7 Overlooked Amazon Seller Central Tools for Amazon PPC Growth [The PPC Den Podcast]

Michael Erickson Facchin: What is going on, Badger Nation? Welcome to the world's first and longest running show all about Amazon PPC, to make your Amazon advertising life a little bit easier and a little bit more profitable. I am really excited today because we have a great show with Mike Danford from Adverio, where we basically do a tour of seven tools inside Seller Central that, if you click on them and you have not before, you will surely get value almost immediately. Really actionable stuff here. Mike, welcome to the show, welcome to the Badger Den. How are you doing today?

Mike Danford: I am great. Thanks so much for having me today.

Michael Erickson Facchin: Fun fact I never told you, the Adverio accounts you guys manage are so big that when you signed up for Ad Badger, we embarked on probably a month-long sprint to upgrade our servers just to make everything faster. So I thank you for pushing us, it was awesome. For anyone who does not know who you are, why do not you introduce yourself?

Mike Danford: Sure. Mike Danford, CSO for Adverio. I have been in the Amazon space since around 2010, started launching a brand and then realized my most expensive cost was paying someone to do the advertising for me, realized it was just numbers, and went from there. Others started seeing the results and asked if I would do it for them, and the rest is history.

Michael Erickson Facchin: A CSO, for anyone who does not know, what does that stand for and what do you do day to day?

Mike Danford: Chief strategy officer. There are multiple ways to go with that. For the organization it is strategic partnerships, but I also like to get into the weeds on the strategy for sponsored ads and DSP, as well as organizational strategy. I have my hands on a lot of different things and get into the tech side as well, which I love. It is trying to make sure everyone is going the same direction and we are all aligned.

Michael Erickson Facchin: Tell me about the rhino mascot. I am a big fan of companies with animal-based mascots. How did the Adverio rhino come to be?

Mike Danford: You can see we have a rhino there. It is my daughter's, Winston, she gave it to me, and we needed something strong and burly. The AI generation we have now with the personified rhino has been so fun for the team, so we love it.

Michael Erickson Facchin: That is awesome. You have a really cool topic for today. We are going to do fast and furious and cover seven parts of Seller Central where the homework for anyone listening is to literally go into these seven tools, click on them, and you will immediately be inspired to take action. Let us jump into the first one. Search Query Performance. This is probably every Amazon marketer's favorite thing in the last two years. Amazon gives you search volume, total impressions, your product's impressions all the way down the funnel to purchases, and what your brand's share was. But there is a problem with the report, it is nice to look at but hard to take to the next level. So tell me what you love about it and what problems you experience.

Mike Danford: Absolutely. The biggest thing is a lot of these tools Amazon releases have a lot of information that is really hard to digest, you have to bolt on some way to manipulate it and get the insights. If you are willing to do that, you can really go to the next level. Our biggest takeaway is looking at the total addressable market through the report, and then there is a way we work out to understand the potential revenue bump if we were to push and pull certain search queries, both from optimizing the listing and the quickest levers on the advertising side, especially when we marry the advertising data to it. It is also one of our main things for due diligence taking on a brand, it helps us understand where they are at, including price and elasticity, and one of the most common questions we get is around forecasting, how much can I grow, how much will it cost, and is it sustainable. I know your latest podcast mentioned forecasting is dead since 2020, it is definitely more challenging, but this helps us understand the quick wins. It is only one part of the puzzle, so keep that in mind.

Michael Erickson Facchin: A couple of things I will comment on. The first time Amazon came out with Search Query Performance and I showed it to a seller, their mind was blown, and it has been out over two years. A couple months ago I showed it to another seller and their mind was blown. It is easy for high-level optimizers to love it, but it is hard to get into. You need to download it and do stuff with it. I know internally we have built spreadsheets where you put a bunch in and it gives you a spreadsheet. I really like the name of your tool, QueryIQ. So with Search Query Performance data, what do you do with this report?

Mike Danford: There are a lot of use cases. We have several larger brands, high SKU accounts, 100,000 SKUs, so we go with the brand level. The big thing is the comprehensive report, it gives us a couple thousand extra terms sometimes, and shows us the Pareto across multiple products at the same time, what to go after, and we can figure out which ASIN is on the back end based on advertising. What we love is, we have several brands with pretty large tentpoles. We just had St. Patrick's Day for a brand, and we looked at the Search Query Performance from last year during the ramp-up four to six weeks prior, and we could have really pushed this unit. One ASIN sold 40 or 50 units, and we took the top 10 that we knew had better conversion and click-through and built a dedicated campaign, and it is over 500 units over the same time frame versus the prior year, just by taking that data. We do the same with our SEO and indexing, for the seasonal terms let us put these in the back end, rotating alt text, anything of that nature, to juice seasonality.

