#638 – Strategies For Launching A Brand In 2025

Can understanding the latest trends in Amazon ads and influencer marketing transform your Amazon-selling and brand-launching strategy in 2025? Join us as we welcome back Liran Hirshkorn, CEO and Founder of Incrementum Digital, one of our earliest guests, who brings his expert insights into the rapidly evolving world of Amazon selling. This year marks a transformative period for platforms like Amazon, where changes in fees and advertising dynamics have forced sellers to realign their focus toward profitability. Liran shares compelling strategies for navigating these shifts and highlights the innovative use of Amazon AI search, Rufus, which is personalizing shopping experiences by customizing search results based on individual habits.

Explore the power of enhanced data visibility in Amazon advertising and uncover the secrets to optimizing your strategies. In this episode, we unravel how understanding the customer journey through expanded data insights can significantly boost purchase rates and ad efficiency. Discover how Amazon’s strategic expansion beyond its own marketplace opens new avenues for sellers familiar with its advertising platform, allowing them to broaden their reach across different channels. Liran’s insights into leveraging Amazon Marketing Cloud to create lookalike audiences for more targeted advertising are not to be missed.

Finally, we navigate the dynamic relationship between TikTok and major retail giants like Amazon and Walmart. Hear the captivating story of a seller’s transition from Amazon to TikTok, illustrating the platform’s impact in driving demand through engaging content and viral potential. We discuss how TikTok’s algorithm enhances product discovery, especially for visually appealing items, and the implications of strategic partnerships that could reshape the e-commerce landscape. Throughout this episode, we emphasize the importance of building a strong brand identity and utilizing diverse marketing channels to stand out in today’s competitive market. Tune in for a plethora of insights that promise to redefine your approach to e-commerce success.

In episode 638 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Liran discuss:

• 00:00 – E-Commerce Trends and Strategies for 2025
• 01:29 – Amazon PPC Changes and Current Challenges
• 03:54 – Personalized AI Shopping Experiences
• 11:00 – Shift in Search Results and Analytics
• 11:46 – Amazon Advertising Trends and Strategies
• 14:32 – Amazon Advertising’s Expansion Into Other Retailers
• 17:59 – Advanced E-Commerce Strategies and Influencers
• 21:52 – Influencer Marketing’s Impact on Brand Launches
• 27:57 – TikTok and Amazon Integration Strategy
• 29:57 – Beauty Product’s Success on TikTok
• 36:04 – Amazon Sales Boosting Strategies

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today we’ve got back on the show one of the first ever guests on the SSP way back in 2018, and he’s going to be talking about a wide range of topics such as AMC, TikTok, shop, influencer marketing and more. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show. That’s a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we’ve got back for like the fourth or fifth time here. Somebody who was, I just noticed, was on the third ever podcast we did. He was, like might have been the first or second outside guest we ever had on the serious artist podcast because it was episode three. So if you guys want can find episode three, get his whole backstory, but, like, I believe episode one was just like me and Manny Coates and episode two might have just been me or maybe Kevin King or something, but Liran was the first, uh, outside guest the podcast, I think. So welcome back to the show. You’ve been on here for years now, yeah thank you so much.

Liran:

Yeah, I know it’s amazing to see how the space has evolved, how Helium 10 has evolved over time, and you’ve been a main anchor. The one steady component of all of it has been you. So thank you for having me on. It’s great to be back on the podcast.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. And who am I wearing today? Well, we’ve got Beanie by Incrementum Digital. We’re both matching there. I also consider this like we also have something called Insights Dashboard in Helium 10. So something similar. But, yeah, this saved me. I was in I think I was in Japan or somewhere where it was super cold. I didn’t have any beanies and I was like, oh, Incrementum Digital had sent me a beanie, so that saved my ears from frostbite when I was freezing temperatures recently. Anyways, we’re not here to talk fashion, let’s just catch up on different things. And the first thing I would say let’s see if you agree with me or not, but like 2000 or 2024 was like the year of change on Amazon, whether it’s fees, whether it’s new things, of advertising. Like I do not remember a year where there was more significant changes on those fronts. You know, advertising, fees, things like that. Then 2024. Would you, would you agree with that? And then, if so, like, well, what are some of the biggest noteworthy things for you?

