Matt Edmundson (00:00)

Welcome to the eCommerce podcast with me, host Matt Edmondson. This is a show all about helping you deliver eCommerce. Wow. And to help me do just that today, we're chatting with Will Hare from Bellavix about how we do advertising on marketplace platforms like Amazon. Yes, we are. And we were just chatting actually, that's why you called me mid laughing when we started the recording.

It turns out he's from Raleigh, North Carolina, which I Colby Flood is from there. So I've just introduced those two. If you're from Raleigh, North Carolina, give them a shout out. Colby was on the podcast a while ago, actually. Facebook has a long time ago, but yeah, go listen to that episode. It was great as well. Now, before we get into it, let me do the usual newsletter thing. If you haven't done so already, go to ecommercepodcast.net. Come join our newsletter community.

as we always give more in the newsletter and extra insights and all that sort of stuff. And you'll love it. You're going to get a lot out of it. It's going to really help you grow your e-comm business. So come join us there. We'd love to see you in that. Just go to ecommercepodcast.net, follow the subscribe link and you will see just a place where you put email, no name, nothing. We've made it so easy. Just go ahead. We'll see you over there. Ecommercepodcast.net right now.

Let's talk about Will, the e-commerce wizard and co-founder of Bellavix, who's been helping brands crush it on Amazon and Walmart marketplace for over a decade. The digital marketing virtuoso has turned Bellavix into a powerhouse agency by mastering the art of marketplace strategy and showing brands how to turn their online presence into pure gold. Yes, he has. Will, welcome to the show, man. Great to have you. How are doing today?

Will Haire | BellaVix (01:51)

Doing great, man. Living the dream. And that is quite the intro. Matter of fact, I think we could just end the interview here. I'll be signing off. That was wonderful.

Matt Edmundson (01:56)

Hahaha

Live in the dream. we, my brother and I, I, I sure, I'm sure we're not the only people on the planet to do this. We have abbreviated it to LTD. So when I call my brother, I'm like, don't bro. He's like LTD. Cause we just can't be bothered to say live in the dream. And so, and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A little bit. And also in the UK, LTD, means limited company.

Will Haire | BellaVix (02:14)

dream. Yeah, that's right. A very military phrase.

Matt Edmundson (02:24)

So it's also a sort of a legal entity, it's boring. I don't know why I even mentioned it. Let's forget it. Let's just say live in the dream. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So how come you live in the dream,

Will Haire | BellaVix (02:30)

Living the dream is way better. We should change that.

applications here.

man, mean, I'm honestly truly blessed. I run a boutique agency. We help brands scale on marketplaces and I get to work with a lot of entrepreneurs like myself where we're kind of all over the place, but we're passionate about one thing. In my case, it's helping these brands, but these brands solve problems in supplement. They solve problems in beauty, electronic space, pet space, and they're fun. They're inventive. Sometimes they're eccentric, but like interesting people tend to be eccentric. So.

Matt Edmundson (03:10)

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (03:11)

With that being said, my days are never the same. I get to have great conversations with people like you, and share kind of what we've learned on the journey. We don't have everything down. That it was a great introduction, but we're always learning. And as you know, being in the e-commerce space, dude, things change like crazy. Amazon did not operate the same way it did last year. And with AI coming in, like it's just changing so fast. So for somebody like me who loves to chase the shiny object, I haven't stopped running.

Matt Edmundson (03:23)

Yeah.

all the time.

Yeah, hear you. It is so true. And I think the thing that I've noticed is the people that stop learning who feel like they've got it, they're not the ones that are around after a while. Because it does change so much the space in many ways. There's always new things to think about, nuances. And I think competition's an interesting one, isn't it? Especially with places like Amazon.

Will Haire | BellaVix (03:49)

Uh-huh.

Matt Edmundson (04:10)

and Walmart, which I know you specialize in. It feels like, and will correct me if I'm wrong here, but it kind of feels like Amazon is a lot more competitive than it has ever been. If you want to get on there and start selling stuff, it's no longer a case of I'll put it on, I'll sell a million of these, because there's 100,000 of the people importing the same products or doing something and trying to get that space.

Will Haire | BellaVix (04:32)

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (04:39)

So, which is why it's great to have you on the show. Cause I want to talk about this. want to talk about how we, as entrepreneurs of e-commerce businesses, probably doing some stuff on Amazon. How do we compete? How do we, where do we start in 2025?

