The data-driven guide to ranking on Amazon

[00:00:00.00] - Kenton Snyder

Thanks everyone again for taking the time today. Aswe mentioned before, we're going to be walking through product ranking, productlaunches, all of that on Amazon as we get ready for Q4. Before we kick off, alittle intro on myself. My name is Kenton. I'm on our customer success teamhere at Intentwise. For those of you who don't know about Intentwise, we are asoftware platform within the e-commerce space, focusing on data management andad optimization. There's three different tools that we work with both agenciesand brands on, one of which is an ad optimizer, where we help brands with ourAI bidding and automated rules engine to optimize your day-to-day a little biteasier for you. The other one is a data management platform where we pipe inall of your data to a database, allow you to visualize it in different ways,whether that's Seller Central, Vendor Central data, so you guys can get somedeeper insights into what you're doing across different e-commerce platforms.Our final and most recent solution is a AMC platform. We'll help you executeAMC queries, visualize AMC executions that happen to write any sequel yourself.I know a hot topic right now, Amazon's made some recent announcements, and I'msure there's more to come soon.

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[00:01:03.23] - Kenton Snyder

We're excited about things on that front as well. Wehave Marcel joining us today, who is an expert on product launches, productrankings. I'm going to let him introduce himself, and then we will jump rightinto things.

[00:01:15.18] - Marcel Marculescu

All right. Thank you, Kenton. So hello, everyone.Happy to be here. My name is Marcel Marculescu, and I'm the CEO and co founderof intelliRANK. Also, I started myself as an Amazon seller. I don't want totell you my story just now, maybe another time, but I came into Amazon boomingwith a huge loss. And yeah, here I am today. So things can get better always.That's one thing I can say. Now, in terms of intelliRANK, we foundedintelliRANK in 2019. And up until now, we have successfully launched and rankedmore than 4,000 products on the Amazon marketplace. So we have quite anexperience on that bit. Myself, I also have experience in the IT field, so Icome with an IT mindset behind everything. I like to understand how things workand try to replicate them in a technological manner, so to speak. I'm happy tobe here and also discuss this opportunity with Amazon and what we can do andwhat opportunities we have right now to launch and better rank our products onthe Amazon marketplace.

[00:02:20.08] - Kenton Snyder

Awesome. We mentioned before, I have some thingswe're going to walk through. We're going to keep this as more of an opendiscussion. If you guys have questions that you want to hear us talk through,get answers on, please throw them our way, and we will be happy to work throughthose as well. But Marcel, while people are thinking about most questions, onething I wanted to start off on that that's hot on my mind is just overall, whatare we doing to push better rankings? I think it's a hot topic right now,especially as we consistently see bids on an advertising perspectiveincreasing, cost per clicks increasing, especially as we go into Q4 andpromotional periods. We're going to see that costs are higher there. Everyone'sfocused on, how can I lower my TACOS? How can I get better organic rank? I'llstart that with what I'm doing from an ad perspective. I guess at a basiclevel, from what you guys are doing, what are those factors that you guys seehave the biggest influence on your organic ranking on Amazon?

[00:03:16.11] - Marcel Marculescu

That's actually the great question that we will beanswering today. So thank you for that, Kenton. In terms of organic ranking,everything is about selling. So it's a matter of keyword targeting. Now, youcan target keywords through PPC That's one way of getting organic ranking, andthat's one of the things you should be doing, definitely. But the way we lookat it, the way we position things, it's through a market research strategy thatwe have implemented within Intellirank. That's a service that we have forAmazon sellers. The power of the service is that it's actually providing goodfeedback in terms of a survey to the Amazon seller. We're gathering data foryou while also helping you with sales and loss team momentum on the platform.But before we get into that, it's very, very important to look at what's comingup next. Like very well, we were discussing at the beginning, Black Friday,Cyber Monday. For most of the brands out there, it's important to considerboosting their product ranking to the top. Why? Because when Black Friday hit,you want to be organically at the top and also continue to bid because PPC,it's a must and never turn on PPC because by the end of the day, you want to tobe visible everywhere.

[00:04:31.17] - Marcel Marculescu

You can, especially with the opportunities that comeup in the next period. Now, if you're in, let's say, a supplement area ordifferent other branding that it's not selling so good this period, or thesales are pretty much the same, then you can also consider this on the longrun. It's important to look at it from the holistic point of view, so to speak,and try to plan ahead and boost the overall ranking of the product. Now, it'sall a matter of planning and execution. When we're talking about planning, we'relooking at keywords. Everything currently is keyword-related. We have AI cominginto play. We've been at Accelerate, Kenton there, so we had some good time atAccelerate. A lot of new things are coming to Amazon, a lot of AI. You haveRufus that's also influencing the somehow now decently low, but it It willinfluence even more the buyer behavior. But at the end of the day, everythingwill be keyword-centric. One thing that we've seen at Accelerate that Amazon istrying to bring in is modifying your title and our title, the brand, theproduct title, based on the search term that the user will input.

