THE THOUGHTFUL ENTREPRENEUR PODCAST
In this episode of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur, your host Josh Elledge speaks to the Co-Founder, CEO & Interim COO of AMZ Advisers, Mike Begg.
AMZ Advisers is a company that offers a comprehensive range of services to brands looking to scale their sales on Amazon. They handle everything from advertising strategy, merchandising, positioning, to content creation.
Their goal is to take brands from $1 million to $10 million per year in sales on Amazon.
They've worked with notable brands such as Polaroid, Rainier, and Sun Warrior, setting up their clients' entire sales funnel for success. This includes attracting potential customers and converting them into buyers.
What sets AMZ Advisers apart is their ability to provide a team of two to five members, saving their clients the hassle of managing multiple team members themselves.
Mike emphasized the importance of maximizing conversions and social engagement for their clients on Amazon. He highlighted the significance of reviews in influencing purchase decisions.
However, he warned against incentivizing reviews, as it goes against Amazon's terms of service.
Instead, he suggests providing a positive customer experience and driving more traffic to listings to increase opportunities for conversions and reviews.
Key Points from the Episode:
- AMZ Advisers specializes in helping brands increase sales on Amazon
- Services offered include advertising strategy, merchandising, positioning, and content creation
- AMZ Advisers sets up clients' entire sales funnel for success
- Worked with notable brands such as Polaroid, Rainier, and Sun Warrior
- Clients are looking to scale sales from $1 million to $10 million per year on Amazon
- Experience and track record since 2015
- Importance of maximizing conversions and social engagement on Amazon
- Emphasize the significance of reviews in purchase decisions
- AMZ Advisers is an advanced partner of Amazon with access to exclusive programs
About Mike Begg:
Mike Begg, a 33-year-old entrepreneur, boasts a wealth of experience cultivating eCommerce and online ventures.
Initially making waves with two Amazon private label brands, he achieved remarkable success, amassing over $1 million in sales exclusively on the Amazon platform.
Capitalizing on his expertise as a seller, Mike co-founded AMZ Advisers alongside his partners, a venture aimed at aiding other brands in prospering on Amazon.
Under his guidance, AMZ Advisers has blossomed, overseeing an impressive annual ad spend of over $10 million and driving sales exceeding $100 million on Amazon.
Fueled by a passion for expansion and optimization, Mike's ingenuity led to establishing an international office in Mexico, where he presently resides.
Eager to impart wisdom, he readily imparts insights spanning Amazon strategies, business enhancement, and global enterprise establishment.
About AMZ Advisers:
AMZ Advisers is a comprehensive eCommerce and digital marketing consultancy renowned for crafting dynamic growth strategies catering to brands and manufacturers on the Amazon platform.
In 2018, their partners achieved remarkable sales surpassing $100,000,000, with substantial year-over-year sales surges exceeding 100% for many.
Recognizing the pivotal role of a robust eCommerce presence, AMZ Advisers tailors strategies to transform Amazon, the premier eCommerce marketplace, into a potent sales channel and a crucial element of the companies' digital presence.
Their expertise extends beyond Amazon, fostering long-term growth through diverse sales channels, additional eCommerce platforms, adept sales funnels, and conversion-focused websites.
With a versatile skill set encompassing Amazon Marketing Services, Seller/Vendor/Express support, SEO optimization, market analysis, product launches, and global expansion into UK, Canada, and Europe, AMZ Advisers empowers businesses through services including inventory planning, analytics, social media advertising, and video production/editing.
Tweetable Moments:
07:09 – “If your brand or your products are not there, no one's going to discover you.”
11:49 – “The more people you get to your listings, the more purchases you get, the more opportunities you're going to get to convert reviews and that is probably the most important aspect on the backend side.”
Apply to be a Guest on The Thoughtful Entrepreneur:
https://go.upmyinfluence.com/podcast-guest
Links Mentioned in this Episode:
Want to learn more? Check out AMZ Advisers at
Check out AMZ Advisers on LinkedIn at
https://www.linkedin.com/company/amz-advisers/
Check out AMZ Advisers on Instagram at
https://www.instagram.com/amzadvisers
Check out AMZ Advisers on Facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/AMZAdvisers
Check out Mike Begg on LinkedIn at
https://www.facebook.com/seanallencampbell/
Check out Mike Begg on Twitter at
Check out Mike Begg on Instagram at
https://www.instagram.com/m1ke_begg/
Don’t forget to subscribe to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur and thank you for listening. Tune in next time!
