#230 – Chatbot and Facebook Marketing Strategies for Amazon Sellers of Any Level

Who doesn’t love the idea of spending their time relaxing in the Italian countryside? Our next guest, that’s who. When it came time to jump with both feet into e-commerce, a change of location was called for.

Today on the Serious Sellers Podcast, Helium 10’s Director of Training and Chief Evangelist, Bradley Sutton welcomes Leo Sgovio. Leo is a Facebook and chatbot expert who’s going to walk us through the processes of brand building, ManyChat keyword research, and finding opportunities on Amazon.

Leo will also detail the techniques he uses to do battle in competitive niches, identify the right (and wrong) reviewers, as well as how to stay on the right side of Amazon’s regulations.

All required listening for Amazon sellers!

In episode 230 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Leo discuss:

• 02:00 – Italy, a Great Lifestyle But . . .
• 04:30 – Mixing Music as a DJ
• 07:00 – SEO and Its Higher Salary Was His Next Step
• 08:15 – A Random Meeting in Vegas with Helium 10’s Founder
• 12:00 – How Did Leo Manage a Challenging Niche?
• 14:00 – Monitoring Competitors’ Reviews to Look for Opportunity
• 17:10 – How to Search for Exact Keyword Phrases in Titles
• 19:00 – Chatbot and Facebook Tactics   
• 22:45 – Leo’s Review Strategies    
• 27:00 – Making Sure to Stay on the Right Side of Amazon’s Rules
• 29:00 – Biggest ManyChat Fails 
• 31:30 – Leo’s ManyChat Keyword Methodology   
• 37:10 – Relaunching Tips  
• 42:15 – How to Contact Leo   

Enjoy this episode? Be sure to check out our previous episodes for even more content to propel you to Amazon FBA Seller success! And don’t forget to “Like” our Facebook page and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Podcast or wherever you listen to our podcast.

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.
• Ultimate Resource Guide: Discover the best tools and services to help you dominate on Amazon.
• Helium 10: 20+ software tools to boost your entire sales pipeline from product research to customer communication and Amazon refund automation. Make running a successful Amazon 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. 

SellerTradmarks.com: Trademarks are vital for protecting your Amazon brand from hijackers, and sellertrademarks.com provides a streamlined process for helping you get one.

Transcript

Bradley Sutton: Today, we’re going to talk to a Facebook advertising and Amazon launch expert who’s going to give us his top strategies for these things in 2021. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think.

Bradley Sutton: 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 Amazon world. And just quick note guys, if you haven’t done so, if you’re listening on your iPhone, on the Apple podcast app, don’t forget to do us a solid and leave us a review there on the actual app. You should be able to do that. And if you’re on Spotify or any of the other platforms, there’s no reviews section, but you can help us out by just making sure to turn on notifications and making sure that you guys are subscribed on the platform. We appreciate it. So anyways, our guest today is the one and only Leo Sgovio. Leo, how’s it going?

Leo: Hey, Bradley. I’m good. How are you? Thanks for having me on today.

Bradley Sutton: Thanks for being here. Now, Leo, we’ve met a few times over the years at various different conferences and things like that, but I haven’t really got into your backstory much at all. And that’s something we always do on this show is we like to find out everybody’s journey or path to the e-commerce world because it’s different for everybody. So first of all, where were you born and raised?

Leo: Yeah. Actually, it’s interesting. I’m excited to share my story. I was born in Italy and raised there until when I was 23. And that’s when I decided to pretty much move to a different country. Because Italy is known as a great place for vacations and a very full life, lifestyle, but probably not the best place where to start a business.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. All right. Now, growing up there, when you were like eight, nine, 10 years old there, or what city in Italy did you grow up in?

Leo: It’s called Bari. It’s on this Southeastern coast. So right across from, I would say Croatia.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Okay. So then growing up in that area, eight, nine, 10 years old, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

Leo: I don’t know about anything for sure, but when I was 12, 15, I remember my teacher saying, Oh, you’re really technical. You’re really good with your hands. You like to design. It was probably the worst advice I could ever be given by your teacher. And anyway, I decided to go into a mechanical engineering school, but along the way I was DJ-ing, I wanted to be a DJ, a producer making music. That’s what I did until a few years ago actually.