Liran:

Yeah, there were a lot of changes and also Amazon, I would say, sharing a lot of a lot of changes, not just for sellers but in general. Like Amazon introduces Rufus, and you know a lot of changes in general. You know shipments and placements and fees there. You know Amazon introducing more services and like a lot more people doing things like AWD and you know I see Amazon even taking market share away from 3PLs that are that didn’t have as good a year because of you know Amazon taking share of their partnership with TikTok. You know a lot of yes, a lot of things evolving.

Liran:

One thing I would say I saw early in 2024 is we saw brands really starting to shift their focus to really focus on their profitability a lot and put a focus there because of increasing fees and pressures there. I think some of that pressure for brands has improved somewhat. We now see brands that overall, we see our clients doing better this December year over year, this January year over year. So hopefully some of that’s in the in the past and maybe some concerns with the, with the economy and inflation and again those, some of those things past due. But yeah, 2024 was a year of a lot of a lot of changes and maybe starting on the pathway of how, ultimately, you know, Amazon platform will change and how, like, search results are going to change too. Because one thing I see as we get you know more to AI and search results is that in reality, you know, when I search something and you search something, the search results should be different, because Amazon should have a good understanding of our shopping habits.

Liran:

For example, I was at lunch like one of our neighbors here, and one of our neighbors was talking about buying on Amazon and how the first thing she does is she does a search and then she sorts by price from low to high. Right, I never shop like that, right? I look at reviews like it’s not how, it’s not how I shop by like lowest to highest price point. But that’s how she shops. And I’m thinking, well, if she does that and Amazon knows that all the time, then why not just serve her up the results that way to begin with? Right, because they know, they know how she’s shopping, or, you know, serve her up into what she’s most likely to buy.

Liran:

And I think now with AI, with things like Rufus, that, while I don’t necessarily see, people have made this huge transformation to shopping with Rufus yeah, it’s going to get better and some interesting things. Where advertisers are now better able to target audiences with advertising is another, I think, big shift that’s coming this year and you know you may not have heard about this yet, but you’re going to start to hear more about how you can now use your own audiences to or not, but your own audiences to target. So, for example, something that we’re doing now is creating lookalike audiences, which historically you would think like why wouldn’t Amazon have that to begin with? Because, like platforms like Facebook have had that for years, where you can kind of upload your email list and create a lookalike audience. Well, now, with Amazon and Amazon Marketing Cloud, you can create a lookalike of your highest spend customers and increase your bids for those for that lookalike audience.

Bradley Sutton:

And then where would those ads show up? Like what would it be for? Just when they’re searching, like we’re not targeting keywords per se, or is it targeting keywords specifically for those audiences? And just wherever those guys are shopping on Amazon, they’re going to see those ads.

Liran:

Yeah, so, like the big shift is that you know, up until like very recently, you can say almost like now you can only use AMC with DSP, and so it would be display ads that we’re showing on and off Amazon and you can create this lookalike audience and it would be towards that display audience. Well, now you can implement it for sponsored products audience and it would be towards that display audience. Well, now you can implement it for sponsored products. So if you activating AMC for sponsored products, then you’ll see, you’ll have like an audience tab and you can actually add that audience there that you created and you can increase your bid to that lookalike audience. So, even on keywords, when that particular lookalike person you know which, which is highly similar to somebody shopping from you is doing a search, your bid would go from a dollar to whatever, to a dollar 50 based on the percentage that you know you want to. You want to increase your bid.

Liran:

And so now you know I’m kind of thinking, um, I had this conversation with somebody and we’re like thinking, like you know, Amazon executives are sitting in a room and, um, they’re like you know, Amazon executives are sitting in a room and they’re like, you know, cost per click is kind of flatlined, you know, like because at a certain point you know you can’t increase cost per click anymore because you know it gets unprofitable for a brand. So like, hey, cost per click is flatline. What can we do to get brands to increase their cost per click and make more money on our advertising business? Well, if you can get the brand more closer to who they want to reach, they would be willing to pay more, because the theory is your conversion rate would be higher, which then it would be okay. And so it seems like you know, this was like a brilliant idea to get brands to find a way to increase their cost per click, and Amazon’s doing this in a lot of ways, right? We’ve seen in the last few months Amazon roll out B2B audiences where you have business customers and you can increase your bids to those business customers.