More from UpMyInfluence:
We are actively booking guests for our The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. Schedule HERE.
Are you a 6-figure consultant? I’ve got high-level intros for you. Learn more here.
What is your #1 Lead Generation BLOCKER? Take my free quiz here.
Want to learn more about all the podcasts managed by UpMyInfluence? Opt in here.
Transcript
Josh (00:00:05) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant, coach or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than $10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence and click on podcast. We'd love to have you. With us right now. It's Michael Berg. Michael, you are the founder and CEO of AMS Advisors. You're found on the Web at AMS Advisors. Mike, Mike, Michael, what do you go by your LinkedIn says Michael. But you're showing here is a mike.
Mike (00:01:15) - You know, I get that question a lot. I usually go by Mike I think I just need to update that a little bit.
Mike (00:01:19) - But thanks for having me.
Josh (00:01:20) - We'll go with Mike. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give us an overview what advisors does.
Mike (00:01:25) - So what we do is we help brands and manufacturers sell more on the Amazon platform. Essentially, we will work with brands looking to go from 1 to $10 million a year on the Amazon Channel, and we'll manage everything from the advertising strategy, the merchandising positioning on the platform, the content creation, pretty much everything you need to be successful on Amazon.
Josh (00:01:45) - And I don't mean to undersell this, but you've worked with some pretty decent brands. Polaroid. I'm going through Rainier, a Sun Warrior. These are pretty decent sized consumer brands that that you're working with. And what do you do that would be pretty difficult or cumbersome or just way outside of their zone of genius for a typical e-com company or not e-comm company. But, you know, just again, consumer product.
Mike (00:02:15) - I mean, I think the main thing that we do that separates us is we set up everything on the Amazon Channel for success.
Mike (00:02:22) - So the main thing being that we're going to build out your entire sales funnel, everything from bringing in people to the top into the consideration phase and then eventually getting them just to purchase the product. So what we're doing is something that requires two, three, four, five members on your team to achieve and we handle it all for you. So it's all optimized. Everything is generating more traffic, generating more people over time. We're building the systems that you need to get recurring customers and essentially we just handled it all for you. Instead of having to manage all the team members on your end to get it done.
Josh (00:02:55) - Are most of the clients that you work with already listed on Amazon or are they trying to do it themselves outside of it? What do you normally see?
Mike (00:03:05) - So there's usually a mix. I would definitely say that like the majority of our clients are already on Amazon doing $1 million a year or more on that platform and looking to kind of really step it up to the next level. But we do work with a lot of brands that are currently not on Amazon and have a lot of success on other channels, but we look for similar results, you know, looking to do doing at least a million on their other e-commerce channels.
Mike (00:03:27) - And then with the interest of being able to scale up and have the budget to invest in the advertising because at the end of the day, for us to work together as a team, we need to have you buying in. We need to have the investment on the ad side for us to be able to deliver the results. And I think that's the most important thing.
Josh (00:03:43) - Yeah. And you know, in terms of like Amazon consultants, what makes advisors unique or I guess USP, you know, however you want to describe that compared to, you know, someone's like, listen, all I know is, you know, we're not really hitting the targets we want. We really would like to grow. It's outside of our, you know, what we, you know, our capacity, our operational capacity. It's certainly we don't know what we don't know. But but how would they end up kind of deciding on versus maybe someone else who says I'm an Amazon consultant to.
Mike (00:04:21) - Well, first of all, we're one of the oldest agencies out there.
Mike (00:04:24) - We've been around since 2015. And at that time we were one of. The few agencies doing it the right way. It seems like this day, everyone that's worked at Amazon in some capacity is spinning off and starting their own agency, but it doesn't mean they're going to get the results that you need. The other thing to consider is that a lot of these freelancers don't actually have experience working with the size brands that we've managed. So we've seen everything from corporate boardrooms dealing with a lot of the challenges that that businesses face. And we have the solutions on how to address all of those. And when I look at it from the US side, how do we actually differentiate our service from the other brands? Again, it really comes down to or sorry, the other agencies out there. It really comes down to the way that we approach your account. We look as each of our clients as partners, you know, we want to win when you win. And that's exactly the way that we manage all of our engagements and why we've seen so much success with these household name brands looking to really scale up on the platform.
