Product Launch in 2023 is Much Different than the Past with Chris Thomas and Regina Peterburgsky

Welcome to today’s episode of our podcast, where we’ll be joined by Chris Thomas and Regina Peterburgsky, two experts from The Australian Seller community. In this episode, we’ll be discussing the evolving landscape of product launches in 2023 and how it differs from the past. As e-commerce continues to grow and change rapidly, it’s crucial for sellers to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and strategies to ensure their products stand out in a crowded marketplace. Additionally, Chris and Regina will be sharing details about their upcoming mastermind event for established sellers, taking place in Bali, Indonesia from June 18-22. So sit back, relax, and let’s dive into the world of e-commerce and product launches in 2023.

Thanks Chris & Regina!

√ Chris’s GFAVIP Page
√ Regina’s GFAVIP Page
√ Apply to join the Bali Amazon Seller retreat – https://theaustralianseller.com/bali (tell them Mike from Global From Asia sent ya)  – anyone want to travel w Mike from Singapore or Thailand?
√ Chris’s podcast – https://theaustralianseller.com
√ Our Cross Border Summit early bird wrapping up – https://2023.crossbordersummit.com

√ Visit our GFA partner – Mercury – for US banking solutons for your ecommerce businesss
√ Visit our GFA partner – Casia Cross Better Logistics – for your logistics needs

Thank you Chris & Regina for being on the show, and thank you everybody for listening in.

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[00:00:00] Episode 400 of Global from Asia. It’s great content talking about product launch, and there’s a cat right here.

Let’s tune into the shoe. Welcome to the Global from Asia Podcast, where the daunting process of running an international business is broken down into straight up actionable advice. And now your host, Michael Michel. It’s episode 400, we got a treat for you. [00:00:30] My friend and regular guest, Chris Thomas, the Australian seller, and Regina is here and they’re doing an awesome event in Bali, Indonesia in June.

So it’s a great excuse to get them on the show and sharing a course about this amazing event that’s coming up. As well as to share about product launch in 2023. Chris has done a little private session for me in the past for the Scholar Brothers brand [00:01:00] launch and now we are giving you some free info.

It’s gonna be a fun one, and also, of course, after the show, talk about Cross Border Summit as well. But today we’re focusing on is Bali retreat June 18th to 22nd. Regina will share about it in the interview. Let’s. Tune in. All right. We have Tommy, the sales manager at Cross Better Logistics. How are you Tommy?

Hi, and hi. We just got to meet here in Shenzhen, China. It’s great. Uh, they support the show at Global from Asia and we also use [00:01:30] them ourself for many of our brands and e-commerce businesses. And Tommy really cares. They always are, uh, trying to help us save money, you know, not, you have some products you keep for us in China.

You have some products you keep for us in the US warehouse and, uh, Really appreciate that. And you’ll, you can talk to this seller, right? You can give them your advice. You work with many Chinese sellers a lot, right? And, uh, you can help, um, help the sellers [00:02:00] understand more. Yeah. We are very professional for the treatment to USA and Canada.

Also, we have warehouse in USA and Canada. We can have our factories, supplies, service for the shipment. Yes. Yeah, yeah. For the e-commerce. East. Yep. And you even keep stuff, uh, in China too. So sometimes if you have the limitations about sending too much to Amazon, you can keep it here in China with, with, uh, cross Better.

Or you can send of course to the US [00:02:30] warehouse. They have many different options and they’re always trying their best to find, uh, find out what’s the best solution for you. So definitely talk to Tommy, talk to Cross Better. And thank you for your, uh, Support of the community. Yes, we have good pricing and better service.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. Thank you everybody for choosing to listen to Cold Formia. I think this is gonna be episode 400 cuz we’re discussing the order. So this might be in the 400th episode. Wow. Yeah, [00:03:00] I think it will be. We’ve been discussing when to put this one out and I think it’s 400. So it’s a amazing, it’s a, it’s a great one.

Chris has been on at least twice. I think at least twice before I know he’s been at least, at least, you know, over the years. So it’s great to have Chris here and Regina. So today we’re talking about product launch, but first we got some cool stuff about, about, uh, amazing. Experience, right. Event or experience.

So maybe Regina, you wanna introduce yourself or? Sure. [00:03:30] Hi Mike. For those who don’t know me on your call, my name is Regina Peter Bergs. I’m a, I’ve been an Amazon seller since 2015, so quite a while. Been around the block a few times and one of the most amazing things that I did when I first started and, and reached a level of success.

So it took me 14 months to do my first million dollars. But sort of in that time, I started going to events and masterminds and meeting people who were far more successful [00:04:00] than me, but I was traveling to America and Mexico and it was, you know, quite a inexpensive exercise from Australia. And so a couple of years ago, Chris and I decided to do something similar in Australia.

And we did two and we called them the Amazon Collective Mastermind Retreat, and we did two last year here in Melbourne. And this year in little bit over five weeks time, I think it is, depending on when this [00:04:30] episode goes out. We’re actually holding our first international one in in Bali. So this is a working holiday, I guess, with far more emphasis on the work than the holiday, but it’s an opportunity for higher level sellers to work on their business.

