#373 – Amazon PPC Tips, New Korean Markets, & Relationship Building

The Sell and Scale Summit is just around the corner! Bradley welcomes three special guests who are exhibitors of the said event to talk about the latest news in the industry and some strategies.

We start off with George Meressa of Clear Ads, and he talks about the strategies that are working for Amazon PPC right now and the critical metrics to focus on to get more success. Our show continues with Athena Severi of the Titan Network sharing her best tips to get the most out of networking events and conferences. She also shares her best “Amazon event pick-up lines” and why you should be excited about all the opportunities you can get at a big event like the Sell and Scale Summit! Lastly, we talk to Sean Chang of Kreassive about his ventures into international marketplaces, his challenges while opening new businesses in the Amazon Germany market, and a glimpse into Korean marketplaces that potentially can be your next venture. This is a jam-packed episode, so make sure to listen to the very end!

And just in case you haven’t gotten your tickets to the Sell and Scale Summit yet, make sure to visit sellandscalesummit.com to sign up and use the code S3BS100 to get $100 off your ticket!

In episode 373 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, George, Athena, and Sean talk about:

• 01:32 – Bradley Doing A Mini-Project 5K
• 04:56 – What’s Working For Amazon PPC Right Now?
• 05:32 – Is Cost-Per-Click Going Up?
• 06:16 – Shifting Focus To Conversion Rates And Tracking Profits
• 07:35 – Tips To Improve Your Amazon PPC
• 11:08 – Ask PPC Questions In The Clear Ads Booth At The Sell And Scale Summit!
• 11:55 – How To Get In Touch With George Meressa
• 13:12 – 30-Second Amazon PPC Tip From George
• 15:05 – When Can Sourcing Trips To China Happen Again?
• 17:48 – What Is A China Magic Trip Like?
• 19:40 – Secrets Of Success In Networking And Connecting People
• 22:35 – How To Network When You Can’t Go To Live Events?
• 24:35 – Athena’s Amazon Networking Pick-up Line
• 26:58 – Networking Tip: Find A Way To Connect In The Future
• 29:33 – Catch Athena In The Titan Network Booth At S3
• 30:45 – How To Connect With Athena Severi
• 32:23 – Which Marketplace Has The Most Growth Last Year?
• 34:23 – Amazon Europe Growth And Importing Issues For Foreign Sellers
• 35:59 – Selling At A Korean Marketplace
• 38:03 – The Food Category Is Trending
• 39:18 – What About The Marketplaces In The US?
• 40:33 – See Sean In The Kreassive Booth At S3
• 41:05 – How To Get In Touch With Sean And His 3PL Service

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we’ve got a special podcast episode as we’ve got three different guests, each with completely different specialties. We’ve got George, who’s gonna give us the latest on what’s working for PPC. Sean’s gonna tell us about a marketplace that 99.9% of you have never even heard of. And Athena who’s gonna share her amazing tips on networking and building business relationships. How cool is that? Pretty cool I think.

Bradley Sutton:

We know that getting to page one on keyword search results is one of the most important goals that an Amazon seller might have. So track your progress on the way to page one and even get historical keyword ranking information, and even see Sponsored Ad rank placement with Keyword Tracker by Helium 10. For more information, go to h10.me/keywordtracker. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the serious seller’s 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 or Walmart world. We’ve got somebody helping serious sellers from across the pond as it were George from the UK, how’s it going?

George:

Yeah, it’s all good, my friend. It’s all good. It was great to spend some time with you at the Billion Dollar Seller Summit last week. So yeah, glad to be back home there.

Bradley Sutton:

Indeed. Indeed. Now really quick, just for those who are watching this on YouTube. Remember guys about one week after this comes out the podcast version, and we now have a YouTube version on our Helium 10 channel. You’ll notice in the background here. I just got tons of like a mess, you know, and it’s not just that, “oh, Bradley is a very messy person,” which maybe I am. But what I was doing all of this weekend was I was gathering together a bunch of, you know, my, my sports cards that I invest in and I’m doing a mini Project 5k. So Project 5k, is something we did for Amazon a while back, but I’m doing a mini project 5k that I wanna sell $5,000 worth of my sports card and memorabilia before the Sell and Scale Summit because I need some money.

Bradley Sutton:

I’ve been just telling George right now that I had to shut my door here because I’m constructing a bathroom here. I’m, I’m putting a lot of money into my house. And so like, I need to get some money. So if you guys notice this sports cards, it’s kind of like a cool way to make money. It’s really fun and I usually sell on eBay and things like that. So anyway, that’s the explanation of the mess behind me, but it’s also like to put myself on blast that I have to do $5,000. You ever get into baseball cards yourself or football cards?

