David 0:00
Are you looking to grow your sales on Amazon? Chances are if you’re not selling on Amazon’s international marketplaces, you are leaving some serious money on the table. What keeps a lot of people from selling internationally are all the confusing hoops you have to jump through to get started. That is why we worked with Kevin Sanderson from maximizing ecommerce on our international expansion. Kevin and his team take care of the details and guide you through the process of expanding so that you can grow your sales and reach new customers. If you’d like to find out if working with Kevin and his team is right for you head over to https://maximizingecommerce.com/fire. Once again that is https://maximizingecommerce.com/fire.
Intro 0:46
Welcome everyone to the Firing the Man podcast a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day, and to know you were capable of more than join us, this show will help you build a business and grow your passive income streams in just a few short hours per day. And now your host serial entrepreneurs David Schomer and Ken Wilson.
- Hardcover Book
- Clear, James (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
David 1:10
Welcome everyone to the Firing the Man podcast on today’s episode, David and can give an in depth overview of the new premium EBC feature that was just released on Amazon. Be sure to stay tuned to find out how you can access the premium EBC template that we are using in our own businesses. Ken What’s going on man?
Ken 1:29
David, how you doing? I’m excited to be in the podcast. Yeah. And excited to share with the listeners today about premium EBC this podcast probably air and February 23. Everybody’s a new year, what can we do differently to make our product stand out? How can we get better conversions and today you’re in store for a treat? Because we’re going to cover Amazon’s new premium
David 1:49
EBC definitely, I think to lay out some groundwork, what is EBC? What What is it so that is stands for Enhanced brand content and when you’re brand registered on Amazon, so that would mean you have a trademark and you’ve gone through the brand registry process. This is a special feature that Amazon gives you. And so for those of you that have shopped on Amazon, if you think about some listings that you’ve looked at that look really cool, you know, under the bullet points, you can put big images, how would you describe like EBC
Ken 2:16
just a more of an more interactive marketing description where like you mentioned, you can do images, comparison charts, you can do a lot more. The standard Amazon product description is just text. And so it’s this huge, like paragraphs of text, well, that gets replaced with EBC or enhanced brand content. And there’s like modules, images, sliders, carousels, different things to increase conversions. Amazon wants people to buy stuff faster. In my mind, that’s what the BBC is.
- Hardcover Book
- Michalowicz, Mike (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
David 2:43
And that’s I mean, if you look at why are we super interested in that, in this, it’s conversion rate, if you know, 100 people come to your listing, and five people end up buying if you can increase that to 10 people buying that is gold. Yeah, you’ve doubled your revenue, and you’re doing the same thing. And so I saw our team put together some premium EBC this week, and man, it’s it’s cool. It’s really cool. And so let’s let’s dig into this. So Can Can you tell us a little bit more about this? First, we’ll
Ken 3:10
go over kind of the requirements, how to access it, and then we’ll dig into the premium A plus content, sometimes you hear called being called a plus, sometimes etc. They’re the same essentially. So if you hear us say A plus, we just mean ABC or or vice versa. So we’ll we’ll talk about how how to get access to it. And then we’ll describe what it is. And then for anybody that listens to the entire episode, we I don’t think David announced this yet. But our designer Josh David said in the process of deploying premium EBC right now and one of our portfolio brands and our designer, Josh come up with a really killer template. And so he’s actually we’re, we’re sharing it on our website. So if you want as a template that we’re using for our premium a plus, you can go to firingtheman.com backslash premium, and it’s a free download. We’re just sharing it to give you some ideas and get you off the ground. If you’re if you want to deploy this quickly. Now how do you get access to premium a plus, in order to get access to it, all of all of your ASINs in your catalog must contain a published a plus brand story. And if you don’t have a brand story, you’re missing out. And so what a brand story is an A plus brand story. Essentially, it’s a new, it’s a new feature, I can’t remember how old it is. I think we’ve had it for about six months. Now. Essentially, it comes with like several different modules. You can select however many you want, and use however much you want. But there’s image carousel modules. There’s text based carousel modules. And then there’s a logo for your brand. And so it’s just another way to identify your branding and also connect with you know, share with customers. What kind of a brand you are, what do you stand for? What do you offer? How can you help them along on their journey and really define your brand. So if you don’t have a brand story, that’s step one, go write a brand story, and then apply it to all of your ASINs. David, what’s step two,
David 4:50
you need to have at least 15 A plus content project submissions in approved status within the past 12 months. And this is something that if you’re split testing This is something that you should have on hand, if not what you could do, if you were looking to kind of game the system is upload it, you know, make minor tweaks, like minor improvements to your existing EBC, submit it, get it approved, maybe make some more improvements, submit it, get it approved. And once you hit that 15 That is when you get the approved status, a trailing 12 month timeframe. So one thing I want to note on this is premium A plus content is granted at the end of each month. So you will be notified if you meet the criteria, and you will need to contact them for access. Yeah, so
- Audible Audiobook
- Alex Hormozi (Author) - Alexander Hormozi (Narrator)
- English (Publication Language)
Ken 5:30
just to clarify, at the end of every month, they check your account. And if you have 15 approved a plus pieces in the last 12 months, then you are then you automatically will get access to that for the next month. They’ll grandfather you and on the very next month as soon as you meet that criteria.