And mingle with other high level sellers, plus some amazing international guests that we have this year. Mm-hmm. I first must mention our fabulous [00:05:00] sponsors at and Intrepid Advisory who are part of the reason we’re able to. To make this happen. Guests for this event, Bradley Sutton, whom most people in the Amazon space know Kirsty Verti, who is my personal inspiration for getting to Amazon.

And in fact, during our event will be her 10 year anniversary of selling, uh, on Amazon. So, and she actually started her business in Bali, so it’s gonna be a very nice circle for her. And she’s bringing her [00:05:30] husband, who is a seven figure seller himself, and apparently is getting a lot into the AI bots and how they work for Amazon sellers.

So he’s got some. Some content around that. Mm-hmm. We’ve got the king of launching and ranking, aside from Chris Leo Scoo, who is, you know, I’ve known Leo for very long time, and he is always been at the cutting edge of what’s going on with launching. And this time he’s gonna be talking about influences and using [00:06:00] influencers to help propel your brand and user generated content.

Mm-hmm. Uh, who, who? Steve Simonson. Oh, and of course the gentleman of the e-commerce space, Steve Simonson, and what he doesn’t know about e-commerce is not worth knowing. I mean, Steve, I I sort of think that, and, you know, we can confirm this when we see him in Bali, that, you know, the minute they put the on switch on the internet, he headed the first website selling stuff ready to go.

So he’s, he’s been in the e-commerce space [00:06:30] for a very long time. Including Amazon and he’s in the big box stores. He’s got a massive operation himself selling online, and as I said, like what he doesn’t know. Is not worth knowing. And I think at the moment he’s also into the AI time space and his passion is really helping entrepreneurs to grow.

Yeah. And so he’s, he’s as I said, like a real gentleman. So even though he doesn’t need to do anything, he basically spends his time these days giving back and helping entrepreneurs [00:07:00] achieve the next level. So, you know, getting into a room. With those guys. Oh, plus of course we’ve got, uh, George, Mariso.

Mariso. Mariso. Marisa. Marissa. Marissa, thank you Chris. Yeah. From Clear Ads, who is a PPC specialist. So, you know, we’ve, we’ve got people that are able to help you to level up your business, whether you are a, you know, a six figure seller wanting to go up to seven or a seven figure seller going up to eight.

So that’s, that’s our event. And of course with these [00:07:30] events, the real stuff happens, you know, in the room when you’re meeting and talking to other people at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner, you know, it’s not just the speakers, it’s the other, the other participants in the room and making those long-term relationships.

You know, most of the, the guests that we’ve had at the last event and at this one were people that I have personally met at events that I’ve done in the past, and, you know, and that there’s, it’s invaluable forming those relationships for both business and personal. Great. There you go. There’s my spiel.

That’s good. Come join us. Awesome. What [00:08:00] are the dates, Regina? What were the dates you did? The dates are the 18th. Mm-hmm. So it’s Sunday, the 18th, and we start in the evening with cocktails and we finish on Thursday the 22nd of June, and we finish with lunch. Excellent. What else? So we have three and a half days.

Most of those are in session. We do have a couple of secret surprises off, you know, off the offsite activities. Yeah. Very exciting Bali centric activities that are going [00:08:30] to help to bond the EU with your fellow participants. And we do. We don’t record anything. The event is not recorded, you know, so what happens in Bali stays in Bali.

What else? Excellent. We’ve got transfers are included. That’s it. Yes. So, you know, pretty much what we expect is for people to show up with their laptop and a positive attitude and intention to learn. And we provide pretty much everything else. Accommodation, food, um, transfers, [00:09:00] you know, transfers your flights.

But, but that’s sort of more details if people are interested. You know, the website is the australian seller.com/bali and they can apply and we can talk to them to see if it’s, you know, if it is more appropriate for your business at this time to come join us because we do have, you know, limited numbers.

There’s only five spots still available as of this recording, so if it is something that you might be interested in, hit the reply button and we’ll jump on a [00:09:30] call and chat to you to see if it’s right for you. Perfect. It’s really exciting. Nice one. Here we go. That was well done. That was a, that’s a great, I think I’ve done this before.

You’re, that was awesome. Cool. And then Chris. Chris, I mean, I’ve known, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people remember you from the shows, but the Australian seller. Podcast you were up in Hong Kong for a bit where we got to hang out a couple times, which is fun. And we did, that’s where we met. I was living there for a couple of [00:10:00] years.

I was just passing through basically like many Hong Kong, you know, expats and uh, I was there as a trailing spouse as they’re known. So I was looking after the kids, while my wife at the time had a high power job with the company called Telstra, which is an Australian telco. Nice. So, yeah. And that was where.

Having left Australia, I left behind a high powered job running an agency. It was all about SEO and advertising, online advertising and stuff like that. And I was stressing out and hated it. I didn’t hate it, but I was, you know, I was a bit bit high pressured and so it was really lovely to get to Hong Kong and then actually [00:10:30] work on my commerce business and grow that into something that was pretty substantial by the time I left Hong Kong.

And certainly continued to grow when I got back to Australia. And you know, like a lot of people I wanted to give back a bit. And so that’s when the podcast began in 2017. And, Began to build a community on Facebook and, you know, just been around the joint, just, you know, helping people. And I’ve got a little agency here in Australia as well called Atmosphere, and I help Australian and international consumer brands to sell on Amazon.