George:

No, I got into Pokemon cards when I was younger.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

George:

Only collective items that I kind of put myself into. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Take a look at this. This is something I’ll be going up on eBay original from 20 years ago Neo Pokemon sealed box from Japan.

George:

No way.

Bradley Sutton:

Worth about 1,500. If I can sell this by itself, I’ll be one-fifth of the way here. But anyway, we’re not here to talk about sports cards, but guys we’ve done episodes in that because that’s actually a great fun way to invest and to make money online is by doing sports cards and Pokemon cards and things like that. We brought you on here to talk about you know, what’s working on Amazon, Walmart, whatever the case is for advertising. You had a few minutes with your team on the stage on Billion Dollar Summit. Yeah. And so got to get a little bit of what’s on your mind, but what, you know, since the last time you’ve been on the show, what is the number one thing you want to talk about here that that’s really working for either Amazon or Walmart sellers?

George:

Okay. I think the one thing that we’ve started testing and we’ve seen some really good results is focusing primarily on exact match campaigns. So taking a certain product that’s in category position 1 to 15 and focusing primarily on increasing the conversion rates for exact match targeting to help them rank and try and get their best seller badge. So so that’s been a really interesting test and we used it side by side with Helium 10’s Keyword Tracker. So monitoring kind of what keywords we’re ranking well for we’ve seen results and also using that data. So that’s something we’ve been testing. We’ve seen some good results in some accounts, but what we kind of, the conclusion I’m coming to now is you do need to have some seriously deep pockets to do this, especially for some of the more competitive terms.

George:

So that’s something we’ve been doing and we’ve seen some good results. Something close that we’re pushing into in the future Bradley is we’re just about to get access to Walmart’s DSP. So we’re just going for a final credit check now with trade desk, the trade desk to kind of get access to that. So that’s gonna be really interesting for Walmart sellers as well. So we still haven’t tested it, but the features that it has in place should see some good results. So next time I come on here, I should be able to talk to you about that.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. Now, just in general, you know a sentiment I hear out there amongst, the Amazon community, especially is that they say, “oh, you know what ACoS is going higher.” “It’s costing a lot more to play.” So are you seeing, obviously you be an agency, you have to deal with that? So like, are you seeing that too? Where, where ACoS is going up and or cost per click, I should say, instead of ACoS necessarily where cost per click is going up on words that traditionally have been, you know, $1 bid and now to get at top of the page, it’s like taking a dollar 50 or something like that.

George:

Yeah. It’s, it’s absolutely unbelievable. Now that the cost per click bids is higher on Amazon than it is on Google. Cuz when we first started doing it, it was so much more cheaper on Amazon. But yeah, we’re definitely seen that. And as we’ve, we’ve also seen the shift from the way people think so a few years back the focus primarily was on ACoS. So everyone was kind of more ACoS focused, then it shifted towards TACoS because focusing primarily on ACoS meant that you could have potentially be having a bad impact on your ranking by focusing on ACoS and cutting out keywords that might have great conversion rates, but because the cost of click’s gone up and the ACoS has gone up, you cut ’em off and it’s then had an impact on your ranking. Now we are trying to shift more towards two things.

George:

One thing is track conversion rates, what is the actual conversion rates or certain keywords and being very, very surgical about that when we’re looking for accounts, kind of establishing what they are and then cross-referencing that against how are they doing compared to ranking and how are they doing compared to kind of making money? And then that’s the first thing we do. The second thing is attracting profits. So we get as many people as possible to feed us now information on how profitable they are. So there might be certain products that are incredibly profitable and we sometimes take the profits from those products and invest it into other keywords that are not as profitable, but we’re trying to push to help them get ranked better. So then they are profitable in the long run.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. So then, apart from that, what are some other things that people can do in order to still go. It’s not a case where it’s like, Hey, my cost per click is gonna keep going high and now I have no, no profit, and this is what I gotta do. You know, there’s steps that people need to take in order to, because at the end of the day, you’ve gotta make a profit on Amazon. And so are you suggesting it to some of your clients to raise their prices to offset this? Or it’s just more of a matter of just really focusing in on the keywords that work and cutting out the keywords that don’t what do you guys suggest?

George:

So as long as we got all the data, so I think the first thing is we had a few clients now who didn’t have Helium 10, who, who weren’t tracking keywords. They weren’t looking at that data. They weren’t looking at Profit. So now anyone who signs up with us, they have to have all of that in place. Otherwise, we’re just not gonna work with them. We’re now going through all accounts. So the first thing is we wanna know what is going on, right? What are the actual numbers? Not what you think it is, what are the actual day-to-day numbers once we understand that and what were the rankings are, once we understand those two things, we can then become far more focused on what terms we get rid of and what terms we keep. So we’ve had to be far more ruthless recently with that strategy.