[00:05:52.12] - Marcel Marculescu

They were giving this example. They were looking forRay-Ban, I think it was Ray-Ban, Aviator glasses. Then all the titles that wererelevant were starting with that exact keyword, which for me, it's a bit shadybecause that can put you into IP problems because you're not allowed to putRay-Ban or any other brand in your title. If Amazon does that, automatically,that will be... We don't know what will happen. But nevertheless, the sole,let's say, factor that influences ranking starts from the keyword and theactual buyer intent when it comes to formulating the way they want to end upfinding the right product for them. Keywords are the key. They will remain thekey, but they would probably slightly change in the future.

[00:06:44.07] - Kenton Snyder

We don't know yet. It's definitely still indevelopment. I like that you mentioned Rufus and the title changes. I even sawyesterday they launched AI product guides where you're able to ask questionsand still throw things down based on your preferences for products in certaincategories. There are definitely... We can see the push is coming. I think thatwas one of my biggest takeaways that accelerate is AI is starting to beintroduced into some of the selling process, some of the consumer process. It'snot quite there yet in terms of a full usability perspective, like youmentioned with the title, thing that I think was going around quite a bit. Butit's clear to see that it's a focus and something that brands and serviceproviders need to be keeping an eye on because two or three years from now, itis going to be a big part of what we do on a day-to-day from a rankingperspective. So I definitely think that's this key you'd be paying attentionto. But we are where we are now. I think I agree with you. Keyword is still themain driver of things. So when it comes to finding those keywords that fitspecifically for a brand, because it depends on a brand's size, a brand'sproducts, a brand's product features, what are the steps that you guys take tofind those focus keywords, whether it's a brand starting out or a brand that'smore established but looking to increase rank?

[00:07:55.10] - Kenton Snyder

Where do you guys start there?

[00:07:56.19] - Marcel Marculescu

All right, that's a great question as well. So thewhole idea of keywords comes from harvesting from different tools. This is whatwe have. Back in 2017, when 2016, actually, when I started my Amazon journey,we didn't have so much information. But right now, we have so much informationthat it's quite easy to actually do your due diligence in terms of keywords.Start from a good tool that you like. Ourselves, I'm not sure if I can mentiontools here at Kenton, but there are out there some pretty nice tools that youcan use. Just try to catalog your keywords. Try to find the most relevantkeywords. The most important ones. I see them on a column in an Excel sheet.Those are the most powerful keywords that reflect your product and, of course,can bring you sales. Next, somehow relevant keywords. Then you can go to other,maybe, some misspellings. You want to target, most importantly, Spanishkeywords. That's one key factor that not a lot of sellers take into placebecause overall, the population in America, there are a lot of them that speakSpanish.

[00:09:02.03] - Marcel Marculescu

It's important to also consider that and targetSpanish keywords. Last but not least, also have holiday-specific keywords. Ifwe're looking right now, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, we're looking at Decembersale, gifts, and all sorts of related keywords, they can be in a certaincategory just to target them. Now, harvesting them can be done, like I said,through different tools that are available on the marketplace, putting theminto action, that's another factor. It's important to target them, first of all,through PPC. That will remain the number one topic that everyone is doing atthe moment, targeting them through PPC. But what we do, and this is whatdifferentiates intelliRANK from all the other agencies out there. We also lookat it from an organic approach. So what we do from day one, we have a saying,no day without sales. So whenever consider that you have done your productresearch, you have found the best supplier, you have sourced your product, andnow it's available on Amazon. So we'll say everything is being done. You havegood images, you have a good listing, which implies good text to get indexed.So the images are for the customers to buy the product.

[00:10:12.20] - Marcel Marculescu

People buy with their eyes. While the text, theactual text within the product title, the bullets and the description will helpyour product get indexed and get relevant for that specific niche. Now, be verycareful because we see this a lot. Sometimes products jump from category toanother. Now, while we think that this might be irrelevant, it might happenbecause Amazon is glitching, it's very important what your listing is sendingto Amazon. So how relevant your listing is for that particular category. So tryto re-write and re-think your listing. If this happens too often. Of course,run cases with Amazon just to bring the listing back and so forth. Now, as soonas we have the product, like I said, we have the actual keywords that we wantto target. What we do at Intel rank, we recommend to start with a producttesting campaign. This means what? This means that we'll be sending ingradually traffic to your listing and also getting people to test your product.It's like the mystery shopper program. This is very powerful, especially at thebeginning, because we want to see your product quality. Of course, you willhave a quality check, but imagine that you want product testing.

