Refunds Manager Blog

We love serving up fresh, insightful content from the Amazon pros—experts who have been there done that, and seen it all. Today we’re sitting down with Chad Rubin to get his Amazon listing optimization tips for 2019 and beyond.

Chad is the CEO of ThinkCrucial, a brand that creates replaceable products in the home across a multitude of categories and is sold on over 15 channels (including Amazon). Chad is also CEO of Skubana, a platform for multi-channel inventory management that was born out of Chad’s own frustrations.

Chad is frequently sought out as a consultant by other ecommerce entrepreneurs, particularly Amazon sellers who want help with optimizing their listings. His consulting fee might be hefty, but not to worry! We asked tons of questions on your behalf.

How did you get started selling on Amazon?

Walmart opened up right next door tomy parents’ vacuum store when I was a kid. There were times we struggled to pay the bills and make ends meet, so I decided I never wanted to be an entrepreneur. For that reason, I was a first generation college grad. I went on to Wall Street to give advice and insights to hedge funds buying and selling various internet stocks, so think Netflix and Amazon and Bankrate and eBay. I saw a ton of growth happening on Amazon so I said to my parents, “You guys should be selling on Amazon.” They responded, “Who’s going to buy vacuum accessories online?”

Sure enough, I was laid off in 2009. I started helping them sell not just on Amazon but on eBay. We started manufacturing our own products. We started making vacuum bags, and then a whole host of other products such as vacuum filters, coffee filters, air filters, spa filters, you name it we make it…anything that’s replaceable in the home. Now we sell across 15 different channels, and we do a significant amount of business across Amazon. Anything you can think of that’s replaceable in the home and that is high velocity, we manufacture.

Along the way, I started struggling to find software to help me run and automate my business. There was a separate shipping software and a separate inventory software and they didn’t talk to each other because ecommerce has changed so much since the early 2000s. We needed a software to help us sell across 15 different channels and we didn’t find one, so we started Skubana. We’re very Amazon centric but we also support every other marketplace or channel that you sell on.

What’s your overall philosophy for ecommerce success?

A lot of times you can double down on Amazon or you can start growing SKUs across many different channels. I believe in playing Monopoly. In order to win, you need to spread out a bit and diversify. I don’t just want to double down on Park Ave. I want to be paid when someone lands on the Railroad.

So for me, I try to focus on being multichannel and being everywhere I can. Anywhere that people have dwell time, I want to be there.

What factors matter for ranking a product?

You need to make sure that you’re building proper product detail listing pages on Amazon. If you’re going to send traffic there, whether its organic or paid, you want to make sure that the traffic converts because that’s really what Amazon cares about. The number one thing they care about is making sure it converts. You also want to want to have a high click through rate, from the search results page to your listing.
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Amazon pay per click (PPC) campaigns are one of the more stable ways of drawing business to your products. It can drive Amazon customers to you without breaking your budget. Once you get to a certain number of products and campaigns though, it makes sense to automate your Amazon sponsored product campaigns.

The most significant factor for automation is looking at how much time optimizing your ad campaigns takes up in a week. It doesn’t matter if it’s on account of the many products or in-depth campaigns. If you find yourself increasing how much time you work just to get through it all, it’s time to automate.

What You Need to Follow This Tutorial

Ideally, you must have a product or products established already on the Amazon platform. The product page should have high-resolution images that the ad campaign can use. This product should also have a beautifully written page. Within the writing, you should check for the keywords used in the ad campaign. It should also have at least three reviews on it for maximum effect. All these items mean the product has the highest chance of being bought once we get buyers onto the page.

Since we’re talking about automation, we need data to feed the program. Since you know about Amazon PPC, we’re assuming you’ve been running campaigns already. This means you have data on your earlier keyword bids in your Seller Central. This historical data removes the learning curve for most automation services. Thus, the price of the transition will be reduced.

Step by Step Instructions

Step One: Decide How Much Control You Want

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We recently sat down with Joseph Hansen, who is an Amazon growth expert and one of the original co-founders of the Prosper Show. His company Buy Box Experts helps brands grow their businesses on Amazon.

When do most sellers realize that they need help and that they can no longer do everything on their own?

Most sellers come to us when they reach $1 million dollars in sales. Some businesses come to us before that but most have reached that threshold or have far surpassed it. Our typically engagement is with a mid-market brand with top line sales ranging from several million to a few hundred million dollars.

What makes sellers pull the trigger on getting outside help?

When a private-label seller or brand starts to sell around a million dollars a year on the Amazon channel, they have found that business is a lot more complex than they thought it would be and they realize that they’re not able to keep up with everything. They also feel that they’re becoming an expert at critical things, like marketing, slower than they would like. They may be very good at sourcing products, or at product design or at marketing on their own website. Their core competence is one or a combination of all of those things, and Amazon isn’t their core competence.
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Ready to learn the ins and outs of Amazon branding strategy so you can totally crush your competition?

In today’s competitive Amazon marketplace, branding is the end-all-be-all topic of discussion when it comes to standing out and creating a sustainable business that allows you to scale your product line, your revenue and of course your customer base.

Dayana Mayfield (head of marketing at Refunds Manager) recently sat down with Andrew Maffetone, director of marketing and operations at Seller’s Choice, full service marketing agency for Amazon Seller’s.

Watch the video–we did have a couple tech glitches, sorry!–or read on for all our takeaways from this talk with Andrew about Amazon FBA branding.