Bradley Sutton: Oh, I didn’t know that. Okay. So did you– you were 23 when you came to the States or– upon graduating? I don’t know what you guys do over there, but what we call high school? Did you enter into a university?

Leo: I did. Yeah. So I finished what year would it be? Probably, like a college degree And then I left right after I remember being called to the army, which I went for a very short period of time and they decided to pretty much leave. It was shocking for me, going from DJ-ing, leaving that cool fun night to being in the army. It was terrifying. My dad was in the police back home and he helped me to leave the army. It was an interesting experience.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. What kind of music did you DJ and produce?

Leo: I always enjoyed playing depose, like old school. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton: All right. So that’s like nowadays, like some depose like Mala or Chummy or artists like that. Do you know them?

Leo: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can probably say that those would be the DJ. I mean, recently you can think of probably the best people that are doing the powers would be sex, the sex drive slur, or Peggy goal, this new modern DJs, they are doing a great job with that kind of music.

Bradley Sutton: You create your own music. Like, it’s not like you’re just mixing other people, but you would actually do some original beats and things like that.

Leo: I did for a while. I built my own recording studio back then when I moved. So when I left at 23, I went to Miami first. That’s what I wanted to do, I went to Miami. I thought that was going to be probably the best place to go to enjoy that kind of life and then get exposed to the American music scene. Right. South Beach was the place to go. And then that’s what I did. So I got introduced by you to a few club owners in Miami, by DJs, from Italy. And I remember DJ-ing in some private clubs like Mansion, Set, Set tight. Those were in 2007, eight. Those were great clubs, a lot of fun.

Bradley Sutton: That’s what brought you to the States is trying to further your musical. So then when did the pivot happen to e-commerce or like what did you just like there wasn’t enough money in that for you or what happened?

Leo: Yeah, so that’s interesting because I was dating a girl in Miami, which I moved back to Europe, which she was from Germany and what happened was we didn’t like to be back there, and we decided to give it another try, come back to the States by the, in the States. For me personally, it was hard to start a career because I was just a tourist there and I didn’t have a work permit. So what we did, we came to Canada instead because the family that could have kind of helped to at least have a place to stay. I came here with nothing, no money in my pocket. And, I was lucky, like fortunate enough, three months later to being offered a job by my family or in Canada, they used to own it. One of the largest travel companies in Canada, I was humorous to Expedia and they were already a very large company online. So, I remember my cousin asking me, Hey, why don’t you come for the next three months, at least make some money. And I always offered a data entry job. And so I took the job. I completed what they thought was going to take three months, a task in like three weeks. And so that’s what made them offer me an actual job here in Canada. So they sponsored me. But before leaving, I remember asking them, what’s the highest paying job in Canada, like in this company, I didn’t want just to be, did I answer guys. And the SEO is probably one of the jobs that pays the most. So I remember going back home and starting to study SEO. I did Google all the Google ad words, certifications. Back then there was a book called the SEO Bible, which I finished in like a week. So I went back, I’m like, Hey, I think I know SEO. Now I want to be the SEO in this company, the SEO guy. And so when I came back, I came back as a SEO specialist and then everything kind of started from there.

Bradley Sutton: Interesting. Interesting. Okay. So then what about selling on Amazon? Like there’s another pivot that happened in your career? I imagine. So you’re kind of like in the online business there obviously, but what about specifically Amazon selling? How did you get introduced to that whole?

Leo: Then I started going to some conferences. I remember I was in Vegas once at an Adobe conference. And I think there was a prosper show, the same time happening or seller con happening in a different hotel. And I said to my cousin, you know what, I think I’m going to bail for a couple of hours and go see these Amazon conferences that was in 2015. And I remember walking around and I ran into Manny Coats. And actually I heard your podcast. I think it was Manny and Casey Gauss talking about black hat stuff back in the days. And I was already very comfortable with that topic. Because I was like, you know, gaming God’s saints and that kind of stuff. I’m like, I spoke to Manny for like 10 minutes. I mean, it’s like, I like this kind of, I like where this is going. Because what we’ll do you mind coming on– I think back then they were doing the monthly Masterminds and I told Manny, I’m like, Hey, by the way back then– I was already starting selling on Amazon, but I wasn’t obviously at the level where six years later I am today, so Manny is kind of the guy that introduced me to everybody else. That’s how everything started. I think Manny is the one that discovered me.