Bradley Sutton:

Makes sense when you have, like these bulk product or like, hey, I’m selling these packages of 1,000 masks that mainly go to schools or something. Well, I don’t want to have to get clicks and just a regular Joe Schmo, you know 1000 masks that may mainly go to schools or something. Well, I don’t want to have to get clicks in the rate. You know, just the regular, you know a regular Joe Schmo is not going to have a very good conversion rate.

Liran:

Or you know, like it’s not going to click on my product and buy it so to be able to just show it only to to the business customers and schools and stuff makes a lot of sense, I mean, and I saw that they’re selling paintbrushes and things like that, and so the first question I asked them is have you tested increasing your bids? Because, like painters right, like people like that they would normally maybe go to Home Depot or whatever like might buy from you and if they have an Amazon business account, you can increase your bids. So those people said, yeah, it’s on our list, you know to test and those are the kind of things like people looking at right now. You know, and Amazon does give you the results on those business customers, so you can easily see if that’s like a placement you want to get better, a better placement to get in front of those customers and more and more I see that’s how, at least with advertising, you’ll be able to get closer to who your target audience is and test. And you know, okay, I want to pay more, but I don’t want to pay more for my existing customers who buy from me. I want new to brand customers only. I want lookalike customers only, um and. And Amazon is very interesting. It allows you even to set, like you know, a lookalike audience based on customers that have spent X dollars with you in the last year. So if you have a supplement and it’s 30 bucks, you can put in customers that have spent a hundred with me, that have bought a few times, and I want to look like audience to them, the propensity to buy from me, or it gives you also like the types of audiences.

Liran:

I think one of the options we’re starting to test is like balance, because it’s like kind of like it give you different types of audiences that you can, that you can create for like propensity to buy from you, um, and so I think this is pretty cool, um, on the one hand, yes, it helps Amazon’s advertising business because it gets you to increase your bid. But if I’m increasing my bids and I’m also getting a better conversion rate, um, then you know I think that that could be a win-win, um, but you know, I think that that could be a win-win. But you know, if you’re listening to this, this should be your sort of call out to figure out how can I get access to Amazon Marketing Cloud Today? You know you could do it through tools, or you know agencies or tools, or, unless you can get your own access to, like you know, the Amazon Marketing Cloud, maybe if you’re a bigger brand, through a rep that you have, etc. But generally, today it’s going to be through tools. You should consider tools slash agency or somehow to get access to it, because I think that’s going to be one of the shifts that we’re going to go into this year with Amazon and then, if you think further out with Rufus, that ultimately the results are going to be more customized to the end customer, which again, I think is a good win for Amazon if they’re able to put more relevant products and solutions in front of people.

Liran:

So this is like. I think what kind of this year is like is an interesting shift. In the first time, I think, really a meaningful way that the search results are changing, other than just the way they’ve already been different is, you know, based on inventory, being close to me, et cetera, I might see something different than you see. I’m in New York, you’re in Cali, but now I think it’s meaningfully going to change based on how advertisers are going to start to position their bids to specific audiences, which is pretty cool.

Bradley Sutton:

What about on the analytics side of AMC, because that’s something that’s now democratized where we’re. In the past, yeah Well, I mean the regular AMC, actual targeting, that’s still. You got to use an agency, you got to have a software to use it, have bigger spend. But now AMC, for the first time as far as on the analytics reporting side, is available to just Joe Schmoe and even like inside of Helium 10, we’ve got it because they made it available. So what, uh, should sellers out there who have never used that visibility before, what would what, what should be their priority as far as what they should be looking at? Is it more like trying to figure out that that purchase flow of of how their, their display ads and their video ads and product ads work together in that customer journey, or what’s the highlight?