So yeah, I’m in the trenches most days [00:11:00] with, you know, what’s going on there. Yeah, I, I, I, I, I’ve been calling it gladi, I call it gladiator, you know, in the trenches. Yeah, the were e-commerce gladiators hundred percent in, in the Amazon arena, you know, like mm-hmm. It’s definitely never a dull day. Never dull day.

No. Awesome. Mm-hmm. And so thanks, thanks for having me too, Marcus. It’s great to be back. Of course. Sorry. Of course. We’re, we’ll go back a long time. Go ahead. [00:11:30] I was just gonna say we, you know, jump into some tactics, some strategies. Stephen, I’m interested to hear about launching in 2023. You know, it’s not like, it’s not like, you know, when we’re all older sellers here, we miss the old day.

At least I, I’ll speak myself, but we missed the, I missed the old days. I don’t know if you, uh, the old days, the good old gray hat days. Mm. But you know, I [00:12:00] think, yeah, I think things have changed a lot. It’s, it’s almost like hoping and praying, and I don’t even, I don’t know if you want to talk, maybe we can talk about it later, but I feel like some sellers are dirty.

You know, I feel like some of these reviews we get are not, are not real. There’s negative reviews. I, I don’t know. I, I, I don’t think they’re real customers giving me some low ratings. Honestly. Uh, I don’t want to get into that. Maybe it’s truly a, a real customer, but I feel like some of these reviews are not legit personally.

Yeah, they can, they can definitely sync a [00:12:30] product launch from the get-go. It can make it really difficult to get going if things aren’t going right. So I’ve got a couple of little strategies around that, which we can talk about today as well. Sure. Maybe later we can talk about that. Yeah. But yeah. Let’s, so, you know, product launch 2023.

What’s, what’s the, what’s the, what are the hacks? Oh no, there are no hacks. It’s still hard work. Well, obviously I’m just gonna talk today about the white hat ways that we launch our brands and our brand. You know, the brands that we look after and their products, including our own [00:13:00] products. So, and I have a lot of students as well, so I do a lot of private coaching, and so I help them with the launches that they have for their products that they’ve selected and sourced and whatnot.

I think the, probably the number one thing that I would say before we ever get into product launching is that if you are going to launch a product, and you’d be crazy not to, is to set the max order quantity in your inventory. So that’s the maximum amount that someone can buy from you to like two units, three max.

Like I have a checklist of launch [00:13:30] stuff and the first thing that I always insist needs to happen is that the max order quantity is, has a limit. The reason for that and why is that, Chris? Do you have personal experience with that? I might have some personal experience with that. Regita having lost, what, 45,000 bucks in 45 minutes where people just ordered?

I had a, I had a coupon code back in the old days. Which we’re not talking about today. Back in the old days. Yeah. How old? We used to use coupon code codes to launch, and I’ve forgotten to add a max order quantity. It’s actually a slightly different [00:14:00] story to that, but, uh, people were just buying like a hundred units at a time and I lost $53,000 of inventory in 45 minutes.

Managed to get Amazon to cancel a few hundred units. These are $60 products by the way, and, and eventually it ended up being, I think it was 398 products at 60 bucks each. So I did the mass 42 grand plus. Amazon FBA fees to ship all these free products to the nasty people that pick them up for free. So, max auto quantity, two, three tops just to stop any bleeding or, or [00:14:30] limit some of the damage that may or may not happen during a launch if you’re going super aggressive.

Uh, first tip. Now what I’d like to do is a two-step launch at the moment. So what that involves is getting your first reviews through Vine, so your inventory arrives at Amazon as soon as it gets there. You open up the listing for a few days. Generally it takes maybe up to a week to to, so that fine reviewers can actually get the product.

The listing needs to be open for a vine reviewer to be able to [00:15:00] get hold of the product and have it shipped to them. All right? The maximum amount of vine reviews that you can obtain on your listing or for your product is 30. Okay. And at the moment, there’s a limit of like 200 vine reviews that you can have in total.

But, uh, yeah, I usually offer, recommend about 30 units with vine reviews. And as soon as all those vine reviews or most of them have been claimed, I’ll shut the listing down to preserve what’s known as the honeymoon period. Okay. So I’m not sure how many of your listers know about honeymoon period. I’m sure many do, but some believers, some don’t believe it.

[00:15:30] You know, I guess I believe it. A hundred percent believe it. I think if the sales history of a product is terrible, it’s, it’s almost impossible once the product’s in a desk spiral to, to be, be able to reran it no matter what. You do it, it’s possible, but it’s very expensive. So big fan of the honeymoon. So preserve the honeymoon and then listing is closed.

You know, you still obviously have the option to re-list, and that’s what we’ll be doing. But what we’re waiting for is those reviews to come in. So Mike, you were talking about the bad reviews that come in [00:16:00] potentially from bad actors. If your product is okay, it’s a good product, then Ri Vine reviewers will be very fair, generally in their reviews.

And so you can have 30 reviews sitting there, and so your product is actually sitting at four and a half, 4, 4, 5 stars if you’re lucky, you know, to get before you even launch. So you’re not launching cold, you’re launching with a solid base of 30 reviews or thereabouts. And then that it’s at that point as those reviews begin to, to drift in, and you’ve probably got about 10 to 15 of those reviews coming in, that might take two to three [00:16:30] weeks.