Will Haire | BellaVix (04:56)

Yeah, it's very competitive. And to your point, like gone are there days where you could just list the product in a niche category and nobody's there. it happens rarely, so rarely. Like we don't really see it as much as an agency, but how do we compete? It's omnichannel presence in all transparency. Amazon is only a piece of the puzzle, but we know behavior on mark...

Matt Edmundson (05:09)

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (05:22)

social media, behavior on your website, how you engage influencers and affiliates, they all spill over. At the end of the day, Amazon has done a really good job of building a platform that has consumer trust. People go on there, they're gonna read the reviews. If they can't find your product, it's kind of a red flag, like, is it even safe to buy? And even worse are the brands that just let their affiliates run the show. It's like, you know, the...

Matt Edmundson (05:28)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Will Haire | BellaVix (05:50)

I don't know, the criminals running the asylum, that's the wrong analogy, but that's what it is. So it's competitive and how do you get ahead? It's marketing and brand building is a big part of it. And I wish it all happened on Amazon, but it doesn't. But Amazon is a piece. There is some building that goes on, but it's a pay to play platform. So a lot of what we'll do and what we'll probably talk about is how advertising plays and how retail media has changed over the last few years.

Matt Edmundson (05:52)

Yeah.

Ha

Yeah.

And that's the big thing now, isn't it, with Amazon? You've got to pay to play. I think the thing that I've noticed, I mean, just to come back to something that you said, actually, and I run an e-comm company, run several e-comm companies, as I've mentioned, one of which we do okay on Amazon. I mean, we're not breaking any records. But the thing that I've noticed with Amazon is that famous phrase, a in tide floats all boats, right?

So the more I sell on the website, the more I seem to sell on Amazon, the more I sell on Amazon, the more I seem to sell on the website, the more I do stuff over here. Do you know what mean? My fear was with Amazon, if I start on that platform, I'm sending people who would have come to my website. So I would have known who the customer was and then my margin, obviously on my own website is significantly higher than Amazon. But that doesn't seem to have

Will Haire | BellaVix (07:09)

Yeah, significantly.

Matt Edmundson (07:16)

In the case, I mean, obviously if someone buys from Amazon, they're obviously not buying from my website, but the people that buy from Amazon, I don't know who they are, but I'm kind of guessing they don't, they wouldn't have known about us anyway, you know? And so you kind of create that sense of brand awareness. I don't know if that's what you find, you know, this sort of this rise in tide floats or boats idea.

Will Haire | BellaVix (07:35)

Absolutely, it kind of hits into what I was talking before and what my hypothesis and I read this in a man, Modern Retail published an article recently on it and essentially like consumers value convenience. Not only is it trusting, but it is convenient. Two day shipping, perhaps some of it's same day shipping, which is insane. Like the logistical network that Amazon build and the trust, like it's part of people are willing to pay extra to get something.

Matt Edmundson (07:56)

Yeah.

Will Haire | BellaVix (08:02)

in a day or two, but yeah, the margins with all the fee hikes the last year, I mean, it's, it's borderline criminal. But you know, it's the cost of operating and there's never, you know, cannibalization of sales. Sure. It can happen to some degree. Like it's really hard to get somebody to do a behavior like taking them from Facebook and moving them to Amazon. You're just going to naturally lose people as there's more steps in the process. But they.

Matt Edmundson (08:20)

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (08:29)

To your point, they will find their way there, whether they're just checking it or seeing the better shipping times or all these other considerations when they're on that purchasing journey.

Matt Edmundson (08:34)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's a, it is definitely a different place to what it was when it sort of first started out with this sort of, you know, where you could sell stuff on Amazon. But I'm intrigued, you know, they, like you say, the fees have increased the costs of selling on Amazon are really quite high. So we had a beauty business for the longest time. And one of the things, one of our best selling products in that, on that website had a 16 % gross margin, right?

Will Haire | BellaVix (08:57)

Mm-hmm.

Matt Edmundson (09:11)

So there was no way you would have been able to sell that on Amazon. So the products you sell on Amazon have to have really high gross margins to be able to afford their fees and how that works. So what I've tended to notice is there then has been a slight move on the products on Amazon. I don't know if I'm sure Amazon are aware of this. I'm sure they have plans for it. And I'm sure it's maybe me just going slightly nuts.

So the products that you find on Amazon more and more tend to be products that have higher margins built into them. So you get a lot of the Chinese products on, know, sort of people buying stuff from China, import it in and trying to sell it at a reasonable price. I'm not having an issue with that. This is just what I've noticed, for example. Is that me just going crazy or is that, do you see that actually happening?