Liran:

Yeah, so a couple of cool things that Amazon has added. So, yes, one, understanding that purchase flow and seeing how your purchase rates it should be higher when customers are exposed to more ad types. And you can start doing some of your own calculations with attributing a cost. For example, if somebody sees Sponsored ad, SD ad, and the attribution goes to the last click, which maybe was SD, then maybe instead you can give a third of the attribution of that sale to each one of those ads and figure out because the person didn’t start out with that SD ad they ended up buying through that SD ad. And figure out, because the person didn’t start out with that SD ad they ended up buying through that SD ad. So I think, yeah, trying to see which ad types are working well together and how having, let’s say, different ad types together, like sponsor brand, sponsor product is creating either yes or no, like higher purchase rates, and if it’s worthwhile to run those ads together. So kind of understanding the customer journey and how multiple ad types work together. You know is one area.

Liran:

Another sort of related but interesting thing Amazon has added recently is long-term sales data. So now you can see in your reporting beyond just the you know 14 day or seven day attribution window how sort of a RoAS based on beyond just that attribution window and you can, you’ll see a higher RoAS and you can see the impact of somebody first. You know interacting, you know with an ad, even though they didn’t purchase within the attribution window, how ads are affecting your sales ultimately. So that’s another you know cool thing Amazon has added, and recently in CES they announced also that AMC data would not go back five years. It was going back, I think, like 18 months until now. So you’ll be able to analyze your audiences for a five-year period, which is more data. And I think this is a shift that’s happened over the last few years I think since Andy Jassy has come in, that Amazon has sort of opened up the floodgates to giving you as much data as possible, where in the past they you know, I mean like there were days where like, oh, Amazon will never give you the true search volume or anything, like you had to use tools for estimation. And now you have brand analytics and search frequency and the query performance report and all these things where Amazon is just giving you at the carts and all this stuff and we thought we’d never see that.

Liran:

And that’s, I think, Amazon overall philosophy becoming more open in a lot of ways. And you can see that now with Amazon opening up things like buy with prime to other websites, their multi-channel fulfillment, they’re opening up their uh, their warehouses can now do, you know, fulfillment from your, from your website sales. Um, they are. They just announced at CES that they’re opening up their advertising to other retailers. So now, if you’re selling on like we have clients like on iurb.com, that like in supplements and we can actually run ads from the Amazon console on iherb.com, which is, like you know, Amazon is sort of um, opening up their technology as a service to other retailers.

Liran:

So I think Amazon realizes like at one point they made the decision, they realized, okay, we’re not going to be the only destination people are shopping at, but we want a piece of the entire pie with, like, the different services that we offer. And how can we? How can we get that? Even if somebody is selling on Shopify or you know, now on like another website, how can we monetize? How can we monetize that through our fulfillment network, through our ad now, through our advertising technology and I think that’s Andy Jesse’s like philosophy, like AWS, which is running the cloud network for, all you know, a lot of websites online. It’s similar philosophy of let Amazon sort of be the underlying backend channel for advertising fulfillment. Um, it’ll be really interesting to see how many retailers um take up Amazon on that. Uh, you know, uh, advertising as a as a service, it’s a nice advantage, I think, to those brands that already know Amazon advertising and will be able to run those ads on other platforms. You know it’s a nice competitive advantage.

Bradley Sutton:

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Bradley Sutton:

So another question I had you know we’ve been talking along the lines of all these new things that are available to advertisers and brands is I’m just curious, what are you doing differently in 2025 for some of the fundamentals you know? Because I feel like there’s just there’s a lot of talk, like you said, like hey, rufus is going to change things later. Like to me it’s not like yet, because it just kind of sucks from a consumer side. It kind of sucks and so like yeah, until it gets better, people aren’t going to adopt it. But you know like there’s people now saying, oh, you got to change all these things.

Bradley Sutton:

For me, I’m not changing anything as a seller, just because a lot of the things that Rufus does, it’s still based on the same principles. You know, like I’ve never been one of those people who says, yeah, just stuff your keywords, or stuff your listings with keywords and that’s the best thing. No, you’ve always should. Hey is kind of like almost filling in the gaps of the people who aren’t maybe doing all the best practices, and now it’s kind of less than that gap. But that means that if we were doing the best practice, there’s not that much that we have to change. Launch changes you know like little things here with launch. You know like I’ve always been using PPC for launch for the last few years. I’m just wondering the fundamentals of listing optimization, keyword research, research, basic advertising. You know not AMC, what are you doing differently in 2025 than, say, 2023, or things that you’ve incorporated in the last year for some of your bread and butter things, if anything?