George:

And again, if we see the improvements and conversion rates, we definitely started to see some improvements in ranking and in the category ranking as well. And that seemed to help a lot. So that’s one thing. We’ve also been suggesting trying out new things. For me, I’m still astonished Bradley at how many people haven’t utilized, Sponsored Brand Video Ads across all of their product lines, right? So that’s something else we use. We push them and if they haven’t got the resources to create a really nice video, I have someone now I just say, look, I’ll pay for it. We’ll do it. We got someone who uses Canva and we just create some really good slideshow with some good content, put it on there for every single product, just get ’em up because they tend to have the best conversion rates, the best ACoS from all of the accounts. So we look, we look into that and we test, we wanna test ASIN target, and we wanna look at the remarketing for display ads. We wanna see, okay, you’ve paid so much money to get the traffic to your website. What do your product, and what can we now do to reengage that audience, to get them to follow through and buy? So that’s kind of what we do.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now, speaking of Sponsored Brand Video, I think now, like on Sponsored Display and Regular Sponsored Brand Ads, now there’s like more abilities for sellers to like put their own kind of like the copy on there. Before it was like sponsored brand, like way back in the day, it’s just like, here’s the three ASINsm then Amazon puts the layout, but now you can actually like change. You can have a sales message, you can change the image. And I think you can do that on sponsored display as well. So am I wrong in that? And if not, what are you guys doing to leverage this new flexibility that Amazon has given sellers?

George:

Yeah. So firstly, again, going back to kind of the fact that it’s becoming less profitable Amazon with the customer clicks increasing. We wanna first to establish which keywords have converted really well for Sponsor Product Ads. Once we figure that out, we then go into sponsor brand ads. The first place we go is Sponsored Brand Video Ads. And then we start looking at the different types of ads. You can create variations and kind of different messaging and so on and so forth. But one thing to bear in mind with that as well is because there’s less real estate on a search results page. It is gonna be really hard to achieve a really good conversion rate and also good impression share on those slots. So that’s something we bear in mind. We have one or two clients who have been very much profit focused and they wanna push hard, we’ve had to be quite ruthless and we’ve had to actually stop most of the Sponsored Brand Ads because that’s where most of the money was being wasted. So we’ve had to focus primarily on sponsored product ads just to ensure that the profit is solid.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Now before we get into your 30-second tip of the day to close this out, I wanted to mention that, you know, Clear Ads is gonna be in person at Sell Scale Summit. I just looked it up. You guys are booth number 233. Will you personally be there?

George:

Yeah. Yeah. I’m gonna be there.

Bradley Sutton:

So guys you wanna ask George some questions directly, make sure to come to Sell and Scale and visit his booth and there’s actually you just ask for George and you have a 50% chance of getting somebody at their booth because half the people at their company seem to need George, but just ask for George and somebody named George will help you at the booth to ask anything PPC. But if people can’t wait until there to ask you a question, how can they find you on the intros out there?

George:

They could contact me on [email protected] or you can go on the website, clearads.co.uk, and Bradley just really quickly. The funny thing is when I speaking to one of your colleagues, Ryan, at the start of the year, I said to Ryan, look, we’re looking for events to sponsor. Is Helium 10 doing anything? Is there anything you guys are doing? And he goes, oh, funny enough, you should ask. You should speak to Jasmine. I was like, right. Put me in touch with Jasmine, put me in touch with Jasmine. And she’s like, well, funny enough, George, we are just about to release the layout. We have an event Sell and Scale is coming up. And I was like, right, just let’s get on a call. We got on a call and she tried to sell me Sell and Scale as a Jasmine, it’s Helium 10? Just, just show me the four plans and how much it is. I love it. Right. And then she was just like, right. Okay. The best place is probably gonna be near Helium 10. I was like, right. Put us right next to helium 10. That’s it just, here’s my finance lady. She’ll sort out the money we’re done. And then like–

Bradley Sutton:

I just saw, just saw that now we are at booth 227. So yeah, I guess you guys are next to us there. Excellent.

George:

Excellent. And you got in quick. Well, you got in quick mate, so

Bradley Sutton:

Then I love it. I love it. Now. I also like how you’re the original George. So you’ve got the George at everybody else. I’m assuming. Has George dot something or something like that?

George:

You’ve got the dots. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Very good. Anyways, what’s your 30-second PPC tip of the week for us?