[00:11:26.01] - Marcel Marculescu

We want it from the perspective like getting the goodinformation from people that are actually using the product. Think of it like aStarbucks mystery shop or program. Starbucks is actually giving out vouchers topeople to go into the cafe and enjoy a free latte, for example, or a freecoffee. And after that, they're getting them to answer a set of questions interms of how they were served and how was the coffee. Did they wait a lot inline? Was they treated nicely by the clerk? So all that information that helpout brands to make good decisions. Now, this is good and this is very powerful.Why? Because sometimes, not a lot of times, thank God, we found products thathad defects, and it can be related to the actual product manufacturing, maybean easily breakable part. It can be a shipping-related product. Maybe theshipping, the cardboard was not so good and it wasn't protecting the product sowell, and the product ended out damaged. Imagine sending these products toactual Amazon customers That will actually do what? Return the product. A lotof returns will lead to account being suspended because that is not somethingAmazon likes.

[00:12:38.24] - Marcel Marculescu

So this things can be mitigated. And also it's aboutcreating the sales velocity and momentum on the platform from day one. That'sthe most powerful way. So we start from the keywords, we build up the strategy,and we execute it. It's a straightforward service. You can do this yourself aswell by finding and running ads on social media. This is very powerful, andgetting people to actually test the product and give you feedback. No reviews.This is not associated with reviews in any way, so there's no reviews involved.It's just feedback in terms of a survey that you get and you get valuable dataabout your product from your actual end customer. Hope that makes sense.

[00:13:25.22] - Kenton Snyder

Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. I've definitely seenscenarios where someone launches a product on Amazon that they manufacture andthey spend a bunch of ad dollars behind it, spend a bunch on creatives and allthat. Then it comes back that they get a bunch of returns, they get a bunch ofbad reviews because there's one thing wrong with their process, and that throwsall those ad dollars, everything else they're doing out the window, and you'restarting from zero. If anything, you're behind the eight ball where you wouldhave been had you started from nothing again. I definitely can see theimportance on finding out that data. I know you mentioned it's not as commonthat you see those defects. It's definitely good to catch them when you do. Butin those scenarios where there's not any defect, the product is good to go,you're getting good feedback, how do you take those key selling points that acustomer is calling out in those surveys and funnel that back into yourstrategy for bringing in new customers from a ranking perspective?

[00:14:18.24] - Marcel Marculescu

Actually, that's very powerful because you end upwith the information and the data about your product in the hands of thecustomer. You can talk about here about improvements, about ease of usage,about pricing points, about your actual listing images. It depends what you'retrying to target through the product testing and through the survey. Thesurveys themselves, they're built up to actually target usually one or more keyfactors. If you're interested in how the actual customer perceives and seesyour listing, it's very important to ask the right questions. We usually have aset of default questions, but we are flexible into allowing Amazon sellers outthere to reiterate them in the certain way that suits them best. Now, the ideabehind it is to get as much information as possible and the best information aspossible. But the key factor is happening actually in the background whenactually that momentum and sales velocity is created on the Amazon platform.That's the power of this strategy. At the end of the day, you want to sendAmazon the right signal that your product is actually selling is desired isappreciated by people, not in terms of a review.

[00:15:34.14] - Marcel Marculescu

Again, no reviews. I don't want people to think thatthis is a review service or anything related to that. It's not that. It's aboutgetting customer data in terms of a survey.

[00:15:44.20] - Kenton Snyder

Got it. That makes a lot of sense. What I'm hearingis you communicate with customers through some type of paid ad on a socialmedia, have them purchase the product, you give them a survey, going intoAmazon, where we're breaking terms of service because we're interacting withthem outside of the platform. Then that allows us to collect this data, whichwe can then use to catch defects and enhance our listings, which I think fromthe listing perspective, what I've seen from channel venture brands in the pastis that data has got to be huge because knowing what your key selling pointsare within your customer base when you're competing against products that mightbe lower price points or have more sales velocity or more review count can betough. You need to know what are the things that are going to separate yourproducts from those other products, especially in those high price pointsituations where I can call those out within my image, call those out within mybullets, make sure that target keywords related to that from an advertisingperspective that might pay a little bit cheaper. There's lots of ways you cango about making sure you're emphasizing that data.

[00:16:46.14] - Kenton Snyder

It's a C sales velocity with knowing that you're notgoing to go. If I'm selling a new pair of shoes, I'm not going to rank on theword shoes. I guess, what type of questions are you guys typically looking atwhen you're interacting with these customers to get back that best data set topower your decisions going forward? I know you mentioned a specific set. Whatare some of those main questions to try to get back from the customers in thisprocess?

