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📒 PAY ATTENTION to REGIONAL KEYWORD DIFFERENCES

In last Thursday’s BDSN, we showed you in detail how to compensate in keywords for your Amazon listings for differences between the way different countries speak English and Spanish.

The same principle can be applied to regional differences within a country too. For example, take a look at how a carbonated beverage like Coca Cola could be referred to in different parts of the USA:

It's important to note that these regional differences are not absolute, and there can be variations even within regions. For example, while "soda" is common in the Northeast and West, "pop" in the Midwest, and "coke" in the South, some areas in New England may use the word "tonic."

You want to try to make sure you include in your backend all relevant keywords someone could use to describe your product or the problems it solves. It will give you and extra edge over your competition.

Here are a few more examples within the USA:

🏛️ ANOTHER WAY to DIFFERENTIATE PRODUCTS

Licensing (using someone else’s copyright or IP with permission) is a great way to differentiate your products, but it often comes with 5-10% royalties and jumping through hoops to get approved with bigger rights holders like Disney.

A Freedom Ticket student of mine has had good success creating a “US Army” licensed water canteen instead of doing it under his own brand. The licensing deal added instant credibility and helped him stand out in search, resulting in a doubling of sales in exchange for a 6% royalty to the Army.

A great place to find possible licenses for your products is to head to the world’s largest licensing show, held each year in Las Vegas. Or alternatively use their online licensing directory.

Copyrights typically expire 70 years after the author’s death or 95 years after publication. After that they enter the public domain, and are fair game for anybody to use without permission or needing to pay royalties.

Here are a few famous characters you can use freely now:

Take a look at the fair game ones above, and well-known characters below that just recently or will soon enter the public domain. They may be ripe for the picking to create product variations for your products.

🪢 USE DEEP LINKS when SENDING TRAFFIC to AMAZON

Rankster’s Paul Harvey says 99% of Amazon sellers make a big mistake by using normal Amazon links in their ads and social posts.

Here’s a normal Amazon link

Which is great ... if you are on a laptop or desktop browser.

But if a potential buyer is using their mobile phone (like 99% of TikTok users), it will open the mobile browser, usually Safari or Chrome.

But most users are not logged into Amazon on their browser, and once they log in, they will have lost the link and search criteria. Not a good user experience.

Instead, you want to use Deep Links that open the app by default … not the browser since most users are logged into the Amazon app.

This eliminates a ton of friction, and in many cases reporting/tracking issues and Amazon Attribution are kept intact.

Use a tool to create your outside links to Amazon so they are deep links.

PixelMe’s deep links allow you to drive customers directly to the Amazon app for better UX, longer retention and higher likelihood of conversion.

Deep linking can increase conversions by up to 3x by reducing the time and steps it takes to complete the checkout process. It can also help your rank.

Here are 3 different tools Amazon Sellers can use for deep linking:

• PixelMe

• URLgenius

• Geniuslink

One of the best ways to expand your reach to new customers and grow your business is through Walmart Marketplace.

You’ll get to leverage the platform of a household name and find millions of monthly shoppers looking for products just like yours on Walmart.com. 

As one of the fastest growing eCommerce platforms in the world, Walmart Marketplace makes scaling any eCommerce business simple with: 

• Zero monthly or set up fees 

• Competitive commission structures 

• Flexible solutions for fulfillment, advertisement, pricing, and more 

• And, if you become a seller today, you can save up to 50% on referral and fulfillment fees. (conditions apply)

🔥 WHAT is a GOOD CONVERSION RATE on AMAZON?

Dream 100 member and BDSS XI Iceland speaker Mansour Norouzi often gets asked how to determine what makes a good conversion rate in a given category.

Here's his approach to tackling this question:

Scenario 1️⃣: Existing Products in the Same Category
If you already have products in the same category, there are several ways to gauge what a good conversion rate (CVR) is:

● Brand Metrics: This tool provides insights into the top and median CVR for your category. By far the best place to look into.
● Search Query Performance (SQP): A valuable resource to understand the market's conversion rate at the keyword level. However, it's crucial to have a solid foundation in SQP to avoid being misled by the data.

Scenario 2️⃣: Entering a New Niche
This scenario can be trickier as you need to estimate the average CVR to gauge performance and plan budgets or rankings.

✅ Here's his method:

Product Opportunity Explorer (POE): By combining search terms and products data, you can calculate total clicks and purchases for each term. This data allows you to estimate the conversion rate at the search term and niche level.

Keep in mind, this is an estimation based on products capturing 80% of the clicks in the niche. It's a baseline to understand the average, but to succeed and launch effectively, you need to aim higher than the average.

Want a copy of the template he uses to calculate this? Message him on Linkedin and say you saw his tips in BDSN.

🚢 AMAZON FULFILLED by CHINA CREATING BACKLOGS

Jamie Paros of SKUDrop says sellers need to wake-up before they get screwed.

Amazon announced plans for a discounted DTC, FBC (Fulfilled By China) model for Chinese-only manufacturers to take part in a few weeks ago.

At the same time, Amazon’s China shipping arm, AGL, now has a back log of up to 3-4 weeks — good luck trying to book a slot anytime soon.

He says Amazon’s new financial playbook is almost cornering sellers into “forcing” them to utilize AWD and AGL services to avoid being penalized with new fees. But Amazon can’t keep up with the volume right now.

With many sellers now completely relying and integrating these new supply chain strategies and having an almost 100% reliance on Amazon services to function, he is concerned the next 6 months are not going to end well for those who don’t plan for supply chain risk management.

With shipping spot prices warming up to $15k-20k per container, only savvy operators will survive.

There are alternative out there, and SKUDrop is one you might want to look into to keep costs down and your inventory flowing to US Amazon warehouses.

👂🏼 Great podcast worth a listen:

💵 CASH FLOW HACK for EARNING POINTS on AD SPEND

Clearco was founded 20 years ago to make it easier for entrepreneurs to grow their business without giving up equity or pledging collateral. They help free up profits you are waiting to come in so you can reinvest in your business faster.

Clearco's weekly repayments and flexible funding amounts enable you to take what you need, when you need it. Funding with Clearco is not a loan, so you can access working capital without personal guarantees or collateral.

Clearco can also get relevant invoices or receipts funded in as little as 24 hours.

All you need are:

• 12 or more months of revenue greater than $10,000 USD/mo

• Incorporated (LLC OK) in the USA

• Current United States checking bank account

  

  A pretty cool twist: Clearco can do expense reimbursement for up to $1 million if the invoice was paid in the last 60 days. Typically this is great for founders that have used their credit cards on Amazon, Google or Meta ad spend.
  
  This is your hack: Use your rewards credit card to pay ad spend to earn points, then pay it off with Clearco (potentially at a lower interest rate if you need to cash flow it over time).

✌🏼 See you again on Thursday …

The answer to today’s STUMP BEZOS is
20% of sales come from “local” sellers