Michael Erickson Facchin: I love it. You have a freebie for everyone to download, there will be a link in the description. Let us jump to the second one. SKU Economics. Talk to us about this.

Mike Danford: This has been available at an individual SKU level for quite a while, and more recently they released it aggregated, where you can look at a holistic view of your catalog. We have large catalogs, so it is nice to have these all on one screen. It is insightful to see how many different fees there are, the fee stack from Amazon, from the referral to fulfilling it to the returns. We developed our own tool called the Profit Pulse System, very similar, and we take all that data and create heat maps based on the top five or so categories, ROI, margin, total revenue, ad sales, and organic. That helps us look at, this ASIN is our top seller but our number 10 spender, is that what we want, or this is our number 10 seller but our number one spender. It helps us recalibrate if we are pushing ad spend to the right place. A lot of brands focus on margin and TACoS, but when we pull in net profit after all fees divided by COGS to get ROI, it helps them understand, let us kill the dead weight, and we can increase efficiency within a couple weeks. It is not the easiest to find. You go into your inventory section, manage all inventory, click on the actual SKU link, and about two thirds of the way down there is a table showing the SKU economics for that ASIN. Right below it there is a new prompt for the SKU economics dashboard, click that and it pulls everything together.

Michael Erickson Facchin: This is really cool because a lot of people use third-party tools to extract this information, returned items, Amazon fees, but at the end of the day you want to know how much you spent and what the profit was, which is a very different metric than total ACoS. How often do you look at that, maybe monthly? And the last time you did, what were the action items?

Mike Danford: It is updated daily in our dashboard, so you can pull it any time. Generally it is at kickoff or during our audit, and then on a monthly basis, let us move some spend around, understand what is going on. With the new Amazon fees there is a lot you can get into, low inventory and long-term storage, so it helps with moving prioritization. It is impactful, we have a couple of brands, one launches two or 300 SKUs a month, another does a couple dozen a month, and it helps us keep this spend on the ones more mature in the product life cycle and reallocate here. We love looking at ad conversion versus total conversion rate to understand if the advertising is improving the organic conversion rate.

Michael Erickson Facchin: This one is definitely one of my favorites, the Product Opportunity Explorer. Give people a quick overview first.

Mike Danford: Most people are probably familiar with Helium 10, it is very similar, where you can go in and look at niches based on search terms or ASINs, pull in your brand, look at other information, and it gives you a lot of metrics across the top ASINs or search results, which is really insightful. Just going in can be overwhelming.

Michael Erickson Facchin: I love that the first wave of Amazon tools were all market niche explorers, generally from the angle of go launch a product. That has evolved to where Amazon tells you search volume, if it has gone up or down, what they define as a niche, the search terms, which lead to the most conversions, and the top converting one. I use it a lot for market growth or contraction. If an advertising campaign shrinks and revenue goes down, I go to Product Opportunity Explorer to see if there are more competitors, it tells you how many people launched in the last 90 days, the average review rating, and if overall search volume has gone down, so maybe we do not need to panic, we are out of season. And I look at who is the number one clicked product for these keywords to do competitive analysis. What are some of the ways you incorporate it?

Mike Danford: You nailed several of our use cases. This is a 1P data set, so I love that. Our biggest uses are the customer review insights and returns, which work hand in hand, especially on the negative sentiment side. You have a lot of returns and you can see that in the reviews, and it helps you change your product or understand the opportunities. We have several brands launching a lot of trendy tentpole products, so it helps understand recency bias, my product has been on there two or three years longer than the top seller, why, and they are tapping into that fad, whatever is popular, a color, a style, a size. It helps you find those trends directly on the platform.

Michael Erickson Facchin: I love it. Number four, Market Basket Analysis. I am curious on your perspective because you work with a lot of high SKU count clients. Tell us what it is and how you work it into your workflow.

Mike Danford: At a high level, it is Amazon telling you the other two ASINs purchased with your ASIN. You can look at whether they are purchased with your own brand, multiple purchases of your brand, and your competitors as well. Those are the two views we look at.

Michael Erickson Facchin: When does this come up, when are you sitting at your computer thinking, I better check the Market Basket report?