Mike (00:05:20) - I think really what you want is someone that knows what they're doing, someone that's been around, someone who has the track record, and we have that in spades.
Josh (00:05:29) - Yeah. Mike Do you do you also work with brand new? Like someone is like, listen, this is what we want to do. We're not currently selling any product, but we, you know, we have a supplier or we've got a manufacturer or, you know, now we just need a plan for getting this to market. Is that someone that you can work with?
Mike (00:05:48) - Typically we won't we won't work with those sized companies. We do have a educational company and courses that we do push some of those people towards. And then if they start seeing success, we'll work with them in the long run. But the reality is, no, it's just it's too difficult for a lot of smaller businesses to first of all be able to afford our services or there's always people that can do it cheaper than us, but there's not many people that can do it better than us.
Mike (00:06:17) - And we could be charging way more than we're actually charging. So I think that's one of the things is like if you're not there at the point where you're already scaling on the platform, then it's probably not going to be a fit for us to work together unless you're looking to learn from our educational platform.
Josh (00:06:31) - Yeah, you this is what you do day in, day out. For those of us who are not living in the Amazon world, what are some trends that you've been observing maybe over the past year or so? And most importantly, you know, for anyone that's considering working with Amazon, what should you be aware of? Or, you know, again, kind of have a mind for in the months and years ahead.
Mike (00:06:56) - So there's a few different things, but I'm going to position it this way. First, when we look at Amazon, you need to look at it differently than your other sales channels. It is the biggest brand discovery platform that there is. More than 70% of online searches for products are coming through Amazon.
Mike (00:07:09) - So if your brand or your products are not there, no one's going to find, you know, going to discover you and understanding that that is how Amazon works helps you understand where it fits within your marketing plan, your marketing system. It should be at the top of your funnel, acquiring as many customers as possible for you, bringing them into the brand and then trying to get them to go to your other channels over time. That being said, the platform has gotten more and more competitive from an advertising standpoint. The costs per click are going up, the cost per acquisitions are going up. The amount of ad inventory that Amazon is displaying has also increased because they are trying to push more and more ads. I don't know, maybe you've noticed if you go to Amazon, the first ten results now are ads on some pages. So if you're not in, I've noticed that.
Josh (00:07:55) - I've noticed that recently.
Mike (00:07:56) - There's actually it's interesting. There was actually an article that came out today about the FTC potentially going after Amazon for that, but that's a different story.
Mike (00:08:06) - But if you're not in that game, you're not investing in the ads, you're not going to be found. So again, it's about brand awareness. It's about positioning, it's about having your products out there and having the money to invest in the outside.
Josh (00:08:17) - Mhm. Yeah. What are some things that. So I'm a very, very avid Amazon customer. What are some things that, that I might notice. I'm wondering if you have and I don't, I don't know if you can think of anything off the top of your head, but like if I'm a really active Amazon consumer and shopper, what are some things that I might be noticing that I don't really understand? What's going on behind the scenes or like, for example, like, you know, just like, you know, I was just shopping for I needed to replace an amplifier. And, you know, obviously I'm paying attention to, you know, the results. There's a now a popular brand pick. I'm seeing those for the first time.
Josh (00:09:02) - Of course, Amazon choice best seller. I really pay attention to those that catches my eye. But are there any other things kind of within the Amazon ecosystem that that might be interesting for someone like me think?
Mike (00:09:17) - I mean, I think in general, one of the interesting things to consider is that no two people have the same shopping experience on Amazon. They're constantly split testing different features within the platform so you can buy the same product. We may have found it in different ways. We may have seen it in different placements. There's constantly different things going on in the back side that we don't know about. For Amazon trying to find out the best way to get customers to convert, at the end of the day, that's what they want. They want people to buy. So the badges, the placements, you know, editor's picks or recommendations or all these things are all different ways for them to try to influence customer decisions. So when it comes to like the work we do and how we help the brands get into all these placements, it's us constantly focused on a few things.