George:

Okay. Test anything new Amazon brings out. It looks like every few weeks, there’s something different coming out. When you, when you get into something new that Amazon’s doing and you test it, there’s a strong chance. You’re going to benefit from the first mover advantage. We always suggest any new features. Just test it out because those new features are gonna help you differentiate your product from everyone else. So if there’s a new type of headline ad that comes out, Amazon’s just rolled out. A video builder for Amazon sellers as well for Seller Central that’s just being phased in. You got the category. You got Brand Metrics as well that’s just come out, utilize that information, use it to your advantage. Cause if you are fast to react to this stuff, then it’s gonna put you on an edge.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. Well, George, thank you so much for joining us. I’ll be seeing you on the Zumba fitness dance floor of the class I’ll be leading in a couple of weeks here. And we’ll now go on to the next interview. All right. Our next guest is now Athena, Athena. How is it going? Where are you? Are you in Florida? You said you live in LA.

Athena:

Hey Bradley. What’s

Bradley Sutton:

What’s going on? How’s Florida? How’s that coast?

Athena:

I love it. I feel like I live in a postcard, so I’m from LA, right? And I moved to Clearwater about three years ago. And what I love about it is the ocean is warm. So you can like swim in it. And like the sand is powdery white and there’s like a cute beach town, like every 15 to 20-minute drive. It’s like a totally different vibe. So I love it. I feel like–

Bradley Sutton:

Do you put up with the humidity though?

Athena:

I kind of love it. It’s good for my hair. Good for my skin. So I don’t know. I kind of look okay.

Bradley Sutton:

Maybe that’s why my skin is so bad. The hair is so dry here and that’s why I have so much dry skin. Maybe you just told me the secret of my facial success here.

Athena:

There you go. Come on over Bradley.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. I wanted to just hop right into it. Cuz I would venture to say that you might be the one who has kind of brought more people and introduced them to like sourcing in China and things like that than anybody else in the world because of your trips used to take. Now obviously the first thing is there haven’t been any trips, you know, in a couple of years because China’s been kind of shut down. I’m just curious. Have you heard any scuttle bud or is there any like estimations on when people can start going to China again to like take sourcing trips and things from outside of the country?

Athena:

Well, I heard that global sources is opening in Hong Kong, which is cool, but Hong Kong’s not China obviously. And so I’ve heard little whispers, but until I see it like solidly open is not really my ideal thing to bring a hundred Amazon sellers over until I see that it’s like a very stable environment.

Bradley Sutton:

And then they get locked down for like one month and you cannot leave your hotel.

Athena:

It’s not gonna happen. So China Magic was one of the most magical things that started off my career in this Amazon space. And it really taught me a lot about the power of connection, the power of networking, and the power of having close proximity to people who are 10 steps ahead of you in the game. Do you know what I mean? You’re learning from them. It’s almost like if you’ve been in this business for, five, 10 years yourself, imagine speaking to yourself five, 10 years ago and saying, look, Bradley, this is the way you should do this. Avoid that. Like if you go this route, it’s gonna be a lot easier for you. So just the amount of time and stress and money and energy that you save by like being around incredible people that have already kind of been there and gone through that path is something that was really remarkable to me. And I think that I noticed that drastically when we had all those days together,

Bradley Sutton:

Will you be bringing it back? Like, let’s say the country does open up everything good for will we see a return of China Magic?

Athena:

We’re gonna bring China back what? Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

We’re bringing China Magic back. Hey. Yeah.

Athena:

Oh absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean we do a lot of events and a lot of trips and that’s why I’m really excited about Sell and Scale because I know the power of these events. And so obviously we haven’t stopped because China’s closed, but that was really a very special trip just cause we got to see the products, touch the products, talk to the suppliers. It was definitely cool.

Bradley Sutton:

Now I’ve had Kian on before on different programs and talked about like, okay, well what can we do since we’re not going to China physically, what are some strategies? So he’s covered that, but just to get people an idea of like what you used to do and what you’re gonna do, what is a China Magic trip involved? Like, you know, some people might think, oh, I’m just gonna go, you know, 12 hours a day and visit factories that are 20 miles apart from each other and stuff, but that’s not at all what you do there.

Athena:

Yeah. So that’s really where Titan came from was the fact that we would go during the day to the Canton fair. And so we would see, you know, suppliers and we would, you know, look at products and things. And then in the evenings, we would do a full A to Z on Amazon. And we would talk about PPC strategy and launching and conversion and pretty much every topic. But the thing that I’m so fond of was just that proximity that people had to the actual speakers, right? Which is not usually a normal thing. So they would be able to kind of like hands-on mentors and workshop with people. And the feedback that I would get is that it would really fast forward their business tremendously just because they were able to actually work with, you know, someone like yourself. Who’s had a lot of experience. Imagine like someone sitting next to you and being like, yo, what do I do about this? It’s so different than anything else out there. So that’s, I think where that magic really started.

