Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  0:18

Happy Tuesday everyone, I am Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson, digital strategist for BWG Connect. And for those that don't know, we are a network of knowledge sharing group. So we stay on top of latest trends challenges, whatever is going on in the digital landscape, we want to know and talk about it, we will do at least 500 virtual events this year due to the increase in demand to better understand everything in the digital space. And we will be doing at least 100 in person small format dinners. So if you happen to be in a tier one city, feel free to shoot us an email, we'd love to send you an invite, the dinners are typically 15 to 20 people having a discussion around a specific digital topic, and it's always a fantastic time. We spend the majority of our time here talking to brands, that's how we stay on top of the latest trends and challenges in the digital space would love to have a conversation with you. So feel free to send me an email at Tiffany Tiffany@BWGconnect.com. And we can get some time on the calendar. It's from these conversations, we understand what people want to know about. And it's also where we gain our resident experts, such as ProductWind and Bose who are with us today. Anybody that we asked to teach the collective team has come highly recommended from multiple brands, and service providers within our network. So if you ever have any need for any recommendations within the digital space, you can always feel free to reach out, we have a short list of the best of the best and we would love to provide that information to you. Also note that we have a talent agency BWG Talent that we would love to put you in contact with as well. Should you have any hiring needs a few housekeeping items. We want this first and foremost to be fun, educational, conversational. So please put those questions comments into the chat q&a. Or if you feel more comfortable, you can email me at Tiffany@BWGconnect.com. And we will be sure to get to them. And do note that this is a 30 minute session. So we will be wrapping up at the 30 minute mark. So with that, let's rock and roll and start to learn how Bose uses eComm influencer marketing to win on Amazon. I'm gonna kick it off to the panelists to give a brief introduction on yourself. And then we will dive right in. And I think,

Todd, I'm going to start with you today. Sure.

Todd Weagant  2:19

Thank you, Tiffany. So Todd Weagant. Global Head of market or Global Head of Sales for the Amazon business for Bose. And it's a mouthful. Basically, I'm focused on Amazon, for Bose on a global basis. been with the company 10 years have worked with Amazon for 20 years. So way back in the day. So that's kind of a nutshell.

Tim Wilson  2:43

Right? Thank you. My name is Tim, I lead the revenue efforts here for ProductWind, which is a really innovative solution for those companies who are looking to drive momentum for products online prior to that, and I've spent some time at pattern, which is a large three P reseller. And I also helped start a company named commerce IQ, and grew commerce IQ from you know, zero to eight figures and then jumped over. So I've been in the eCommerce space for a little while now. Excellent.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  3:14

Thanks so much. All right, so I'm gonna kick it over to you because this is really the journey, the story about Bose. And from what I understand is, you were an attendee listening in on one of the webinars and decided to test it out and see how it went. So with that, can you provide us your story and your journey? We'd love to hear it.

Todd Weagant  3:38

Yeah, you know, you're right. I did join a webinar, we're always looking as a company, we're always looking for different ways of doing things test and learn is a big part of our DNA at the company. And, you know, for years, you know, we I think we consider ourselves kind of best in class in launching products. But the rules keep changing. Its Amazon, of course. And, you know, we were, you know, really reliant on the vine program, the vine program has since changed quite a bit where it's more of an automated program less flexible, you don't really have the ability to drive that as hard as maybe we had in the past. And then investment, we always invest a significant amount in our launches, from a paid media point of view, but you can only do so much of that. And it's getting more and more expensive. So when I learned about ProductWind they were doing some things that really would influence in my mind that kind of had a lightbulb go off even during the seminar that they would influence really, you know, you're looking at, you know, driving more traffic, more eyeballs, and, you know, in ratings reviews, I mean, really everything that goes into the flywheel. And you know what, what happens is that all of a sudden You're doing those things in concert and not trying to do them independently. And so we learned that, you know, we, I guess the thought was, hey, let's try this. It's like all the secret sauce, because we, we have a really short ramp to our launches. Typically we launch products in the fall, consumer electronics, the largest selling season is the holiday season. And so we don't have the luxury of months to get a product into flight, we literally have six to eight weeks or less dependent upon if it's September October launch. So the idea of getting more eyeballs, and kind of moving the Amazon algorithms along. And that's, you know, what ProductWind kind of advertise themselves as, and so it's like, let's take a chance. And really for this the product that we tested in the fall, we saw exactly that happening. And we were able to hit some KPIs, we put some pretty aggressive KPIs in place that, hey, within a month, I need to have X, Y, and Z. And the program actually over delivered what we were looking for. So it's, it was very exciting. And, again, a test and learning the paid off so far.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  6:15

Very cool. And any questions, comments, make sure that you put into the chat q&a, and we'll be sure to get to them. So I used to work with Amazon as well. And I remember that buying program, and that was very painful at times. So thinking of this, as you essentially were able to train the algorithm, which the insurance means the influencer is training the Amazon algorithm. Is that correct?