It can take a while, be patient. That’s when we go for launch. And then there’s a few different ways that we can do that. So does that sound and make sense? Yeah. So maybe I’ll reiterate and then interpret and see if I see it. If I understand it correctly, but you use the line, the vine to launch, which is, you know, basically the Amazon’s own unboxing or, well, not really unboxing, but review program.

It’s like there, what we used to do before that’s [00:17:00] is now done through Amazon, through Vine, but I think most people, no Vine, but then you only let, basically, you’re only really expecting those people to, you only want those people to do the review or to buy it. So then you turn the listing off. While they’re getting it.

So that you keep that juice of the honeymoon. That’s right. And then once you get enough reviews Correct, you kind of reopen the listing, right? Yeah. And that’s when you go for lodge. So the next, this is really borrowing, I wouldn’t call it [00:17:30] borrowing, but just really building on what Bradley Sutton has talked about in the past with the Maldives honeymoon and, and the Maldives launch method.

Okay. So, What he likes to do, and this is certainly what I recommend to everybody that, that you know I’m working with is to, and this bit hurts, so we’re gonna go into the red before we go into the black. So I strongly recommend that you discount the product so it is an irresistible price. All right?

That’s super important. So if [00:18:00] your product’s 30 bucks, honestly sell a thing for 15. Like, just be cheaper than everybody else so that even though you may not have as many reviews as other people, What you are trying to do during the launch phase. I’m gonna talk about exactly how we get traffic to the listing.

There’s a few different ways, but during the launch phase, we, we need people, the conversion rate to be very high. I want to just reiterate or recap just the basics of how Amazon’s algorithm works in the most, in the three, kind of, most simplest, I guess, parts that really move the algorithm [00:18:30] velocity of sales.

Get a lot of sales in a short amount of time when you launch. Okay. That’s one thing the algorithm loves, it’s likes to see a lot of sales compared to competitors in you’re either matching or even exceeding the amount of sales that they’re getting in over a certain timeframe. Usually about eight days.

Number two, it’s a conversion rate of the listing. Okay. So Amazon’s conversion rate algorithm is, is different to say like Google. So if someone orders, let’s say you get one order and someone orders two products, and why are they’re getting two products, Mike? [00:19:00] Because. You’ve set the max order quantity to two, the conversion rate is 200%.

I know it sounds weird, but Amazon had sort of calculates conversion rate based on the units that have been ordered, not the order itself and the fact that someone bought something. So if you can get the conversion rate nice and high, that’s a really, really good thing. And then last thing is sales through keywords.

That’s really important. I’m just gonna emphasize this again, [00:19:30] sales through keywords equals rankings. All right? Sales through keywords equals rankings. One of the benefits of Amazon, particularly when it comes to Amazon advertising, is that as, as opposed to, say, Google Ads, where there is a, like a Chinese wall, forgive the pun, between the Google Ads world, world and the SEO world, the the algorithm, the organic search results.

With Amazon, it’s all blended together. So [00:20:00] where this is heading is, is that you generate a master keyword list for your listing. You should have done that when you optimize the listing and at the beginning. So you’ll have a, a master keyword list. It’s probably about anywhere between maybe 10 to sort of 30 keywords that are highly relevant to what your product is.

What you wanna do is grab 10, no more than 10 of those keywords. These are kind of seed keywords. They all typically are very tightly related to what your product does or is. You wanna select those keywords, [00:20:30] they are gonna be your exact match keywords for your advertising, for an exact match sponsored products campaign.

That’s it. All right, so we’re bidding on 10 keywords. Amazon is gonna have the suggested bids for each of those keywords. You know, it might be a dollar to 15, or it might be a $2 30 or something. You wanna double those key, those bid amounts. So whatever Amazon suggests, you double it. And the other thing that you wanna set up in your advertising as well is the bid plus or the bid multiplier.

And you need to [00:21:00] set that to a hundred percent. Now, what that’s gonna do is it’s gonna guarantee that your product is gonna show at the top of Amazon for your best keywords, most relevant keywords for that product. Okay, so here’s what’s happening. Let’s draw a little picture. We’ve got customers going to Amazon.

They’re typing in highly relevant keywords for your product. They see your ad at the top of the search results not buried somewhere else. They see you’ve got 30 reviews [00:21:30] and you’re probably half price of everybody else. What the hell are they gonna do? They’re gonna buy your product. They’re just gonna buy it like you don’t give any choice.

So what that does is you get the sales through your core group of keywords, you get the sales velocity that you’re after you get the conversion rate that you want. And you’re getting sales through the keywords as they come through the ads, and you put all that together, and I guarantee in eight days you are gonna rank for all those keywords and you’re gonna rank for a bunch of other keywords that are [00:22:00] kind of related.

Amazon gives you an opportunity, it sort of starts ranking you for other keywords that are related to your core group of keywords, these 10 keywords or so that you’re bidding on. And I’ve done this so many times and it works every single time. So that’s my number one ranking strategy. It is expensive.

But you know, in 12 months time when that that product’s a runaway success, you’ve locked the rankings in. See a lot of, lot of sellers make the mistake of they, they launched with an automatic [00:22:30] campaign. All right? What happens there is that if you do that, and this is what I used to do, you launch with an automatic campaign.

