Discover how Mina Elias, founder of Trivium Group, scaled his Amazon presence and built a thriving PPC agency. Learn actionable insights on optimizing your Amazon listings, managing PPC campaigns, and leveraging the latest Amazon tools to skyrocket your sales.
Listen
Watch
Mastering Amazon PPC: Insights from Mina Elias
Mina Elias shares his journey from MMA nutrition to founding Trivium Group, a leading PPC agency. Dive into his expert strategies for managing Amazon PPC campaigns and scaling your business.
Optimizing Your Amazon Listings for Maximum Conversion
Discover the step-by-step process Mina uses to optimize product listings on Amazon, including tips on main images, A+ content, and leveraging customer reviews to boost conversions.
Building a Brand That Stands Out on Amazon
Learn how to create a unique brand identity on Amazon, even in highly competitive markets. Mina explains how to differentiate your products and build a loyal customer base.
Leveraging Amazon’s Latest Tools for Success
Explore the latest tools and features Amazon offers, including subscribe and save discounts, brand promotions, and Amazon’s partnership with Meta for seamless advertising integration.
Resources From This Episode
In Conclusion
Mina Elias’s insights offer invaluable lessons for Amazon sellers. By implementing his strategies for optimizing listings, managing PPC campaigns, and leveraging the latest Amazon tools, you can significantly boost your Amazon business’s efficiency and growth. Explore the resources mentioned to further optimize your e-commerce operations.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Essentially, every other product that I can think of has evolved in some sort of way. And so for me, I’m looking to understand what is the problem that my customer is having when they’re typing in those search terms and how can I solve that problem better than everyone else? Because if I’m creating a solution to a problem, that’s better than everyone else is a beautiful way for me to stand out beyond just like.
A better price and more reviews, which sometimes you can’t have a better price than your Chinese competitor. Sometimes, you know, those other expert you know, sellers on Amazon are going to get 10 times more reviews than you. So how do you win in a market of a bunch of experts with a lot more money than you?
[00:00:37] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: All right. Welcome everybody. Today we are here with my good friend, Mina Elias, and he is one of the owners of the Trivium group.
Had him on the podcast like three years ago, which is crazy that it’s been that long and it sounds like a lot has happened in the last couple of months. Three years building a PPC agency and still doing a lot of your own private label products. So Amina, why don’t you go ahead and catch us up with what’s happened in the last three years?
[00:01:09] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah, it’s crazy. You know, cause I didn’t realize it was that long since we, you know did an episode together. But I think when we last spoke, I was still a hundred percent doing MMA nutrition, which is my supplement brand that’s still you know, running. It’s still generating me, you know, a lot of Like profits that I’m like using to spend on my life.
And, and I was just sharing with you that I’m launching a new variation. It should be going out to Amazon’s tomorrow. So I’m hoping it’s going to be delivered before January 1st. I know we’re cutting it close, but it’s going to be a six pack version of you know, my existing electrolytes. But then during that time, when we last chatted in, in you know, December of 2020, I was being tested by an aggregator.
They had hired me. To train their in house team on running ads. And they wanted to test me on one of their brands. So, you know, to show that I knew what I was talking about. So I ran one of their brands with one employee and a few months in, so around April, they showed me that I had outperformed all of the six other agencies that it hired.
I’ve got the contract to train them and whatever. So that kind of led to like a very eyeopening kind of moment of. Maybe I should be doing this, you know, professionally instead of, cause I turned a lot of people down there, you know, obviously, you know, a lot of people knew who I was and they heard everything that I talked about when it came to ads, but then I always turned people down.
I didn’t want to do too much consulting. It was taking away time and straining time for money. That was a kind of a big moment of like, okay, like. What are you doing? Like your first business, like MMA nutrition, like you started it. You didn’t know anything about business. This is legit. Like I have a personal brand.
I’m really good at something. I can add tremendous amounts of value. I’m passionate about this thing. It challenges me. It allows me to be creative. And so I decided to start the agency and that was, you know, me and one employee back then. And fast forward to. Today, December of 2023, three years later we have 82 employees, you know, running about 162 or 63 brands and, you know, it’s just like, I’m sure, as you know, every day is a new challenge dealing with a lot of people.
And I never thought that was going to be in the business of like having a big team and dealing with so many personalities, but, you know, it’s, it’s just, it’s been, you know, there’s good, there’s bad. And, and every day I kind of take it as like an opportunity to grow.
[00:03:30] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Awesome. Awesome. So, yeah, building a team to 82 people, that’s a big achievement.
It’s not easy to scale past, you know, a handful of people because you can’t control everything yourself anymore.
[00:03:43] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Exactly, exactly. And every week I realized that there, you know, it goes deeper. It’s like, okay, first, you know, you need systems and processes and you need to delegate. And then it goes deeper into, you need scorecards and career paths for employees and understand their motivations.
And then it goes deeper to, there needs to be a system of how things get done in the business in terms of like building a culture. And so. It just, it’s a, it’s crazy. Like there’s so many levels to it.