David 5:46
All right, cancel, why do we care? Why is this important?
Ken 5:49
Like you alluded to earlier, David conversion rate is critical. Like I’m huge on on optimization and conversion rate optimization. And so adding this premium A plus will help should help you increase your conversion rate. If you if you do it properly. There’s a couple new like really, really cool modules that they’ve introduced that I think are you can get very creative with it. And a really help describe your products to the shoppers and really let you stand out against your competitors. And so the quicker you can deploy this, the quicker you can increase your conversion rate. And so and right now it’s free, I heard whispers from someone that being released to everybody for free. There were brands, high end brands paying $250,000 To unlock this feature. And so now Amazon is allowing us to have this for free, at least for now. So go out and take advantage of it premium A plus content, it’s going to increase your engagement and the page experience is incredible way, way better than the basic A plus content, you have more spots on the page or real estate you can take up Amazon to Skype describes it as richer media content, which means they’ve added some new modules, which we’re going to cover here in a little bit. But it just essentially as your PDP or your product detail page, it shows up the same way regular EBC is it just has new modules creates it covered more real estate. So David, what are some of the new modules that it has or some of the modules that it has?
David 7:10
Yeah, so it has a interactive hover hotspot module, which is really cool. You can toggle from image to image has multiple video modules, which this is huge video is video converts better. And so when you can put multiple videos up, why not take advantage of it, it has enhanced comparison charts, which when you’re deciding what to compare compared to your other products. So if they choose not to buy that one, maybe they buy a different one. And so those are really neat and larger image larger images on the Detail page also has some carousel modules and a Q&A module. And so if you want to see the template that we’re using, which our designer Josh is a creative wizard that he put this together, go to firingtheman.com/premium to check it out, I really do think there’s going to be a benefit to early adopters here. We saw this with Amazon posts a while ago, when that was first released, that was huge. And Amazon was driving traffic to it then everyone joined Amazon posts and it wasn’t as good and so you know, most this just got released. So most likely your competitors have not taken advantage of this yet. And it’s a good thing to jump on and you know, increase the value of your listings.
Ken 8:19
Yeah, absolutely. So I’m going to go over Amazon has an A plus content or EBC. They have this comparison chart between the basic and the premium. And so I’m gonna go over them and compare them to each other. So you can kind of get an idea of the old one versus the the upgraded one basic A plus has text and images sodas premium. Now one thing that premium has better than the basic A plus is the image size if the basic A plus image sizes are 970 by 300 premiums or 1464 by 600. And so you know they’re almost double the size so the image sizes are larger, they both have comparison charts the comparison chart on the premium has a couple more features and options than than the old one. The premium A plus has two more modules that you can fit on the product detail page, the basic A plus you can only do five whereas the premium you can do seven now a basic A plus had 14 modules to pick from all of the different modules freemium A plus has added five new modules so it has 19 different modules you can select from you can you can deploy seven but you have an option of 19 different ones and then the two new features that premium A plus has that basic does not is the video and hotspot and so video modules are crucial and there’s there’s a couple of different tweaks to that you can do there are designer Josh told me to share with everybody that to put the video at the top or at the bottom of your your layout because the video will once it’s done playing it’ll revert back and so if you don’t do that if you put it in a middle. They’re not going to see everything and so as you’re deploying these try a couple different things, learn from it and improve now I thought the hotspot and modules was was really cool. It’s an interactive hover hotspot. And so let’s say you’re a football helmet. And so you have to have a big picture of that football helmet on there. And let’s say like, some of your features are like a padded chin strap. And so you could put a little hover. So as someone hovers over that chin strap, it can pop out like a little bubble and say, you know, hey, this is like, you know, Next Level gel padding on the chin strap, and maybe like on this on the ear hole, you know, maybe it’s a larger ear hole as they hovered whatever. So like, you gotta like enhance your your image with hover spots to show all of your features and show how that product is going to solve the customer’s problem. And then the last one here is navigation carousel carousel module, that is a completely new module, we’ve tested it, we’re tweaking ours a little bit. And it’s it’s definitely different. But I think it’s super helpful. And the slider is a little bit it’s different. And so one one thing also to share. And this is like a next level of tips and tricks. You know, I think, David the last time we checked our stats, where we’re, I think we’re at like, above 70% of our sales come from mobile. And so as you’re designing your your A plus content, design for mobile, and then verify that it works for desktop, don’t do it the other way around. And so this is something that we’ve had to kind of switch over the net last year. So as we’re always designing stuff for desktop, and then just verifying if it works for mobile, if you’re doing that, switch it please more of your sales, sales are likely coming from mobile and so designed for mobile, and then verify that it works for desktop. David, you want to cover some of the at some of the FAQs and stuff? Yeah, absolutely.