All of a sudden you start getting these sales through keywords that are kind of unrelated to what the product is, and I’m sure we’ve all seen it. If you’re looking at your search chain report and your auto campaign, you’ll see that you get weird sales through strange keywords and Amazon’s like going, well, you’re kind of relevant for that kind of weird keyword over here, and you’re sort of relevant for these ones that you’re probably should be relevant for.

But customers are buying through these different keywords. You always get these random sales through irrelevant keywords, and [00:23:00] that just kills you, I reckon, in long term. So don’t go hunting for keywords right at the beginning of your launch. You do that later once you’ve locked the algorithms, locked you in as that bunch of keywords and some and related keywords to, to that core list.

Super important. Got it, got it. So, yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it does. It does. I guess for the red and the, the bleeding, you know, what kind of. I know you probably won’t be cheaper than all of your, all of ’em, but any, maybe not. I don’t make [00:23:30] ’em buy, not think about it, but any, any kind of rule of thumb percent loss or discounts or, well, you’ve got two things going on cost-wise.

You’ve got the discount that you’re offering and you’ve also got the advertising, and then you’ve gotta also probably throw in some vine as well. You know, you’ve got $200 to enroll in Vine to get your first set of reviews, plus you’re giving away all of, you know, the 30 products as well, plus the F B A costs on top.

So there’s a lot of red ink at the beginning of the launch. What’s super important is that as you, as you are, so you should be tracking your rankings on your core group of [00:24:00] keywords, this master list to see where do I, where you ranking. So Helium 10, there’s a bunch of ranking tools out there that’ll do it for you.

But what, what you don’t wanna do is then go, okay, after eight days, I’m ranking everywhere. This is fantastic. And then suddenly go from a $15 product to a $30 product. Get up to where you want to be. You know where your R R P actually probably needs to be to be profitable. The reason for that is because Amazon’s gonna take away the buy box and that’s gonna kill you straight away.

So you need to, as the rankings start to flow through and you start to see climbing [00:24:30] up onto page one, top five, top 10, it’s at that point that you need to start inching the price up. So I generally go by a couple of dollars per day, depending on the price of the product. You know, if it’s, if it’s a hundred dollars product and I’m at 50 bucks, I can probably afford to jump, maybe, you know, 10%, 15%, up to maybe 60 bucks, something like that.

And just sort of every couple of days just keep inching it up, but keep an eye on the buy box because Amazon will suppress it and you won’t have the featured off a box. So, and then you just creep up to your target. [00:25:00] And then it’s at that point as well that I start to do a lot more broad advertising. So, you know, I’ll be opening up like a phrase, match campaign, a broad match campaign, an automatic campaign with super low bids.

And, and and really allowing the organic sales to, to, to really pick up the heavy or do the heavy as much of the heavy lifting as possible. And then winding back all of those really expensive bits that were all happening in the exact match campaign. I’m winding all those right back to something that’s a hell a lot more sustainable from an ACOs or a point of view.[00:25:30]

So, you know, trying to get you, yeah, that sort of classic Taos, you know, around that sort of 10 to 12 at at worst or maybe at cost at 20%. Look, it just depends on the profitability of the product. So you’ve gotta work those numbers out for yourself. But ideally what you’re doing is that you’re advertising, remember the sales through the keywords, you’re still getting a few of those.

And what they do is they help maintain the ranking positions that you enjoyed when you, when you launched. Okay. Makes sense. So you know, there’s that. And then of course, The [00:26:00] classic influencer approach as well, and there’s lots of people at as, as Regina mentioned, you know, Leo Segovia talks a lot about influencer marketing.

In one of our previous events as well, we had, we had Norm Farra and also Paul Barron is a big TikTok advertising guy. Um, definitely reach out to Paul if you need help. Paul Harvey’s another great resource as well. Good friend of Regina’s. Hopefully we’ll be coming to one of our next collective events too.

I keep trying, I keep trying to get hubs to come. He’s great. He’s an amazing, he’s a weapon, isn’t he? [00:26:30] May, maybe next time I’ll convince him. Yeah, come on. But yeah, so influencer marketing, you know, is a really, is also a great way of doing, doing it as well, as long as you find the right influencers. Now, I’m not an expert in influencer marketing and I’m probably not the right person to speak to, so I’d probably recommend Mike, that you find somebody like a Paul Harvey or, or a Leo to come on the show and, and really talk about all the strategies.

That’s why I’m going to Bailey to learn from Leo and understand more about influencer marketing and how it might apply to my Amazon business. So, but the influencers are [00:27:00] awesome. Of course. I strongly recommend too that everybody has an insert card. You try to build your own audience. You know, you’re trying to get people from Amazon, so they’ve ordered your product, they’ve got an insert card, there’s a Call of Act, call to action on that insert card to either register for a warranty or lots of different ways that you can encourage people to sign up to your list.

And that makes the launch much easier in the future because they’re your audience. You’re not having to use an Amazon advertising campaign and an influencer that you might be paying. Paul Harvey last year though, did talk about how he shares the brand [00:27:30] referral bonus with his influencers, which is pretty cute.