Bradley Sutton:

Yep. And you mentioned networking and things like that. And like I said, you’re probably the most advanced person in the world, as far as knowing how to bring people to China and stuff. But on the flip side, you’re also probably the most advanced person in the world that I know of in the Amazon space, at least as far as, I don’t know what the word is, like creating connections between sellers. I remember the seller cons, which I loved when they would do their big events. Like you would be the one in charge of doing these unique networking sessions for lunch. So it’s not just eating lunch, but we’re, you’re playing games and stuff like that. And then you’ll just have a–, I remember in the past you had a last-second idea to like, you know what let’s do a conference in Florida. And like two weeks later 200 people there and stuff. Give us some secrets of your success, as far as that goes, like, why are you so good at your networking and bringing people together like that?

Athena:

You know, it’s kind of who I am, but as I mentioned, the power of connection for me is just tremendous. And so even at my first Amazon event, like I hosted a dinner for a hundred people. It was my first time walking into an Amazon event. I just connected with people. And one of the things that I did is I had guys who were successful, stand up and give some tips. And again, the feedback I got from that was these guys are in the trenches they’re operators, right? So they’re seeing what’s working and what’s not working. Whereas sometimes in other events and things, you would see people who are a bit disconnected. Maybe they operated a few years ago. They’re not quite in the know of like what’s trending now. And so I would have them stand up, give some tidbits and people would really benefit from that just because these guys were so in the trenches.

Athena:

And I don’t know, I’ve always liked I have a background in Hollywood. I’ve always done fashion shows and events and musical things and actors. And like, I worked with a lot of people in Hollywood. I worked with a lot of people in just different industries. And when I got into Amazon, my goodness, do I love our people, like the entrepreneurial spirit, they’re fun, they’re wild. And when you bring them together and you really get like the brain power of someone, like, let’s say, you’ve got Kian, right? He’s a sourcing wizard. And then you’ve got someone who’s like a PPC genius and you’ve got somebody else and they’re all sort of like brilliant in their own zones. And then you mush them together. The innovative things that happen because they’re all in the same room is remarkable. And so that’s really where I think my love for, you know, connection and events and masterminds and all of the things. I mean, I literally have traveled the entire world, attending everything I could just, cuz I never knew who I was gonna meet. I met you at an event, which is super cool. And I met my business partner, Dan Ashburn at an event and you know, that changed our lives.

Bradley Sutton:

I was just with him at an event in Dubai of all places a few months ago. So we meet people randomly all over the world. Yeah. Now, we’re gonna talk a little bit about Sell and Scale in a minute or two here, but sure. Let’s say for some reason I can’t go to Sell and Scale Summit. Maybe I live in the middle of Australia, it’s hard to get out of the country or, or maybe, I just don’t have the time or money to go to Vegas at this time. Especially during the pandemic, I think people were like, holy crap, how do I network when there’s no more events or if I can’t go to events, that’s kind of a universal thing. So what are some tips you can give people about like, Hey, power of networking is important, but just because you can’t go to events, that doesn’t mean that there’s no opportunity for networking. I mean, five years ago, I think Facebook groups absolutely were like number one. Is that still like the number one thing to do? Or is it discords? How do you network when you don’t go to events or meetups?

Athena:

Well, I mean there are meetups, which I would recommend because meetups are usually more local and more affordable. So if you can find, let’s say a local Amazon meetup, that’s a really good way to connect with people in person. You can also meet people whether it’s Facebook groups you can join a mastermind. I mean, that’s really what these things are set up to do is to connect you with like-minded people and there are several in the space that is lovely. So you can connect with an online mastermind. And you know, don’t be creepy if you see someone in a Facebook group and you really see that you guys connect, like reach out to them, but don’t be that weirdo. That’s like privately messaging everyone and just be kind of crazy. There’s one lady, her name’s Ann Netta who has two boys,my kids’ ages. And I just always saw her like in this Facebook group. So I reached out to her and she actually came to my holiday party. And now she’s like one of my closest friends. So like, you can totally find people like that, but you just have to do it in like a very genuine way and not like sit there and DMing everyone.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah.

Athena:

For sure.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. That’s a good point like it’s a turnoff, if somebody’s like, you know, DM stalking you, you know, it’s not a great motivation to network with this person. Now, Sell and Scale Summit, a lot of people are going here now we already have, you know, like pre network events, like schedule, there’s a beach party here and there’s a meeting greet here and, and just in general, you’re, you’re gonna be around, a thousand people or so what are some tips that you can give of how somebody just average Joe, average, Sally seller on there like I don’t have maybe control over the program and things, but how do I make sure to come outta my shell and get the most out of these networking events? Do you suggest like just going up and randomly going up to people and meeting them and introducing yourselves or what’s the best strategy?

