Episode 008
On today’s episode we share with you how to get FREE Amazon ads with the beta program Amazon POSTS.
Be sure to stay tuned so you can learn how to leverage your existing social media content and get FREE Amazon advertising.
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Ken (00:00):
And on one of the brands, it had over a million impressions, a million views in less than seven weeks.
David (00:06):
And how much did that cost.
Ken (00:09):
Free, David that was free.
David (00:11):
How do I do this without those sets of skills?
Ken (00:14):
Okay, this is getting some traction let’s create a few more of these test it again, a week later found out, yes, this is what’s working, and then we DOUBLE down on them.
Intro (00:24):
Welcome everyone to the firingtheman.com Podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and 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.
David (00:48):
Welcome everyone to the firing the man podcast. Today we have a very exciting topic. Last week, Ken texted me that he had found a new way to get free Amazon ads in a recent mastermind. Ken showed me a spreadsheet that showed him getting over a million impressions. And the exciting part about this is they were all free. Now, Ken, let’s dive right in.
Ken (01:13):
Yeah, absolutely. David. You know, so this is a, I’m excited to share with the audience today. Uh, you know, I’m a little under the weather. I got the flu, but you know what, damnit I’m excited. You know, it doesn’t come very often where you get free stuff, right. Especially from Amazon. So like David mentioned, uh, you know, there’s a, a beta program, it’s called Amazon posts and it works on a mobile feed and you know, it’s, it’s essentially Amazon’s intro into they, they want brands to come onto their platform and do their social media sharing.
Ken (01:47):
You know, it’s kind of that intro, a beta program. So this is a time sensitive program and you know, we’re taping this podcast. Uh, January 25th. So it’s something you’re going to want to go and, and, and get into right now cause it’s time sensitive and, and you know, we don’t know when it’s going to expire. Uh, so yeah, getting right into it. You know, posts it, it’s a, it’s a browse and discovery experience on Amazon. It’s focused on brand shopping and you know, posts. It helps shoppers discover new products and see and see, you know, what’s out there from brands. And like I said, it only works on the mobile and it’s a, it’s towards the bottom of the, of the feeds. Um, you know, you can include category tags and related categories. So those are the posts that it’s in. Um, now backing up, so, so who can participate in, in the, in the post beta, you have to be either a, a vendor or a seller enrolled in Amazon brand registry and have a U S store.
Ken (02:47):
So if you have brand registry and the U S and.com, amazon.com your covered, right? Uh, you know the URL, it’s uh, advertising.amazon.com/lp/beta-posts and it’ll be in our show notes. So if you’re driving, don’t write that down. Don’t pull over, don’t crash. Just go, go to firingtheman.com Look up episode eight. Look at our show notes it’s in there for you. Uh, so, okay, so a couple of the details, um, you know, right now post is free to participate in, right? So this is like I said, it’s time sensitive and it’s, you know, they can be accessed on mobile only. Why is Amazon doing this? Uh, and, and why should you, you know, why should you do this? Well, free advertising. Who doesn’t want free advertising, right? Like, you know, we spend thousands of dollars in pay-per-click PPC, right? To get ads in front of our, you know, shoppers, right?
Ken (03:43):
So, uh, what posts does as it puts, you know, ads in front of shoppers in a mobile feed so they can browse your categories, right? So, uh, kind of getting into how to create these, uh, you know, it’s essentially, you know, and another tip, you know, for brand creators, you’re already creating, you should be creating, you know, social media images, putting them on your Facebook, your Instagram, you know, your Pinterest, whatever, whatever social media platforms you use for your brand, you know, you can repurpose those. And essentially you repurpose those. You put a little bit of ad copy in there and you know, you, you submit it in an Amazon takes those and uh, you know, they go through an approval process. Um, and if you want to share with the audience kind of your experience with the approval process.
David (04:36):
Yeah, absolutely. So I would, if you were approved for Amazon posts, I would encourage you to read the directions. Uh, I was so excited about it. I jumped right into it and my first post was, uh, I was looking for a picture and I thought, what better picture then my hero image that I use for the main image on one of my listings, a great photo, put a lot of time and effort into making that look nice. So I thought that’d be my first post. That post got denied. Uh, unfortunately you cannot use photos from your listing. And so Ken, when you mentioned coming up with, you know, unique photos maybe from your Instagram or your Facebook accounts, those are the ones that you’re going to want to use first. So the, the second mistake that I made, uh, was I, I posed a question to the user. It was, are, are you tired of dirty fill in the blank. And there was something in the Amazon post rules that don’t allow you to use personal references like that, like you your, and so the way I had my sentence structure on this post set up, uh, was not in line with the terms of service. And so that one got denied. So I have since read the directions and have made more posts and I’m now getting free impressions, but I would encourage you to, uh, yeah, just re read the rules. Don’t, don’t make the same mistakes that I made now.
