Aaron Conant 0:18

Happy Thursday everybody. My name is Aaron Conant. I'm the co founder and chief digital strategist here at BWG connect, I spend my time just building the network and talking with brands up as many verticals as possible around, hey, you know, what are your biggest pain points? What are you trying to solve for. And that's where you get the topics for these events. Also helping people out with service provider partner selection across the board, asking everybody across the network to share who's working and who's not. And when we come across the same partner over and over again, that's who we asked to jump on and the sponsor of the webinars that we do. And today, it's going to be fun. But before we get started, a couple of housekeeping items are starting to couple minutes after the hour, we're going to try to end you know, a couple minutes before the half hour mark here, make sure everybody needs to get to the next meeting without being late, we'll send a follow up email to everybody. We're going to post the recording hopefully the beginning of next year. And if anybody wants to have a conversation ever, as we head into the end of this year, more than happy to spend time with anybody on the line today love those conversations can help you out with digital strategy, partner selection, whatever, you just want to chat about the snow or whatever else going on. That's fine, too. But as we tackle this, what is new item launch look like? There's been a lot of developments in the strategy and in how to do this and to accelerate it. And what's interesting is a lot of this stuff can also be applied to items that have been out there for a while, but might be on page two, and you want to move to page one. Anyways, we're gonna get to all that. And so we got some great friends, partners, supporters of the network for a long time now, Katie, right. And then Tim as well probably going to be Katie, you want to jump in brief intro on yourself, the company, and it's great to have you on this side or the webinar.

Katie 2:06

I know. There and thank you. Yeah, no, I've known you for years. I'm happy to be on and just to chat with you and Tim. So I'm Katie music, I work for totes isotoner. I've been with totes for going on 10 years. And I've been on our Amazon eCommerce business for eight years, which is kind of wild. I feel very old saying that because there's so much that you've learned right in that time. And yeah, I mean, this this year has been really exciting for us, we had really strong success in the last three, four months, really since the fall seasons kicked off with both t 11, t five cyberweek, whatever we're calling it and also the prime Big Deal days this was which is a mouthful to say. But both of those were really successful for us. And you know, definitely talking through Aaron and hearing about different connections, I got connected with Tim and we had some really great success with some new product launches in a way that we've never done before. So my organization is super jazzed about those and trying to figure out how we can continue that and what we're doing for q1, two, and all of 2024 to continue that excitement. So very happy to be here.

Aaron Conant 3:20

Really quick. Alex drops in here soon to be t 365. Right. Tim, I'll kick it over to you, you're gonna do a revenge show yourself and ProductWind. That'd be awesome.

Tim Wilson 3:24

My name is Tim. I've been in the eCommerce game for about 15 years now wearing different jerseys at different companies and the company product line that I'm at, I'm thrilled to be at because it solves a real niche problem that I think is pretty ubiquitous. But not everyone realizes there's actually a solution for and product when what we're really great at is providing instant momentum for products. It's most often used to help companies launch new products, and get them up and ramp but it can work on existing products as well. And we'd love to talk to you a little bit today about some different things that are possible. Whether it's using us or not using us doesn't really matter that you can do to really add some adrenaline to your strategy for next year. Things that you can do to really spin the flywheel to your to your advantage.

Aaron Conant 4:23

Yeah, awesome. And I think that's the key thing here. As we get into this, Tim Katie's like, what are those key things because at the end of the day, you can use ProductWind or another platform or you can do all this stuff on your own. It's just whether or not you have the time, the bandwidth and everything else. But I mean, the key strategies here are going to be great. Where should we start, Tim? Because

Tim Wilson 4:47

where should we start here? Well, I think I think maybe the best place to start would be Katie, do you want to just share your journey about your vision and I mean Amazon in 2015 versus Amazon today are two different platforms, I wouldn't even say it's a channel, right? We've seen it. And so maybe talk a little bit about what's going on at totes. How your Amazon business is working today and what maybe made you want to have the conversation with ProductWind that you had and kind of from there,

Katie 5:19

for sure. I mean, for years, our business at Amazon has been like the classic Amazon story, the items that have been on the platform, the longest have the most ratings and reviews provide the most volume, you know, they're not maybe the most exciting products in the world, their legacy products, they're their products that have been around for a really long time. We're very proud of those products, they mean a lot to us and our consumers love them. When it comes to launching, newness and totes isotoner, we are really proud of our innovation, innovation that we have in footwear innovation that we have in gloves and innovation that we have in umbrellas and rainwear. We've got a design team that does a really fantastic job to bring that to life and make it fashionable and make it products that people really bring them a lot of comfort, especially in weather that's crummy, right. And we've always struggled with new nests, we've always struggled with launching notice to the point where you know, my leadership would bring it up and be like, just we've never been able to make this work. And it's like pounding your head against the wall. That's