Athena:

Sure. I’ll give you my line. Ready for my networking Amazon pickup line. Okay, so I like this one, which is, tell me about yourself. Eh, very chill. Very cool. But like, if I, if I go up to you and I’m like, Hey, my name’s Athena. And you’re like, oh cool. My name’s Bradley. I’m like, great. Tell me about yourself. You’ll probably say, well, you know, I’ve been on Amazon for X amount of years. You know, I’ve got this kid, I’ve do Zumba. I’m really fun. Like you kind of tell whatever’s realistic to you about you is the first thing that’s gonna come to your mind when someone asks you, you know, like, tell me about yourself. You can also say like, how long have you been selling on Amazon?

Athena:

Tell me about your journey. What is your biggest pain point? What is your biggest strength? Like just be a normal freaking person and connect because here’s the thing. You have no idea how powerful that connection could be for you. That person might have some experience, maybe they know of like this amazing factory that happens to make this product that you’ve been looking for. Maybe they’re like genius at PPC, and they could totally help you out with this one thing. Maybe you’re creative and they’re like a techie and you guys can combine forces. Maybe they could be your future business partner. In fact, I just found out about this guy who was sitting next to his now wife, they’ve been married for six years and they have two kids and she was from Norway. He was from the US and they sat next to each other at an Amazon event. And they’re both introverts, but they were doing some networking exercises and they fell in love.

Bradley Sutton:

Like, no. Yeah. So like, Hey, initially guys, your main motivation should be, you know, network. So you can build your network and learn about Amazon more and learn stuff. But you never know, you might find your future life partner there.

Athena:

Like my business partner. And I like we’ve, we’ve done so many events together. We created like all kinds of magic. And he was just at an event in San Diego, hanging out with some of my friends. We happened to connect. Do you know what I mean? Like you just don’t know who–

Bradley Sutton:

You need to create Athena, a dating app for Amazon sellers.

Athena:

Do you know how many people have told me that they’re like, you tight singles,

Bradley Sutton:

Swipe left.

Athena:

I literally told Dan about it and he’s like, oh hell no, that stuff gets messy. And I’m like, no, it’d be so fun. He’s like, yeah, I know. And anyway–

Bradley Sutton:

Look how much money the Bumble CEO has made. You never know.

Athena:

Here’s the thing, Bradley. Here’s the thing. I want people to understand whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert. Yeah. You’re in a group of people and these people are entrepreneurs. They’re willing to take enough risk to do something crazy, like build a brand on Amazon. Right. And so you might have felt like out of place or lonely in other worlds, but in this world just be you and be open and find your people. Maybe the first few that you talk to are not gonna be your vibe. But if you just continue to put yourself out there, you will meet. I mean, I know you have some of your closest friends that you’ve met at these events and such. These are like absolutely real people to me too. And so I think the most important thing is like, get over yourself, get over your fear, put yourself out there, talk to people like normal humans offer value. Don’t go around looking around like, Hey, I wonder if that guy could hook me up. I wonder if that guy could help me out. nobody likes that.

Bradley Sutton:

Very good point. I like that.

Athena:

Do not do that. It just makes you an awkward, uncomfortable person. Do not bring like business cards and start handing them out. Like we’re in the nineties or something. That’s not to make real connections, real relationships. And here’s a real trick. Are you ready for this?

Bradley Sutton:

I’m ready.

Athena:

You have to find a way to connect in the future, right? Because if you have like this great conversation, you meet this great person and you have no idea how to find them in the future. Like that’s not gonna work for your networking. So one of the things that I do, is that you can use there are apps for this. But what I do is I take out a simple note, right? And I’ll write down people’s names. I’ll even pull, like, if they’re a WhatsApp person, I’ll get them on WhatsApp. And then I’ll put WhatsApp under their name. I’ll take a selfie with them. Sometimes I’ll like, whatever kind of notes you’re gonna make me remember who that person is. I actually put it in a note on my phone so that when I get home, I literally have all the people that I connected with.

Athena:

And I make it a thing to actually reach back out to them and say, Hey, it was super cool to meet you. I usually even note down like how I can help them. So like, if they have something that they need help with, I’ll literally write it down on my note. I’ll reach back out to them in a week or two or whatever, and be like, Hey, you mentioned you were looking for that one, whatever sourcing agent or whatever it is. Here’s the contact for that hope you’re well. And then that person’s like, oh cool. I mean, this is so simple, but like when you’re in the moment and you’re all excited and there are lights and there’s music and there’s Gary freaking Vee up on stage, you might forget to get that person’s name and phone number. Don’t do that because that person could end up being a really, really important person in your life.

Bradley Sutton:

Super great point. I just wanted to mention guys if you wanna get more insights from Athena, Titan Network has a booth at Sell and Scale, they’re at booth number 133. So make sure to visit the booth. Will Dan be there too?