Bradley Sutton: Cool. Cool. A lot of people have that similar story, like, a lot of people don’t realize it, but Kevin King is Kevin King today because he just randomly came on the AM/PM Podcast years ago, nobody knew who Kevin King was. And then that episode that Kevin King was on, just blew up so much that’s how people found out about. So like a lot of people I think in this industry can tie their origin scene kind of including myself, to Manny. But, that’s interesting. So what have you been selling on Amazon then for how long now?

Leo: Six years now, since 2015.

Bradley Sutton: 6 years, like a total of like how much do you think you have sold, gross sales on Amazon overall?

Leo: Across multiple brands we have probably done over in sales of a combined, probably 30 millions or so.

Bradley Sutton: Excellent. Excellent. Now you say you enter into different brands, so like these different niches as well, different categories, you have a wide variety or you try to stay focused on just a couple?

Leo: Yeah. So what I did, right at the beginning, I got into skincare and then I kind of like stick with it because I didn’t want to learn a new vertical on category. So I always kept doing beauty and supplements. And that’s pretty much what I feel comfortable with because once you know the industry, once you know the logistics, how everything works, you probably want to stick with that. Right. Rather than jumping from product to product or category to category, that’s what I’m currently doing. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. So now how does it work then for competitive categories like that? Because a lot of people say, they’ll say things like, Oh yeah, don’t do cell phone cases or stay away from supplements or beauty because it’s so competitive that most sellers are not able to compete. So obviously you have your own formula of how you’re able to launch products in very competitive categories. So what I mean, you don’t have to give all your secret sauce, but like, what are some of these things that you’re doing that traditional advice of, Hey, don’t do it, really doesn’t apply to you since you obviously figured out a way.

Leo: Yeah. So, Bradley, if I had to start today again, I don’t know if I will get into skincare or supplements if I didn’t know what I obviously know today, I’m not saying I’m not discouraging people from getting into these categories. Because obviously we know that we have a lot of friends in common. I mean a lot of money into the category. So it would be silly to say, well, just stay away from this. But I would say that you need to know Amazon very well. You need to know this business, what works, how to get your real reviews out to get rankings up. And although there’s a lot of courses out there, you really, really need to know and prove to yourself that you can make it work because it’s hard to know how to get into these specific categories. Now what I see a lot of sellers, including myself recently succeeding with is to kind of like the spin to something that is already working. So for example, in the skincare business or a category, things have changed more towards like single ingredient products. So we’re looking for specific ingredients for specific, I guess, serums or products that do one thing and do it well.

Bradley Sutton: Obviously if you have an established brand on Amazon, a lot of the same “rules” don’t necessarily apply. Like, where if it’s a brand new seller, it might be, Hey, this is too much competition. Nobody knows who you are. It’s going to be too hard. But then if you’re an existing brand, sometimes it’s not as important that you’re starting off with not that many reviews because you’ve got your own audience and people know your brand and they’ll trust you from day one, but just in general, what would be your advice as far as like, if somebody asks you for advice and say, Hey, Leo, like I’m a new seller, what are indications that I should not get into this niche? Like, number of reviews on page one or search volume or number of sales on the existing sellers there, like, is there a certain amount that’s too much? Like, what are some of these things that you would advise or advice to somebody new to say, just like you said, a few minutes ago, I was like, Hey, maybe in some of these supplement categories, if I was new, I wouldn’t get into it. So like, how would you tell somebody what are the things to look out for to know that?

