded keywords within the space and we’ll put those into Market Tracker 360. And then what it will do is it will pull a bunch of competitors and also your product that are relevant for those specific keywords and literally build a market for you. So, using this market, you can see what is the percentage of overall sales that each competitor is generating, as well as what is this track back to a dollar value. And, yes, we have spot checked that multiple times and it is a pretty accurate there in terms of the sales that it’s pulling. So what we do is we’ll include that in our product launch phase.

When we receive a new brand into the Vendo pipeline, we look at okay, how are they situated within the market right now compared to these top competitors? And of course, we know who the top competitors are. The brand has shared that with us, and then you can dive deeper into different filters that you can set so you can say, okay, I only want to filter this to a title that includes this keyword, like, let’s say, the title includes protein powder or it is situated in this specific category or subcategory. That way you can really define that market even more so, and now you don’t have as broader of a set of different competitors in that market. It is a lot more specific to your overall market. Or, if you only want to benchmark it towards like five competitors versus the entire market, you can do that too and exclude specific competitors from showing up there. So that’s the basis of Market Tracker 360 and how we use it. But then it goes even further deeper into there’s different keyword insights that you can see through Market Tracker 360. And where are those competitors now winning? How has the ranking of those competitors on the organic and the sponsored standpoint changed with time? So that’s probably my favorite tool in Helium 10, Bradley.

Bradley Sutton:

Nice, nice. What about the regular side of Helium 10, which I know you have a lot of experience with? What’s your favorite tool? And then my secondary and it’s use case. And my secondary question would be if you had a wish list of your top thing that Helium 10 doesn’t have currently, doesn’t have to be Amazon, could be about Walmart, could be something about TikTok shop. What would be the number one thing? If you were like, hey, I can be the Helium 10 director of product for a day, what would you make our team get started on working for you?

Delaney:

Yes. So I’ll start with your first question related to my favorite tool. It has to be Cerebro. Just going back to the roots, looking at the time tracker function that you guys have more recently added, it’s probably been probably not even a year yet, right, Bradley? But that tool is extremely powerful because, again, if you have a brand that experiences a ton of seasonality, you can go back to those specific periods in time to see how you were ranked on specific terms, as well as how your competition is and also what are seasonal terms that you need to be taking advantage of. And I think that is often something that a lot of brands miss is hey, there might be 500 searches per month for this particular keyword now, but three months from now there’s going to be 5,000. So what are you doing with that information? How are you getting ahead of it from a creative standpoint? How are you optimizing your listings to make sure that those specific keywords are being highlighted? And then, on the advertising side, your competitors probably aren’t going to know to be winning on those specific keywords either. So you could get the upper hand by understanding I need to be ranked on page one at this exact moment of time, on the top half of page one, ideally in the top three to five slots. And once I can get there, then I know that when this search volume hits its peak I’ll be the competitor that’s getting a majority of the conversion share there. So that’s got to be my by far my favorite aspect there.

Delaney:

And then apologies, Bradley, I’m on the second question, related to what I would like to see from an agency side. My vendor central experience probably speaks to including a few more vendor central aspects in there, just because from a purchase order standpoint that is a huge area that we would leverage. But honestly, I think from an FBA standpoint I would have to say forecasting, because I think that inventory management is a huge challenge for a lot of brands and forecasting allows us to better understand what our projections and what our inventory demand is going to look like throughout the year. And then my second one, if we’re throwing things in here, would just be variations. So I know with inventory protector you can update maximum order values and things like that. If we could directly change variations in Helium 10 or really be able to decipher, maybe even submit cases for variations that are wrong some more technical things there, but all things that I feel like would be extremely powerful, because that’s where a lot of time is spent trying to update things that maybe Amazon is using. It’s not updating, even after multiple cases.

Bradley Sutton:

Cool, cool. Now, before we get into some of your final strategies of the day, if people want to reach out to Vendo Commerce guys, one of the easiest ways is just go to hubhelium10.com and type in Vendo, which is Spanish for I sell. So whoever made that company name is a genius and you can reach out to them there. But if people want to follow you or reach out to you, how can they find you on the interwebs out there?

Delaney:

Yes, you could find me at delaney@vendocommerce.com and, as Bradley said, also have a podcast that I know Bradley will be joining me on in a couple weeks Vendo Commerce Velocity as well as on LinkedIn. I’m on there, delaney@vendocommerce.com.