Will Haire | BellaVix (10:04)

No, you're absolutely right. Actually, we recently lost a supplement brand for that same reason. The woman manufactured herself. We were doing good. She was a seven figure brand on Amazon, but her margins were tight on all her products. She was really conscious of her customer, didn't want to raise prices. And then Amazon has the fair pricing policy, so she couldn't have higher prices on Amazon and not our website. And so what we ended up doing is taking her products and doing fulfilled by merchant.

Matt Edmundson (10:31)

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (10:32)

which helped because it cut her fees in half, give or take. But at the end of the day, she ended up leaving us because the margins couldn't support it. So even on the service side, like we're conscious of it. If you don't have at least 50 % margin, gross margin on your products, like with agency fees, with Amazon's fees, like it's probably not going to be a good fit. that's just kind right now that's just the way it is. I'm hoping that there'll be some pushback, but.

I also think to some degree they're phasing out some of the smaller businesses and they're making it difficult for some of these brands to come on. I think slowly Amazon's transitioning to more for established brands. And that's just kind of the lay of the land at the moment.

Matt Edmundson (11:14)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? And I'm intrigued how that works. You know, like, it means that, like, for example, you take TV, I know full well what I know what margins are on TVs when they're sold in store, and they're not great, right? These guys, they're not making massive amounts of money. So they can't then go and sell those on Amazon, but the manufacturer can, right? And so Amazon then goes and makes a deal with Samsung. So right, put your TVs on here. And

Will Haire | BellaVix (11:41)

and

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (11:49)

and they sort of start selling those TVs, which I find quite fascinating. I think this will be another shift, won't it? Amazon will go more and more to the brand. if you are an e-commerce business selling other people's products, I think more and more you might find Amazon difficult. If you are selling your own manufactured product with a high gross margin, then Amazon I think is still quite an interesting place. we...

Will Haire | BellaVix (12:11)

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (12:16)

Like the lady that left, have a supplement brand, for example. So I understand the margins and supplements. And I understand the niche that we operate in. actually Amazon is good for that, you know, and at the moment it still works, but I'm not holding my breath that it will be like that forever. So in the meantime, I mean, all that caveat said, I am on Amazon. How do I kill it? How do I kill it on Amazon? Well, what do I do?

Will Haire | BellaVix (12:43)

Yeah.

Yeah. So there's a lot. just to kind of put a bow on what you just commented on, like we primarily work with brands, a reseller, you know, business model, like it does exist. I'm friends with a Canadian company that like all they do is buy and resell products. I think it will still exist to some degree, like commodity type products where like people don't really care about the brand. They just want to get.

nail super cheap or something like that. So it still exists. It's just getting more difficult. And I do think there's other platforms that, know, Tmoo and Sheen outside of the political stuff that's going on is a great platform for cost, low quality, low price products. And there's a market for it. People are always going to want cheap to some degree. So there is shifting consumer behavior. And as a result, there'll be shifts in how sellers

Matt Edmundson (13:14)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (13:41)

reach their audiences. Kind of jump into what you were saying. So how do we scale on Amazon? It's definitely marketing and advertising. And I'll talk like at Bellavix, we use like a bottom-up approach. So everybody knows the user intent funnel. So, you know, when we start advertising with the brand, you know, we do want to make sure we defend listings and that we have a brand presence for advertising. And it'll vary. Some companies...

don't want to invest them much. So they might be like, Hey, 10%, don't spend more than 10 % or I only want to invest when it's a $10 ROAS on branded. I don't want to pay for customers that are already customers and fine. That makes sense. And then a lot of what we'll focus on until the brands about a hundred thousand dollars a month is getting people in consideration. So remarketing using display advertising, uh, conquesting, going after competitors, uh, having a presence for relevant search terms.

Matt Edmundson (14:15)

Yeah.

Will Haire | BellaVix (14:40)

and kind of building that up. And that's kind of the bottom of pro up. And then when we get to a point where you got about a hundred K a month in sales, turning on something like programmatic advertising, tends to be effective and gives us the ability on Amazon to build audiences. A lot of your listeners may be rolling their eyes. I've tried it. It didn't work. Depends how you use it. So a lot of times when we get started, we'll build remarketing funnels and we'll go pretty heavy after

Matt Edmundson (15:08)

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (15:09)

competitors and just see what that ROAS is. We also do some streaming TV, but that is a top of the funnel and kind of a longer play before you actually see any type of brand lift. And Amazon will pull some brand lift reports. I know some of our software like Techometrics will be able to kind of get that information too. So it really depends the size of the brand and kind of what your goals are. And what we've found, and we don't do this, we work with agencies that assist

But you may get a better return as opposed to turning on DSP, doing meta ads, working with influencers tends to work really well. We do a little bit of affiliate marketing with Lavanta and Stacked Influence. And those tend to be pretty good if we drive them to Amazon and indirectly we get sales velocity. We'll get more reviews when people buy them. They tend to be in a better mood than Vine program buyers because they generally get free products.