Leo: We all know that reviews are the currency of Amazon, right? The more reviews you have, the more money you have on your own plates. Right. Then, how are they getting these reviews? Right? If they’re niche were getting organically getting these reviews, then you know okay, well, if I have a good product, assuming they don’t have a lot of reviews, right? So my entry point now I feel comfortable entering, even three, 400 reviews. Because I know that I’ve mentally, I would be able to compete and get this many reviews over time, but it depends on how many reviews are getting daily. Then what I do, I look at the images and see if for example, any of the reviewers posted images with they’re show inserts or seekers or anything like that, that the sellers is using to actually acquire reviews. And if I see that, well, then I try to understand how they’re getting reviews, how aggressive they are with their flows. Right. If I know that they’re giving free products to everyone in exchange for review, I know that if I want to compete, I have to do the same thing. If I don’t have these kind of tools, the resources available, but then I stay away from this niche. Right. So I think understanding really where you’re dealing with, and that will be big and how sophisticated your competitors are. It’s very important. As long as I’m comfortable, I would say with a ranking, and deal review acquisition strategy, I would go into the market again, as long as all the other factors like price point, like I don’t like launching products anymore that are like 120, $125. And the reason is that, um, we are, we will know today that in order for us to compete, we have to do PPC, right. Amazon sponsored. All that has to be done. And if not, you’re kind of like pretty much where you would be less behind. So if I’m not able to afford PPC, then it means that I’m not going to succeed with this product. And so if you’re selling a product for $10, $15, and the average cost per click today’s like, I would say dollar or 50 on Amazon. You’re probably not going to make it. Even if you have a killer listing until when you start getting reviews, you’re probably not going to convert well. Assuming that you’re going to probably get a 15, 20% conversion rate, which means that every five clicks you got a sale, you do the math there, right. You’re paying a dollar 50, that’s already like eight to $10, right. In cost per click, plus your cost of goods sold. Plus the Amazon commissions, you’re just not going to make it right. So I would, my advice is to source your product wisely, like make sure that the cost of goods is decent, is fairly priced based on what you see the competition, selling the price as a selling the product for, and don’t go after products that are too cheap. It’s just going to be hard to sell or hard to succeed.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. All right. You brought up something interesting there that I didn’t even realize by putting in the quotation marks now, is that saying that somebody has that word and phrase form either in the front end or back end of their listing?

Leo: Normally, it means that they have it in the title. The exact in the access inform, right. Or there. So if you type in quotes, vitamin C serum for face, you’re most likely just going to get results that include that phrase in the title. Interesting. So that means that that seller has already optimized the listing because they want to rank for that keyword. Right. So if I see a lot of results for that accept, match, keyword search, then I know that there’s a lot of people going after the keyword. So I might change my keyword strategy only at the beginning, just so that I can rank for easier ones. But eventually I know that if a lot of sellers are trying to rank for the keywords, that’s the money keyword, that’s the keyword I would go for.

Bradley Sutton: Yeah. We’re going to have something that allows people to look for it. Because the keyword entitled because that to me is one of the big parts of my launch strategy. Like the Maldives method that I talk about is trying to find those keywords where not many people actually have that exact keyword in their title. It’s going to be that much easier to rank for. Now, what would it be safe to say that for all of your new product launches and all of your existing products that Facebook advertising plays a role in your marketing strategy for every single one of those products?

Leo: I would say 60%.

Bradley Sutton: 60%. Okay. Now I know you talk a lot about that with our elite group recently enough, obviously we’re not going to give all the secrets away from there. That was only for the Elite members, but can you talk for a few minutes about some just general strategies. Let’s just take, for example, a new product, like somebody trying to use Facebook to help them with their launch. Like what would some basic best points to remember or some basic strategies be for somebody who wants to leverage Facebook advertising with an Amazon product launch.

Leo: Yeah. So probably what I would say is, right now with the chatbots, we all have been using ManyChat for a while. Now, I would say for new sellers, experienced ones is probably the easiest way to get reviews on your listing. Right? You create an ad on Facebook, you promote your products and advice– quick advice there, stop targeting everyone that likes rebates, reprocess all that, because that is going to give you the wrong or send the wrong people to your flows. So create an ad that is relevant to your product and get people to buy your product, obviously. So that’s what I do at the beginning, right. I like to use Facebook to promote my product, whether it’s a full price purchase, whether it’s just a 50% off coupon, those work very well as well, especially if a product is more expensive. So you want to drive as many sales as possible. Now, the way I do it is it has to be more advanced. And I’d be happy to talk more on another occasion about it. But what I like to do at the beginning is warm up my listing, right? So I normally don’t launch the actual ASIN until when I have a few reviews, 20, 30, 40 interviews. It depends on the competition as well. So Facebook is my go-to traffic source for the reviews. I also have different landing pages right now that I’m using recently to send traffic from other sources, like for example, Google or Pinterest. So diversifying is very important to you, but at the beginning, I like to get my reviews in place. Once I have my reviews, and I feel comfortable launching the product, the mistake that most people make is they launch. Although we have 90 days, the honeymoon period, we know isn’t that 90 days, right? By the reviews coming late. Now you’re spending a bunch of money on a giveaway or a ranking strategy. And Amazon is just nice seeing that sales velocity kicking in, and then you pretty much failed with the launch. Right?