[00:04:09] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, for sure. I don’t have a team that big, but I think we’re at about 15 people right now. So I can just imagine 85 people.
It’s a lot of work. You got to have everything, all your ducks in a row, so to speak.
[00:04:22] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah, totally.
[00:04:23] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Today we’re going to dive into kind of what your thoughts are on the current state of selling on Amazon and then how someone either with a brand that, you know, maybe is not optimized at all on Amazon. Maybe it’s a brand that someone else has listed all their products on there and how they can take that And build their Amazon presence and kind of explode it.
So why don’t we start with what are your thoughts on the current state of selling on Amazon? Is it too late to get started selling on Amazon or is there still a good bit of runway yet?
[00:05:02] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah, I think there is definitely a good bit of runway and it’s just a way it’s 100 times harder than it was in 2016 and 17 and 18 where it was a lot easier to, you know, find a product to get it up on Amazon, you know, get a few reviews, start running some ads and call it a day.
Right. And you’re, you’re making money and you eventually figure it out. Those days are, are long gone. There’s, I mean, it’s, We’re still launching brands from day one on Amazon and, and they’re, you know, outperforming brands that were running that have been on Amazon for six years. And I think it comes down to like, what is the difference?
Why is it so much harder? I think Amazon has become much more sophisticated. And after COVID I realized that it pretty much everyone you know, started realizing the power of Amazon and a lot of people that used to look at Amazon, like it would devalue their brand because it was like the get things at the cheapest price place.
Became like the universal marketplace. And so they started turning towards like, okay, how can we get on Amazon? Our competitors are on it. We need to be on it. And so you see these rush of, you know, a bunch of big direct to consumer brands that have hired experts to get on Amazon. And so now they’re doing things very well and direct to consumer brands.
They’ve cracked a lot of things. The Amazon sellers haven’t like branding and messaging and ICP and that kind of stuff. And, and, you know, beautiful packaging and all that kind of stuff. And obviously all the institutional capital that came in once Drazio IPO you know, and, and everyone started, you know, hearing about Amazon brands and acquiring Amazon brands.
And so everyone essentially. Is like, okay, I want a piece of this pie. So what used to be, you know, a marketplace where there’s a nice kind of blend of like beginners some mediocre people, some, you know, average above average and some amazing people, it started getting skewed towards. You know like the average is between 80 to a hundred percent you know, on, on like an expert level.
And so if you’re, if you’re coming in like what, what does this mean for you if you’re coming in or if you’re kind of on Amazon right now and you’re wondering like, what does this mean for me? There’s no more room for error. There’s no more room for you to be like, ah, you know, it’s okay that I just have like, Premium like regular a plus content and it’s not that good and there’s a lot of text on it It’s okay that some of my images look a little bit blurry It’s okay that I haven’t optimized my title and bullet points seo in the last six months That stuff doesn’t fly anymore in my opinion.
And so you have to be very meticulous and okay And I’m not going to talk about the product. I’ll touch that in a second, but you have to be a little more meticulous in terms of my, my main image. How does it rank against the competitors? When someone is typing in keywords, when they’re looking for a solution to their problem, like they’re looking, they’re typing in electrolyte powder because they’re looking for hydration.
Does my product stand out versus the competition? Does it speak to them? Does it, you know, get them to click on that product once they’re in the listing, you know, how are the rest of the images? What about the videos? What about the title and bullet points SEO? And how’s the text there, the copywriting? You know, am I utilizing the brand story, the premium A plus content?
Does my landing page and my images sell the product? You know, just by looking at it and not needing to read a lot. It’s just, here’s why this product is better than everyone else. Here’s why this is going to solve your problem better than everyone else. You know, here’s what, how we have all of the pros of all the other competitors and none of the cons of the other competitors.
Do your reviews have images? Is all of your frequently asked questions answered already so that you can remove any of the doubt? And then obviously, you know, a couple of things I didn’t touch on, but also in the search is your price competitive? You know, do you have reviews? And the final thing that I want to touch on, which is product.
A lot of people, I think, including me have thought, okay, you’re going to create a product and you’re going to get it up on Amazon and then you’re going to sell it, you know, for four or five years. I don’t think that’s how it works. And I don’t think there’s any product on the market that’s That hasn’t evolved in the last five years, maybe chips, right?
Chips is one and waters, water bottles. Those haven’t evolved, but like essentially every other product that I can think of has evolved in some sort of way. And so for me, I’m looking to understand what is the problem that my customer is having when they’re typing in those search terms and how can I solve that problem better than everyone else?
Because if I’m creating a solution to a problem, that’s better than everyone is a beautiful way for me to. Stand out beyond just like a better price and more reviews, which sometimes you can’t have a better price than your Chinese competitor. Sometimes, you know, those other expert you know, sellers on Amazon are going to get 10 times more reviews than you.