Athena:

Dan will be there. I’m gonna be there in a whole bunch of our crew. And really the power of Titan is in the people and in the connection and in that collective brain power. So what we’ve done is brought together like some really amazing human beings. And we’ve created a network that really helps people. So I’d love to connect with any of you. So if you come by our booth, we’re super open, and friendly, and we’ll introduce you to people. So if you’re feeling awkward or uncomfortable, come find me like, I’m super, like, I’ll introduce you to people. Like, I just want you guys to feel so comfortable, so excited. Because this is a big deal. Like I literally have goosebumps thinking about it. Like, we’re gonna ha we’re gonna meet people probably that we don’t even know exists because COVID really shut down a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there are a lot of people in our industry we’ve never even met yet. So like, who knows who’s gonna be there? And I just can’t wait to connect with all of them.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, if they can’t wait to see you until then, how can they find you on the interwebs and reach out to you?

Athena:

Yeah. So go to titannetwork.com and you can connect with me there before anyone joins our network. I actually personally speak to every single one of them. I don’t know if you knew that, but we have over like 1100, 1200 members, I’ve spoken to almost every single person before they become a part of our world. So I’d love to connect with them personally, and see if I can help them in any way. So you can go to Titan Network or you can find me on Insta Athena Severi, Facebook, I’m very social. I love humans. I’m like an extrovert to a fault. So there’s that

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome. Awesome. So guys, you know, in case, for some strange reason, you haven’t got your ticket yet go to h10.me/s3. You can use my code at S3BS100, and save a hundred bucks off of it, S3BS100. Athena, thank you so much for coming on here. And I can’t wait to be on the dance floor and on the conference floor with you in a couple of weeks.

Athena:

Me too. Thank you so much for having me Bradley talk to you soon.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. So our next interview here is no stranger to the Serous Sellers Podcast. We’ve got Sean from Kreassive here. Sean, (Speaking Korean)

Sean:

Bradley. Yeah, I’m good. How are you?

Bradley Sutton:

How’s my Korean getting better from all the Korean drama you and your wife have been showing me to watch?

Sean:

I think you watch more than I do.

Bradley Sutton:

I think so too. I think so too. Anyways, we’re, we’re not here to talk about Korean dramas, although I would love to do a full episode about it. I wanted to bring you on just to see, you know, what’s going on in the world of 3PLS and different marketplaces. So my first question for you is probably more than anybody I know and the brands that you manage are on more platforms that anybody. All of the different Amazon ones around the world, Europe and USA, but then you also big on seven-figure seller on Wayfair and eBay and Walmart USA, probably Walmart Canada, I’m just wondering out of all these marketplaces, where are you seeing the most growth and where are you seeing if any, either the slowest growth or maybe even a decline?

Sean:

Definitely, Amazon Europe is a very strong marketplace. And I am quite amazed that all the people, European people buy stuff online, and I think 78%-80% of the channel was Amazon. So it’s been a pretty strong and growing market in Europe, but which is the same time the American US sellers not really launching their products one Europe market. So I see that’s a chance cause only the one reason that is difficult to launch a product in one Europe market was it needs a complicated import compliance part. And also there is a part where you need to have an importer to actually import goods. That’s the like big changes compared to two, three years ago when there was a lot of international sellers selling on Europe Amazon, but now it’s been, even though the market is huge, but the sellers, a number of sellers, when I look at it, because of those regulations has been going down.

Bradley Sutton:

So are you saying that most of the ones who are launching over there are just like Europeans themselves? Yes. Or not like American sellers expanding. Interesting. But, but it, would you say that the market growth, like the revenue increase is more in Europe than it is in the US or less? I mean, obviously overall US, of course, you know, by far number one, you know, not even close, but I’m just wondering about like the increase in revenue.

Sean:

Oh, like, you know, the, the sales volume wise Europe, according to what share the data comparing to US, EU is like 70% of US volume.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, wow. So all of the European together.

Sean:

Yes. Yes. And they’ve been launching like they launched UK, Germany, France, Spain. Now they added Netherland Sweden and Poland, all the other countries too. And all 27 European countries also purchase goods from Amazon. The channel that they are nearby. So the market size is already used, but the chance that I’m talking about is the order competitors, and Amazon sellers got removed. It’s because they have import issue. So whoever of fix that issue or penetrate that barrier have a chance to sell on Amazon Europe with less competition. So that’s one of the reasons I set up the Germany branch, cuz the UK Brexit like two years over from EU. So and it’s been working

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Before you could just manage everything from the UK, cuz it was all, all tied together. But now like UK is kind of literally is its own island and physically too.

Sean:

UK on me. Yeah. And we through the German branch we’ve been managing warehouse and marketing over there.