Bradley Sutton: All right, guys, quick break from this episode for my BTS, Bradley’s 30 seconds. Here’s my 30-second tip for this episode. Those of you who are using Helium 10, don’t forget about Portals. We’ve talked about in this episode, driving outside traffic to Amazon. Well, if you’re going to do that, send them through a portal. That’s the Helium 10’s landing page program where you can actually connect it to ManyChat. You can connect it to deliver coupon codes that you want to have for discounts. You can connect it to your Facebook pixel. You can put different two-step URLs to help you with ranking. You can even have QR codes, you can do insert cards, right? They’re all within portals. And it kind of will tie your customer to you a little bit more to help you capture some customer data before they become Amazon’s customer so that you can remarket to them later. So don’t forget checkout Portals, H10.me/portals.

Bradley Sutton: What are some of your methods? I mean, obviously there’s a million Black hat methods to get reviews. And a lot of those that people were doing years ago don’t work anymore because Amazon kind of cracks down in it. But one of the white hat methods is an early reviewer program that no longer is available. So outside of just making sure you have a good sequence to follow up with your customers who do buy your product to review it, what are some of those ways that you use or people in your network use to get those first 30 reviews?

Leo: Yeah. So Bradley what I, if you ever at least, I mean, right now, after you do your first launch or first few launches, you kind of create a list in a specific niche. Now I have a few thousand people in the beauty, a few thousand people in the supplements, right? So what I do right now, I keep messaging or emailing the same people. Obviously you don’t want the same person to buy a product from the same brand, more than like two or three times. That’s not good. But I would say if you don’t have that list, the first thing you want to do is create these Facebook ads, right? I’m sending traffic to your flow where you’re pretty much giving this product for free to your audience. Now I wouldn’t try to get a review from each one of them because that would probably get your listing flagged or suspended. But I will get a good 30, 40%. Now I would also distribute these purchases across multiple listings. And not just one, because sometimes, you’re always going to get the guy that is going to leave a one star review or two star reviews, because maybe he’s a competitor. You found your Ad on Facebook is buying your product because he’s going to try to ruin your launch. Right. So yeah, we have that kind of strategy in place. What do you want to have three, four or five different listings? Then if one of them gets a one star review, we can just get rid of it. You didn’t really ruin the whole launch because otherwise if you have one in one listing, you have to pretty much get rid of that ASIN. Or do you have to start now with a 4.4, 4.5, which is not ideal, but if you multiple listings and then one of them gets a one or two star review which row is kind of your average, then you just get rid of it and then launch a new one. And then, as these reviews come in, you can start combining them, right. And you have the master or the parent ASIN with all your reviews, which helps you a lot for the launch. So that’s what I will do just in a regular search warrant by campaign, with well at the beginning, actually, I don’t really care about the search funding, because I don’t even want to rank yet. I’m just trying to get people to purchase the product as easy as possible. So just send the user straight to the page. So here is a product. I don’t care really initially about the price, because again, the ASIN that you’re going to launch is going to be, the listing you’re going to launch is going to be different. So it’s okay to start with a lower price in this case, if you have this kind of strategy in place. And this is where you’re spending less money on a launch and you have a higher chance to succeed. It makes sense.

Bradley Sutton: So, you’re saying the ASIN you’re getting the reviews on, is not the ASIN your main ASIN that you’re going to launch?

Leo: No, sorry. The ASIN is the same. It’s the SKU.

Bradley Sutton: Oh, okay. Okay. All right. Got it. Good. I was just wondering if you were using some strategy where you’re doing that thing that people do where they at late launch one ASIN get reviews and then just add another variation or something. But, okay.