[00:17:12.14] - Marcel Marculescu

Main questions are related to actual pricing, likeyou very well said, also to images. From time to time, we also go into as deepas competitors to compare to those listings. It's about perception. It's abouthow the customers actually perceive your product and how they position it intheir mind when they're looking at it. Because what I've seen from myexperience, sometimes you get emotionally attached to our product. For example,my brand, I've created the images, I made sure that they're the best, and ifyou ask me, that's the best you can get. But what I've learned over the yearsis that you should never trust yourself in this judgment because you're not thecustomer here. Now, the whole idea, and this is a powerful thing to always doon the Amazon platform, use Brand Experiments. Experiment as much as you can,of course, in an educated way, and don't run multiple overlapping experiments.That's not the idea. One at a time, wait for the conclusion and try tounderstand what your customers are actually thinking about. Experiments is apowerful feature on the Amazon platform, and we're a big fan of it.

[00:18:21.10] - Marcel Marculescu

From the sole perspective that you can understandalso from the platform how the people think and how they react to an image, toa bullet point, to a title, to whatever A+ content, whatever we want to test tosee how well it converts. It's not, let's say, a set and forget. No listing isset and forget. It's always about reaching out and trying to improve it andtrying to find the best improvement points. But before we start this, it's onekey factor that also I've been mentioning. It's important to have in mind,reviews. That's another topic to have good reviews because Amazon is lookingand is favorizing your product over your competitors, also based on reviews. Ifyou get good reviews, Amazon will push more traffic and more visibility towardsyour product. As soon as you get a bad review, your popularity with Amazon willslowly fade. Try to avoid those as much as possible. Work on the reviews.

[00:19:27.10] - Kenton Snyder

I've definitely seen scenarios where a product canhave good velocity, and then they get two or three bad reviews, andeverything's thrown off, you're resetting, you're back in a Vine program togenerate some new reviews. It resets your entire process. I think going back towhat you're talking about from a defect perspective, being able to to be ableto catch those before you get into the review process is a large benefit forsellers because now we're not going to run into that later down the road when we'vealready poured more into our product page. I like what you said around theexperiment side of things. From my opinion, I think as a new seller, you shouldalways be running some type of A/B test on your product. We just have so manydifferent levers we can pull, whether it's like you mentioned, the titles, thephotos, things on the ad side, different creative pieces. There's alwayssomething we can be testing, and maybe you find that the stuff you createdfirst is actually the best. Maybe you did a great job your first run, but atleast now you have the data to back that up.

[00:20:24.21] - Kenton Snyder

You validated that, and you know that you're doingthe best that you can from your product's perspective. When you continue to runthose tests, I think I like what you said on it's not a one-time thing. We'renot setting and forgetting it yet. It's not something we do once a quarter oronce a year. We should be continually refreshing things to see, is theredifferent benefits that I can get here as I've changed the different factors uphere. I think one thing that you mentioned on the review front that I knoweveryone's familiar with Amazon Vine and generating reviews that way. Is thereanything else that you guys have seen be successful successful in ensuring morepositive reviews, getting higher review velocity for your products? Is thereanything that you guys do in particular to focus on that?

[00:21:08.22] - Marcel Marculescu

Well, we look at the Vine and also myself, I'm a fanof variation. That's the key factor when I run an Amazon business or we haveclients who also recommend to them. Running variations is very powerful,especially if you can enroll them into Vine, all of them. Let me give you anexample. There are different strategies here. Let's say you have your productalready launched. You can always bring in variations and just don't add themunder the same parent. Just bring them as individuals and enroll them into Vine.This is still possible. We don't know at what extent Amazon considers that agood or a bad idea, but as of now, it's working and people are leveraging that.The idea behind it is to use it at your own risk, that's for sure. For example,myself, I use this strategy because it helps, especially when you have anestablished product and you want to kick in more reviews. For example, someniches are very competitive. Your main product might have maybe a two-digitreview count. Let's say 25 reviews, right? But all your competitors havethousands, tens of thousands of reviews.

[00:22:17.24] - Marcel Marculescu

You want to at least try to be competitive there.Getting in more variations. It can be color, it can be quantity, it can be, Idon't know, whatever variation part you can add to the product. Just add themand roll them into Vine. Wait for Vine to conclude. So don't do anything untilthe Vine campaign concludes. This means that everything has been completed andit's done. Then, of course, you enroll up to 30 products. And then when all theVine are concluded, then you can add them under the same parent and benefitfrom all the reviews. So this is a strategy a lot of people using, but here aresome tricks that you can apply to this. Of course, we call this the variationvineyard, but you can transform it into the variation graveyard, if you will.For example, you can bring in variations, like a small amount, 50 units, andjust enroll them into Vine for Vine purposes, get the reviews, and then letthem die. Still adding them under the same parent will inherit the good reviewsthat you get under those variations. This is very powerful strategy that can beapplied to any product as of right now.