Matt Edmundson (15:56)

Yeah.

Will Haire | BellaVix (16:08)

And they'll share user generated content and user generated content and advertising happens to work really well. We actually have a case study that's being published on the site now that shows that user generated content has better conversion rates than something that's like traditionally built using a studio. And I'm personally convinced it's cause we're all on Instagram and Tik Tok and we just become accustomed to like discovering products this way. So it's very natural and, and native.

Matt Edmundson (16:11)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yay.

Yeah.

Will Haire | BellaVix (16:38)

to use advertising terms.

Matt Edmundson (16:41)

Well, geez, there's a lot there, let's, for those that might not know, let's define a few terms if we can. What is programmatic advertising?

Will Haire | BellaVix (16:43)

Yeah.

Yeah, Programmatic is on Amazon demand side platform, but pretty much just display advertising. It's our ability to target customers on and off the platform based on intent, contextual behavior, or how they engage products in the Amazon platform.

Matt Edmundson (17:06)

Okay, and you wouldn't do programmatic advertising for someone that turns over less than 100k a month.

Will Haire | BellaVix (17:14)

Yeah, I mean, it varies based on category, but between 70 to 100K is generally where we turn it on. We should be able to use pay-per-click, and some of these off-Amazon methodologies will get you there in terms of brand building. DSP is not a ROAS driving machine, which is why CPMs is measured. Programmatic advertising. So it's referred to as Amazon DSP.

Matt Edmundson (17:31)

What do mean by DSP?

Will Haire | BellaVix (17:38)

So forgive me using all these acronyms. I'm brainwashed by the Amazon machine.

Matt Edmundson (17:41)

No, no,

fair play. I just I'm aware that we e commerce probably more than any other industry I've come across users three letter acronyms. And so I feel like it's my quest in life just to get people to qualify what they mean because why why understand by various things and what other people understand by various things can be very different. And so if I let's let's deal with a smaller brands first and let's talk about strategies for them then so I'm turning over I don't know 10 20 30 40 grand a month on on Amazon.

Will Haire | BellaVix (17:53)

Yeah.

No.

Matt Edmundson (18:15)

sort of a smaller chap for one for better expression. What sort of strategies then should I be focusing on? So I need to maybe look at, you talked about using meta for example, and user generated content to drive traffic to Amazon. And this again, used a phrase sales velocity, which I know is a very important thing on Amazon, but talk about that and how that might work a little bit in more detail if you don't mind.

Will Haire | BellaVix (18:17)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so typically when we see brands driving off Amazon traffic, we would use something like Amazon attribution. I think they changed the name, but I'm to go with attribution because that's how I refer to it. But it's our ability to use these URLs so we could track behavior. And we would want every unique campaign to have a unique URL so we can measure the impact. Like the toughest thing about Amazon is that it's a black box. So therefore, you know, if I'm driving traffic into this

Matt Edmundson (18:59)

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (19:07)

black box, may not know which campaigns perform. It also doesn't communicate back to Meta, to Google, to really any of these platforms. So first things first is you're to want an infrastructure in place where you can get some measurements that can, you can feed to your advertising team, whoever that is. So they know these campaigns are working, these attributes are working. And then on Amazon, I don't like using SCAG, Single Keyword Ad Groups. And I'm talking more Google than Meta right now.

But in the instance where we're driving traffic to Amazon, I am a big proponent of this because I do believe that it gives us better insights into what's working and what's not. I've heard of brands using like ZonGuru, I think, and other software that somehow patches it together. I'm a little hesitant to believe how accurate that is. So for the most part, I'd rather use Amazon Attribution and measure it.

And generally, the conversion rate is not going to be as great as it is advertising directly on the platform.

Matt Edmundson (20:13)

So the, I guess the key question that someone's going to have is why would I, if I have my Google ads budget, a thousand pounds or thousand bucks this month, whatever it is, why would I use that to send traffic to Amazon versus sending traffic to my website?