Liran:

Yeah, um, I mean, the one thing I would say with Rufus is that we are using it to, you know, look at listings and look at the questions that Rufus is properly with and making sure that you have those answers in your listing Right. So, like you said, it’s a way to find the gap between, like, a competitor and you know what you have in your listing and making sure that you are answering those questions that Rufus is like prompting people to maybe ask about a product and then making sure you have the answer so that when the person does, you know, click on that or something that Rufus has the right answer based from the listing.

Bradley Sutton:

So I would say- If somebody is asking that question in your competitor listing, they probably would ask it on yours, and so being ready for that is a good move,.

Liran:

Yeah exactly so I would say that’s kind of how we’re using it now, just like for best practices, making sure. But essentially, yes, listing fundamentals to me are the same. You know, I think, ultimately, a lot of the fundamentals are the same, but, you know, the things we’re focused on is more testing, making sure you know advertising isn’t cannibalizing your, your organic sales. You know, we’ve found, like you know we had, we had a customer, we just did their annual review and we found that pulling back on bids last year resulted in much better performance. They had more sales. Their organic sales grew by 20% because, as a strategy, we kind of pulled back on bids and maybe let their organic positions take the sales a lot of the time instead of the advertising position, and they ended up just having a lower. They had like a 23% TACoS in 2023 and they had like a 18% TACoS in 2024. And we’re talking like a pretty decent 38 million in sales on this brand this past year and 30 million the year before. So they had stronger sales here lower TACoS, lower cost per click, just further optimizing, further testing and using the data and the tools out there that you know that we have to do. That is like one of the things we’re focused on, besides these new initiatives as far as, like you know, testing.

Liran:

But you know, I think the main fundamentals you know haven’t really changed. I do think you know brands really have to focus on a lot on their creative, their video, their creative. I think also, brands should be. You know, what they do outside of Amazon is important, very important now, just because you know you have more, especially if you’re in a niche where you know you’re competing with more, like Chinese sellers, let’s say, which is a lot of niches, but like maybe less so in like supplements or beauty or certain niches. But you know, what’s going to really help and save your brand in a lot of ways is branded searches and because you know, or influencer marketing or those things doing those things outside, we’re definitely doing, uh, things like creator connections. We’re driving more, more sales. It’s not the brand game changer, but it’s definitely driving sales for brands and I hope Amazon allows you to do more with it, like reach out, reach out to influencers and making it a better tool. But I think brands really need to do things outside work with influencers, be on the platforms Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, shorts, wherever social commerce is happening, whether TikTok is here or not here, in order to drive those branded searches on Amazon and grow those branded searches, those branded searches on Amazon. And grow those branded searches because that puts you in a position of not just competing on price and not just competing on you know on reviews.

Liran:

You know, like I won’t. Chances are, if you look through my history of buying, you won’t find me buying a product that has, you know, 10 reviews on Amazon. Yesterday, you know, my wife sent me something she saw from an influencer and it was a toy product, like maybe for my son, and I had like a hundred something reviews again like that might be something I’d bypass normally like a hundred something reviews in toy category. But I looked at it like oh cool, it looks kind of interesting, whatever. And that’s because an influencer was talking about it and was already showing the product. And you have that transfer of social proof from the other channel coming into Amazon where the things like you know whether it’s now the cheapest or somebody else has a thousand reviews. Influencer already recommended it already. Trust, I’m going to buy. I’m going to buy what they recommended because they’ve tested it already, played with it, whatever, and they recommend it, right.

Liran:

So I think those things just become, overall, more important for brands if they want to get out of competing on Amazon just based on the traditional things of the marketplaces, which is a lot about reviews and price, and that’s, you know, I think, a big shift. And I think we’re seeing, we’re seeing growth of more and more Chinese sellers on the platform, you know, according to like marketplace pulse and you know other data sources. So, and you know, by the way, as we have AI we just had this announcement on like deep seek and right, like AI, um, it’s going to get easier for those, uh, non-english speaking brands to have better content and you know, better understanding of the consumer and how to position your brand and who’s your target audience and doing all these things, um, so you know, I think right now your edge is on. You know, I think I think sellers in the U S have always done better on the branding side and the marketing side. Um, and those levers I think you have with working with influencers, reaching out.