Mike (00:09:59) - Obviously maximizing the number of conversions that our clients are getting from the customers coming to their page, maximizing the number of social engagement or social proof that they're getting on their listings in the form of reviews. Because at this point, every one of these checks, the reviews on Amazon or sees how many reviews it has at a minimum before making a purchase decision and then looking at other ways that we can take advantage of programs that we are able to get brands into. We're one of Amazon's advanced partners. We've spent we're one of the top 5% of all agencies out there when it comes to the advertising side. So we have access to a lot of programs that other brands can't get into. So I think that's really what you're not seeing is happening on the front end.
Josh (00:10:42) - Yeah. Interesting. And then for someone that is like you were talking about reviews and they're like, Yeah, oh man, how do we get more reviews? These people, we put these nice little index cards in there saying, Give us five stars and they're not doing it.
Josh (00:10:57) - And then another thing that I've been seeing is where they, you know, so I get my Amazon package and it's like, we're going to give you a $20 gift card. If you leave a five star review and post it and send it to us and prove that you did it. And I've heard. And I'm supposed to do that.
Mike (00:11:14) - Yes. Yeah, you're definitely not supposed to do that. That is against Amazon's terms of service. If they catch you, they will throw you off the platform. So most brands should avoid doing that. When it comes to actually how do you write more reviews? It's all about the customer experience. There are other ways to put those inserts that do not incentivize the review. You could potentially ask politely for them to consider leaving one. That's one aspect. But at the end of the day, it's all a traffic game. The more people you get to your listings, the more purchases you get, the more opportunities you're going to get to convert reviews. And that is probably the most important aspect on the backend side.
Mike (00:11:49) - I mean, what we can do is we can request the reviews for you through the Amazon platform to try to get more engagement, but mean playing within. Rules are playing within the lines so you're not stepping foul of Amazon is usually the best way to go about getting reviews.
Josh (00:12:03) - Yeah. All right. AMS Advisors, someone that's been listening to our conversation and maybe part of their research is they're listening to this episode because it came up in their search results and now they've heard our conversation. What's the next step if they're first off? Can you just make sure that because we talked about who would be a little too early, what would be those indicators that they are perfect for you?
Mike (00:12:25) - Yeah, sure. So I mean, I would start by saying that doing at least $1 million a year on the platform, so about $80,000 a month, maybe $3,000 a month is extremely important, having somewhere between 5 to $10,000 a month in advertising budget to start with is another really important aspect. Category wise, we're pretty agnostic, but the categories that we see the most success in are usually cosmetics supplements, pet supplies, baby products, toys and home goods.
Mike (00:12:53) - So if you fit any of those criteria, you know, I'm always glad to have a conversation about it and see if it's fit.
Josh (00:13:01) - And on your website advisers, what would you recommend they click on and do?
Mike (00:13:05) - Yeah. If you want to learn more about the programs we offer, we offer three different ones. One is the launch getting started on Amazon. Again, these are for brands that are already doing $1 million on other channels. The accelerator.
Josh (00:13:16) - And you call that getting started?
Mike (00:13:19) - Yeah, getting started. I mean, that's that's how we get you started on Amazon. Got to be doing sales somewhere else for us to to have the money to invest as I said. Yeah that's right. But the accelerator program for brands looking to go from 1 to 10, that's 1 to 10 million, that would be that one. And then global expansion, a lot of brands looking to go into new marketplaces. We do a lot of work in the European marketplaces UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy.
Mike (00:13:43) - And we also do a lot of work in Latin America, in Mexico and Brazil. So if you're looking to get into any of those, there's all the programs that are available on the website for you to check out and to schedule a call with us.
Josh (00:13:54) - Mike Begg, again, founder, CEO of AMS Advisors, Your website, AMS, advice to our friends. Listen to our conversations. Click around in your podcast app. Click on the little information button. We've got show notes, a direct link Mike to your website. Click on the button says, Talk to your experts, Have a conversation. See if advisors be a great partner for you. Mike Again, it's been fantastic having you. Mike Beggs Founder, CEO of Advisors, Thank you so much for joining us.
Mike (00:14:23) - Thank you again for having me. Josh, really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today.
Josh (00:14:32) - Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence.com/guest.
Josh (00:14:45) - If you're a listener, I'd love to shout out your business to our whole audience for free. You can do that by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or join our listener Facebook group. Just search for the thoughtful entrepreneur and Facebook. I'd love even if you just stopped by to say hi, I'd love to meet you. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together. We are empowering one another as thoughtful entrepreneurs. Hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning. That's right, seven days a week you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes each day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the thoughtful entrepreneur movement.