What is Amazons New Premium A+ EBC and How Can You Enable This Feature?

Episode 162

On today’s episode David and Ken give an in depth overview of the new Premium EBC feature just released on Amazon.

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00;00;08;08 – 00;00;28;08
Speaker 1
Welcome everyone to the Firing The Man podcast. On today’s episode, David, and Ken give an in-depth overview of the new premium ABC feature that was just released on Amazon. Be sure to stay tuned to find out how you can access the premium ABC template that we are using in our own businesses. Ken What’s going on, man?

00;00;28;15 – 00;00;53;26
Speaker 2
David How you doing? I’m excited to be in the podcast. Yeah, and excited to share with the listeners today about premium ABC. You know, it’s this, this podcast to probably air and February 23, everybody’s a new year. What, what can we do differently to make our product stand out How can we get better conversions and today get you’re in store for a treat because we’re going to cover Amazon’s new premium.

00;00;53;26 – 00;01;26;09
Speaker 1
ABC definitely, I think to lay out some ground work. What is ABC? Just what is it? So that is it 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.

00;01;26;12 – 00;01;28;13
Speaker 1
How would you describe the ABC?

00;01;28;16 – 00;01;58;19
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think it’s just more of a it’s in more interactive marketing. Our description where like you mentioned, you can do you can do images, comparison charts, you can do a lot more. The standard Amazon product description is just text. And so it’s just huge like paragraphs of text. Well, that gets replaced with ABC or enhanced brand content and there’s like modules, images, sliders, carousels, different things to, to, to increase conversions.

00;01;58;25 – 00;02;04;00
Speaker 2
Amazon wants people to buy stuff faster. And so in my mind, that’s what eBooks.

00;02;04;06 – 00;02;20;19
Speaker 1
Absolutely. Yeah. 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, a hundred people come to your listing in in five people end up buying, if you can increase that to ten people buying it, that is.

00;02;20;21 – 00;02;21;22
Speaker 2
Doubled your revenue.

00;02;21;22 – 00;02;42;10
Speaker 1
Yeah, you’ve doubled your revenue and you’re doing the same thing. And so I you know, I saw our team put together some premium ABC this week and I mean it’s it’s cool it’s really cool and I so let’s let’s dig let’s dig into this so can can you tell us a little bit more about this.

00;02;42;10 – 00;03;10;20
Speaker 2
Yeah absolutely So first we’re going to we’ll go over kind of the requirements how to access it, and then we’ll and then we’ll dig into the premium plus content. Sometimes you’re sometimes you hear called being called A-plus, sometimes ABC, they’re the same essentially. So if you hear us say A-plus, we just mean ABC or or vice versa. So we’ll talk about how how to how to get access to it, and then we’ll describe what it is.

00;03;10;23 – 00;03;33;07
Speaker 2
And then for anybody that listens to the entire episode, I don’t think David announced this yet, but our designer, Josh, like David said, we we’re in the process of deploying premium ABC right now on one of our portfolio brands and our designer Josh came up with a really killer template. And so he’s actually we’re sharing it on our website.

00;03;33;07 – 00;03;54;28
Speaker 2
So if you want to, if you want to the template that we’re using for our premium A-plus, you can go to firing them incom 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 it quickly. So okay, Now how do you get access to premium A-plus in order to get access to it?

00;03;54;28 – 00;04;13;17
Speaker 2
All of all of your essence 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 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.

00;04;13;19 – 00;04;39;21
Speaker 2
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 the customers what kind of a brand you are, what do you stand for, what do you offer?

00;04;39;24 – 00;04;52;15
Speaker 2
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 essence. David What’s step two?

00;04;52;17 – 00;05;26;25
Speaker 1
Yeah, so 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 is, if you’re split testing, this is something that you should have on hand. But if not, what you could do if you were looking to kind of game the system is upload, you know, make minor tweaks like minor improvements to your existing ABC, submit it, get it approved, maybe make some more improvements, submit it, get it approved.

00;05;26;27 – 00;05;52;05
Speaker 1
And once you hit that 15, that is when you get the approved status and that is in a trailing 12 month time frame. So one thing I want to note on this is premium A-plus content is granted at the end of each month. So you’ll be notified if you meet the criteria and you will need to contact them for access.