Todd Weagant  6:40

Yep, that’s correct to me. Yeah. And even even to the point, you know, working with Tim's team, you know, we were able to focus on like key words, and make sure the content used key words and phrases. And that just expands as kind of the universe expands with influencers and creators and things like that. So if there were, you know, a certain thing that we wanted to end up being part of that algorithm, and we were able to kind of plant those seeds.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  7:10

And then how do you on your side, pick the influencers and make sure that they're the right fit for the brand and what they want to test?

Tim Wilson  7:20

Well, that's good question. That's, that's really the most important part of this whole program, right to win on Amazon, you need a whole bunch of things to go, right. It's really hard. And fundamentally, the role that the influencers play is they want, we want to send signals to that algorithm, over an extended period of time, and the signals that we want to send very, we want to be able to send, we need to have people that can develop beautiful content, we need people that are really good at driving traffic, and glance views and click throughs. And click through rate, we need people that are really good at driving sales, we need people that are great at driving ratings and reviews. And so what we do is we measure our influencers and their ability, their people, so it's not, you know, a program software program, but, you know, what is their propensity? Or what's their tendency to be able to deliver on each one of these attributes. So we're measuring our influencers, not just on demographic, you know, female aged 25 to 35 is an outdoor enthusiast, or audiophile. Rather, we have that and we're looking at to what degree does this person help drive each one of these KPIs that you need to be successful? And then we assemble a team of people with the idea that there's no one influencer, who can do all these things, it takes a village or it takes a team and we assemble a team to go out and do all these different things with each person having a part or role to play in that.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  8:47

And do you segment influencers based on maybe you could go over this because I'm even confused. I like the Nano versus micro versus celebrity. Like, there's so many different levels. I feel so maybe we could touch upon that. And then is that play into the mix the formula for success when you're looking at who's going to be promoting?

Tim Wilson  9:07

So there's lots of different levels that are just ways to talk about how many followers an influencer has. So a nano is going to be less than 5000 Micro will be 5000 to 100. Macro will be 100. Right and then go up and celebrities, you know, celebrity. That's my opinion is that is a pretty simple or, I don't know, it's not the best way to really segment somebody, Hey, how many followers do they have? And I think a lot of it is because for most companies, when you say influencers or influencer marketing, their mind goes to some form of public relations and PR and talking about likes and comments. That's not what we do. It's a natural consequence of what happens because of what we're doing. But if we have a choice to optimize a campaign towards driving eCommerce metrics and KPIs around, optimize Seeing SEO and visibility and click through rate, right, or ratings and reviews for credibility, like, that's the path we go down, we don't go down, delivering you 50,000 likes, because I'm not sure how to connect that to sales, but I know how to connect, share voice and SEO to sales. So we that's why we look beyond but you know, the micro than most of our influencers would be considered a micro because they are, you know, 20 of our influencers are going to be north of 5000, less than 100,000, we have macro, this is an RFP, I can check the boxes all the way up and down. But the fact of the matter is, we find micro to be the best mix of engagement, being able to deliver results and being cost effective, right? I mean, there, there's some people that pay $100,000, just for one post. So, you know, we're like, we'd rather take that $100,000 and spread it out across a group of people and have that army, go deliver kind of sustained results over an extended period of time.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  10:59

And then today, when you are looking at who is going to promote the product, I mean, was there actually like an interview process per se, I can't think of it like I used to work at home shopping. And it kind of reminds me a little bit of that. It's like you have this personality who's promoting a product, and people are watching or listening. So I guess one, did you have to have this actual interview process into how did you make sure that the content that they were creating was approved via like a corporate level up? It was hogging marketing buy in on all this?