Mike Danford: We do it first when we bring an account on, especially a brand that wants to know where their next product is. It is pretty wild what you can find. On the product detail page you can see frequently bought together, but that rotates and has some Amazon bias, whereas this shows you what other ASINs in your catalog they are purchasing in large quantities. So what is frequently bought together of our own brand, can we put those in bundles, parent them together, make the cart size larger. A use case we just had for a new brand, they were selling smudge sticks, and we ran the Market Basket Analysis and showed them one of their top sellers, number three, 59 percent of the time that was purchased they were also purchasing a Palo Santo type stick. They were not aware of it either. Guess what they offer now, a Palo Santo stick, and it more than doubled their cart size for that product, the individual price and combined price.

Michael Erickson Facchin: Just to confirm, they used that as market research and began to develop their own Palo Santo stick? Wow. And another use case is you look at what is being purchased in combination with your product and actively target that product with advertising so you appear as a sponsored placement on that product page.

Mike Danford: Absolutely. Cross-sell, complements, supplements, all that.

Michael Erickson Facchin: I love it. It is another category to target, go to the Market Basket Analysis report, see what people buy with your product, and go advertise on that. That is a layup. More homework for people. Let us jump to number five, the Brand Reputation report. Tell me a little about it, this is one I have not used.

Mike Danford: It is not necessarily a report, it is a service we offer, brand reputation. Amazon has a way in the back end under the customer review section, where if a customer gives a critical review, three stars or less, you have two options, an instant refund or contacting them if they have not opted out with buyer-seller messaging. We have an automated process depending on the product, cost, and star rating, and whether we do an instant refund and follow up, or ask why the review, especially if you can read it and get more information, was it due to shipping which we do not control. That also bleeds into the seller feedback.

Michael Erickson Facchin: So the workflow is when a review comes in that is not good, and you can only respond if it is three stars or less. How impactful is this, and what is the success rate?

Mike Danford: The best thing is timing, do it as quick as possible. If a review has been sitting there three, four, five months, past the look-back, either 180 days, it is a lost cause. A lot of times sellers do not know how to do a refund or missed the refund window, but you can authorize it and engage with them. It is really up to how much you want to be involved from a customer service side, each brand has a different philosophy. On success, sometimes they keep the one, two, or three star but add an update, product was not as expected but customer service was awesome, or they change it and lift it. Some brands we have a 70 to 80 percent hit rate. Similar to Market Basket Analysis, they purchased this flavor and it did not hit with them, and we know from our audiences that people who like this flavor also like this one, so we send a refund and a sample pack of other flavors, or if it is a size thing for apparel we swap them out for free. It depends on how aggressive you want to be.

Michael Erickson Facchin: Taking time to triage the review, sending a sample pack, comes with a cost, but versus the cost of having a product with a three and a half star rating, most people would take the cost of triaging it. Would you generally see that as the case?

Mike Danford: Yeah, absolutely. We lost a food torch a few years ago, we did not show the image that you have to put the fuel in the torch upside down, we had it inverted. So little things like that, you can follow up, flip over your torch, update the FAQs or put responses in the reviews, here is the size update. Very impactful, and catch it really quick.

Michael Erickson Facchin: Let us jump into number six, one of my favorites from the last year, Brand Tailored Promotions and coupons. Let us define these.

Mike Danford: It is different cohorts, like an email or coupon campaign inside Amazon. You have people who have abandoned your cart, people following your brand, high-spend customers, at-risk customers, and a few other cohorts. It lets you give them a special promotion coupon, and when they are searching your product or on your page they see it, very specific to them, so you are not giving it to the masses.

Michael Erickson Facchin: These are so easy and effective I feel like everyone should be using them, would you agree?

Mike Danford: Absolutely, but few do, unfortunately.

Michael Erickson Facchin: I have done this quite a bit with a brand I am working with, the most effective were cart abandoners and repeat customers. When you create it, it tells you the audience size. This brand had 7,000 people in the last 90 days, we turned it on about two weeks ago and had 31 redemptions, which is nice for this account size. You also have a connection here about Amazon posts.

Mike Danford: One of the cohorts is brand followers. When we take over a brand we really push for their storefront, because once they are in your storefront there is no competition, it is yours, you own it, and you can get more of a web design there instead of the square peg Amazon requires. So our number one thing, every person we communicate with, we go to their storefront, look at their header, and say you need a call to action here with an arrow pointing down to the follow button, because that is how you increase that cohort. Anytime you release a new product or push a new Amazon post, they get notifications if you set that up. Increased followers is another organic campaign you do not have to pay for, and it helps build your high spenders and top tier.