Will Haire | BellaVix (20:34)

So Amazon has something called the halo effect. This is a really good question. I get this all the time when I talk to brands. So when I mentioned earlier, their sales velocity is like the number one KPI. So if you could demonstrate to Amazon that this product sells and that's done through sales per month or a given period of time, then you'll technically rank better organically. And we have some older case studies where we proved this out using Google ads and stuff and the lift will vary.

depending on the category and the brand. And that is the main reason why it's like, if I know for this specific root keyword, that's very relevant to my product, that the opportunity is like $10 million a month, and I'm doing a thousand dollars on that product, then I know that there's room for me. So we may not want to do it all the time. There is a point of diminishing returns, but to get the gears going, to kind of show Amazon that there is opportunity there.

That's the reason to do it. In all transparency, I don't recommend driving the entire budget. I like to do like 10 to 20 % of your budget to just go over. And I like to start with queries that have Amazon in it. So in your case, you sold the supplement. So if it's a whey protein, people will go to Google and be like whey protein Amazon, because we're lazy and why not? And so like those are low hanging fruit that the intent is already to buy it on Amazon. So putting some ad dollars behind it makes sense.

Matt Edmundson (21:52)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Will Haire | BellaVix (22:02)

I wouldn't do any branded. I think at the end of the day, the value is acquiring new customers. So if I was building keywords or audiences that wasn't remarketing, I would direct those shoppers towards my Amazon store. And I like driving to the storefront versus the product detail page, because the storefront doesn't have ads from your competitors. You could showcase your unique selling proposition and get a look and feel for the brand and build that trust.

as opposed to you drive to product detail page, like myself, it's like, oh, this is great. Ooh, this is better. Click, click, click, click. And then before you know it, you paid to drive traffic to somebody else's store.

Matt Edmundson (22:39)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah,

that's that's part of the problem I suppose with Amazon isn't it? So sorry just to just to clarify if I'm running ads I liked your whey protein Amazon that makes a lot of sense and I I I'm a whey protein company They've not put in strawberry. They've not put in the size. It's just sort of a general thing You're gonna send them to the storefront my whey protein storefront in effect Rather than a specific whey protein product

And if they put in the search a specific product, do you still send them to the store front page or do you send them to that specific product?

Will Haire | BellaVix (23:22)

I would continue driving to the storefront just because I'm very conscious of other people conquesting on us. Because it's a common advertising tactic and brands love when you steal audience from bigger brands. So generally, because your storefront page should showcase all the products. If it's done right, they should be able add it to cart. So they'll see the product that they're actually looking for. there's not really an, I mean, technically, yes, there's an extra step. Click to add to cart, but.

Matt Edmundson (23:31)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (23:49)

They're gonna do the same thing if you drive them to that Amazon listing. So I would recommend just driving to the storefront.

Matt Edmundson (23:52)

Yeah, yeah, no fair play.

And so alongside this, are you doing ads on Amazon or are you just using Meta or Google to drive traffic?

Will Haire | BellaVix (24:05)

absolutely.

Yeah. mean, when we start with the brand, we primarily start with pay per click. and we'll do the bottom, you know, automatic campaigns like everyone else for keyword harvesting. And then kind of once we get some data, we'll launch some manual campaigns. also do keyword research. So we'll, you know, if it's a new to market product, we'll, we'll start with smaller ad groups to kind of train the algorithm. If it's a product that's been around, then we're just gonna, you know, optimize, launch some additional campaigns, but PPC is definitely where to start.

Matt Edmundson (24:09)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (24:35)

And if we want to talk about like low cost, cause you mentioned like if this brand's under 20 to $30,000, let's just assume that they don't have great reviews. You know, they may have great rating, but the quantity of those reviews may not be competitive. Like Whey Protein is competitive. know, there's listings with thousands of, cause Whey Protein's been around for a while. So we're big fans of like brand tailored promotions, which is our ability to offer discounts to audiences.

Matt Edmundson (24:44)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Will Haire | BellaVix (25:03)

with specific intent models. like somebody who's purchased from you in the last year or somebody who's high risk of leaving, because they purchased in the past but haven't purchased lately. We could Conquest, Abandon Cart, which is like low hanging fruit. Like these are all audiences and you could pepper them with as little, I believe as little as a 5 % discount. But these are people that have shown intent. Another great...

Matt Edmundson (25:10)

Mm-mm.

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (25:30)

program that's cost effective is Amazon's Creator Connections. It's a relatively new program and it should be, if it hasn't already, it is being rolled out according to our Amazon resources to the entire Amazon ecosystem. It's your ability to work with Amazon associates. And these are affiliates, influencers, if you will, who will buy your product for some type of commission. You don't even have to offer.

a sample and they'll promote it on their LinkedIn or their, excuse me, on their social media, wherever that is. But we've gotten brands into articles, which help with SEO, know, top 10 supplements of 2025, as well as some micro influencers that have done really well. And they'll end up putting that on their storefront. So then you start getting presents and other places for customers to discover.

that tends to be pretty effective. So those are two low hanging fruit that come to mind off the bat that can drive sales and they're performance based.