Todd Weagant  11:35

Yeah, no, it's it's a great question. And it's so so first, there's, there is a Tim's team can, you know, based on the KPIs and select, hey, based on what we're trying to accomplish here, these are the folks that we recommend, they're there, you know, whatever your KPI, and, you know, my KPIs may be different than somebody else's. But it's, we start off with kind of this group, and then we hand it over to our social team and our social team kind of reviewed kind of past history of what these people were posting kind of the look in the fill of what they were presenting, and then came down to said, Hey, I think out of the initial group that we were presented, I think maybe one or two didn't make the cut. So they were already pretty well vetted. And then, as far as assurances that there wasn't going to be some sort of rogue posts or things like that there was a comfort level that there was a relationship with ProductWind, and their creator community, that that was not going to be a risk. There was never a time that we felt like this is a problem. So we felt really comfort, I will tell you that it's created. So I'm on the sales side of the fence, I care about sales, KPIs, growing the business and launching products and things like that. And to Tim's point, you know, oftentimes, when influencer or creator gets mentioned, all of a sudden, the social team or the PR team, they prick their ears up, and they're like, Wait, what are you doing? So it you know, we had a point where, you know, during the test and learn and just kind of building a relationship before we launch where our marketing team kind of freaked out like, Wait, you're playing in my sandbox a little bit. So I guess the lesson there is, is bring people along when it's appropriate into this process and make sure they're there understand and cover once they joined the process. There were awesome partners. And they we worked together and launched the program is exactly how we wanted to but there was kind of that uncomfortable where a this is not in your normal rain round. So just tidbit there of learning. But no, no, that hopefully the answer to your question

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  13:57

is a great takeaway of like, who are those stakeholders in the room and the beginning of the process? And who would you say, marketing and sales,

Todd Weagant  14:07

marketing and sales and social if you have a separate social team? And the PR element? Yeah. I mean, you know, Tim's point of, you know, there are influencers that, you know, pay, you know, hundreds of 1000s of dollars for one post. But the objective of that post is oftentimes completely different than what you're trying to do. And when you're launching a product, I mean, the many voices. And actually, I think it creates a much more comfortable, comfortable scenario for the social and PR and marketing team, knowing that these folks are gigantic voices. They're somewhere in the middle, they have a following. They have an interaction. They're doing some things, but one post is not going to change the world. And so it's like, at least in our world, it felt like this is something we could test and we're not freaking After the sales guy went rogue.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  15:04

He's always watching the sales guy going wrong. Yes. Did everybody have a good gauge on their KPIs that were at the table there in the beginning of like, what what defines success? Because

Todd Weagant  15:18

I think we're we were pretty solid on what that was. Yeah.

Tim Wilson  15:22

I think that's one of the most important things and anything like we've all done many projects in our careers, everyone was on the phone. And it's so critical to have clarity on what success up front. And then to maintain that, because oftentimes, that definition will change three or four times in the course of the program. So having that alignment upfront, which is hugely I have to thank the Bose team, because Todd's on the phone today and obviously, but he's right, we worked with the social work with the marketing team. And just making sure that we were all on that same page made. I think that's one of the important success factors for any program. anybody does. And one point that we've touched on a couple of times that I want to make sure it is clear, we've touched on peripherally is that what we're doing here and what happened for for Bose, right, he has Amazon, Bose has just a short window of time to make sure this thing is successful. And there are different KPIs that are going to be that were important for Todd, and they'll be, you know, maybe maybe the same KPIs and other launches, or maybe they changed depending. But ultimately, what this program is doing and product land is it's it's a program where we are sending signals to Amazon through external traffic and through these influencers in a very coordinated way. You don't have to use ProductsWind for this, by the way, you can do this yourself, right. But just you want to make sure that you're sending those signals over an extended period of time to essentially train that algorithm into loving your product. And when you do that a product launch Amazon's algorithm is entirely based on historical data, right? And that's why there's the honeymoon period that we all heard about. If there's no historical data on this Asin. It needs to know what do I do with this thing. And so when you launch one of these efforts with whoever, whatever company or whatever what you may do, you just get outsized results, when you do that, at the launch, or within the first, you know, 3060 days that it's been launched anyways, when the history is really small. That's when you can have the outsize impact and deliver the results. Because you can truly train the algorithm and send it the signals that needs to have to love your product. And that's, that's really good. It's not rocket science, but that's what we're doing here. And so with

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  17:31

that, that product can be anything that could be a mass market item, or that could be more of a niche item, it really doesn't matter. It's about that process that you just stated, to train that algorithm. Because that was one of the questions is like the is this better suited for mass market items, but it doesn't matter?

Tim Wilson  17:47

No, it really, really doesn't. I mean, I'm just trying to thank the last two customers that have signed up one is a protein bar. And the other one is a garment steamer for people like me that have wrinkly shirts, you know. So from Garmin steamers and protein bars to, you know, Premier audio products. That's it, we have a question

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  18:11

about KPIs. So what are some of the KPIs that you get on Amazon influencers, what data is available?