Aaron Conant 6:26

the new item just launches on an Amazon right, which it used to be you would upload it, they'd order on the one piece side, they'd order a case, and then would go in I'm thinking back to, you know, like 2014 2015 16 days, and so they would order it, and then you could at least put some money on it and get it going. But like you're saying it's totally new, right at this point. Yeah,

Katie 6:48

totally No, like you do vine, you know, you do you put AMS on it, blah, blah, blah, but not really. Not it never really we never had success really kicking newness into high gear on Amazon like this, the discoverability was always the challenge. So like

Aaron Conant 7:05

dry, just driving the traffic they're driving. Usually, when it comes out to right, you want detailed eight page views, correct

Katie 7:10

detail page views, our conversion has mean if something had had tough conversion or tough ratings and reviews, then we you know, we just yank it, we know it's not going to work. And so we move on. But we have a tail of product that has strong ratings and reviews. People really liked the product. I like the product, you know, we have people who really believe in it. But getting it to be discovered has been the challenge of getting it high enough to rank and search and to get onto page one to have searched to really get the eyeballs to it. We've just not had the success there.

Aaron Conant 7:48

Yeah, yeah. And then so then that comes down to traffic driving, right? Like that's at the end of the day. And if you don't have inventory in there, the paid media side is tough to do. So then traffic is coming from where paid search social influencer, like how do we solve for it? Um,

Katie 8:06

yeah, I mean, on, on Amazon search is coming. Obviously, from the funding through AMS, we hadn't really done with newness. We hadn't done too much with DSP, but maybe trying a little bit there. But in chatting with Tim and his team back in maybe early fall, I think it was like September that we really chatted a bit to him. And I was like, let's, let's try this. I talked to some other folks who who are competent in product when talk to Aaron, you know, you definitely recommended that I give it a try. And so we were like, Let's test this, let's see what happens. We've never tried this before driving traffic off platform, from places like Instagram and Tiktok, directly to our Amazon PDPs. And let's see what we can do. Especially also bringing in a new shopper or bringing in a younger consumer. We tested this with a product that is, is definitely geared towards a younger shopper, and more fashionable, etc. And it worked really, really well. So Tim, what

Aaron Conant 9:10

does that mean? I mean, you guys, I don't know his secret sauce. What is it about? Advice for brands? Because, right, it's off Amazon, right? And we know the Amazon algorithm now really, as long as you're converting really, really values that traffic? What is the advice for brands on the line today? If they're launching a new item? Like how do you guys look at it and tackle it?

Tim Wilson 9:32

So yeah, I think one of the most important things right, so the algorithm is an important component to everyone's strategy. I think when I talk to a lot of brands, you know, as I've done over the course of my career, it feels to me like everyone has a very similar recipe that they use for launch and they're obsessing over their end consumer. They have personas, they have all these profiles built out. I'll tell you You, well, you know, this person shops to Whole Foods owns a French Bulldog, they have all this rich information and what's missing from everyone's launch plan and strategy is that you have two customers, you have your end user, and you have the retailer's algorithm. And the more that you can market to both of those things together is how you start to get kind of an unfair advantage or your when your unfair share. So, like you said, We'll talk primarily about Amazon's algorithm today, because I think that's probably the biggest part of everyone's business but, and Walmart has many, many Amazon, but really, it's about understanding the different components to that algo. And giving it the data that we know the algorithm likes, and sending in that data or those signals, week over week for an extended period of time, training the algorithm to love your product. That's it. And so the things you need to do, you touched on already, right, like external traffic, and high quality, external traffic that, you know, have lead to a good conversion rate, potentially leave reviews, all these different signals that are out there, which we can go through if you want. I think a lot of people are familiar, but we can go through them. That's what you've got to do. So it's about breaking those different components. I do want

Aaron Conant 11:12

to go through those signals, because I think a lot of people are curious, and I agree with you that it's tailoring it and having the right KPIs. Right. Yeah. Which is, it is probably the most important thing, because then it can frame the strategy as a whole. But those, I would love to hear what those signals are, because we're gonna be taking notes like, Is it primarily? Is it micro influencers? Is it your own? You know, paid search and social? Is it meta? Like? Where do you is that product specific? Like, we're, where should the people be different for their new item launch, specifically dividing up that spend? Because at the end of the day, it seems like traffic is the key high quality traffic is the key? It