[00:23:26.13] - Marcel Marculescu

Yeah, it's working.

[00:23:28.24] - Kenton Snyder

All of it in a It's an interesting call out. I'veseen some larger brands that have done that exact same strategy. I wasn't awareof it previously. They're just like, Oh, yeah, when we launch a new product,this is what we do. We let it keep separate, even though we know we haveestablished products, we know it's not going to sell as well, but we want toget some velocity behind it, then bring them together. We don't turn on adsbefore we do that. We aren't running A/B test before we do that. We're just focusedon reviews because we know that they're so important from a rankingperspective, from a conversion rate perspective. I think even when you aregetting ranked, if you have... I know what I shop, if I see something with athousand reviews and something with 25 reviews, if they're similarly priced andone to a thousand reviews has a good star count, I'm buying that one. It's notmuch of a consideration. Being able to build that up over time. Definitely, Ican see the power there. I think one other thing that I've been thinking aboutfrom a ranking perspective that I think is commonly talked about, but there's alot of, I don't know, mythical stuff around it is the honeymoon period thatpeople mention.

[00:24:29.03] - Kenton Snyder

You hear people call it out, but it's not somethingthat Amazon directly acknowledges. Is that something that you guys have seencan have an effect on the launch of a product? How are you guys utilizing that?Or is it something that you guys are even seeing at all?

[00:24:41.16] - Marcel Marculescu

It's very important. People have named it, peoplehave blamed it, whatever. I'm technical. Getting back to my... I have more thantwo decades of IT engineering in my background, and I'm looking at things froma technical perspective. What is actually the honeymoon? Actually, your productlands on Amazon, and usually, you should keep your listing closed until youhave the inventory and everything. You can create it, you can have it there,but keep it closed. When you open it, this is when the honeymoon period starts.Why? Because actually, Amazon has no history, doesn't know you. You have nofootprint for that ASIN for that product on Amazon. This is when Amazon, itlooks at you and tries to understand who you are and where you're heading. Thisis why I said no day without sales. From day one, it's important to try to getsales. Of course, there are different tactics there. People end up callingtheir friends and family. Those can be your strong supporters. Other people goon social media. They build their the brand ambassadors, build a tribe, createa sense of belongings around the brand. There are different strategies you canimplement.

[00:25:50.11] - Marcel Marculescu

The whole idea behind it is when you start at day oneand your product is live, it's good and it's important to try to get in sales.Because if you get zero sales, first day, zero sales, second day. If you go toone sale, the third day, whatever, then zero sales. This is a message to Amazondirectly that, Hey, this product is new and it's not so visible. But if yousend in two, three days a day, five, whatever, depending on how competitiveyour niche overall is, that's a different type of signal. Amazon is recordingthat. Everything records and all the days behind you are being counted byAmazon. Of course, I don't claim to understand how Amazon is thinking. It's acomplex algorithm. But from our experience, it's important to have them bringin these sales and create a good history like credit with any bank. You justsell. This is the only game Amazon is playing. I see a lot of podcast, a lot ofthings. The only most important factor that influences Amazon is the actualsale. There are different algorithm is complex behind it, but the salesinfluence the most.

[00:27:00.10] - Marcel Marculescu

At the end of the day, you want to sell becauseAmazon can offer that sale to you or to your competitors, whoever is sellingthe most and getting happy customers. Amazon, happy customers, sellers. It'slike this.

[00:27:15.09] - Kenton Snyder

I think the way I thought about it is Amazon reallydoesn't care whose product sells as long as they get a sale. You're right. Theywant to showcase the product that their algorithm is telling them is going toconvert at the highest rate and is going to drive the most repeat purchases onAmazon. They don't want to sell something that's going to lose the customerbecause they just care that they get the sale overall. We know the importanceof having that high ranking for that because people aren't going past thatfirst or second page very often. I like what you mentioned from getting thoseinitial sales. I think I've seen products when I'm searching, especially inmore niche categories, where I look at the second-ranking product and I'mlooking at the product page and you hear all these best practices all the time.I'm like, How in the world is this product the second ranker when it doesn'thave A+ content, its bullets are all over the place, it doesn't have anoptimized title? But it comes back to what you're saying, right? If it sellsand it drives repeat purchase, then Amazon isn't going to care as much.

[00:28:15.21] - Kenton Snyder

Obviously, all those other things are stillimportant, can still drive you guys up in those rankings. But I think gettingthose initial sales velocities, Amazon identifies you as a product that has theability to sell at an even higher rate. Amazon is doing their own A/B testing.They're pushing you up to the top to see if you can get any of that. If youcan, you're going to keep you up there. I also really like what you mentionedabout the off Amazon side of things. I think that's honestly one of the most underutilizedthings that a lot of Amazon sellers aren't taking advantage of. It's like, whatcan you do on social media? We all know Amazon loves to see outside trafficcoming in. The more outside sales you can bring in to Amazon, the morepreference they're going to give you. I can build myself a small following onsocial media around my brand. One, I'm going to avail an actual fans andcustomers of my brand. If I ever want to take something to a D2C front, I havethe ability to do that. I'm probably driving more repeat purchases from that,and I'm driving those outside purchases.