So how do you win in a market of a bunch of experts with a lot more money than you? Like there’s Chinese factories that are making hundreds of millions of dollars that have approached me to help, you know, create. You get products like they wanted me to create an LLC, an American LLC that is, you know, going to be there like US company and get products on Amazon.
I’m like, how, how can you compete with people like that? And I mean, there’s, there’s one answer, right? Is creating a solution to a problem that’s better than everyone else. And then start looking. How do you create a moat you know, in terms of like IP, maybe, you know, patent protection, maybe, you know, certain design that you’ll, you’ll protect, you know, and protect it here and protect it in the country, country of manufacture protected in China.
So that. It’s not easy for someone to say, Oh, wow, this guy just innovated. Let me, you know, very quickly just replicate, do it at a lower cost, get more reviews than him and beat him.
[00:10:32] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah. And that’s really where to like building a brand can come into play, right? Like taking your example of water. You can’t really necessarily innovate water, but you have some brands that really stand out.
Like, I think Liquid Death is, is one of the amazing ones that just built a market for their target demographic, which is, you know, like men. And, you know, maybe people into heavy metal, rock and roll, hip hop, stuff like that. And targeting that area and building the brand is, is really important these days.
[00:11:09] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah. They, they basically wanted you to kind of look cool and look like you were drinking a beer as you were drinking water and you hit, you hit the nail on the head. I think that’s a beautiful way of branding. And I think it’s great. The other one that comes to mind is what is it called? It’s like Black Rifle Coffee, something like that.
I’m not sure, or Death Wish Coffee. It’s one of those two, but they basically created a brand around coffee and veterans. And You know, coffee is coffee, right? Like, and so one of them, I think Death Wish Coffee, they created a brand around like, you know, being that extremist, like strongest coffee ever, and Black Rifle Coffee created a brand around being like a veteran’s coffee.
And so there are very creative ways of branding. And when you mesh, you know, an innovative product with branding, I think, you know, you do create a pretty solid moat for yourself.
[00:11:58] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, it’s super important. And that’s something, you know, people want a community, especially in the United States. I just heard that, you know, the like depression levels and stuff in the United States are at an all time high.
And mostly that is because people feel disconnected. They, they don’t feel like they’re part of anything. And if you can help create that community, which is what a brand can do. If you do it right, you can really pull people in and get them dedicated to your products.
[00:12:30] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: A hundred percent. Exactly. And so when you ask is, is Amazon FBA, you know, still alive or dead, it’s alive and thriving.
It’s just a different league now. It’s, it’s a, you know, we went from an amateur league to a professional league. That’s, that’s the only difference.
[00:12:44] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, exactly. So let’s kind of take it step by step if so we are doing a lot of brand partnerships where we partner with brands that maybe have.
Successful brand and business outside of Amazon. And there somebody else has put their products on Amazon, but obviously they look like garbage and we try to help them build up those listings run ads and everything. To promote them and get them more sales on Amazon. So that’s kind of similar to what you guys are doing with Trivium groups.
Walk us through if someone comes to you and they have maybe a bad presence on Amazon, but outside of Amazon, they’ve got a good business going. What do you recommend for them? What do you do for them?
[00:13:34] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: That’s a great question. So I think the first step is we start by like benchmarking their data. And I think analytics are very important.
A lot of people to this day, I noticed. Are looking at analytics straight from Amazon. They’re looking at, you know, campaign manager data. They’re looking at business reports data, but I think it’s very important to blend all the data together. So you can have a, like kind of a holistic view on what’s going on.
So you can see like week over week changes in ad spend impressions, you know, ad sales, total sales sessions, cost per session, click through it, conversion rate, cost per click, you know, Ecos tacos, of course, and then dollar amount and profit, I think not enough people. Look on a day over day and week over week basis of what is my bottom line profit when it comes to sale price, minus Amazon fees, minus cost of goods sold, minus, you know, the ads, and then maybe a refunds also kind of worked in there.
So first thing is I come in and I benchmark the data and I’m like, okay, cool. Let’s look at the funnel and the funnel on Amazon. The way that I see it is. You are launching campaigns. You have sponsored ranking and organic ranking. What that does is it generates you impressions. Impressions is basically, you know, people seeing you on the page when they type in a search term and, and, you know, it loads and then they see you, or if they’re, you know, in, in a product detail page and then they see you.
So impressions are essentially just eyeballs. It’s, you know, people seeing you and a certain number of those impressions turn into clicks. So we look at the click through rate and we say, what can we do? You know, obviously we want to improve the. Because the more impressions means, you know, more people are going to come into the listing and more people are going to convert.
But before we do that, we’re like, what are the things that we can do to improve click through rate? We start by the main image. We go, we take the main image. We, we go to, you know, pick foo and we start split testing or like, okay, let’s take our competitors. Let’s take ours. Why are they clicking on our competitors versus ours?