Tim Wilson 11:51

is it is right. So keep me honest, on answering the question, it was a couple of thoughts came to my mind. First of all, you said, you know, it doesn't matter the product, like we we've done $5, you know, bags of coffee and $500 headphones, right? And it doesn't matter, the algorithms looking for the same data, the same signal. So first of all, that's that's point 1.2 would be what your there's, you know, people will talk about a nine or a 10. If you want to talk about seller, you know, seller account, whatever it is, fundamentally, the Pareto principle applies. And what we've seen, and I'm curious with, if Katie, you've seen it the same way. And Aaron, you talked to a bunch of people, you know, many people on the phone, but there's all these different components to the AI algorithm, which you can, we can read through, but 80% of what wins your placement is sales velocity and conversion rate, if you have a product that is selling, and has a high conversion rate, that is the biggest sign for relevancy to Amazon, and Walmart, and whoever else, all they want to know is your product, something that people are going to buy. So the better that you can do that the faster that you can do that the more relevant you can signal. And if you can do it from external traffic coming in, that's even better, because that's one of the things that they look for. And what we look to do is simply help companies by delivering a bunch of external traffic to their listing that convert, and if you can do that in an orchestrated way, week over week, so it's not just like a, you know, an adrenaline shot, and you know, you've run a PR thing, and you have a bunch of sales and, you know, a 10 day window, it's going to extend for a month or so, you then have that training set. And that's what we help brands do in some ways. Yeah. I

Aaron Conant 13:45

mean, Katie, you're shaking your head. And then I have a question for you. Like, do you? Would you shut it off? Are you monitoring conversion rate? Because in my mind, a lot of people look at sales. A lot of people look at traffic. But what Tim's saying is conversion rate is a major player. And if it's not going to you shut it off, go back fix and then go back. But they always we'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah,

Katie 14:08

conversion rate, obviously, is is really, really important. I think the piece that was really eye opening for me as well with this is driving traffic from off Amazon to Amazon, and how much the platform favors that and how much Amazon wants that. We think about, you know, Amazon, how many people are Amazon shoppers, how many people are Amazon Prime, but bringing in more traffic to them is huge. And they love that. So that's very interesting. And then thinking about to you know, Tim's point of making sure that you continue this over several weeks. So we've had, you know, a PR thing where we'd get like some major blip or that our products are featured in magazines or featured in, you know, Buzzfeed or wherever, and we might see some huge spike for a week, but then it's just back to where it was. So continuing that over weeks, over, you know, week over week over week is fantastic.

Aaron Conant 14:57

It's really great. Katie, like how long so quick Question What's, what's the name of? Tim Scott? There's two, what's the name of Tim's company? So itsPproductWind, like product, and then wind like blowing in the wind. And the other one is question around the timeframe. So you'd mentioned September, like, what what is the timeframe for this to take place? And it can be either with Tim's company or not, doesn't have to be there. But is this a? Is this two months? Is this five months? Like how long does it start to get things going? And then you when you're saying it's weeks, is that four weeks? Is that eight weeks? I think people are trying to plan especially when they're talking about, you know, q1 of next year.

Katie 15:37

I mean, I'll speak to my experience. And then Tim, you may have other perspective as well. But in the with the campaign that we did, we made sure we launched the product in late October. So meaning the PDP launched, inventory was in the FCS via Born to Run a significant amount of inventory in the FCS SEO was there, we were driving advertising ratings and reviews buying going at the same time. So really attacking it from every angles to make sure that you had this perfect storm. And this really strong looking PDP as strong as we could. And we turned the campaign on pretty much right away. And within three to four weeks, we were like, Okay, this is we're onto something.

Aaron Conant 16:17

But the key thing that you still use the Born to Run, right? For

Katie 16:21

sure, for sure. Because you don't want to drive all this traffic and drive eyeballs and then you can't convert it, that would be a waste of money.