Matt Edmundson (26:33)

So the name of the new feature on Amazon again was? Creator Connections. So for the longest time, there's been Amazon Associates, Is that all right? You just drop your cup, okay. No, problem. So for the longest time on Amazon, we've had like...

Will Haire | BellaVix (26:37)

Creator Connections.

I just dropped my cup, I'm I didn't hear what you said, I apologize.

Matt Edmundson (26:59)

We've had the affiliate thing, haven't we? Amazon associates. I have an Amazon associate link, which I set up. I don't know. 1973. I don't think I've ever used it, but I think there's something there. Um,

with this new creator connections, are they sort of revamping Amazon Associates a little bit? Have they kind of gone, this is a little bit outdated, we need to update it here.

Will Haire | BellaVix (27:21)

Oh, way, totally. Yeah.

Yeah, so the way it works, it's a dashboard inside of Amazon that created connections. You'll jump into it and essentially create an influencer brief like, you know, this is the product. This is about it. We're offering up 20, 30 % discount on all sales. They'll opt in. It's a low volume game, but you'll get these associates. They will purchase the product through Amazon and they will...

Matt Edmundson (27:39)

Mm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (27:50)

create that content, you'll have access to the content, you can use it for your marketing purposes. So it's very streamlined. And I find that it works better than, you know, like a Lavanta, an Archer, like some of these platforms that already exist. The caveat is, is like, you really don't have control over who applies and how they get the product. And also the volume is low. A ROAS is great, you know, a ROAS is like $10 all the time, but like,

Matt Edmundson (28:08)

Right.

Will Haire | BellaVix (28:18)

you know, in a given month for a brand that has some popularity, you know, maybe 60 to 70 of these affiliates will actually participate, which is low. then, you know, some of them will buy the product, but never post and all the issues that come when you're working with some of these influencers, but it's all contained on Amazon. You just set it up and it runs itself. And what we love about it, as long as the brands don't have any restrictions,

with who they work with. What's nice is that it's performance based. So these people don't get paid unless they're moving products. So that's kind of the benefit.

Matt Edmundson (28:52)

Yeah. Yeah.

It's interesting that they're revamping then the associates side of things, isn't it? And actually affiliate marketing becomes a bit more interesting rather than just taking whatever it was like one, 2 % of the sales price. You can actually now go 10, 20, 30%, whatever the brand believes on that product here, which again makes it a bit more interesting. And I quite like that. I wonder how many

Will Haire | BellaVix (29:04)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, whatever you want. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (29:21)

YouTubers out there that have done content on you know, I don't know I'm just looking around my desk here the Logitech MX Master three mouse and they go sign up to this program and then just put that link in on their YouTube or if you is it a case of you have actually got to buy the product for it to work

Will Haire | BellaVix (29:32)

Mm-hmm.

The influencer has to buy the product for it to work. you can give them samples and yeah, like if you do samples, you get more volume. the brands that we work with, because the quality of the influencer is all over the place, generally we don't give away samples. We'd rather be more aggressive on their commission and that's worked pretty well. We started 20%, but we've had brands go up to 50 % and the higher that commission, the more volume we can get.

Matt Edmundson (29:56)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Will Haire | BellaVix (30:11)

know it's just a crapshoot.

Matt Edmundson (30:14)

That's really interesting. That's really interesting. So that's then helpful for some of the smaller brands. What are some of the tactics you found for the guys doing over a hundred grand a month?

Will Haire | BellaVix (30:25)

man, I love programmatic. that's the DSP, the display advertising, the type of audience we can build. So like cut out anything that might be like medical related. So like we've worked with brands that help people with diabetes and stuff like that, like pregnancy. We have HIPAA laws here. like targeting becomes very difficult. And so we would recommend using like a connected TV.

Matt Edmundson (30:42)

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (30:52)

Mountain's a really good one or another third party platform to help those brands scale. But for your typical brand that sells supplement or beauty products, it's great because we're able to build audiences. like what we have found is that a lot of people on Amazon will just focus on like the bottom of the funnel, those, know, conquesting product searches and their brand. And what happens over time is like, to your point, competition, more people come in.