Let’s change some things. Let’s add some eye candy to the image. Let’s make it very HD. Okay. 3d render let’s manipulate the label slightly so that the text is bigger it’s easier to read so that it’s in your face sugar free electrolyte hydration and it’s you know you can you can see it right away in the search you know we keep iterating and then we ab test on amazon and now we have a better main image we start playing with the price you know drop the price a little bit
[00:15:52] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: On that real quick before we move from the main image.
So with the main image, are you guys playing with the boundaries there of what Amazon allows? For example, let’s take a apple cider vinegar gummies, right? Are you guys putting like little apples? Pieces, maybe on the sides of the bottle and things like that, or what are you guys doing as far as the main image?
[00:16:17] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah, well, I’m pushing the boundaries as far as I can. And here’s the ways that I’m doing that number 1. Yes, I’m putting the apples in the side. I’m putting the gummies on the side number 2. I’m putting fake badges on the product. So let’s say, you know, the, the, it’s a bottle. I might put a badge at the top that says like, you know, from the mother, because I know that that’s an important thing.
I’m also manipulating the label. So there’s a lot of things that you put on a, on a product label. Like for example, like I’m looking at this, you know, Mentos chewing gum. There’s a lot of like small stuff on there really like might not be as necessary. So I’m putting like, you know, pure fresh breath. With green tea extract in really big letters So that you know people are seeing that and it’s probably it’s not what it’s gonna What it’s gonna look like when it comes into the mail But it’s such a small difference that you’re not gonna remember and then to take it even a step further sometimes I’m also putting a fake box and That box is pretty much real estate for me to put text on so that Instead of you just seeing a, you know, a bottle on the shelf of Amazon, you’re seeing now a bottle with a sign next to it in that box.
I’ll manipulate the box to the text on the box to say, you know, some benefits. And so when someone goes and scans through the listings and says, okay, which one should I click on? They’re looking at the main image. They’re trying to say like, is this the right thing for me? And then they go to mine and then they see, you know, all these pop outs of saying, yeah, like this is the right thing for you.
Here’s the benefits. Here’s what it is. Here’s the main keyword. Here’s like a couple of things that make it more attractive than these other listings. So we’re definitely pushing the boundary and trying to stand out, you know, in the crowd.
[00:18:01] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: So that’s interesting. So you’re even if the product doesn’t come in a box, you’re adding a box to the image anyways, and you’ve never had any issues with customers on that?
[00:18:11] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: No, no. And I’m also kind of like on this thought process of like, if they ever catch it and say, Hey, like, you know, you don’t have a box, then we’ll say, Oh, sorry, this is an old image. We’ll update it. You know what I mean? Okay. But so far we haven’t, haven’t had really any issues. And we do anticipate at some point, you know, someone’s gonna catch on one of the brands is, you know, Amazon’s gonna catch onto one of the brands and when they do, we’ll just change it and it shouldn’t be a problem.
Yeah.
[00:18:39] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah. I seen one the other day. It was for an Amazon Echo and the main image. Had the Amazon echo in the middle. The background was like a gradient gray. And then in big block 3d letters, it said Amazon echo above it. I’m like, okay, that’s just a little bit of a violation there, Amazon, that you’re doing for yourself.
But I think we can play with those boundaries and stuff. Like you said, if, you know, worst case, they take it down and you should probably have a backup ready to go. Of just the actual product so you can throw it up and get it back up right away. But you kind of have to nowadays because everybody else is doing it.
[00:19:19] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Exactly. Like you said, you know, it’s, it’s not going to be hard to have a backup and get it you know, right back in. You’re trying to, like, identify every area of opportunity to improve click through rate and conversion rate because, you know, it’s, it’s a multiplier effect of, of your ads.
[00:19:34] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: For sure. And so, yeah, once you’re getting your click, anything special that you guys are doing inside the listing that people might not know about?
[00:19:42] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah. So, you know, we, we talked about the impressions turning into clicks. That’s main image price and reviews, I would say are the biggest levers that we’re going to pull. So get more reviews, play with the price. So bad badges, if we can get the best seller badge, obviously it’s very hard, but if, if you can, which one of, one of the products is a pasta, skinny pasta, it’s basically like a, You know, very low car pasta and they’re a little bit away from the bestseller.
So as soon as Christmas hits, we’re going to blast them with a little bit of extra spend just to get the bestseller badge going into like January 1st, which is their season. So things like that. But then once they’re in the listing, you know, I’m looking at the, the listing images. If I only looked at those images, can I be sold on that product in terms of Can I just scroll through the images and, and, you know, it sells the product does it talk about the features, benefits and why it matters to the customer does talk about all the pros that all of the other brands have or all the other competitors have?
Does it talk about eliminating the doubt of all of the cons that all the competitors, other competitors have? There’s a talk about how it’s differentiated, you know, any edge that it has social proof, if it’s been in Forbes or whatever it is. So I’m looking for the images to really sell me. I’m looking for a video that is again, like fast, catchy.