So he, he might say, look, I’m gonna give you Brenda Darling. Paul Barron. Sorry. Oh, Paul Harvey. I’m sorry. Paul Barron. Paul Barron. I apologize. Convinced. Thank you Regina. Mixing up. Mixing up your Pauls. I am, I’m so sorry. Thanks. I’m so glad you’re here with me. Sorry. Yeah, Paul Barron, the way that he makes his influencers really come to the party in terms of promoting his product for launch.

Oh, just a, a boost during some sale event or whatever, is that he offers them the brand [00:28:00] referral bonus that Amazon provides having registered for the brand referral bonus. So he might say, look, I’ll give you a hundred, 500 bucks flat rate, and any sales that you generate, you get the brand referral bonus of an extra 10%.

And that that is a really incentivizing offer for an influencer as well. I thought that was a bit of gold golden gem out of our last collective base. Yeah, so attribution is obviously if you, if you’re running traffic from outside of Amazon, then you wanna be tracking it. For your return on investment and attribution and understanding how [00:28:30] that traffic’s performing.

And that can all be done through either Amazon a attribution, creating the special links that you’ll see in the back end of your advertising camp world or indeed through the brand referral bonus section as well. So make sure you sign up for that. Get a free 10% every, you know, do a million dollars in sales.

You get a hundred thousand dollars back. Happy days, right? Some of the other things that we’ve done as well is the, this is a sort of a little known one as a social promotion. Which is a bit hit and miss, but it’s certainly something that you can think about a little bit. Kind of. [00:29:00] It’s kinda where you generate a, a social media promotional link through the promotion section of the advertising area of your seller central account, and make sure that you include actual Amazon influencers as well in that group so that they are notified of your campaign.

This, this discount that you’re offering. And that can really help with things like Amazon Lives and, and other social media influencers that Amazon has in its world. I say that’s a bit hit and miss because not all social influencers on Amazon are gonna pick [00:29:30] up your offer. They just might not be attractive enough to them.

So sometimes you’ve gotta submit it again and again to, to try and get someone to bite. But they’ve seen those work really well. Bradley Sutton’s a big fan of that. What else have I got in my bag of tricks? Ah, product targeting ads as well. That’s another way that I launched a product recently for one of my clients.

They, they sold candy, like bags of candy. Really boring, but you know, tasty. And we were able to create a two pound bag, [00:30:00] sorry, three pound bag of candy that had the same ingredients as one of main competitors, which had a two pound bag. They were selling their two pound bag at. 25 bucks and we could still make a profit selling them for 19 point 95.

So what we, they had 24,000 reviews and we had none. Mm-hmm. So we went after them. I, I put a, put a correct big product targeting ad right on their listing and just said, we’re offering more value. We had big three pounds written [00:30:30] on the front of the bag, pretty nice, and people could see that it had the same ingredients and it just took off just off the back of the traffic that they had or on their listing already.

That’s right. So yeah, if you’re offering better value and stuff like that, and certainly during launch you should be. Yeah, we, we, and we got that product ranking beautifully just off the velocity and the keyword optimization on the listing. I remember you did a private, we did a private session, if you remember, for our, our blimp program.

We did. That’s right. That was showing that one. That was great. [00:31:00] Yeah, that was a, that was a fun launch. So, but I think those, you got any questions I’m kind of running out of, of launch tech? No, I’m sure there are many others. I mean, I can clarify or, or sometimes reiterate, but maybe I, just to go back to the social promotion, so that helps tap into the Amazon influencers automatically, or you still gotta find them and reach out to them?

I didn’t get, no, it actually. Amazon not, I believe, cause I’m not an influencer, so I don’t know what happens exactly. Happens on the other side of creating these promotional code [00:31:30] codes. But there is a little checkbox there that says, do you want to let Amazon influencers know about this promotion? And of course you leave that well and truly checked.

And what you’re hoping is that you know, somebody who’s like a a, a Facebook Live. You know, man, woman, person, you know, picks it up. So I sees it. I’m not sure how they’re notified about it, but I’m sure they are. Yeah. And, and shares it, you know, actually promotes your product for you. Got it. So that, yeah. So that can [00:32:00] be really cool as well because they get paid, you know, if they, the more they sell their, their associates, right.

Yeah, so they make their two, 2% commission generally on any sales that they generate. As Paul was saying from Paul Barron, you know, they get 2% affiliate commission as well as a 10% brand feral bonus that you’re offering. That’s just like five times what they normally get. That’s just, you know, irresistible to an influencer, so, Hmm.

And Amazon, Amazon’s paying. Mm-hmm. You’re not paying. Yeah. That’s amazing. But once, I [00:32:30] think that’s like a unique information. Very unique. It is. It’s unbelievable. Yeah. But you know, the, the, the flip side of this, of course, is the reason that Amazon does that is because that’s a part of Amazon’s customer acquisition driver, right?

They want external traffic. They want you to drive new customers to their platform to buy stuff and become their customers. So, you know, that’s the, that’s the way to do it. When I was up actually on the Gold Coast in Australia [00:33:00] recently, I, I also got to talking with, with Tim Jordan and the team there from Carbon Six and they were talking about picks their pixel.