Matt Edmundson (31:18)

Hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (31:19)

You know, everybody has an anti-aging product if they're selling beauty. So it's like, how do you differentiate yourself and how you do that effectively is by leveraging a programmatic and building these audiences that are a little higher up in the funnel that are related to you by lifestyle. They're related to you by their demographic, their shopping behavior, their hobbies and interests. And a great way to get started, which a lot of people neglect is like, you know, I don't know a website that doesn't have Google analytics tied to it.

And Google Analytics, if you go on the backend, they share this information about the website audience. You can essentially take that and use that to get started. If you work with an agency in the advertising partner network, like Bella Vicks is, we get access to Amazon resources and they can pull information and help us build some of these initial audiences. And one of my favorite audiences that they're able to build, it's called an overlap report.

Matt Edmundson (31:52)

Yeah.

Will Haire | BellaVix (32:17)

And so they'll take the ASIN in question that you're researching and then they get a bunch of information based on the current audience that goes there and they build this report and the overlap of that report are like the common interests that these shoppers have and we turn those into audiences. And surprisingly, we get pretty good engagement and we look for a lift in sales over time. So like if you're gonna start DSP, you wanna run it.

Matt Edmundson (32:37)

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (32:44)

at least for six months and you wanna focus, like you don't have to spend, like so a brand that's conservative and starting with programmatic advertising, 10 % of your budget is enough for us to at least do the remarketing. Typically what we recommend is 80, 20, 20 % of your budget going to this and allowing us to test some of these different audiences, but the KPIs are different. We're looking for impressions, product detail views, add to cart, so it's like it's.

Matt Edmundson (33:02)

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (33:13)

It's softer metrics, but we know that over time and you know, Amazon has the Cantor report, Ogilvy for any advertisers who follow that. Like we know exposure is how you get people to buy your product. And so this exposure allows us to kind of build those audiences. And over time, you will see a sales lift. That's how we've taken brands from that $100,000 a month to three, $400,000 a month.

So it does work effectively and some categories do really well and others don't. it's something that needs to be measured and reacted on. It's not something you just turn on and forget about. There are some categories that it just, it might not make sense. We've worked with some beauty brands that we've tried to do this and we just, we never really saw the lift we were looking for after about a year of doing this. And so we stopped, they ended up using Meta and Google and

Matt Edmundson (33:50)

Mm.

Hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (34:10)

and it worked out well and we still saw sales increase. And then we just focused on what we can do on the AMS side with your PPC advertising. And there are some brands that, you know, we're working with a supplement brand now in the green fruits and green space that we shouldn't see this, but we see a $7 ROAS on programmatic and we're mid to bottom of the funnel. And it's like, what's different about those products? I mean, yeah, there's nuances that are different, like,

Matt Edmundson (34:18)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (34:39)

Seven dollars, I can't explain it.

Matt Edmundson (34:44)

you enjoy it while it lasts, obviously. Yeah, absolutely. I'm curious, why don't you do programmatic advertising for companies that are saying doing $10,000 a month? Is it a budgetary issue or is it an access issue?

Will Haire | BellaVix (34:45)

Yeah, exactly, yeah, and nothing gold can stay, yeah, exactly.

It's always budgetary.

Yeah. So like we've worked with some private equity brands that have the budget and they also understand full funnel marketing and advertising and they'll sign off on it. They get it. They're like, yeah, let's do commercials. We want to get, we want to build our audiences. But most of the time, the brands that come to me that are doing 10 to $20,000, they're, smaller. A lot of times I'm working directly with the owner and they're just there. They're closer to the money. So therefore they're a lot more.

conscious of how it's spent and they want to see that row as and I get it, you early on, it makes sense. want every dollar to count. And therefore when I talk about mid and upper funnel and I share all these KPIs, they're like, well, I spent a thousand dollars of my $3,000 budget and I didn't see a sales lift in the first month. So like in those situations, it's just, it's not worth it.

Matt Edmundson (35:35)

Yeah.

Yeah, slightly untenable. No, fair play. Fair play. What's what's one thing about Amazon we should all know heading into 2025 that maybe we don't know right now? That one maybe most people don't know.

Will Haire | BellaVix (36:04)

Yeah, I mean, would say,

yeah, AI is definitely taken over. as of now, Amazon updated the title restrictions and they're cracking down on longer titles. So as of January 21st, they have taken everybody's titles and they cut them on their own using AI. What we have found with AI is that, oh man, it's painful. When they rolled this out last year, they changed some of our titles and we didn't turn it off.