00;05;52;08 – 00;06;08;06
Speaker 2
Yeah. So 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.

00;06;08;08 – 00;06;16;07
Speaker 1
In one thing I want to clarify, you do not need to contact Amazon for access. I said that wrong. I just want to clear that up so.

00;06;16;09 – 00;06;19;20
Speaker 2
They’ll grandfather you in on the very next month as soon as you meet that criteria.

00;06;19;27 – 00;06;23;27
Speaker 1
Definitely. All right, Kent. So why do we care? Why is this important?

00;06;23;29 – 00;07;00;24
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. So just like you alluded to earlier, David, conversion rate is is critical. Like the I’m, 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 like you can get very creative with it and to really help describe your products to, to the shoppers and really let you stand out against your competitors.

00;07;00;26 – 00;07;27;05
Speaker 2
And so the quicker you can deploy this, the the more you know, the the the quicker you can increase your conversion rate. And so and right now it’s free. I heard whispers from someone that like prior to this 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 this, allowing us to have this for free at least for now.

00;07;27;12 – 00;08;00;06
Speaker 2
So go out and take advantage of it. Okay. So premium 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. And Amazon discount 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.

00;08;00;08 – 00;08;18;15
Speaker 2
But it just essentially is your PDP or your product detail page. It shows up the same way regularly because it just has new modules and it creates covered more real estate. So David, what are some of the the new modules that it has or some of the modules that it has?

00;08;18;15 – 00;08;44;17
Speaker 1
Yes. So it has an interactive hover hotspot module, which is really cool. You can toggle from image to image. It 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.

00;08;44;19 – 00;09;14;07
Speaker 1
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. The also has some carousel modules in a Q&A module. And so again, 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 firing man dot com slash premium to check it out.

00;09;14;09 – 00;09;47;08
Speaker 1
But 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.

00;09;47;10 – 00;10;14;00
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. So I’m going to go over Amazon has an A-plus content or ABC. They have this comparison chart between the basic and the premium. And so I’m going to go over them and compare them to each other so you can kind of get an idea of the old one versus the the, the upgraded one. So basic A-plus has text and images and so does premium.

00;10;14;02 – 00;10;44;10
Speaker 2
Now, one thing that premium has better than the basic A-plus is the image size, the basic eight plus image sizes are 970 by 300. The premiums are 14, 64 by 600. And so, you know, they’re almost double the size. So the image sizes are larger. They both have comparison charts. But the comparison chart on the premium has a couple more features and options than than the old one.

00;10;44;12 – 00;11;13;07
Speaker 2
The premium plus has two more modules that you can fit on the deal on the product detail page, the basic plus you can only do five, whereas the premium you can do seven. Now the basic eight plus had 14 modules to pick from all of the different modules. Premium plus has added five new modules, so it has 19 different modules you can select from now, you can you can deploy seven, but you have an option of 19 different ones.

00;11;13;10 – 00;11;41;04
Speaker 2
And then the two new features that premium plus has that basic does not is the video and hotspot Dot. And so video modules are are crucial and there’s there’s a couple different tweaks to that you can do there are designer Josh Tommy there 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 will revert back.

00;11;41;08 – 00;12;04;18
Speaker 2
And so if you don’t do that, if you put it in the middle, they’re not going to see everything. And so as you’re deploying these, try a couple of different things, learn from it and improve them. Now, I thought the hotspot modules was was really cool. It’s an interactive hover hotspot. And so let’s say let’s say you’re selling a football helmet and so you have to have a big picture of that football helmet on there.

00;12;04;20 – 00;12;26;17
Speaker 2
And let’s say like some of your features are like a padded chinstrap and so you could put a little hover. So as someone hovers over that chinstrap, it can pop out like a little bubble and say, you know, hey, this is like, you know, next level gel padding on the chinstrap and maybe like on this on the ear hole, you know, maybe it’s a larger ear hole as they hover or whatever.

00;12;26;17 – 00;12;56;15
Speaker 2
So, like, you get to like, you can like enhance your, 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 the navigation carousel. The carousel module. That is a completely new module. We’ve tested it. We’re tweaking ours a little bit and it’s definitely different, but I think it’s super helpful and the slider is a little bit it’s different.