- Kane, Brendan (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 302 Pages - 03/09/2022 (Publication Date) - Independently published (Publisher)
David 11:30
One thing I want to add to what you were talking about was video. So we like we’ve put quite a bit of resources behind like getting videos on all of our listings. And we know it’s important. Well, where does Amazon currently without premium UPC? Where does Amazon make you put those behind your eighth image shopper really has to like seek it out find the video. And so I like that this is an opportunity to just lay it out there and at they don’t have to work to find it, you put it right in front of them. And so I’m really excited about that. And and you know, we put a lot of effort into the video, so it’ll be good for more people to see those video every time and I when I think of my own shopping, I like to watch the videos I do. And it’s that’s a helpful thing in making a decision. And so yeah, really excited about that and excited to see the results. So there are a couple FAQs that we pulled out that we think would be incredibly helpful to this episode. And so we’re gonna run through those. The first is what is the cost and and I want to read you the exact thing that Amazon put out because there’s a couple key things here, they say access to premium A plus features will be available to you at no cost during this promotional period for all ASINs registered to your brand. Now that tells me that at some point they are going to charge for this, my hope is that during this promotional period, we can get all of our listings in in here in will be grandfathered in. But there was really no mention of costs in so at this stage, so excited about this. And and I really think that’s going to be helpful Can Can you talk a little bit about eligibility criteria
Ken 12:55
a little bit earlier, we’ll go over it again really quick, you have to be brand registered, meaning you have to have a trademark apply for brand registry, once you’re in there, you need to create a brand story and then apply it to all of your ASINs you need to have 15 approved a plus contents in your account over the last 12 months. Once you have this, then you’re automatically have to be at the beginning of the next month, you should automatically be in entered into the or enrolled into the program. And so the way to see that is go into navigate into Seller Central there your dashboard Fe plus under the average I think it’s under the advertising drop down and go to a plus open that up and at the very top it says you’ve been enrolled in premium a plus and then you can just go in there and start and start designing
David 13:33
I want to circle back on the cost piece of this. So I’d mentioned there’s this promotional period that’s undefined. As we read a little deeper into the FAQ, there’s something I want to add. So it says at the conclusion of this promotional period, we may disable your ability to add premium A plus modules to new ASINs. However, any premium A plus content published to ASINs, during the promotional period will remain on the Detail page free of charge this promotional period, at least from what I’ve researched, I’ve not seen that defined on when does it end. But it looks like if you get in early, you can have this premium A plus content on your listings free of charge and be grandfathered in.
Ken 14:12
That’s very interesting. So I did not see that. And so yeah, I would say jump on it quickly and get as many of you know, if your brand is not eligible yet go through all of their and get it eligible, get into the program and deploy them as fast as you can. Because once it sounds like once they’re on there, they’re not going to charge you for them. You never know what Amazon is going to do and they they like to charge us for everything they can and so you know it’d be good to get out in front of that one. So David any other FAQs you want to cover? Or do we have pretty much everything I think we’ve
David 14:41
covered them you know to our listeners if you’re brand registered definitely check this out. I think this is some low hanging fruit and really it just it takes a little bit of extra work but you’re improving your existing listings and your existing listing health and and end of the day that’s you’re not you’re not meeting the customer. You’re not shaking their hand until about the product, you have a listing to do that for you. And with this feature that allows you to do that job in a more productive way.
- Hardcover Book
- Michalowicz, Mike (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
Ken 15:07
Yeah, absolutely. And one last piece. Well, two, first one, as you’re as you’re designing your, you know, your premium a plus, I think David mentioned it earlier, like sieving come into the mindset of a customer of a shopper, what would convert you to a buyer from a shopper? And what are the, you know, what are the, you know, people always talking about features and benefits, but how can that product make that person’s life better? How can it add value to that person’s life and see if you can speak to that and your premium a plus. Secondly, and last thing, if you want to take a peek at our designer, Josh’s new template that we’re deploying for premium A plus we have a free download. It’s firingtheman.com/premium. Go get it. It’s free.
David 15:49
Awesome. Thank you, everyone for tuning in. And we’ll see you next week. Before you go. Fun fact for all you Amazon sellers out there. When you start selling in international marketplaces, all of your reviews come with you. At the beginning of this year, Ken and I sat down and talked of ways that we could double our businesses in size and landed on international expansion as our number one initiative this year. We partnered up with Kevin Sanderson from maximizing ecommerce and he has made the process an absolute breeze, walking us step by step through the process. If you want to grow your revenue and reach new customers head on over to https://maximizingecommerce.com/fire and connect with Kevin Sanderson today. Now back to the show.
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