Leo: On a listing, right. I’m using a flat file and then you can pretty much– you have the same eating two different SKUs, like in the early days of your program, you weren’t allowed to submit different SKUs. Right. And it gets six reviews, I believe four per SKU. So even if you did that with two different SKUs, you still have the same ASIN and you could potentially combine the reviews. Right. But anyway, that’s what I still do, obviously not through the ERP program, but I’m trying to get reviews through Facebook list.

Bradley Sutton: Okay, cool. Now what about people who use ManyChat and for reviews, like that’s always something that scares a lot of people, including myself. It’s like, man, we heard that Amazon sometimes checks these flows and make catch you, and that you’re doing something shady, but what are some things to make sure that people don’t do it? If they’re incorporating, asking for a review in their many chat flows, like what are things they need to keep in mind so that they don’t get caught by Amazon or get a slap on the wrist from Amazon.

Leo: Yeah. And look for those that are listening, that don’t get me wrong. We shouldn’t even look for alternative ways to send traffic. Unfortunately with Amazon, we have to always find these hacks and strategies because Amazon is a platform that is super like tight and closed. Right. So, but having said that the easiest way to kind of like fly under the radar in a way is to tell your customer to go on Amazon, rather than having a button in ManyChat that says, Hey, click this button and go to Amazon. The reason why is because when you click on that button, there is a referrer, or like a kind of a variable attached to the URL that is telling Amazon where this person came from. Now, if you tell your customer, go to Amazon, find this product or search for these keywords, then Amazon is going to see this person going directly to the website. So it looks like a typing traffic or direct traffic to the platform. This way, you don’t have to worry about blanking the referral or these sophisticated terms that we use. If you’re a new seller, if you’re an experienced one, you most likely know some tools that help you to kind of blank the referral. So basically it’s already direct traffic to Amazon hiding pretty much where their source of traffic is. But otherwise it will just say what I do in my freezes right now, I just, Hey, go to Amazon, whether it’s dot com does he, or whatever the marketplace is searching for this keyword. And once you find the product, complete the purchase and then send me your order ID, that’s probably the easiest way to do it.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Speaking of ManyChat, what are like, I don’t know, three, four or five of the most common mistakes that you think sellers are doing either they’re doing something completely wrong, or they’re just doing something in a way that they could easily be doing better, but they just don’t realize it. I mean, I know you deal with so many sellers all the time, so you probably have seen hundreds of different situations on how people are misusing ManyChat. What are some of those most common things, would you say?

Leo: Yeah, that’s a good one. Because I spend a lot of time on this, Bradley as you know, the biggest mistake that most likely is costing them sellers, even account suspension is allowing everyone to redeem their products. So they send traffic from Facebook to ManyChat and then this, Hey, thank you for the interest in this product. And then they showed a picture and then that’s it there ain’t, right. The biggest mistake is that they do not pre-qualify the user. And the reason that I think is a big mistake is because this, a lot of these people are professional reviewers. I used to be part of this WhatsApp group and they were all reviewers and it’s insane. Like the same way we have masterminds is trying to understand how Amazon works and how to be better sellers. These guys have masterminds trying to be better reviewers– each other how not to share the profile because if you click on your buyer profile, Amazon sees that click. And so don’t send the buyer profile to the seller. They say, Oh, use a VPN. They, then will say, don’t leave a review too soon, or don’t always leave five-star reviews. Like it’s insane. It kind of masterminds. These guys have. So the most important thing is to avoid giving your products to these people. So I think this is probably the biggest mistake that they’re making. The other one is probably still sending traffic straight from Many chat to Amazon. It could be a myth we don’t know yet, but we do know that some people, while we do know that there is a referral being passed and that could be potentially causing issues.

Bradley Sutton: What’s your current suggestion for obviously it changes based on the niche or based on the product or based on somebody’s goals, but in general somebody wants to use Many chat mainly for their keyword launch. One thing you mentioned that, that, you know, worked for some people, some people not as new awaiting for more reviews, but the generic flow of how it worked, like as far as how long to run ManyChat for a certain keyword, how many keywords to try and target at the same time. What’s your general rule of thumb, as far as the typical seller, what you would suggest how their structure should be for doing keyword launches, leveraging ManyChat.