There’s a lot of texts, you know, and it’s like benefit, benefit you know, lifestyle. So I’m looking for that title optimizing the SEO through data dive. So I’m looking at competitors, SEO ranking juice. I’m trying to optimize mine to have a better ranking juice. And then with the bullet points, obviously, I like to see that big text, all caps, like first sentence for people who like to glance under it, if we can have virtual bundles, I’d like to use virtual bundles because they push competitors below the fold under that, you know we have the, Brand story.
And so that’s a easy way to showcase mission, vision, values you know, the founders, why we started this company you know, like any of like the things that set us apart, is it veteran owned, minority owned, family owned, et cetera, et cetera, any, any sort of like mission and something that will connect with the shoppers, then we’re looking for premium a plus content.
So. Telling you know, it’s a full landing page telling the story and we like to build it I think one thing that a lot of people can take away from this is go and look at the really really really Big DSC brands that are killing it and go to Facebook Ads library Go check out their ads and then click on an ad It’ll take you to a landing page and then just look at how the landing page is built You’ll notice that it starts with a title Some sort of like big like benefit or something, you know, and then, then it goes on to like social proof.
Then it goes on to, you know, something else that then it goes on to value that. So there is like a format that they use. And these people are like split testing landing pages. And obviously this is probably an optimized landing page, especially if you notice that the ad has gotten a lot of clicks, it means that they’ve been running it for a while.
A lot of likes, a lot of comments, a lot of clicks. So. And I’d like that. Go look at the landing page and try and build that premium A plus content to have that similar flow of like, how can I get someone in that journey of like, okay, this is the benefit. This is what separates it. This is social proof.
This is this, this, this, and kind of by the time they get to the end of the premium A plus content, they’re convinced that this is the best product for them. And then below that, I would say, fill out the questions on the listing. Make sure that all of your frequently asked questions are answered. Use Amazon posts get UGC on there from, you know, Amazon influencers and at the bottom where you have reviews, try and get a few people to take pictures and images and videos and post them up as with the reviews.
Cause I’ve seen that really helps. So we’re, we kind of build like this checklist and we’re like, okay, let’s go through one by one, optimize everything. And this happens once every three months. So every three months, we’ll, the reason that we do this every three months is because I’m noticing that competitors are now.
More competitive and so every three months at least in supplements That’s what I’m noticing every three months They’ve all revamped their stuff and they all look better than us and they all have better Stuff than us and so it’s like okay now it’s our chance to you know beat them again And so yeah with that being said that’s how I’m looking at things.
I’m like, okay cool Are my impressions going up? How are, how will my impressions go up? I’m launching more campaigns, identifying profitable search terms, doubling down on those profitable search terms going through the search query performance report, finding keywords that I have, you know, a good conversion share on low impression share.
Looking at my sponsored and organic rank for those keywords. If it’s low, increasing my sponsored bread bid to be high, knowing that, you know, if I get a more, more of an impression share, I’m going to convert better. So increasing those impressions. And then as those impressions increase at the same click through it, we’re going to get more clicks.
But also if I improve that click through it, we’re going to get even more clicks. And then with the conversion rate at the same conversion rate, you’re going to get more sales. improve that conversion rate, you’re going to get even more sales. And that’s kind of essentially the, the looking at one individual product, what I look for and what I, what I’m like, you know, my game plan essentially to increase traffic and increase conversion.
[00:24:54] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Very good. Yeah. All really good, really important stuff. And the. Redoing it every once in a while, you know, in vitamins and supplements every three months is, is definitely important because it’s such a, such a high competitive environment, but outside of that, you know, at least doing it every six months to a year.
You want to be revamping those listings. Now, let’s say, well, we have some brand partnerships where these brands might have 100, 200, 300 different products that are for sale on Amazon. How are you approaching a brand like that to help them get going on Amazon? What’s your focus?
[00:25:41] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah, I think you know, we talk to them like they are investors and I say, You know, each one of your products is a stock.
You know, if you, you have Amazon stock, right. And you have like some random stock, like, you know, that that’s taking a nosedive in the last year. So where would you put your money? You would put your money in, in the S and P 500 and, you know, in Vesco and you know, Amazon and Walmart, whatever stocks that, you know, you’re going to put a dollar in and you’re going to get 5, 10 back.
And so it’s the same thing. We think the exact same approach, cause we have, you know, a lot of people coming in and And they have this exact same thing. We have a catalog of 250 products. So I’m like, cool. How many products generate 80 percent of your revenue? And they’re like, well, six. And I’m like, perfect.
So that’s, that’s what we’re going to focus on and we’re going to, you know, maximize, and then for these other ones. Let’s pick one or two that you think have a fighting chance and let’s, you know, give them a fighting chance. Let’s put a lot of energy and effort into them. And if they take off, they take off.
And if they don’t, we’ll just maintain them. You know, we’ll kind of, we’ll clean them up. And, and so then it becomes like, okay let’s take two products you know, every couple of weeks or a product a week. Clean it up, set up the campaigns, you know, set some, maybe like automations and guardrails to prevent any overspending and, you know, not too many clicks and no sales or, you know, too high of an ACoS on certain keywords that are not generating that many sales.