Bradley Sutton:

A couple, maybe quick hitting SST, what I call my 60-second strategies. By the way, that’s also something that comes from my Filipino side, because I think that’s how our mothers or grandparents would call us when they’re trying to. You know, come over here. But anyways, for everybody else, that just stands for a 60-second tip. So what is a couple of 60-second tips or strategies that you can talk about that our sellers can influence?

Delaney:

Yeah. So, from a more data-centric standpoint, make sure you’re leveraging both Helium 10, Search Query Performance and product opportunity. Explorer tons of insights and the way in which you’re telling a cohesive story for your brand. If you combine those tools, they’re not meant to be used in silo, they’re meant to be used together, but also from a competitive aspect, using the video placement aspect and sending videos. Putting videos on your competitive ASINs is something that’s really fundamental, but at the basis of it is just more organic visibility for your listings. So, again, you can add your own branded videos onto competitors listings within the video manager. A lot of brands don’t do this, but they will show up if the full video stack is not filled by your competitors. So something to look out for.

Delaney:

Also, from a cross-sale standpoint, a lot of brands aren’t currently leveraging things like targeted cross promotions in which you buy one product and you get 5% to 10% off another product, or the add an accessory widget. A lot of brands think that, yes, that’s probably only a SaaS core function if you are investing in that program, but we’ve seen through filing of multiple cases, you can have that add an accessory widget pop up there and then, just in terms of prime, exclusive discounts. I know that sometimes, and more often, you’re seeing that when you add SKUs and prime exclusive discounts they might be getting rejected. So for that I would suggest creating a new SKU, and what we’ve seen that is that if a SKU is being flagged specifically for FBM or for internal policies, then you can create a new SKU. Add that new SKU instead to your prime exclusive discount and it will still run because that history won’t be tied to that new SKU. So those are a few things, but on a larger basis. For a 60-second hack let’s say a very not even hack, but tip is to know your PNL, and Amazon has a lot of different tools. Helium 10 has a profits tool to help you understand that. But you do need to understand how much margin you have to work with and evaluate your PNL on a weekly and even a monthly basis.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Well, this has definitely been a strategy field episode. Now, on the personal side, you got married last year, so congratulations. Where was your honeymoon? I was living vicariously through your Instagram honeymoon, but where was it Wasn’t Maldives. It wasn’t the Maldives honeymoon.

Delaney:

I know, but where’d you guys go? You’re going to need to change the name of your honeymoon launch strategy, Bradley, but we went to Italy and then we ended up in Santorini. So a bunch of different spots in Italy and then Santorini in Greece was my favorite.

Bradley Sutton:

What’s some of, overall, your favorite travel spots. Is that something you do, or was that you know? Do you travel with any kind of frequency, or are you more of a homebody?

Delaney:

Trying to travel more usually, stay stateside, go to Hawaii a decent amount. I can’t really get tired of Hawaii, but in terms of some of my favorite places I’ve been, probably Spain is at the top of the list. So many great places in Europe. But I would say if you haven’t been to Santorini, I don’t think I’d ever be able to go back, but it is definitely worth a visit.

Bradley Sutton:

Speaking of Spain, you got to get Darren to send you in May, probably our next Helium 10 Elite workshop. You know we do a quarterly workshop is probably going to be in Madrid in May. So business, business trips/second honeymoon bring your hubby along and, you know, soak up the nightlife in Madrid and the museum. I like, I like how it’s both. You know like I can hit those like really cool museums and architecture, and you know they’ve got good restaurants and nightlife over there. So tell Darren, I’ll put in the good word for you. Let’s, let’s hang out in Madrid next year.

Delaney:

Yeah, we’ll put in the good. I will definitely be bringing that one up to him. So thanks for that, Radley. And then we’ll have to make a trip to the Philippines.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, well, I’m actually going soon. The Amazon is doing their first event, or not? For the I missed their first event, actually in March, but or in February, I should say. But they’re actually doing another event in a couple of months, so, offline, I’ll give you some details that they haven’t finalized a date on that. But yeah, there’s second every event in Manila, and so there we go. You can go and visit some family too and support the community out there.

Delaney:

There we go. That sounds great. I definitely need to go back.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, all right, well, thank you so much for joining us and it was great to see my sister from another mister right here on this show, and I look forward to being on your show in a couple of weeks.

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• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business. 
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