Me, I think it, is it Pixel Fire Me or Pixel Me? Yeah. Tool as well. They do a lot of launching using that particular strategy, using influencers, uh, strongly recommend that you either get Tim or Clayton. Clayton Atchison. On the show to talk about how that launch method works, cuz it’s really, really powerful.[00:33:30]

And you get to cookie all these, all, you know, like all the influencers that they reach out to, influencers, they do all the things I was talking about. But they give the influencer a, a special link that they generate through the software that they have. And what that does is that they, when someone clicks that link to, you know, visit an Amazon product page, it drops a cookie.

And that cookie then brings that audience member, you know, the influencers fan. [00:34:00] They then have access to be able to advertise to that fan later. So they’re kind of stealing the influencers kind of audience. Using the, the tracking pixel. Just some really, really high level stuff that’s probably gone a little bit over my head, but yeah, it certainly looked really powerful.

So, yeah. Well, like maybe we could, interesting bucket, maybe we bucket some of these to, to help listeners and us it’s different categories, right? So generally you’re, you’re kind of. What you’ve been sharing mostly is the, on Amazon launch. That’s right. [00:34:30] Tactics. Mm-hmm. Influencers is like more of an off Amazon strategy.

Mm-hmm. But then you also kind of got me interested in social promotion. I don’t think, honestly, I have a couple people on our team doing stuff now. I, I’m not as in the ops, so I have to check if we’re doing that, but I have a feeling not so I, but that team seems like, kind of like a mix cuz you’re using Amazon influencers.

Network. That’s right. So I gotta study. Yeah, I’d like to learn more about it as well. Certainly how influencers are even kind of find out about promotions that we might be [00:35:00] offering. I’m on, I’m on Amazon, so actually I don’t know if, I don’t know if you think it helps or not, but I do on, I do my own video boxing as an influencer and I hope, I hope I don’t get in trouble at Amazon.

I don’t think so, but I use my buyer account influencer. To leave unboxing video for a lot of my products. I also do it for other people’s products too, just because I like to help ’em, but I’m an influencer. Mm-hmm. In Amazon, and I can put videos on the listing, so I That’s cool. If you look at some [00:35:30] listings I’ve done or.

Even friends books like Tor did that book writing Amazon Wave. Yeah. If you check out the, the reviews, I’m the only video on the whole thing. Yeah, that’s, that’s very clever. So they can leave reviews as a influencer and, uh, on listings. And I, I, I don’t know, I, I’m always scared with Amazon, but I don’t think it t os against t os, but I do it for my own products that I’m a seller of.[00:36:00]

Yeah. I’m thinking you’re probably getting away with that because you are, I guess, a registered type of influence. I’m not sure if we’re registered is the right. Yeah. I mean, I’ve been a reviewer, I’ve been a reviewer myself, my, as a buyer for books and products for years. Mm-hmm. And I, I qualify for an influencer program and I have a backend for it as a buyer.

And then I, I do videos, they review ’em, the Amazon proves ’em, and they show up on the listings. Uh, it’s not as a sellers, as a buyer, Oh, of course. You know, there, there’s also that [00:36:30] Amazon influencer program. Have you, did you mention that, Chris, where it’s, it’s, it’s not off Amazon. It’s actually, you know, that Amazon, those Amazon live feeds and there are quite a few influences including Norm, you know, you know Norm for us sort of.

Just doing some of that. Thank you. So, so that, that, that’s an opportunity to, to find, you know, it’s, it’s a live feed that Amazon’s got going all the time. Mm-hmm. You can get your product into the hands of one of those influencers. And there are some companies that actually do it where you pay them. [00:37:00] But there are also plenty of, you know, up and coming Amazon influencers who will do it for the, you know, for the exposure and for the free product.

That’s right. Uh, so that’s a, you know, something that’s worth a try if you wanna send out one or two products and, and see how it goes. Yeah. So that’s actually on Amazon, but it’s using an influencer, so it’s a bit of a. A blame best of both worlds, right? Yeah. Yeah. Tim Jordan was also talking about during one of his presentations sort of on this, Regina sort of was to find Amazon Associates at and who their big influences were in [00:37:30] your niche.

So let’s say that you were gonna launch, I don’t know, a camping chair or something. What, what he does is he goes to YouTube and he types in camping chair. Which is, yeah, the product or camping equipment or something. And then he also, in the search term, uses the, the a keyword, which is AMZ tk or to, or something like that.

It’s like, basically it’s the, the Amazon influencer link. Yeah. You know what? This is Mike. Yeah, yeah. I can’t remember exactly what the link is, but [00:38:00] it’s just a shortened link for Amazon, I think. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what he does is he, he’ll search on, on Google, Google, YouTube, search on YouTube to look for all the video reviews of people reviewing camping equipment that are Amazon affiliates or associates already, because they’ve got their links in their descriptions, right?

And so then he can quickly go, ah, this person has. 5,000 subscribers or 10,000, you know, whatever. So he can quickly go through and work at and identify who he wants to reach out to [00:38:30] with the brand referral bonus. Here’s a brand referral bonus if you promote my thing on, you know, an unbox it or whatever.

And so he drives a lot of traffic from YouTube onto his listings as well. Sorry, all this stuff’s coming back to me as we talk about it. Great. That’s great. Yeah. Yeah. And then I’ve heard that strategy, so I don’t. You know, I think it was mayor, my friend, he says he contacts once, it just has an update the back link on the video or add his link.