Bradley Sutton:

Have you guys expanded at all to like the UAE or Singapore or Australia or any of these other Amazons, Egypt, et cetera?

Sean:

So we set up actually Korea branch this year. So not through images, but like in Korea there’s a like imagine Amazon similar type of open market over there. So we’ve start launching us and Europe clients to Korean market for

Bradley Sutton:

What? What’s it called?

Sean:

Coupang and G market.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. I remember that one. Yeah.

Sean:

11 Three. Yeah,

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah. I remember that one too.

Sean:

It’s like amazon. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

So then do they have an FBA kind of thing or everything is Fulfilled by Merchant? Everything you have to ship that they don’t have warehouses

Sean:

Coupang is exactly the same as Amazon.

Bradley Sutton:

How do you spell that by the way? That one I never heard of.

Sean:

Coupang

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Sean:

Yeah. Now actually they listed, listed last year in US market and is in us too. So it’s kind of like us company doing business in Korea with Amazon business model.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. I see. I just went to that coupang.com. And I see Gatorade, I see Oreos. I see a lot of Duracell or some American brand areas. So this is a similar concept to Amazon. The difference of those Korean websites are, is it kind of like for example, in America, Wayfair, it’s more furniture base, and Amazon is everything. Walmart is everything. Are those websites you mentioned kind of like everything or is one of them like a certain kind of good I should consider this. And if I, if I have a different kind of goods, I should consider this other website

Sean:

Korea’s open markets is very similar to Amazon. So every category is possible and especially like for US product like the health supplement is shoes. Yeah. Health supplements.

Bradley Sutton:

Like made in USA.

Sean:

Yes, yes, yes.

Bradley Sutton:

Once selling in Korea. Interesting. It’s funny, America is all crazy about anything Korean like K beauty and K-drama Kpop. And, and I guess it’s the opposite, like in Korea, like a lot of American products are popular.

Sean:

And one other thing that I see as a huge potential this day is about the food category. Yeah. after this pandemic thing globally, like food categories been growing yeah. On Amazon and people are now getting used to purchasing products without going to market. So even Amazon, they have only fresh, but even US, we have you know, there’s a like fr food delivery system, like Instacart and other similar solutions coming out and delivering frozen food to your door.

Bradley Sutton:

You’ve always been big in the food, you know, like for like at least three, four years. I know, you know, like I remember you used to carry those seaweed products and then a lot of like Korean garnishes. So all the food products you’ve seen, I, I would imagine just skyrocketed during the pandemic, but then after the pandemic, e-commerce slow down a little bit. You haven’t seen too much slow down in the, in grocery and, and food categories.

Sean:

I mean, yeah. The food category actually is kept going up, keep going up. So yeah. So I don’t think like the habits that we create it doesn’t really kill that demand even though like it’s going to like end on the pandemic now.

Bradley Sutton:

All we we’ve talked about, European market, Korean market stuff we’ve never talked about before. What about here domestically in the United States outside of Amazon, are the other marketplaces still strong for you? As I said, I know you do Walmart. I know you do eBay. I know you do Wayfair have these states pretty, pretty steady or are there any new ones that you have gotten into?

Sean:

Walmart definitely, I think they are the one investing their in front and system more and more, and their market share is been kept going up. And since Walmart is everywhere easier returns and, you know, like collaborating with the online and offline type of thing it actually provides certain even bigger benefits than Amazon too. So I think starting Walmart definitely is a good chance. Other than that also Shopify brand store causes US sellers to know the crazy Amazon fees and FBA fees so that to create a profit like building up their own brand store. I think everybody these days we are doing it. Yeah. So, yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, excellent. Now, before we get into your 30-second tip or your 30-second strategy of the week again just like with George that we just interviewed, you guys will also be an exhibitor at the Sell and Scale Summit. So guys, if you wanna see Sean in person, ask him some more questions about the Korean market, which I don’t know anybody who’s taking advantage of that. So that’s like really cool. If you could get into that go visit the Kreassive booth through at booth 319 at Sell and Scale. You can also ask him for some Korean drama recommendations. He’ll be happy to give that and then Sean, make sure to check him out on the dance floor. He’ll, he’ll be in my Zumba class, my Zumba dance class that I’ll be doing over, over there. But Sean, if they can’t wait until Sell and Scale to ask you some questions, how can they, how can they reach you out there?

Sean:

You can reach me anytime through email at [email protected] and also on me and our team will be in the Helium 10 Sell and Scale Summit in Las Vegas. So yeah whoever launching your product from US to Europe or Korea or certain service needed in the US, like 3PL we are welcome to explain all the detail.

Bradley Sutton:

Excellent. All right. Thank you so much, Sean, for joining us and I’ll be seeing you in a couple of weeks.

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