Tim Wilson  18:20

What data is available so that our influencers, if they are prime members integrate their accounts. So we see all of their Amazon activity, we try to get as much first party data as possible. So using the TikTok and Instagram API, along with the Amazon information, and then we'll also ask our partners like Bose, whoever else to share some of their first party data with us so we can understand things like glance views and sales and try to optimize what's happening in the market. The platform itself will provide you I mean, we can the metrics that we have heard most often matter the most. So we have the basic PR metrics of reaching engagement expressions of interest, likes, comments, etc. You have all that there is a media value to what's delivered, no doubt, I think, no doubt there is immediate value. But then below that, we're going to optimize and measure things like your SEO and your share of voice driving ratings and reviews and things of that nature that we know help drive traffic and conversion. Got it?

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  19:27

toggling back to you. What was the response with Amazon? So this you know Amazon displays very nice with the Amazon way. Right? So this isn't like some as it goes as Amazon approved as Amazon like this kind of traffic. And I guess why? Why does Amazon like this?

Todd Weagant  19:44

I mean, to be transparent. We did not share with Amazon that we were doing this program, but we do all kinds of programs. I mean, we have an outside agency for our media that we don't necessarily share exactly what we're doing from that point of You from Amazon. But yeah, there is. That's one of the reasons I liked this program. There was no gotchas that if Amazon had a conversation that they would be going, Yeah, this is a problem. So that's that's one of the reasons why I kind of perked up because it was like, I couldn't find the blind spot here.

Tim Wilson  20:19

For what it's worth. I've had i We're very open, there's no you know, Amazon program, you can be an authorized Amazon advertiser, right? So you can go and spend their money to have that. But there's, we're extremely open, I would have lunch just a month or two ago was at a table with seven people from Amazon, tell them what we're doing. Like, yeah, that sounds great. Sounds like the right way to do it. Right? Measure people use the data based on people's behavioral profiles versus their, you know, social graph. And one of the things that everyone knows Amazon loves is external traffic, especially external traffic from competitors. And TikTok is an emerging threat to Amazon search business, right. And it's everyone saw the article about Gen Z having TikTok as a preferred search engine. So, you know, we can use or set up, or anyone can set up a path where Amazon's algorithm is seeing week over week, increasing external traffic from TikTok into this product that has a high click through rate, higher sales velocity versus a competition, etc. Those are all signs are signals to Amazon that this thing matters. And so correct me if I'm wrong, Tom. But I think one of the things that you saw was a boost in your SEO is that right?

Todd Weagant  21:35

Like as soon as, as soon as the campaign launched, we could see traffic going up, we could see all of our kind of standard metrics going up. And there was nothing, nothing else to attribute it to, except for the product one activity. So and again, that was, you know, early on, oftentimes, we don't invest in paid media, right at the start, we want to wait till we have a little bit of organic activity going. And that's, you know, a strategy some people will go for, and some people won't. But we that's why we were able to kind of separate the two verses, and we just don't have a lot of paid media into this. And that's what's driving it. But we were actually slightly out of sync, so we can actually see the difference.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  22:22

That way, is it a clean slate, per se? How's that b2b? Tim, is that common? When you do these that it does positively impact SEO?

Tim Wilson  22:33

Well, it without a doubt. So the key Yeah, without a doubt, SEO is a huge part of what we're helping drive. So when we think about delivering, delivering visibility, it's not just about visibility in the social sphere, it's about visibility within the retailer, and retail media. So it's about driving, one of the impacts we have is a boost in your SEO and your share of voice. We have a study going on right now that we just started. But the other thing that we know anecdotally, but we don't I don't have the raw data on yet is your a cost will drop your advertising, you know, advertising cost of sale will become so much more efficient and effective. So there's a lot of these ancillary or peripheral benefits that exist as well. Certainly driving up your share voice and your organic rank is one of them. Excellent.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  23:21

Questions, comments, please put in the chat q&a bar, feel free to email me at Tiffany@BWGconnect.com. Any other retailers that you work with besides Amazon?

Tim Wilson  23:32

Amazon, we work with Amazon, you know, multiple countries, we also work with Walmart, Target Best Buy the main the main players that are out there. One question I'd actually ask Todd would be what did you and I don't know that I've ever asked you this? Is it like what did you What did you do to kind of get this to be approved? Or okay, because there are especially a bigger companies are like you mentioned how marketing and social kind of perked up and they're saying hey, well, wait a minute. You're in the influencer space like Yeah, but it's about eCommerce advertising. It's not the same as like what everyone else is doing. So how did you? How were you able to kind of get everybody on the same page to say, let's try this.