Liran:

You know, um, I have somebody on my team, Kate. You know, Kate launched her own product, uh and um, she was trying to figure out funding and everything else and she, she put it on Shopify. It’s just like, uh, um, pre-orders and she made, she made like a unique product. Um, um, she reached out to influencers and she sold six figures on pre-orders in the last few months, just with influencers promoting it because they love the product. Um, and that’s, that’s unbelievable, that’s amazing, right, um? And my initial advice to her was and she’s applying for a patent, uh, utility patent on this product is like don’t put it on Amazon until you get the utility patent, because, as for a patent, a utility patent on this product is like don’t put it on Amazon until you get the utility patent, because as soon as it’s on Amazon, you know this product is made in China, the Chinese are gonna copy it. You won’t be able, you won’t be able to enforce it while the while the patent is pending.

Liran:

The strategy we have right now I mean, if it’s converting, you know pretty decently, with pre-orders, with influencers, that’s a great strategy once you have inventory and ads are working well too, even during pre-order, and so those strategies and then when she does launch it on Amazon, let’s say, a year from now, she launches that product on Amazon, she’s going to have the branded searches already there. It’s going to be that much easier. People are already going to probably see it somewhere else and it’s going to be instead of pushing uphill on a launch, it’s like pushing downhill right. And so I think you need to think about your strategies for launching and how you do things. I’m not saying don’t launch on Amazon first, but you know, I think you want to have that outside strategy to and becomes more. It becomes more important today If you don’t, you know, want to compete, you know, on price and reviews, or it lessens the amount of time you have to be out of profit just to push a lower price point, et cetera, until you build up enough reviews to kind of be relevant.

Liran:

And I think maybe even where we are now, over two years ago, platforms like TikTok, for example, are really influencing what people are buying on Amazon right and on Shopify, and so I think you want to have that as part of your strategy and even now, as you are selecting your product right, that you want to think about how you know, how is this going to play out? What’s the strategy for like social or influences with this product? Because if you have a product like this person that’s selling paintbrushes, I mean hard to um. Now, that’s a brand that’s been on Amazon, I think, for years. They have like a best seller, you know paintbrushes etc. 20, you know 20 000 reviews and you know okay.

Liran:

But if I’m launching paintbrushes today on Amazon, I have a really hard time and then like going and making that uh, you know, a viral sensation is going to be very difficult too. And so, thinking about the products that you want to launch before I mean going back to when, I think, we got started with Amazon you would launch whatever, as long as it was like opportunity, right, like you used something like Xray or Black Box, you’d find the opportunity and you would launch it. And you know you could do on Amazon because there’s a there’s a line between the amount of supply and demand. But I think today you can’t do that. You have to think about what’s going to be. You know what’s going to be beyond that also, and that’s, I think, a shift for you know, 2025. And again, I hope Amazon takes more steps in the direction of things like creator connections and other opportunities that are allowing live shopping trying to figure out why.

Bradley Sutton:

Why us hasn’t picked up on that, like China and other places? But along those lines, like what we’re talking about? Marketplace, we’re talking about influencer marketing. Two years ago, if somebody were to ask us, maybe hey, I’m selling on Amazon, what’s the no-brainer marketplace? I should just go ahead and list my products and I think maybe people might’ve said Walmart as like, all right, yeah, you’re not going to try and match your sales, but you’ve got the product in the United States. That’s the easiest and most obvious next step, I would almost say this year, for now. I mean, who knows what’s going to happen with different things, but I would almost say that before Walmart, you’ve got to be considering TikTok shop. Would you agree with that?

Liran:

A thousand percent. I’ve thought the same thing over the last year because with Walmart we kind of know, we kind of know what you’re going to, what you’re going to get on Walmart. You know you’re going to get anywhere between five, maybe up to 20% of what you do on Amazon, depending on the, on the brand of what? The brand of? What’s the potential there? With TikTok, you have the potential to go viral. You have the potential to blow out. I think we both know the seller that was doing these like groove handwriting that his wife was a home mom, homeschooling her children.

