EP343: How eCommerce Business Can Better Safeguard Their Brand With Lesley Hensell | Riverbend Consulting

Stacy Jones: Welcome to marketing mistakes and how to avoid them. I’m, Stacey, Jones and i’m so happy to be here with you all today, and I want to give a very warm welcome to Leslie. Hensel

Leslie is the co-founder of River Van consulting, and leads the client services team, where they work with major manufacturers private labeled Brands top resellers and mom and pot businesses to better navigate the online selling world having been an Amazon seller for over a decade after helping hundreds of third-party sellers get their suspended Amazon accounts and Asians back up and running. Leslie Leverages decades as a small business consultant to solve the underlying business issues in online retail resulting in improved operations and profitability.

Today, Leslie, I’m going to be chatting about how e-commerce businesses can better safeguard their brand. We’ll learn what works from leslie’s perspective what should be avoided, and how some businesses and individuals justice some more. Leslie, welcome, so happy to have you here today.

Leslie: Thanks so much for having me, Stacey.

Stacy Jones: of course. Well, first of all, what all of our listeners do not know is, I have a fellow, Dallas, native Texan native

here, and so i’m always happy to have that, because while there’s many of us, I don’t necessarily always get to chat with them. So welcome to the show.

Well, thank you. It is great to bond with any fellow texting.

Stacy Jones: And with that how did you get here today where you are now? This Queen of Amazon e-commerce? You know all the things that people do wrong and how to write them.

Lesley: You know it’s really funny, because for a couple of decades now Amazon has been seen as a great side hustle for mommies.

Lesley: And that is actually how I got my start in this Amazon world. It was the side hustle for a mommy who was a full time consultant at the time that I had a kiddo who was diagnosed with autism and a bunch of other special needs.

Lesley: and we decided the best thing to do was to home school him? Well, obviously, you cannot be a full time Consultant and home school a kid with special needs and go to a million therapy appointments, which is what we did.

Lesley: So I quit my job, and I started hustling on Amazon. So when my husband was home night and weekends, I would go source inventory. This is back in the wild West days of Amazon, where it was just flipping everything from retailers. And then on the weekends we’d ship it all the Amazon Fba. And you know there are still so many mommies that I work with. Who that this is what they do. They want to home school or they want to help special needs, kids, or whatever.

Lesley: and Amazon for side hustle. But now that my kiddos in college, and my other ones in high school. I am full time with river been consulting. We have a staff of people. And I’ve grown into becoming one of the experts in the space who helps folks to grow the brand.

Stacy Jones: Well, you’ve certainly been busy the last many years. I will say that. Yes, I have. I spend more time at baseball and football games than I ever thought I would. So you know. Then, Amazon, on top of that it’s a full life.

Stacy Jones: You really put the opportunity into being able to work from home before Covid and lockdowns came and figured it out. So you’re ready to rock and roll. I’m assuming in ,, and you didn’t even have to blink.

Lesley: I have actually worked from home since the year ,, which is crazy

Lesley: because I wanted to be that present mom way back in the day before I had my first kid. So yeah, I’ve I don’t think I could ever go back to an office environment. And fortunately for me, Amazon is perfect for that. Yeah. Well.

Stacy Jones: you know, for anyone who is listening from home. I think that

Stacy Jones: it might have been pre that people would be like oh, home, then that’s much easier to work with kids. It’s not. You have to hustle still having the kiddos in the background, the dogs and the cats, the husband, the wives that everyone else is coming in and out. It is not exactly the most

Stacy Jones: calm environment at all, but congratulations, and finding success in that.

Stacy Jones: Well, so I have this screen behind me. It’s a it’s a printed branded river. Been consulting screen. It’s also there, because I’ve got French stores in my office, and you might see my kid grabbing his cleats on the way up to practice, or the dog wandering around so absolutely true. You have screened your house

Lesley: bye.

Stacy Jones: So when we’re looking at Amazon, Amazon’s. Obviously you know it’s the giant of e-commerce, and besides your own

Stacy Jones: websites that you have, I mean, this is where people go and it’s massive business, and it’s where most online business is going.

Stacy Jones: But there’s a lot of issues that people think that it’s so easy to pop in and create an Amazon storefront and just rock and roll and get going on it.

Stacy Jones: And that’s not the case. What are some of the issues? You see? Traditionally, people have.

Lesley: so even the largest brands have the same problems on Amazon that this small little private label sellers do which to me is fascinating, and that’s because Amazon has created this entire set of rules in its own ecosystem.

Lesley: without regard for how people on the outside may or may not be able to understand or navigate it. It’s all about Amazon, and the way Amazon does it, and they just don’t care that much about you or me or anyone else, so

that out front Amazon does not care about you is the message that we’re saying right now, as far as being kind and loving and supportive of your needs, when you have a clossal fail going on

Lesley: right, or having it be easy to figure out or intuitive. They just don’t care they care about the buyer and the customer, and that in the end that’s good for sellers. But it does make it more difficult. So the very first thing that you need to know if you are going to market. Your own products on Amazon is, you have to get brand registry. So Brand registry was created, so that

Lesley: what was really created for Amazon to manage intellectual property complaints that people file against each other like gangbusters. But for their regular brand on Amazon it was created so you could protect yourself and your brand, so that someone else can’t easily go out there and say.