Todd Weagant  24:20

Yeah, so it kind of goes back to we had a very important product launch. It was launching very, very late in the season. And so it's really it was about building that story of, okay, we need to be able to drive eyeballs, we need to be able to drive the buzz and get the flywheel going. And that idea of you know, it's, it's, we're pressing all the buttons at once to drive this. That was kind of the thing. It was like, Hey, we got nothing to lose, because this launch has to be gigantic. And what you're telling me is it's hitting all the key points that we want to try to do. But it takes time and we don't have any time. So I mean, that's kind of in a nutshell the the elevator pitch that happened to get this over the road. Well, thank you,

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  25:13

Sally. And and it's fine. Absolutely cool coin claim that this is the insurance policy for product launches? Because I think that is a fantastic way to describe it.

Tim Wilson  25:29

I think I don't know, did I think I guess I said it, you say I said it, and then you used it or

Todd Weagant  25:35

I stole it from you. But I think in your pitch you used insurance policy for for product launches. But it really does. There's a lot of things, especially on the Amazon platform, that aren't necessarily in your control, and you can't directly influence. It feels like ProductWind allows us to influence a lot more because they're all working in conjunction. It's not You're not trying to do one thing and hope it works. And this other thing, and they hopefully work together. It's not your you've all working in the same direction, and you're all pushing the right things. And like I said, we I think we consider ourselves best in class product launches. But you've got to always evolve what that looks like. Because what I was doing on Amazon 10 years ago, or even three years ago, is not the same as what you need to do today. Absolutely. A polling

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  26:33

question here about the influencers? Are they adding content to Amazon? Or is there also content on Instagram, TikTok, that drives to Amazon or is it both?

Tim Wilson  26:43

Yeah, so they're creating content content living in one of two spots. Either they're posting to their own socials. So their TikTok account, or in some cases, some of the creators just generate content, and they don't post it socially. It's just available through the ProductWind platform and our customers then typically use the content and will use it themselves because you have the rights to then a big strategy that we've seen emerging more and more as people using that for our Amazon posts. Because Amazon posts follows the Instagram model where it's about how recently did you post so you can, you know, in Todd's case, if he walked away with 50 100 150 pieces of content was able to they could just stack that up and up to three months of Amazon post strategy just locked and loaded and done. Right. So that's where the content lives. And this is a

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  27:36

great question, can you typically turn that influencer content into ads on

Tim Wilson  27:41

TikTok or meta nets? That is very frequently done, we, you know, we will do some, you know, boosting of a post if asked, but we're not. We're not a social ad agency, you likely have someone who does that already. You know, our play is really about doing eCommerce advertising. And a very specific way to boost your product through the use of you know, all those signals we mentioned before you own that asset that's generated for a certain amount of time. And the great majority of our customers will, you know, hand it to their their ad agency that they work with to go run campaigns and promotions around. I don't know if Bose has done that at all. But it's a pretty common thing.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  28:29

And does this work with existing products or solely new products?

Tim Wilson  28:33

100% absolutely works with a listing, the name of the game is Amazon's algorithm is collecting data on trying to understand what your product is. And the reason it works so well at product launch is because it has no data on the product. So you can literally train the algorithm. If the products been around for three, four years. It's already got a tonne of information about it. So you've got to think through, there's some different approaches we might take. But you've just got to think through how can I change the current trajectory of my product, given the history that it's had. But I mean, we've done that for that it's one of our primary use cases, there's four use cases, we have product launch, being one of them, boosting an existing products will be a second, right? positioning yourself ahead of a surge in demand, people will use us ahead of Prime Day. So they don't have to advertise on Prime Day, they can just organically be buzzing the top of the heap and then ride that wave of demand. Right? And then also driving a lot of product health. If you have a four two we can make people love it. So it becomes a four three now it looks like four and a half stars and your conversion rate jumps. So those are the primary use cases. Yeah, a

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  29:38

lot of different levers. Awesome. Any closing thoughts

Tim Wilson  29:42

to wrap up? No. Thank you, Todd, for you’re welcome.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson  29:52

I appreciate you all for joining today. So we definitely encourage a follow up conversation with the ProductWind team. Thank you Todd for sharing your experience and thank you for it any events and thank you all for attending today. We hope to see you on future events. Take care. Have a lovely Tuesday. Stay safe, take care, lots of love.