Aaron Conant 16:30

Right? Awesome. And then what were the metrics that you were looking at? So if I'm taking notes right now, I'm like, no matter what I'm doing burned around, I need the proximity. I need the inventory in there. Yeah, all the detail, but I'm still doing everything else. I'm driving my own traffic. I'm using Vine program gains rates are doing all of that is the same. And then the additive piece here is okay. Now how much traffic which in the past is why people didn't view it that way. If you're spending money on Amazon, it drives the Amazon. If you're off Amazon, it goes to your direct to consumer site. And this is the next phase, it's a little different is driving off traffic off Amazon traffic on to Amazon,

Katie 17:10

for sure. And driving really qualified traffic off Amazon, to the platform, people who are gonna bring in their followers bring in their, you know, share their stories, and and so forth. So,

Tim Wilson 17:22

yeah, as I say one of the things that you the DTC conversation, which you kind of hinted out there, Aaron, right, like, one of the things that I think about is each of these platforms or channels that you think about have the different roles and functions. And I don't know that I think of a DTC platform as a customer acquisition channel, so much as I think of it as like a retention and research and r&d kind of arm. For most brands that, you know, Nike is going to be an, there'll be some exceptions, but that's generally how I think about it. Amazon is the best customer acquisition channel that I've seen. And if you know, your LTV, and you can understand your CAC, like, it allows you to just be much more thoughtful about how you choose to invest in the in the channel, and, you know, ProductWind and what ProductWind doing is simply trying to make sure that if your product is good, if it's not good, we can't help and we all everyone has a dog in their portfolio if they're being honest, right. But if your product is good, we can make sure that it gets its 15 minutes of fame. Right. And traffic times conversion equals sales are yes traffic times conversion times the price of your product, but you know, traffic times conversion and so what we're looking to do, and what I would encourage anyone to do is there are lots of different nuances within how you can drive traffic and things you could do within conversion to drive conversion. What we're looking to do here is simply do a bunch of do all these different tactics around getting external traffic driving people to your product detail page that are likely to convert and likely to help drive reviews to help you know bring in some, you know, influencers will help drive some credibility, which helps drive the conversion rate etc. and get all of these different tactics working together to send in you know, kind of push the flywheel in your favor and make it retail ready in 30 days is our goal on day 30 This thing is looks like it's been out here for three months already.

Aaron Conant 19:34

Yeah, so a quick question that comes in Katie mentioned you know, highly qualified traffic is that primarily micro influencers or influencers like how do you get that high quality? Yes that Tim for that's that's gonna be for me like when you guys because you're on the back you're doing this where? Yeah, so one so companies like are you saying hey, we're going after traditional paid search social or we're going after primarily micro influencers or influencers? I'm thinking If people on the line today like okay, I understand to this point now I want to leverage the traffic I obviously can handle my on it on site traffic through. I'm like you Katie invalids go I'm AMS right? Whatever. Right? But where does that traffic? What do you guys targeting Tim is your primarily horse to ride to get that highly crowd qualified traffic in is

Tim Wilson 20:22

primarily micro influencers and understanding we have, you know, understanding their behavioral tendencies, not just stopping at demographics and psychographics. That's not nearly enough, you've got to understand their behavioral tendencies. And you also have to understand, like any good any, any good manager, whether it's in your work life, or if you ever played any, you know, activities, or sports or whatever the job of a manager is to find out what somebody does well, and put them in a position to be successful. It's really that simple. And I think a lot of people that work with influencers on social, don't put the influencer in a place to move to have the most impact to your business. It's everything's there a hammer, and everything's a nail. And that's just not true. There are more nuances there. And so, you know, we're looking to deploy these micro influencers in ways that allow them to maximize their benefit to a brand. And the benefit we're looking for is specifically what kind of data or signal can they send into the algo. Because we want the algo to really love your product, and in strengthen your digital shelf.

Aaron Conant 21:32

Awesome. So a couple questions come in. Katie, what were your KPIs that you were holding them to? And then this next one, have you used Amazon creator connections?

Katie 21:42

So yeah, so key KPIs for us were shipped units. So retail units out the door at Amazon, to shoppers, future orders by Amazon, so open purchase orders from them?

Aaron Conant 21:56

Good one, right as a key indicator of does Amazon view it is an accelerating product.

Katie 22:01

Awesome. Sure. For sure. And those were both fantastic. Again, like, like, you know, unlike any other lunch we'd seen. What else were key items, we were looking at bestseller rank. I'm seeing where we were in terms of search results. So looking at at, you know, our brand and category were we on page one, page two, looking at the overall category, where were we? Yeah, those were the major ones.