So, setting up those guardrails, setting up some campaigns, and then Let’s let, let’s just let them run. Knowing that I don’t wanna spend that much money. I don’t wanna spend a hundred dollars on that product, on product 30 or 40 or 50 because product three, that same a hundred dollars would generate me $800 in, in sales.
Versus, you know, product 30, a hundred dollars is gonna generate me $230 in revenue. And then I, I have to worry about getting reviews and, you know, doing this and doing that and troubleshooting, and I’m like, focus on, on, you know, the, the main ones that are growing. And then for all the other ones. Pick a couple that you want to put a lot of focus and energy into, put them in the focus group, put a lot of energy, and then if it takes off amazing, if not, keep them in maintenance and switch them out with, with the other ones.
And that’s honestly how we look at it. Unless you want to hire like, you know, one employee for every, let’s say like 20 products. You know, have like 20 employees on your account working full time and it’s not really feasible. And at the end of the day, a lot of those products don’t pan out. And I think in this world, it’s just, it’s natural.
Like what you focus on grows. And if you focus on everything, you focus on nothing.
[00:28:10] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah. The 80 20 rule is definitely important. And it’s, it’s amazing how often it’s just spot on. Like we did that the other day. We, I looked at the profitability of all the products that we carry and it, it came out to around 20, I believe it was 21 percent of the products carried 83 percent of the profits.
So it’s just, it’s amazing how that almost always works out. And you want to focus on those top 20 percent of your products that are really hitting it big because that’s where you’re going to make most of the money.
[00:28:46] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Exactly, exactly. I couldn’t agree more.
[00:28:48] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: So as far as PPC, if this brand, you know, they’re coming on to Amazon for the first time, their products were already there, but they want to take control of them and start working with them.
How do you recommend people get started with PPC? And is there any particular software that you guys like to use?
[00:29:09] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah, so no particular software. We essentially do everything in bulk sheets. Here’s how I would get started. You need some sort of like foundation. So I would go go to helium 10. Take your top 10 competitors.
You can also do this in data dive. And then you want to get the keywords of those competitors. So what I do is. You know go into amazon. com type in your main keyword Open up the chrome extension for helium 10 go into x ray pick the top 10 competitors run them in cerebro You’re gonna get probably like 60, 000 keywords.
So then add some advanced filters, something like at least 500 searches or more a month, a maximum rank of 60, anything beyond 60, it just might not be a relevant keyword. And then minimum ranking competitors. I would do seven out of 10 or eight out of 10, because that gives me the intersection which means.
If you’re showing this keyword, it means that all of these competitors are ranked position one to 60 for that keyword, or at least, you know, eight or nine out of the 10 competitors are ranked for that keyword. That gives me a nice refined list. I’ll take that refined list and I’ll start, you know, putting some campaigns to, to do discovery, but also to do some targeting.
So I’ll start with an auto campaign, break it up into close match, loose match compliments and substitutes. Knowing that compliments and a loose match are probably not going to perform that well. So I’ll start them off with a little bit lower bids, much, much lower than the suggested bid. A hundred dollar budgets, no problem.
One campaign, one ad group, and you know, just that targeting type. And then substitutes and post match, probably a little bit more of an aggressive bid knowing that they’re going to discover keywords and a lot of the times they do perform. And then I’ll start taking those main keywords, probably the top five main keywords and do single keyword campaigns just because they’re very powerful keywords.
So one campaign, one, one ad group, one keyword for the top five main ones. Broad, phrase, and exact. So it’ll be a total of 15 different campaigns, one for each match type, because they perform differently. Hundred dollar budget. If you’re trying to be conservative, start at a lower bid and you can always work your way up.
And then for the other keywords, I like to take like five at a time and put them again, you know, broad phrase and exact campaigns. And now I’ve kind of spread out a nice little kind of spread. You can do this. You can be a lot more selective, so you can take the top five keywords and maybe the bottom, because, you know, you’re going after some long tail, cheaper keywords, and you’re going after some main ones that are going to establish relevance and, you know, have a lot of firepower.
And so, I launched those, you know, those keywords and I’m watching the search term report like a hawk. So, in the first, you know, You know, I walk every day. I’m looking at, okay, show me keywords that have spent money, you know, and which one generated sales, which one didn’t generate sales. And I’m looking to refine quickly because the auto and broad and face campaigns are definitely going to perform, but they might have bad keywords in there.
Meaning. I have a broad keyword like electrolytes powder. I go and I look at the search term, the, you know, the search terms inside of that broad keyword. Some of is like electrolyte supplement. And another one is electrolyte packets. And so my products on a packets, for example, and so I’m not converting well for that.