[00:29:12.03] - Kenton Snyder

There's so many ways you can grow that from organiccontent, working with influencers, paid media. There's just a lot of, I think,underutilized opportunities on that side of things that Amazon could learn fromwhat D2C brands do and bring that into the Amazon side of things as well.

[00:29:27.21] - Marcel Marculescu

Yeah, absolutely. At the end the day you want tosell.

[00:29:31.14] - Kenton Snyder

Exactly. All these things are just coming back to howcan we sell more units? 100%. I think the honeymoon period really affects thosenew sellers. But when we're talking about a seller that's more established,maybe I've done tests on my product, I know what my key selling points are. Ihave a good general ranking, but I want to rank. Maybe I'm selling a pair ofheadphones, and I know my key selling point is my sound quality. I want to rankmore for keywords that are specifically focused on sound quality versus comfortor price or things like that. I want to rank for high-quality headphones as akeyword. What can I do, specifically, from what you guys have done to rank forthat specific keyword or group of keywords? What are you guys doing there tohone in on past the initial bulk phase of keywords? How are we honing in onthose product-specific ones?

[00:30:21.03] - Marcel Marculescu

For this particular strategy, for this particularsituation, actually, it's even better. Why? Because you already have all thedata. So think about it this way. If you go into PPC, you'll see exactly whatkeywords are converting for you. So you're, of course, bidding, and for everyclick, you know you're just getting one sale and you're happy. But you're beingdisplayed sponsored there. How would it be also to be displayed organic? You'llget more real estate, so that's even better. This way, you know exactly whatyou want to get to the top, on which keywords you're interested to get to thetop. It's even better for established products to rank organically and focus onthem through PPC and through other methods like the product testing, or you canbring in your own traffic from social media and target exactly where you wantto go on the targeted keywords, actually. The whole idea behind it is to, yetagain, more real estate. The more you get, the better. Since you're alreadyselling, it's even better because at the end of the day, you've proven thatthose keywords are good for you and the customers are finding your productappealing by searching for it in that particular way.

[00:31:29.06] - Marcel Marculescu

It's pretty much the same idea behind it. You justwant to bring in a good strategy and focus and target the peak seasons orwhatever you want to target, depending on your niche and when your sales comeup best.

[00:31:46.14] - Kenton Snyder

Got it. From what you guys are doing, do you guys seethat the title has the biggest impact, two bullets have a bigger impact,description? Where are you guys honing it on when we're wanting to focus on aspecific keyword?

[00:31:56.24] - Marcel Marculescu

Usually the title, yes, has the biggest impact.That's proven, that's already there on the newsletter, so to speak. But thewhole idea is, again, going back to what strategy you apply. For example, weconsider that the title is also a good idea to do some A/B testing from time totime. Targeting, again, getting data from PPC and seeing not where you want togo, but where you are, and try to see, Okay, I'm here. I'm converting on thesekeywords. Okay, I don't have this powerful keyword, which let's say it's on topthere with I don't know how many monthly searches, I would try to add it to thetitle, do an A/B test, do an experiment, and see how the people are reacting toit. And if we're going back to what we started and thinking how Amazon wants todo things. It's pretty much the same idea with AI. They want for the customersto search for a term and then display all the results with that term in thetitle of all the ASINs. That's pretty much the same. You can actually test thatand see how the customers are reacting. For example, you have a long tailkeyword, you can put it in the title and try it, do an A/B testing and see howpeople react to it.

[00:33:10.02] - Marcel Marculescu

Because we sometimes think that we know how theproduct is discoverable on the platform. But the customers may surprise us fromtime to time, and it's important to listen to the customers. They are tellingus how to find a product, not how we think that they should find a product thisway.

[00:33:29.14] - Kenton Snyder

100%. Yeah, I think the thing that I find interestingin that is the point of the A/B test. I think that allows us to make a changewithout completely overhauling everything you're already doing. If I'm runningan experiment, if it doesn't work, like you're saying, you think you know whatyou're doing, but maybe you're wrong. If it doesn't work, you're not taking theranking you've built up, but because you're doing it more gradually, you'reable to get some results and then turn things up a little bit without having tojust convert over everything you're doing, whether that's a title or an imageor anything on those fronts. Exactly. I think if we take things a stepfurther... Yeah, totally. I think if we take things a step further, though, sayon a specific keyword, I know you mentioned balancing PPC and organic rank,having both the real estate pieces. But I think something that a lot of brandsstruggle with is what is the right spot for that balance? If I'm the number oneorganic ranker on a keyword, maybe I don't want to have a 75% ad impressionrate because people are going to see my organic placement in that first orsecond line anyway.