Yeah, that can be done too. You don’t even need to make a new [00:39:00] video. You just have to add your link. Maybe even sometimes, A lot of times they’re dead links because those products are no longer available. Yeah, and the YouTuber doesn’t even know that those products are not available. So you find those dead links and then just contact them and say, Hey, that guy’s product’s out, but I, this is my product and I’ll also give you like a BR brand for a bonus, or commissions on top.

So then they don’t even have to make a new video. They just change. Change the changing up a link description. Yeah. Yeah. So you could just [00:39:30] edit the, the link that keeps on giving right. Of that. How does that, I know because then, because there are like chrome extensions and stuff where you can actually scan a page to see if, you know, if any, any links to 4 0 4, you know, page not found.

So I don’t know if he, I don’t know if he had, I dunno think that’ll work actually that, but I mean, he was just seeing some top YouTube videos of proxy he sold and, but I think it’s a high percent. Because you know how Amazon is, people take products offline or outta stock or whatever. Or you could just say, add mine as an [00:40:00] additional one.

Keep theirs. Just, why not give ’em another, like, link another product, like an alternative, another option. Mm-hmm. So you don’t, you don’t have to compete. You just say, Hey, why not? You just get more chances to make money or you know, like as an affiliate. Well, this is awesome. I think we got, we’re a little bit at time, but you know, I think we covered a lot that we wanted to.

Maybe we just wrap up, just a recap. Maybe Regina also can. Just share again, the Australian seller.com/bali, b a l i and yeah. June for the month. 20 [00:40:30] 18th. 18th. 18th to the 22nd. Yep. So if you’re flying in, you wanna arrive around into Bali Airport sort of by at the latest early afternoon to make sure you’ve got time to get to the resort and do up for welcome drinks.

Nice. And then plan on leaving. In the afternoon of Thursday the 22nd, and come and learn not just from experts like Chris, but other fantastic sellers and our V [00:41:00] I P international guests who have got, you know, I don’t know how many years have we put it all together, but decades of experience that can help you level up your, your business and your brand.

At whatever level you are now, you, you pretty much guarantee, you know, in the next 12 months you’ll yeah. More than get your investment back in terms of, you know, relationships and tips and tricks and ideas and, and [00:41:30] personal and business growth that you’ll get from, from joining us in Bali. For sure. And if, if the people you know, if listen for the show, let ’em know that, that I, you know, that you heard from Global Meia.

Yeah. Look, well, when, when we talk to you, we always, one of our first questions we ask is, where did you hear about the event? So absolutely. Please make sure you let us know that you heard about the event through Mike’s so through this podcast. Yeah, and then I, I know some friends are in Thailand. We’re discussing coming, so maybe if somebody’s listening wants to go with us, fly with us, let [00:42:00] us know.

We can arrange travel together from Thailand, be amazing, or Singapore, that’d be awesome. Some people. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don’t think I have a direct flight, so I might. Meet some others. Oh, you’ve gotta go by the direct flights from Bangkok to Bali. No, I’m in chain Mai, so I’m on, I’m a, through Mai, I mean through Bangkok or Singapore, but I might do Singapore because I have quite a few friends there now to meet up.

Okay. Nice, nice. Well that’s, that’s a wrap. Really, really appreciate having you both [00:42:30] back and our region the first time. But Chris, Regular hearing. Oh, thank you. It’s been such, such a pleasure. Thank you so much. Yeah, it’s great. All right, and appreciate this. It’s been amazing. Thanks. Thanks, Mike. All the hacks.

Good to catch up, man. Cheers. Take care everybody. And thank you to our sponsor, our returning sponsor, mercury.com online bank, while Real Bank, welcome to a totally online for us, our Blimp program. Participants are going through this as well. Thank you, mercury. Travis is great there. It’s been on our show, it’s been in our events.

We’re gonna have another event [00:43:00] where we will have them attending. As well. And if you wanna get a little bonus for you and us, if you sign up and do some special circumstances, you can go to global information.com/mercury. I also have a video tutorial that we use, even for the blimp. People use the same exact video to learn how to use it.

Oh, I hope you can check it out totally free. Why not? It’s you there. Hey Maggie. Hi. All right. That’s my daughter, Maggie, big girl. So thank you Chris and Regina for sharing. [00:43:30] I’m excited for Bali. Oh, she’s got the cat. She got ’em, got her. So Girl Cat here at my house, actually. So I hope you enjoyed that. I got a lot of valuable info.

Thank you, Chris. He’s done some private ones for us, some public ones for us. Gave amazing hacks and strategies about launching within, mostly in Amazon, which I think a lot of us here. Are interested in. We’ll also have this at global [00:44:00] major.com/product launch 2023, so you can get this in video, audio transcribed and others.

So I really appreciate that and also hope to get you in Bali. It’s gonna be a small, little quaint. Retreat with some top people in the industry, and of course further out is our cross border summit in November two day event here in Chang. Mai might meet my daughter too and she’ll probably be hanging out at these [00:44:30] events.

She may. She just get her to work. Anyway, I think that’s it for today’s show. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening. Have a great day. To get more info about running an international business, please visit her website@triplew.global from asia.com. That’s Triple w.global from asia.com. Also, be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed.

Thanks for tuning in.