Ken (06:02):
That’s great David. And yeah, you know, you’re like me, you know, we, we just jump in and we dive right in and, and we test things out and that’s how you figure, you know, you figure everything out is by testing. Right. Uh, so yeah, there is an approval process, so, you know, but if you’re, whatever you’re posting on your social media channels, it’s likely going to get approved. But like David mentioned, you know, go in and, you know, on the main page on the Amazon posts, it has all the rules and what you can and cannot do. And it also, it could be a, you know, a testing phase of applying for a couple and getting approved and not, you know, uh, so a little bit about the nuts and bolts of, of, you know, kinda the backend of this and, and, and where it’s going.
Ken (06:45):
And then we’ll follow up with some, you know, some pro tips on what’s working for me right now and my brand and, and, and how to take advantage of that right now. You know, so, uh, you know, post it’s there and it, and it’s for, you know, Amazon really is promoting brands nowadays, right? They want to promote this brand, and this is a way to get brands name recognition out there and the products in front of, in front of shoppers in a really relevant way, right? You know, you’ve got brand registered sellers out there, right? So if you’re brand registered seller, you’re gonna, you’re gonna have a, probably a, a pretty focused brand, right? And you’re going to be having likely quality products and you know, et cetera. Uh, you know, so in the, in, in the backend of the post-program, you know, list, it’s, it’s kinda rudimentary right now.
Ken (07:34):
It’s just kind of list out all the posts. You, you can have all the posts that you’ve submitted. It’ll list them out and in order whether they’re approved or whether they’re not approved that they’re denied, like the one David submitted, don’t, don’t feel bad, David. I have some that were denied as well. Like I said, this test ’em out and there’s, there’s three metrics on the back end. It’s got views or impressions and clicks and click through rates. And those are the only three that they have right now. As of January 25th as we’re, we’re taping this, so it’s a little bit, uh, you and there’s a, there’s enough to get feedback, right? So, as David mentioned earlier on, on one of my brands, the audiences is pretty interactive and these results are not going to be for this, you know, for everyone. Uh, but I’ve been using posts on, on both of my brands for about seven weeks now.
Ken (08:25):
And, and we ran the numbers last week and on one of the brands, it had over a million impressions, a million views in less than seven weeks.
David (08:35):
And how much did that cost.
Ken (08:37):
free, David? That was free.
David (08:39):
It’s, it sounds almost too good to be true. And I, and I think, you know, once Amazon gets this off the ground, it’s going to be something they’re going to start charging for. I mean, you look at PPC, how much, how much would you pay for a million impressions on PPC? I mean, it’d cost you thousands.
Ken (08:53):
Yeah, yeah. You know, this, it’s something that you’re going to want to take advantage of now. Get an early and kind of exploit it. Right? You know, we find something that works and, and, and we, and we dig in deep and, and, you know, take advantage of this. Uh, Amazon’s opening this up. They’re testing, obviously they’re testing or they want to get brands, they want to get the brands, you know, to, to bring their social media over.
Ken (09:15):
Right. Uh, it’s, it’s good advertising for them. And yeah, you know, if you’re brand registered right now and in the U S I would highly recommend to go in and, and get involved in this, the pro tips here that I kind of want to get into a what’s working, what’s not as, as David and I were discussing earlier, anything in your eCommerce business you want to test, you want to test what’s working, what’s not. And so early on, you know, I, I threw up 10, 20, you know, so as of right now, there’s no limit to how many posts you can put up. So Amazon and their, you know, their, the rules of posts says, you know, that you should post as many times on posts as you do on social media, but there’s no limit. So, and I’ve tested up to 15 per day with no restrictions.
Ken (10:04):
So, I don’t know what the limit is, but I’ve tested up to 15 per day per brand and I’ve not been restricted. So you want to, you want to go and put out, you know, different, you want to test different kinds of images, different kinds of ad copy and uh, you know, what’s working really, really well for us right now is lifestyle images with questions that, that shoppers would be wanting to answer. You know, and that’s working really, really well. And like I said, every brand is different and you’re going to want to test these. But for, for one of my brands, that’s what’s working right now. And they’re in the way we found that as we tried five different posts, you know, every day for a week. And we went and we went back the following week, checked out the results and said, okay, on this day we had, you know, a thousand impressions and 49 clicks. So with, okay, this is getting some traction, let’s create a few more of these tests that again, a week later found out, yes, this is what’s working. And then we doubled down on that.