[00:34:34.01] - Kenton Snyder

As you guys get people's ranks improved on specifickeywords, how does that change, which you do on a paid side? Or are we stillfocusing on those same keywords just as strong for a paid perspective? Or do wekeep some paid budget there and shift our paid budget somewhere else to focuson new keywords? Do we shift our paid budget completely away? How are you guysgoing about that?

[00:34:51.24] - Marcel Marculescu

That's a very good question. It really depends on theactual product. Now, the trick behind it is once you get to the toporganically, it's to stay there. Now, in order to stay there, once you get yourproduct in the spotlight there, people need to click on it and buy it. We'regetting back to phase number one, you need to sell. If you get organically onthe top, on the top, you are done on Amazon, whatever that might be for yourniche, it's important to sell. Now we're getting a few steps back. You want tomake sure that your product, first of all, you did all the A/B testing on amain image. You want to have the best image. You have a good amount of reviews.You want, of course, to showcase your product in the best review count andreview star rating as possible. You have a competitive pricing, and then youwant to be on the top and remain at the top of the search results. Because 10out of 10, I'd say, maybe 9 out of 10, let's not put it too much, people willbe purchasing from the top of page one.

[00:35:55.11] - Marcel Marculescu

There's 1 out of 10 people that might look, if hedoesn't know what he's looking for, we'll go to below page 1 or page 2 orwhatever. You want to be there in the spotlight. It's like in the supermarket.You want to position your merchandise where people actually turn their theirsite and see it. If it's on the below, let's say, rack there. They have to lookdown and they have to search for it. They must be looking for it desperately inorder to find it that specific brand. Actually, people are not looking likethat. They're looking for something to fix a problem that they In marketing,it's always about two things, pain or pleasure. You want to make sure that yourcustomer understands how you are serving one of these two things. If you'vedone your job right and you're talking from the customer's perspective, notfrom your brand's perspective, Hey, my brand is the best. We fabric the bestsocks in the universe. Buy from us. People don't care about that. You have totalk the customer's language. Socks that keep you warm at night. As simple asthat. The simplicity of wording and the simplicity of things is what makesactually a good marketing.

[00:37:07.17] - Marcel Marculescu

You don't want to get oversophisticated in terms thatonly you understand or maybe you get some certification that your product isapproved by the UL, whatever, something, and nobody knows what it is. It's likethat, usually.

[00:37:25.12] - Kenton Snyder

Definitely. There's lots of complexities that can gointo it. I agree. It's just always testing something. Well, I think we'recoming up towards the end of our time. I do have one or two other questions Iwant to get through, but I did also want to remind everyone, if you have anyquestions for Marcel or I that you want to make sure we talk through, wedefinitely can take your time to answer those. So please throw those in thechat now and we will make sure to get to those. While we're waiting on that, Marcel,though, one other question I had is, I know we've talked a lot about thekeyword, the current set of things, but going back to where we started at thestart of this talk where we were walking through the changes that we're seeingon the AI front. Obviously, I think we know a lot of the We're starting to seea lot of the changes that are coming from the Amazon software, the Amazonimplementation side. But I think we know that's also going to affect the waythat we rank, the way we advertise, all of that. I know at some point down theline, as maybe searches become more conversational with things like Rufus, orthey become more product feature-based with the AI product guide, things likethat.

[00:38:21.17] - Kenton Snyder

How do you see a ranking strategy changing over timeas more and more of these features begin to have higher usage?

[00:38:29.12] - Marcel Marculescu

I I think the best strategy in mind is to adapt towhatever's coming our way. If there's one thing that this is a business, thisis not a get-rich-fast scheme, this is not... There are no silver bullets,there are no magic pills, there are no shortcuts. It's a matter of adapting tochanges. As much as we'd like things to remain the same and you've got your topposition there, you're keeping your top position, you're the best seller,things in life change. What's important, and this is a mindset thing, what'simportant is what you do when change happens, what you do to adapt to thechange. Now, AI is coming our way, that's for sure. We don't know when or howmuch, but it's already here, but not yet into place. I'd say that adapting towhat AI brings and looking from both ways. Like you very well ask, Kenten, gothrough Rufus and try to talk to Rufus, try to see how it thinks, how it shows.Just ask a general question. I want to buy this product. And ask Rufus whatproducts it would recommend. You'll get there some products. Sometimes you cango even more and say, Hey, how about my XYZ brand?