So I’m looking for those things that I’m not converting well for negativing them quickly and keeping the ones that I am converting well for. And if you ask me, what is the definition of good and bad, I would say for me, like one to 30 percent ACOs. is good in terms of conversion on a search term. And then the 50 percent of my sale price with no sale, with no sales.
So like if a 30 product, 15 in spending, no sales, or greater than a hundred percent echos, that’s not good. So I’ll add those as negatives and greater than a hundred percent echos and low sales. But if it’s greater than a hundred percent echos and it’s generating like, you know, 500 sales a month, like I’ll leave it.
It’s, it’s, it’s all good. It’s probably. Benefiting on the organic side, but adding those negatives and then going in and hunting for new search terms that have converted and launching them in their own campaigns. And so that’s kind of like my system of, okay, you know, we’re launching. The goal is not to overspend.
I don’t want to, I don’t want to control the bids yet. I don’t want to be too, you know, tight because you’re not going to be profitable when you’re, when you’re initially growing. So I want to just anything that’s really bleeding. Pause it and kill it, but anything that I find as an opportunity that’s generating sales, add them to more campaigns.
I wouldn’t negative something that’s already working, just, you know, launch them in more campaigns and do this again and again, increase my impressions, increase my sessions and focus on growth for the first, let’s say 30, 45 days. And then after I’ve achieved like a certain, Amount of good growth. I’ll say, okay, let’s pause for a while and let’s optimize for profit.
Let’s let me find all areas of opportunity where I can lower bids, add negatives. Maybe I had a top of search bid by placement. It didn’t work out. Let me, you know, lower that. Maybe I lost some sponsor brands that I am not sure if I gained that effect from them. Let me lower those bids or pause those campaigns.
And then I get to a point where All of my ad budget is being utilized efficiently, and that’s now when I’m profitable. And if, if you’re still not reaching a point of profitability, you’re probably, your click through and conversion rate is probably too low. And so that’s where you should put your focus next.
So keep everything as profitable as can be, and then start working on improving click through and conversion rate, get those numbers up. Now you’re profitable. Then you go into another cycle of, of growth. And so that’s, you know, tactically how I would approach it.
[00:34:30] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Okay. Very good. Yeah. All very good information for sure.
It’s a, it’s a lot of kind of hunting and searching for those keywords that are going to convert the best for you. And also those ones, like you mentioned, even if you’re losing money on some keywords, you might want to keep them going if they’re really giving you that volume and helping your organic rank for sure.
[00:34:56] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah, some of the main ones you’re actually losing money on because they benefit you so much in terms of organic ranking and, and, you know, relevancy and indexing for other keywords that you’re willing to run at a loss on those keywords just for the sake of the organic crank. And, you know, later on, like I said, over time, as your conversion rate goes up, you They will become profitable but initially it’s okay to lose some money on it.
[00:35:18] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: So once you get a product established do you have a target, a cost that you’re aiming for typically?
[00:35:27] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Not typically. The way that I like to look at it is How can I get the most amount of profit, dollar amount in profit, and that could happen at any Acos or Tacos. And so, we take an iterative approach and say, okay, we’re operating at a, you know, 18 percent Tacos.
Let’s see what happens when we go down to a 16 percent or a 14%. Let’s see what happens when we go to a 20 percent or 22%. And we kind of, like, draw that, like, You know, graph of like at this tacos, I’m making this much amount of profit. I’m at this tacos. I’m making this a much amount of profit. And it’s usually a bell curve when your tacos is super low, you know, you have very low profit.
And then as your tacos goes up, you hit this peak where you have in the most amount of profits. And then as your tacos goes up, you start losing profit again. Cause you’re, you know, margins are slimming too much and you’re basically looking to get as many tacos points as possible to draw that bell curve and figure out where the peak is and the peak is always changing.
So you’re kind of. You know, essentially always chasing it. And also that peak gets higher, you know, total you know, amount, like you know, absolute value higher as your conversion rate goes up too. So that’s something to keep in mind.
[00:36:34] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Absolutely. Very good. All right. Well, cool. So we’re coming up on 40 minutes here, Mina.
So what’s anything that we haven’t talked about that you think would be interesting for someone perhaps launching a product or trying to Get a product going that’s on Amazon.
[00:36:52] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah, a couple of things, a couple of new things that Amazon released. I think subscribe and save discounts are super, super powerful.
So, you know, offering 5 off your first subscribe and save for me, I was able to add 800 new subscriptions in the last you know, three months. So that’s been a really good, just on my brand alone. I’m sure other brands have done really well with that too. I think brand dealer promotions, if you’re not running those, those are easy.
You know, you can do a discount for abandoned car. You can do a discount for people who have bought the most amount of, you know, most amount of product from you. And then there’s also reorder coupons. And so this is kind of a, a way to do some sort of like email marketing using Amazon. And Amazon will send an email, say, Hey, you know, this person is offering you, you know, 10 percent off to come back and buy again.
[00:37:38] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Have you seen a good amount of success with those brand promotions like that?