Leo: Yeah. So I was talking about this with somebody else the other day. And my recommendation is if you can diversify as much as possible, that will be ideal. So I’m assuming that means you’re using just ManyChat for your launch strategy, starting with the ad, by the way, it depends on the niche you’re in, for example, in like more competitive niches, like supplements, beauty, you might want to use video rather than just a static image. And the reason is that you’re already telling a story in the video. So you’re helping your customer understand and know what you’re trying to get out of him or her. So, that’s important. And then once they are in the flow, I will say, when it comes to keywords, I normally focus. It really depends on obviously how much traffic you’re sending. But I’ve seen two things working. One, you started with the keywords that are less competitive, so it’s easier for you to achieve those– my rankings for those keywords. And then as you monitor your keyword positions, right, you started changing more towards the ones that are more competitive. Something that works very well for me at the same time as doing a coupon campaign, which is always active. So you are, I have a 50% off coupon that I run at the same time. As I’m doing the giveaways, I run the coupon campaign. And the reason why that works really well is because I think it naturally organically generates clicks on your listing and potentially add to carts, right? So we know Amazon is sort of changing, just to learn this kind of data points, right? Click add to cart. It is our only engagement metrics that they use to calculate where you’re supposed to be ranked for certain keywords.

Leo: So if you’re doing 50% off coupon and then the user goes under your ad, you’re certainly you’re telling them search for this keyword click on the listing. And then eventually, add to cart and then the coupon at checkout, some of them naturally will not buy the product because maybe even a 50% off is still expensive. Even if they have to be $10, $5, some people would say, no screw that I don’t want to pay anything. Right. So they will leave the product in the cart without checking out, right. So that alone, I’ve ranked throttle just by doing this, to be honest with you, at the same time you have a flow that is now doing the search find buy, and if you can also run either rotate at the same time with another flow or within the same flow, if you can also do some actual what else, like a super URL you can do that at the same time. I think diversification is very critical. And another thing that I do as well, Bradley is outside traffic. Google is working very well right now. It’s hard to get a lot of sales from Google, but if you can drive even at two, three sales a day, you will see that helps a lot with the rankings. But yeah, the most important thing is to always keep an eye on your rankings and switch keywords as your rankings increase. So once you achieve, you have a goal or you want to be bottom of page one, for instance, with a certain keyword you achieve now that the result of the ranking position, you start your PPC campaigns on Amazon. So you give that extra boost and now you can focus on the next keywords, right? So it’s a systematic approach hopefully, and potentially automated is I think, key to ensuring that you’re successful with a ranking strategy.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. Driving traffic from Google, you mentioned that, what kind of URL would you suggest using for like just a canonical URLs or adding some kind of tag to the URL? What’s this method there?

Leo: Yeah, Bradley, what I’m doing, I’m just creating the, what I earlier said– Amazon attribution so that I can essentially track sales. And then I add the keyword in the URL as well, like the K equal or with a keyword. That’s what I do. That’s what I’m doing right now, passing that when you pass that parameter, do you want to Ella you see the search bar and being populated with a keyword and that’s what I need to do because once the user buys, saw the ads, then add to cart and eventually purchases the product, the attribution goes back to that keyword. And I know I’m cool from that perspective. So I was able to actually inspect the source code and all the queries sent back and forth, and they can see that in– if you click for example, add to cart after sending traffic that way, the keyword shows you the actual source code, which means that Amazon did give that keyword on attributions or did pass it along your session. So that’s the one that I’m using.

Bradley Sutton: Somebody is out of stock for a couple of months or and their keyword ranking goes down when they’re back in, or just gradually, they’ve kind of fallen off of keyword ranking. What are some of your relaunch tips? Like, do you just say, Hey, Nope, give up too late now. Or do you do the same strategy, exact Leo, that you would do in the launch phase? Or what do you have to say for sellers who are in that kind of boat?