[00:39:48.18] - Marcel Marculescu

Rufus will say that he doesn't have too muchinformation about that brand yet. Again, it will get there. Rufus will know thebrands, will know everything about the brands, still will recommend one, two,three brands, but that's pretty much it. I do not expect Rufus to put there 100brands. It's trying to ask the right questions to the customer in order to getan for the best product. But still, Amazon is making a huge amount of moneyfrom PPC. Ppc will still be there. I'm expecting-100%. I'm expecting things toremain that area pretty much the same. I don't see Rufus, Hey, you can buy frombrand X, buy brand Y or brand Z, but hey, wait, I have a sponsored bid herefrom that brand W, try to purchase from this guy. I don't know how that willplay.

[00:40:41.16] - Kenton Snyder

I see ads definitely getting a lot more contextual asthings maybe become a little less keyword-based. I think things will come moremore contextual. It's definitely all going to change. There's going to be somethings that I'm sure are similar, but things are going to change. I think it'sgood that Amazon is giving us a little bit of insight into what that paththey're going down is so that we can We can prepare. We can start adapting. Wecan start testing now. Like you mentioned, you can go on Roofis, see what itknows about your brand. Maybe it's not the main way people are shopping now,but I think the way we see things going, it's going to get there. It's just amatter of when. Being prepared to test for it, it's huge. I think the goodthing about it, though, is with everything we talked about today, it comes backto your sales, your sales velocity. No matter what system Amazon is using,whether it's a search result, whether it's an AI tool, there's We still aredoing it to drive a higher sales velocity. That's still their end goal. If yourproduct is selling, you have a strong product, strong product pages, strongimages, those are still going to be the core pieces.

[00:41:39.21] - Kenton Snyder

We're just going to see some changes on the edges ofhow are we getting in front of our customers.

[00:41:45.04] - Marcel Marculescu

Rufus will be influenced by the actual sales. Ofcourse, exactly. Yeah, brand because it sells.

[00:41:50.05] - Kenton Snyder

The products that are selling.

[00:41:51.23] - Marcel Marculescu

Yeah.

[00:41:52.09] - Kenton Snyder

Exactly.

[00:41:53.13] - Marcel Marculescu

Totally. Yeah, it's important to sell.

[00:41:57.07] - Kenton Snyder

Totally. Awesome. The one question we did get issomeone asking, if our keywords in our title are fully optimized, what is thepath we can take forward? I think the one thing I've heard from you, anddefinitely feel great to add to this, but the one thing I've heard from you isyou never fully know if you're fully optimized. Still testing and tweakingthings is still important at that point because while it seems strong to you,and it may very well may be, there could be a tweak that you could make thatimproves things. That's where those experiments come in handy and allowing youto gradually test things and getting the results back and then making thedecisions based on the data tells you.

[00:42:34.00] - Marcel Marculescu

Absolutely. Also, for everyone here, we do havesomething, of course, we didn't come empty-handed. We can offer a free audit.This would be an idea to actually get some good information about your product.This audit we're offering for free just tonight to everyone, tonight on myside, today on your side, for everyone that's here. So just emailoffice@intelerank. Info. So it's office@intelerank. Com. And rank. Info. Andthe mention there that you've seen me in this interview with Intentwise withGenton, and you're applying for a free audit. Now, that audit is something thatis done manually. So a person will deep dive into We look into your niche, welook into your competitors, and we give you a detailed report about how wethink your product is looking. So it's a good start, and it's free. So takeadvantage of it.

[00:43:27.06] - Kenton Snyder

Yeah, definitely a great starting place for everyone.Well, cool. I think that's most of the questions I had, so I appreciate thetime today, Marcel. For everyone here, I appreciate you all joining today aswell. I hope you got some good value out of things. If you have any additionalquestions about anything we talked about today, about Intentwise, aboutIntelerink, please feel free to read out to us. If you want to reach out to me,you'd find me on LinkedIn. You can go to intentwise. Com, find out more aboutIntentwise there, see our past webinars, and sign up for future ones. We alsohave a newsletter where we're calling out a lot of these different topics, andand consistently bringing new info about the Amazon space. Find us atIntentwise or find me out on LinkedIn and happy to connect further. Marcel, I'msure there's some other ways. I know you mentioned emailing you guys. Is theresome other ways they can find you if they have more questions for you as well?

[00:44:15.00] - Marcel Marculescu

Absolutely. I'm also available on LinkedIn. Veryactive there. Also, Intelerank. Info is our website. Feel free to look around.If there are any questions, just contact us.

[00:44:25.10] - Kenton Snyder

That's it. Awesome. Awesome, Marcel. I appreciate youtaking the time. Thank you, everyone, for joining in today. I hope you all havea great rest of your week. Thanks, everyone.

[00:44:33.22] - Marcel Marculescu

Thank you. Bye.

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