Bradley Sutton:

Before they joined their or they started their TikTok journey, they learned about TikTok at the same event that you spoke at there in New York. I totally forgot about that and you know what?

Liran:

And I did some of his Amazon advertising and then they stopped doing Amazon. They said, look, we have so much inventory demand for TikTok. TikTok is 80, 90 percent of our business and Amazon is like 15, 20 percent. Like we’re pausing, like working with Amazon, Amazon was just like so small on their business. TikTok was massive for them. They did so well on TikTok and that’s because they had the right product, very visual, very targeted, right price point and they crushed it on TikTok and you couldn’t do that on Walmart, right Walmart.

Liran:

You know Amazon and Walmart are for people to kind of search and find what they’re looking for and TikTok is to help you discover the things you don’t know you need. You know that, that, that you need or that you want, and you have that. You have that massive ability. Now I think they work. I think TikTok and Amazon work very well together because you know, if I see something on TikTok that’s interesting, I’ll probably just go to Amazon search for it. You know I bought something on TikTok shop just to see what the experience was like and it was fulfilled by TikTok. It was interesting. It took about four or five days. I got in. It was. It was a fine experience. But I’m just going to go by, I have prime, I’m just going to go buy it on Amazon and get it really quickly, right? So I think they work very well together. And you know, and it makes your TikTok will make your Walmart you’re like Walmart will not make your Amazon business stronger, or you know. So, uh, I think, unless you’re going into like we have a plan to go into Walmart retail, they want you to really do well and online there, etc. Like, yes, I would. Um, you know, TikTok would be my go-to for sure as any secondary channel. Um, again, along with maybe like shoplift, if that’s like a focus. But I think tick to TikTok, just like where you know, ultimately it’s where people are.

Liran:

Again, especially if you have the right product towards, like, the demographic that’s on there, I think you can create certain products, like if I’m thinking today about, you know, a product like beauty. Beauty crushes on TikTok, why it’s very visual, it’s demonstratable, I can see instant, maybe before and after. You know, visual, it’s demonstrable, I can see instant, maybe before and after. You know, um, one of our clients, um is a brand called Sacheu. Um, if I’m saying it right, s-a-c-h-e-u. Um, they have this lip liner. Now, I’m only an expert on lip liner because of the client now, uh, but they have this, they have this lip liner that you put it, you put it on and you leave it on for like five, 10 minutes and then you kind of peel it off and it creates this like color and more plump lips or whatever. And they have also the best seller on Amazon and it’s you know, yes, we’re running ads and we’re doing things on Amazon, but it’s because this product has gone viral on TikTok, like celebrities and all this stuff on TikTok, and there’s no, you can never achieve that on. You can never achieve that on Walmart.

Liran:

And so I think, even now, as you’re thinking about what product am I going to launch, you want to look into those categories and where you think you could be and like, how demonstratable is this product? And if I’m going to launch let’s say I’m going to launch a baby product Well, can I get a baby on my videos or do I need a baby on my videos to do that? Is that going to be harder, you know, unless again, you have established brand and you’re thinking about how to do it. But, like, I’d really think about how is this going to play off? What my strategy could be for social commerce, social media and how is that going to feed into? You know, Amazon’s always talked about the flywheel, but now the flywheel is sort of like social media, you know, and Amazon working really well together. How can I feed it into that total flywheel together?

Liran:

So I think if I’m looking to launch a brand and launch products on Amazon, I’m looking at trends and I’m looking at how things are doing on TikTok. Now, TikTok can show me the sales I mean essentially the sales because it shows me how many units people have sold on their products. So I get a lot of data there. And then you have all the data that Amazon has with reviews and listings and you know, and the search volume and everything else that, like your product research should shift into like what can work really well together. Because I absolutely agree that Walmart would not be the second channel I launch after, after Amazon Not anymore, because I think I could do so much more again, at least with the right product, so much more on a TikTok as opposed to on Walmart.