00;12;56;17 – 00;13;21;11
Speaker 2
And so one, one thing also to share and this is like a next level tips and tricks. You know, I think, David, the last time we checked our stats were where 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 from mobile and then verify that it works for desktop app, don’t do it the other way around.

00;13;21;13 – 00;13;40;00
Speaker 2
And so this is something that we’ve had to kind of switch over in the last year or so is we’re always designing stuff for desktop and then just verifying if it works on our mobile. If you’re doing that, switch it, please. The more more of your sales sales are likely coming from mobile and so designed for mobile and then verify that it works for desktop.

00;13;40;02 – 00;13;44;28
Speaker 2
So David, you want to cover some of the maybe some of the fake news and stuff?

00;13;44;28 – 00;14;06;26
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely. 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 BBC Where does Amazon make you put those behind your image? Like a shopper really has to like seek it out to find the video.

00;14;06;26 – 00;14;21;26
Speaker 1
And so I like that this is an opportunity to just lay it out there and 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, you know, we put a lot of effort into the video, so it’ll be good for more people to see those.

00;14;22;00 – 00;14;26;20
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. And then what converts better an image or video?

00;14;26;20 – 00;14;28;06
Speaker 1
David Video every.

00;14;28;06 – 00;14;28;17
Speaker 2
Time.

00;14;28;21 – 00;14;48;07
Speaker 1
Absolutely every time. So 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 facts that we pulled out that we think would be incredibly helpful to this episode.

00;14;48;07 – 00;15;08;17
Speaker 1
And so we’re going to 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 Asians registered to your brand.

00;15;08;18 – 00;15;34;26
Speaker 1
Now, that tells me that at some point they are going to charge for this. And so my hope is that during this promotional period, we can get all of our listings in in here and will be grandfathered in. But there was really no mention of of cost. And so at this stage. So we’re excited about this and, and yeah, I really think that’s going to be helpful.

00;15;34;28 – 00;15;39;23
Speaker 1
So you can can you talk a little bit about eligibility criteria?

00;15;39;27 – 00;16;04;07
Speaker 2
Absolutely. So we covered 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 agents. And then you need to have 15 approved A-plus contents in your in your account over the last 12 months.

00;16;04;09 – 00;16;31;24
Speaker 2
Once you have this, then you’re automatically you have to be at the beginning of the next month. You should automatically be entered into the are enrolled into the program. And so the way to see that is go into your navigate into seller central to your dashboard for a plus under the average I think it’s under the advertising dropdown 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.

00;16;31;26 – 00;16;33;05
Speaker 2
So yeah.

00;16;33;08 – 00;16;56;22
Speaker 1
You know, I want to circle back on the cost piece of this. So I mentioned there’s this promotional period that’s undefined. And so as we read a little deeper into the focus, 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 patients.

00;16;56;25 – 00;17;23;13
Speaker 1
However, any premium A-plus content published to Asians during the promotional period will remain on the detail page free of charge. And so this promotional period, I, at least from what I’ve researched, have 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 up on your listings free of charge and be grandfathered in.

00;17;23;16 – 00;17;43;09
Speaker 2
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.

00;17;43;11 – 00;17;58;02
Speaker 2
And so you never know what Amazon is going to do. And 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 figures you want to cover or do we have pretty much everything?

00;17;58;04 – 00;18;23;02
Speaker 1
You know, I think we I think we’ve covered him. So, you know, to our listeners, if you’re brain 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 but you’re improving your existing listings in your existing listing health and and at the end of the day, that’s you’re not you’re not meeting the customer.

00;18;23;07 – 00;18;33;12
Speaker 1
You’re not shaking their hand and telling them 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.

00;18;33;15 – 00;19;04;20
Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. And one 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, see if you can come into the mindset of a customer of a shopper. What would you what would convert you to a buyer from a shopper? And what are the you know, what are the you know, people always talk about features and benefits, but how can that product make that person’s life better?

00;19;04;24 – 00;19;30;03
Speaker 2
How can it add value to that person’s life? And see if you can speak to that in your in your premium a plus and and convert. Secondly and last thing is, if you want to take a peek at our designer, his new template that we’re deploying for premium plus we have a free download it’s firing the man dot com backslash premium go get it it’s free.

00;19;30;06 – 00;19;33;26
Speaker 1
Awesome. Thank you, everyone for tuning in and we’ll see you next week.