Michael Erickson Facchin: I couldn't agree more, and you get more real estate on your product listings, another vertical row of your posts. What kind of social posts should a brand post on their Amazon store feed, how similar or different from their Instagram or TikTok feed?

Mike Danford: Less is more here. Make it easier first, split test, and see what works for your followers. In the beginning do not be overly concerned with the format, get the minimum, I think it is 10 or so, before you can have those additional placements on your product detail pages. If you are already posting daily, repurpose that content so it fits the Amazon format, then try other formats, UGC, and see what engages. It is up to you, there is no one size fits all.

Michael Erickson Facchin: Last but not least, another one I have not used, Creator Connections. Talk to us about what it is and how it comes up.

Mike Danford: I would say it is Amazon's compliant influencer marketing. You work with them inside the Seller Central platform under the advertising side. You can create campaigns, and the whole thing is about incentivizing them to create posts, which creates the external traffic Amazon is really rewarding the last year or so, especially for newer products. So it is influencer marketing inside the Amazon ecosystem.

Michael Erickson Facchin: Is it an actual interface where you find creators, they have a portal, and it is like a matchmaking site?

Mike Danford: Very much, though not as advanced or mature as some of the other 3P platforms, Amazon wants to control it as always. You create your campaign, put it out there with incentives and commissions based on referral traffic. I think they are starting to increase where you can do more matchmaking and outreach as opposed to just blasting your campaign. It is definitely evolving. It is all about checking that box, it is something Amazon is doing so they will give you a reward, and you have backlinks to your listing, and brands love it.

Michael Erickson Facchin: A lot of sellers ask how do I find these people, negotiate deals, do I have to pay them 10 grand for three posts. It is cool there is a tool right inside Amazon to get started. What kind of brands have you seen using this?

Mike Danford: Pretty much everything, and the engagement differs by product and seasonality. Since we do third-party UGC and influencer as well, it is all about virality, you have to be aggressive and more generous in the beginning, and as more people opt in you have more come in and it is usually cheaper, your commission can drop on the second and third tier. Sometimes it has to be 50 or 60 percent to get someone to move, based on the price of the product, because they get a percentage commission. And I do not think you can incentivize them outside the commission for the product.

Michael Erickson Facchin: I love that for so many solopreneurs who see influencer marketing as challenging to get started with. So we covered seven things today, Search Query Performance, SKU Economics, Product Opportunity Explorer, Market Basket Analysis, Brand Reputation, Brand Tailored Promotions, and Creator Connections. If a seller has never done any of these, what would be the first thing you recommend?

Mike Danford: It comes down to the size of the catalog. The first thing we do with any brand is our QueryIQ, looking at that Search Query Performance. That is usually the quickest win, the painkiller.

Michael Erickson Facchin: I would agree, having good search analytics on what is being searched, your place in it, your market share, and what levers to push. And if someone feels comfortable with the technical side and knows the Search Query Performance report, what is the next place they should go?

Mike Danford: The lightest lift is brand reputation and getting into customer reviews. Engage with them. I think less than one or two percent of sellers are really actively doing that. We go in and see a queue of negative reviews and get rid of those, it is so cost effective, and it is another way to engage with the brand's customers.

Michael Erickson Facchin: Last question, you have a bookshelf behind you, what book would you recommend?

Mike Danford: I am a big fan of Mike Michalowicz, one of my favorites. He wrote Profit First, and I think his most recent one is Get Different. You will see a lot of my blog content leveraged some of his ideation. He is so fun to read and fast, and it is about breaking the mold, do not be the noise, how to be the purple rhino in the room amongst a bunch of gray rhinos. That is my go-to right now.

Michael Erickson Facchin: Mike, what is the rest of the year look like for you, what are you most excited about in the world of Amazon?

Mike Danford: My role has changed here at Adverio, I am cranking out tons of content, so that is where my vision is right now. It is exciting to get my voice out there, and I am working on publishing a book as well, that is my next big audacious goal.

Michael Erickson Facchin: I look forward to it. If anyone wants to get in touch with you, how should they?

Mike Danford: LinkedIn, and specific to the PPC Den it would be the toolkit we will have for you. Thanks so much for having me.

Michael Erickson Facchin: Mike, thank you so much for coming on the show. Hope to have you again.

Mike Danford: Likewise.