Liran:

It’ll be interesting to see who ends up buying it. Now they say Microsoft isn’t talked, but it could have been a great purchase for a Walmart. Walmart’s had some partnerships with TikTok too. We had one of our clients had done special advertising with Walmart and they had a partnership with TikTok where the ads on TikTok only showed to Walmart customers. So they had a partnership with TikTok too. So you know, it could have been, it could be a great purchase for them. But it’ll be interesting to see you, to see who buys it and if it can maintain. But I think the point is that, no matter what it’s proven now right and somebody will, some platform will come up or Instagram will pivot or to kind of do more of what TikTok is doing if it’s not around. But I believe it’ll stay around and there’ll be some kind of deal formed.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, it’s not just going to go away. All right, before we get into your last strategies of the day, how can people find you on the interwebs out there?

Liran:

Sure, so I’m on LinkedIn, Liran Hirschkorn. I’m on Facebook, Instagram. I’m on TikTok too, but you may see some dancing videos too if you go on there. But you can find me there, or [email protected] or through our website. You can reach out to me. We do a lot of audits for brands, so happy to talk to you about your brands or if you have any questions in. You know, in general, one thing we want to consider offering this year is, like this AMC as a service, helping you set up audiences and things, even if we’re not running your ads. So we’re considering doing that. Maybe that’s, you know, something you want to talk about, you’re interested in. Maybe it’s something we can kind of start to beta because we do think it’s going to be more important and we can help, like, set up your audiences so you have access to it, even if you want to run ads, you know, on your own. Nice um and um, uh, yeah, so you know you can, uh, feel free to reach out.

Bradley Sutton:

Favorite Helium 10 tool?

Liran:

You know I love, first of all. I mean, what I use every day, you know, is I use Xray every day.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you like the new features we have? How we have the child item sales now, where in the past I mean, we used to have that like seven years ago or something, but we haven’t had that for years.

Liran:

Yeah, I love that. I also love all the you know what you’ve had for a while but customer or whatever and like shows them all the keywords and search line. So I love that. It’s a tool that you know, it’s a must have, you know a tool. Obviously, a lot more. You know reverse ASIN and keyword tracking and now there’s the market share data and just a lot there. But, yeah, it’s a tool, I think. I think in my company we have like four or five you know Helium 10 accounts that we use just to because of the amount of quantity that you know that we’re using it. So, um, yeah, uh, love Helium 10. And like I said, you’ve been the, you’ve been the steady hand. Uh, you know, in the company, you know, since, like I know helium like 2016, 2017, when you know when Manny first started it.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, thanks, thanks, yeah, so it’s been. You know a lot of people jump around you know, I think, and you know you and I are definitely not in that crowd. We’ve kind of stuck with our original companies, last like 30 or 60. Second strategy for sellers that’s something actionable they can work on.

Liran:

I think if you haven’t implemented creator connections, play with it for sure. It’s no risk. You give 20% commission. You can drive significant sales depending on your product and demand for it. But I think that’s really worthwhile to play with this year. If you haven’t implemented that, and then test out things. Look at your B2B placement and sales on your ads and see if you want to increase bids for that low-hanging fruit of things. Look at your B2B um. Look at your B2B uh placement, um and sales on your ads and see if you want to increase bids uh, you know, for that uh, like low hanging fruit of things. Um, and of course, I will just add um brand sale promotions another great way to drive sales. If you haven’t, uh, if you haven’t implemented that.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome, all right. Well, Liran, thank you so much for joining us. You’ve been on this show since, like 2018 and next year, 2026. Would love to reach out to you and bring you back to see. I’m sure there’s going to be plenty of new stuff to talk about, so, in the meantime, feel free to keep sending me the Incrementum Digital swag, and I’ll be repping it when I can.

Liran:

Amazing. Thank you so much for having me on. Look forward to the next one.

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Want to absolutely start crushing it on Amazon? Here are few carefully curated resources to get you started:

• Freedom Ticket: Taught by Amazon thought leader Kevin King, get A-Z Amazon strategies and techniques for establishing and solidifying your business.
• Helium 10: 30+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon or Walmart business easier with better data and insights. See what our customers have to say.
• Helium 10 Chrome Extension: Verify your Amazon product idea and validate how lucrative it can be with over a dozen data metrics and profitability estimation.
• SellerTrademarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.