David (11:09):
So what have been some things that haven’t been working?
Ken (11:12):
So some of the things that we, that we found that doesn’t work for us is, uh, you know, plain images. They’re not lifestyle, just, just the product photos that those are not working for us. Images that do not have any questions on the ad copy or, you know, we’re, we’re going into, you know, Photoshop/CANVA and we’re putting kind of infographics, text questions on the image itself, as well as the ad copy. So the ones that are not working are images, like I said, that are just product, photo V, product, photo, images, something that’s not, you know, if it, if it’s not engaging to the shopper, they’re not going to click on it. So I would suggest to, you know, step up your game a little bit, put a question on there.
David (11:56):
tell me how you’d answer this question. I am not creative. I am not good at Photoshop. That is something that is one of my weaknesses. How do I do this with it without those sets of skills?
Ken (12:09):
Sure. Okay. So, so for me, uh, I’m going to discuss two, two options you have. So I have a VA that that is, that is working on these for me now. Uh, I created a process and then I handed it off to the VA and you know, now he’s working on this. So the process is, and these are free tools, anybody can use them. So I use Canva, go to canva.com Canva is an online Photoshop, so you go to Canva, you, they have stock photos on Canva. And there’s other, also also other sites where you can get stock photos. Uh, Pexels.com Is another one. Uh, there’s, there’s a lot of them out there. We’ll put them in the show notes, a couple of them get your stock photos. You can Photoshop your product in there. You know, you can be creative in that regard. So canva is an online Photoshop for, I wouldn’t say for dummies, but for like me, I’m not a Photoshop expert, but I’m pretty fluent in Canva. So I can take my product images, lifestyle images that I have already created from, you know, whether it’s customer submitted photos or images that I have on social media, upload them to Canva. And then another pro tip, uh, answerthepublic.com it’s a website. If you go to the website and you type in your keyword, it’s going to crawl. I don’t know exactly how it works, but I believe it crawls, Google, bing and the web and it, and it finds all of the questions and all of the interactions from the public right answerthepublic.com is what it’s called. So, and it spits out this nice sheet and it, and it gives you all of this information.
Ken (13:44):
So you know, if you’re lacking direction on where to go to get this ad copy, this creative, what, what, what customers are asking for, go to answerthepublic.com put in your keywords. You’re going to have dozens of places to start. You can grab those, throw them in your ad copy, add them to a, a text overlay on your images in Canva. Boom, export it. And you’re good to go.
David (14:06):
I’m glad you brought both of those up because you know, last year before I had met you, I tried to master Photoshop and it’s just so complex. I mean it, it really, I think you need to spend a lot of time in Photoshop in order to get good at it. And I wasn’t, I had no experience at it. You know, I was an accountant, right? I’m fluent in Excel but, but not Photoshopping man. There were times last year where I would get so frustrated in Photoshop. I just wanted to, you know, throw my computer in the trashcan and be done with it. And you told me about Canva and it is sweet and it’s easy. In the second thing that you mentioned was answerthepublic.com That you showed me a, you typed in a keyword for one of my brands before we started this podcast and that is sweet and quick and free. And so I think, you know, you dropped some real knowledge bombs here, one on post, uh, two where to go get the content and in three on, on how to edit the images. So I think this is some great content for our, for our listeners. And uh, you know, if you’re listening to this and your brand registered, go out and do this.
Ken (15:13):
Definitely wanted to get this out there because it’s, it’s time-sensitive and we don’t know how long this will last. Uh, yeah. But we wanted to share, you know, share the knowledge with our listeners and, and, and just help out, you know, this is working for us and we want to share. So if you have any questions, you know, go to our website, you know, hit us, shoot us an email. Um, you know, we answer everybody reply to everybody, um, called David’s cell phone and ask him any questions you want anytime I don’t sleep. All right. All right, let’s wrap the show up and um, yeah, appreciate it. David, you got anything else?
David (15:44):
Quick preview for next week we are going to be dropping a book review. It’s going to be our first book review on rich dad poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki. Ken, both you and I can agree that this book changed our lives.
Ken (15:58):
Yeah, absolutely. I love that book.
David (16:00):
That phrase is thrown around too much, but it really did. And, uh, and so for those of you who are listening to this now, uh, go out and read that book and then tune in next week for our episode, Ken and I are going to recap some of our key takeaways and how we’ve implemented some of those lessons into our personal finances and into our business. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll see you next time.