And they ended up getting some of our listings suspended with the titles that their AI recommended. So what I'm saying is like, embrace AI, it's not changing anything. Be conscious of your listing quality for sure. But understand that it's not going anywhere. It's, I feel bad for companies like Getita, the reimbursement software where like Amazon is baking a lot of those features in. And I know they have a partnership with companies like that. So it's interesting to see.

Matt Edmundson (36:40)

Wow.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (37:02)

what AI is going to be taking over and where the human part of this is. Like it's always going to be in the brand and it's always going to be in the creative to some degree, but you know, where is it heading in terms of advertising? You know, are we going to get the a version of Gmax on Amazon where it's minimum, you human interaction. You just set the ROAS and let it, let it do its machine learning. So it's, we're on the brink of something.

Matt Edmundson (37:08)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (37:31)

monumental and it'll change how we as agencies but also as sellers engage with marketplaces and how we operate on them.

Matt Edmundson (37:36)

Yeah.

Mm.

That's very interesting. So watch this space, ladies and gentlemen, watch this space. Will listen. My question for you. Well, now actually it's that time where I remember your question for me. What's your question? Yeah. What's your question for me, which I'm going to answer on social media. What is it?

Will Haire | BellaVix (37:45)

Yeah, yeah, change your past.

Yeah, I did.

I wanna know what's your most memorable experience from living in Salisbury, North Carolina. You shared a little bit about yourself and North Carolina is now home. So I would love to know what you remember most and what you liked most about North Carolina. Cause this is where I call home and I really enjoy it here.

Matt Edmundson (38:18)

I will, I love North Carolina. It's like my second home. And yeah, for those of you don't know, I used to live in North Carolina for a little while. Hence I have a slight, when I say Carolina, I can't say Carolina like a British person, it's Carolina. And I don't know why this is very odd, very, very odd. So I will of course answer that question over on social media. Come follow me on LinkedIn at Matt Edmondson and you'll find me answering that question at some point. What I love most.

Will Haire | BellaVix (38:30)

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson (38:45)

about North Carolina and I think everybody should go to North Carolina at least once in their life. And whilst I'm not answering the question, you should also try Cheerwine while you're there. Just wanna put that out there. Brilliant, well, listen, it's been great talking to you, man. Thanks for coming on and sharing the insights. I see that the sun is coming out where you are because it's shining into the lens a little bit. You've got this angelic glow going on.

Will Haire | BellaVix (38:50)

agreed.

No, that's right. You are local.

Yeah.

Ha ha ha!

Matt Edmundson (39:13)

So if people want to reach out to you, if they want to connect with you, the angel of Amazon, how do they do that?

Will Haire | BellaVix (39:21)

Yeah, check me out on LinkedIn, Will Hair, like on your head with an E. I put out stuff every day to try to help sellers. We're really in tune to the news and what goes on. So follow me there and then check out our website if you're interested, if you need support or need help. We're passionate, we're not a huge agency, but we like working with brands that have interesting challenges and are mission-based. So can check us out at bellavix.com. And Matt.

Matt Edmundson (39:42)

Mm-hmm.

Will Haire | BellaVix (39:46)

This was a lot of fun. It was a really great conversation and great getting to know you. So thank you for having me on your show.

Matt Edmundson (39:51)

No, it's been great, man, great. Here's another three-letter acronym, What's your ICP, your ideal client profile? Who do you work best with?

Will Haire | BellaVix (40:00)

Ooh,

good one. We work with brands that own their trademark and generally are doing at least a million dollars in revenue, because generally, they have a little bit of an audience and they may be struggling on Amazon. So we could help you guys get to that three, four, five million dollar range in a couple of years.

Matt Edmundson (40:18)

fantastic. We will of course link to Will's information in the show notes, which just if you're on an app podcast app, you don't need me to tell you to scroll down, they'll be there or come on by the website ecommercepodcast.net and of course if you signed up to the newsletter, it'll be in your inbox just the way it works. So that's, that's great. Well listen man, thanks for coming on. Absolutely loved it. Let me do this. Huge round of applause for Will. Yes, there we go.

So there we go. That's enough applause. Don't want you had to get too big. What a great conversation. And now be sure to follow the eCommerce podcast wherever you get your podcasts from because we've got some more great conversations lined up. And I genuinely don't want you to miss any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first you are awesome. Yes, you are created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear will has to bear it. I've got to bear it.

You've got to bear it as well. Now the e-commerce podcast is produced by the wonderful podjunction.com. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. I think music was written by the magnificent Josh Edmondson. And as I mentioned, if you'd like to read the transcript or show notes, simply head over to the website, ecommercepodcast.net. But that's it from me. That's it from Will. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next time.

Bye for now.