Leo: Yeah. So look, I am the kind of guy that always runs out of stock and I hate saying this, but yeah, that’s the truth. So what I do normally when I’m out of stock and my back after a few days, and lately it’s been challenging also because of the pandemic Amazon doesn’t receive stocks in time, that they limit the number of units you can send. So it’s been challenging keeping the stock, but anyway, what I do normally right after, I do have a PPC, so I don’t relaunch the product doing giveaways, because Amazon already has a lot of history about your ranking, where you were left off right before going out of stock. But what they do need to see again, is a bunch of sales coming in, right. And eventually you will gain that position back. So what I do, I’ve just focused. I created an exact match campaign or the keyword that I used rank very well for. And I blasted with a bunch of the listing with a bunch of traffic from that keyword. And obviously if you have a good listing and you were selling well before you were ranking, well, he will definitely pick back up. And that’s all I’m doing. I never really had to do another giveaway unless you’ve been out of stock for a very long time.

Bradley Sutton: Cool. Last question is a lot of people just think of Facebook advertising and many chat advertising in the scope of launch or possibly relaunch, but under what circumstances can someone leverage Facebook advertising, many chat advertising when it’s, we’re not talking about launch, if any.

Leo: So, you’re saying, how can you just use Facebook ads to generate sales?

Bradley Sutton: Yeah. Do you even suggest that somebody does, or should people just be using those kinds of things only when in the scope of launch or are there evergreen strategies that people should be using with a mature listing?

Leo: Yeah. So I think, coming from a marketing background, I think there are better ways to use the traffic. If you have a really good listing, a few thousand visuals, it depends on the niche you’re in and then what the market looks like. But if you have a great listing, yeah, you can probably send traffic straight to your listing and convert a few people. But the problem is that once you send traffic from Facebook or any traffic source to Amazon, Amazon is such a perfect e-commerce store designs to gather users to buy something that if your listing is not perfect and the customer didn’t come specifically to buy your product, they’re most likely going to find something else, whether the bottom, where it says, people that bought this also about that, or some other sponsored products. So you might lose that sale. So my recommendation would be more to send traffic to your own Shopify or WooCommerce store. And then, you let the user decide if they want to buy from that store from Shopify. What I see is a lot of spillover, for instance, where you send traffic from Shopify, start from Facebook to Shopify, and then they go on Amazon to see if maybe on Amazon, their product is cheaper. So, and because they have prime, they wanted the shipping, like the product delivered tomorrow, they probably will end up buying on Amazon. We see a lot of these happening and you can track their sale. Of course you can have an affiliate link, right? I’m going to Amazon. So you can see all of this many people that come from Facebook to your store. I mean, you actually ended up buying on Amazon. That would be my recommendation. Don’t get me wrong because I do send a lot of traffic from Google ads directly to my listing.

Bradley Sutton: Okay. All right, cool. Now, you’ve been giving us different tips and strategies throughout the whole episode, but we have this part of the show we called the TST, or the TST, 30-second tip. What’s something that you haven’t mentioned today, but that if somebody can do it, you can say it in 30 seconds or less, and it’s something that’s actionable and highly valuable for our listeners out there.

Leo: Yeah, so quickly my team will be considering what’s going on today in the Amazon space, try to stay away from solutions that are presented to the masses, because normally when everybody’s using something, that’s when Amazon starts tracking food brains. And eventually that’s when trouble starts. Right? So my recommendation is, if you really want to take this business, seriously, try to build your own things, build your own tools, build something that is unique, it’s your own, you have control over it. And whether you can use any of the tools available to the out there, but use it for research, but then eventually end up building your own funnels, your own leading strategy, your own ranking strategies. Don’t really go after something that you’ve seen everybody doing, because eventually that will get you in trouble. So that would be my recommendation. And the app is to follow up on this if people have questions after.

Bradley Sutton: Cool. Perfect. So if people do want to reach out to you for help with their ManyChat flows or just in general, how can they find you on the interwebs out there?

Leo: Yeah. For anything really too ManyChat launches, they can go to convomat.com. Convomat.com and reach out to me through their website or I’m always on Facebook clubhouse recently, and Instagram as well. So my name, Leo Sgovio, it’s on Facebook. Same as Instagram as you spell it.

Bradley Sutton: Perfect. All right. Thank you so much, Leo for joining us. And next year, I’d love to reach out to you again, bring you back and see what has changed in the world of outside traffic in and launches.

Leo: Oh, I love that, Bradley. Thanks so much for having me on today.

Bradley Sutton: Thank you.