Tim Wilson 22:30

Do you track I'm curious. Katie, do you have a tool that were you track Share of Voice? And if so did you track that at all? Um,

Katie 22:38

we do have a tool, retract your voice. And we need to do that with this item? Yeah, that's actually a good point. We need to do that. Because

Tim Wilson 22:45

one of the things that's awesome about the you know, the algos is sponsored, helps organic and organic, help sponsored, these things don't happen in a vacuum. So the idea and Aaron, I'm glad you said at the beginning for everyone, when you're doing these off platform traffic efforts, however you're doing them, I would strongly recommend you continue with your traditional retail media strategy, what you'll notice is your sponsored product rank will improve. It's not just your organic rank, it's your organic and your sponsored, which drives up your share voice makes your retail media spin way more efficient. And, you know, some people tell me they don't want to turn on retail media until the product looks a certain way and has you know, as their retail ready or has a profile of a certain number of things. And that's fine, too, right? We can help accelerate, you can do different things to help accelerate to get there. But I definitely think you want to get there, whether it's on day one or day 30. You know, you can kind of debate but the two together, certainly one plus one equals three is what we've experienced. Yeah. Where

Aaron Conant 23:48

do people pull you in? Traditionally, Tim, is it closer to launch? Or

Tim Wilson 23:53

when we first start working with people I think like Katie was taught Katie is a great example. Because not just because she's seasoned, right? She's been around, she's seen a lot of things happen. And it's it's a concept that people most easily grasp with launch because when product launch happens, doesn't matter who you are, the algorithm doesn't care about your brand name, they want to know about your product, and there's no data on it. So the algorithm, you have the honeymoon period, where essentially the algorithm is saying, What do I do with this thing? Right? Do people want it? Do they not want it so when you start at launch, and we can really start anytime and your first? I mean will anytime but ideally, we're working with you in the first 30 days, it's gone live. We can send in those signals and give it a training set of data that makes it love it. But the ironic thing is the majority of the work that we do today are on existing products. Right? Launch everyone gets it and your hero products probably get a ton of attention and the majority of your budget and then you have products that are dogs, and then the middle you have the rest of your portfolio. And within your portfolio, there's likely a few products that you think are really good, but just aren't selling. And those are the products that typically benefit from getting, you know, their 15 minutes of fame. Awesome.

Aaron Conant 25:13

We're getting really close to time here, I want to make sure that we wrap up, of course, more than happy to connect anybody with Katie or Tim. for follow up conversations, any of this, Katie's been, you know, on a brand side partner, friend of the network just been a great resource for probably a lot of brands. I mean, I don't think you realize that Katie, is that these conversations are the ones that help us put together things like this. What about last question? I want to make sure you get to Amazon creator connections?

Katie 25:43

Um, I've, I've looked into it. It's not something that we've used. I know, it's, I believe it's still in beta. I can't speak to it.

Aaron Conant 25:52

Myself. Yeah. Awesome. Okay, there, if you want to have a follow up conversation, just ping me. I mean, I'll shoot you an email. Anyways, we'd love to connect, again, with anybody on the line today, if you want to do kind of an end of year recap around what I'm seeing on this. I mean, there's 1000s of brands in the network holistically, what we see going on as far as trends, new strategies, new partners that are out there, just ping me or I'll shoot you an email and put time on my calendar. As we get to the end of the year here. We're going to wrap up with right around 100 dinners on the in-person event side. So if you're in New York City, 1212 next week, you know, Tuesday, feel free to stop by or let us know. Tim, do you want to wrap us up here with the key takeaway real quick?

Tim Wilson 26:33

My number one takeaway for everyone would simply be if you're working on a strategy that involves external traffic, the most important thing you can do is understand how you can get the most high quality traffic to convert and buy that you need to understand behavioral tendencies and profiles. I'm selling Coors Light, I'm not going to go to a steakhouse and ask people what they think about it, I'm going to go to a frat party throw a whole bunch of 30 packs, and as people say, five stars, right. And by the same token, I'm not going to serve caviar at that frat party. So really understanding the behavioral profile, I think is one of the most important components to helping you get successful. And then please run your retail media in conjunction with your external traffic strategy.

Aaron Conant 27:20

I think that quality traffic is key because you're right, if you're driving poor quality traffic, and it's not converting, you're going to Amazon if you're dry, especially if it's off Amazon and you're driving on and it's not converting is sick, the exact opposite of what you want to happen. Yes, but I can see we're pretty much right at time here. So, everybody, thanks for joining today. Thanks for the great question that came in Tim. As always, thank you, Katie. Always thanks for being such great friends, partners, supporters, the network. We're going to wrap up here right on time, everybody, take care, stay safe and looking forward to having you at a future event. Alrighty, we'll see everybody