[00:37:42] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah, pretty decent, nothing like groundbreaking, but you know, 10 15 percent increase in sales.
[00:37:48] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, I just started playing with those myself, so I’m collecting data at the moment to see how it works for our different brands.
[00:37:55] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah, I think it’s, I mean, it should run in the background. It’s, you’re not, you’re not going to lose from it. It’s definitely, Especially the abandoned car. I think it’s definitely great to just have an email come from Amazon. Every time you, you have someone abandon your car and say, Hey, here’s 10 percent off.
If you know, if you want to buy now, and then the subscribe and save, I definitely think that you should look into that because that’s been huge for us.
[00:38:17] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah. We’ve been using subscribe and save for a while. Do you have any tricks on getting products that don’t show up as an option for subscribe and save to be able to do that?
[00:38:29] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: No, I mean, the only thing that I know is that if it doesn’t show as default, subscribe and save, we used to incentivize some subscribers because once we hit the hundred subscribers threshold, it automatically did subscribe and save. And then we were able to get a bunch of people, you know, through that subscribe and save coupon.
And then like, you know, we didn’t have to incentivize it anymore. Yeah. If you’re not eligible, I’m really not sure. How to gain eligibility. We open up cases sometimes, but it’s not something that I usually deal with a lot. It’s, you know, usually we’ll have eligibility. If not, we try to open up cases. But it’s, you know, it’s one of those like Amazon system sort of thing.
[00:39:07] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, I haven’t found a secret to that either, so I thought I would let you know. See if you had any tactics on that, but it is what it is. If it shows up, definitely take advantage of it. Cause it’s kind of, you know, getting people on a subscription. That’s a really nice thing to have. And then also having you know, those, it almost makes Amazon a little bit more like having your own Shopify store, being able to do all that.
Abandoned cart and things like that with the brand promotions.
[00:39:37] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah, the more the more we can do the better because I mean, and I really like the Amazon announced their partnership with Meta and that you’re now going to be able to run Facebook and Instagram ads. And then natively show up the Amazon product detail page on Facebook without ever leaving Facebook being able to check out there, you know, and then it connected to the back end of Amazon fulfillment and all that kind of stuff.
I think that’s going to be huge. And on the side, I’m investing a lot of money into meta and and Amazon stocks because I know that that partnership is, it’s going to crush. TikTok shop and it’s gonna crush Shopify and this, their, their stock is gonna go up.
[00:40:17] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah. I was gonna, I was just gonna say, do you think that’s a reaction to TikTok and TikTok shop them joining partnerships?
[00:40:25] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: A hundred percent. I, I think that is, you know, TikTok and Shopify made up partnership and they’re like, okay, Facebook has been struggling since the iOS, Instagram has been struggling since the iOS, and I think the reason is. When you run a Facebook ad, people, you know, might click on you, but they don’t typically convert and so you need to retarget them.
And so they click on one of your ads and then you’re like, let me show you a testimonial testimonial testimonial. And now you don’t have to worry about that because. You never need to go to the website. All you need to do is you click on the ad, it shows up as the, you know, Amazon page, you trust the Amazon page, you have your account connected.
So all you have to do is click the buy now button. You know, which credit card it’s going to come out of, you know, it’s going to come in one to two days. And. Since you never left the site and you engaged with the ad, you can run all these retargeting campaigns and never worry about attribution. I think it’s kind of like a checkmate move.
And I’m, I’m very curious to see what TikTok shop is going to do with TikTok and Shopify to like combat, you know meta and Amazon partnership.
[00:41:32] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: Yeah, yeah, I, I hope it goes really well because, you know, as much as I want more competition to Amazon Temu and TikTok shop are, are not the competition we want because if we think Amazon is a pain a lot of times and what they do and trying to take advantage of things, I mean, I can only imagine what TikTok shop and Temu will do because they don’t have the governmental boundaries that, you know, Amazon has.
[00:42:01] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: 100 percent agree. I’m totally with you there.
[00:42:03] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: For sure. So Mina, what where can people connect with you and find out more about services that you guys provide?
[00:42:12] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah. So, I mean, hit me up on LinkedIn, Mina Elias send me a message or Instagram at the Mina Elias. And then, yeah, if you want to check out the website, go to Trivium.com and for any of the stuff that I mentioned in terms of like, You know how to set up campaigns or, or any of the bulk sheets, macros and stuff that we use. We share all of that. So, you know, if you ever want any of that stuff, just hit me up and I have it all in, in like a, something that I call the toolbox and I just share it with everyone.
So yeah, pretty accessible. If you have any questions, let me know.
[00:42:44] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: All right. Awesome. Yeah. We’ll add links to that stuff in the show notes as well. And Mina, it was great to have you on the podcast again. I will try to do it again here before three years next time.
[00:42:54] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s do it.
[00:42:56] Todd Welch | CEO & Founder of Welch Products LLC: All right.
Have a great one.
[00:42:57] Mina Elias | Founder at Trivium Group: Take it easy.