Lesley: My products are Stacy ink products when they’re not stacy in products. Right? So whether you are Nike or Coca Cola or your

Lesley: someone working out of your basement. You have to get brand registry and manage it well, and managing it means actually watching it on a day to day basis, making sure other people aren’t on your listings with counterfeit products, making sure that they’re only selling

Lesley: real goods, and that’s what branch brand management bread register is there for.

Stacy Jones: And so obviously this happens a lot. I mean a lot of times. We say that it’s international countries that are doing it. But it’s not. It’s all over the place that people are ripping off products and trying to hawk and sell. And so how can brands better safeguard themselves against that?

Lesley: And there are? It is legit that there are tremendous problems, especially with Chinese sellers. There are some specific reasons for that. Sometimes you might source a product from a Chinese manufacturer who’s your contract manufacturer who build something to your specs, and they’ll just use your mold and create another version of it and sell it on your listing. So it does happen more

Lesley: if you’re using Chinese manufacturers, but, like you said, it can be from anywhere it can be from the United States. It can be from anywhere in the world. One thing that I recommend to brands, especially brands that are worried about retail arbitrage.

Lesley: Okay. So anyone who’s a seller on Amazon can go down to the Walmart or the target or the discount store and buy your stuff

Lesley: and listed on Amazon, so they might use coupons or deals sales whatever to get a low enough price that they’re gonna flip your merchandise.

Lesley: They might even get the buy box on your listing, meaning they’re the featured offer on your listing. So what do you do? My favorite strategy is, if you’re a manufacturer or someone with a cool product.

Lesley: you create Amazon only bundles or Amazon, only versions of the product that are not available in retail stores, so

Lesley: that might mean, like I worked with someone who they make a cleaning product that all of you have seen on commercials, I promise you’ve seen this leaving product.

Lesley: and so they have versions of that product that are actually larger or smaller in the number of ounces. Then you can buy it any retailer. Some of them are bundled with a special cleaning cloth, or some kind of sponge or other implement, and it’s, bundled together, shrink right together.

Lesley: and it has their brand name on the cleaning cloth, and none of that is available in a retail store, so no one can just go find this stuff

Lesley: and listed against the retailer who’s selling on Amazon or the manufacturer who’s selling on Amazon, they can’t get it. So if there’s any way, if you have an established brand that you can create an Amazon only bundle. You will save yourself a huge number of hassles.

Stacy Jones: I’m. Assuming that this also corresponds to anyone who’s doing. I. In commercial sales, too, it’s a little different world, but it’s the same thing about bundling and having people be able to find the same product at a discounted rate, because you stop being able to actually control your pricing when other people get involved and are selling on your behalf.

That is so true, because Amazon does not enforce map. So you know the the minimum advertised pricing that you can negotiate with your distributors or your retailers out there that they’re not going to sell below a certain level unless you agree. Amazon don’t play that game. They just don’t care. In fact, Amazon loves when things are below map because they’re big. They’re big. Competition point against Walmart has been to say, you’re the low price leader. I know you’re not. We are so they want prices to be low.

You cannot win the price control game on Amazon. You can go out and threaten other sellers. You can get your lawyer to threaten other sellers. But unless you can show that they are selling stuff that’s actually damaged like it was liquidation, inventory or the wrong version, the wrong packaging, unless you can show that they’re giving a bad experience to your end. You’re not gonna win that game. So yeah, that’s that’s why you want to have these strategies because you’ve got to have some kind of channel control.

What are other things that you see that kind of go wrong in this space? Oh, there are so many, so many things that go wrong. So one thing that a lot of sellers do is they treat Amazon like, set it and forget it. You remember the old wrong appeal. Commercials with, you know, like any kind of a a baking thing or a cooking thing, and it was set it and forget it. You walk away. It just operates. We, Amazon, is not that thing. You cannot set up anything and just walk away. And one thing that I’ve seen so many of my clients do is they make assumptions. But just because you’ve manufactured item a, and you’ve done runs that every run meets quality control. They assume that the manufacturer doesn’t make mistakes. So they have all this inventory. They ship it away to Amazon for Amazon to fulfill their orders, and then they just ignore the returns reports. They ignore the complaints from buyers, and they don’t look for patterns. So I have My very favorite strategy in the world is called, Always be improving your worst, Asen, and this is just old school.

Continuous improvement a lot what? or earlier idea! But just in the e-commerce, you should always be monitoring your account, looking for your worst, performing as well where’s the highest return level, Where do you have complaints on your product reviews with people saying this didn’t match this caught on fire That’s a fun one, you know. I ordered shampoos, and I got a shampoo in a conditioner, or I ordered a shampoo in a conditioner, and I got shampoos. Are you actually looking for these comments in this feedback? There’s a really bad habit of Amazon Sellers and I can say this with total authority, because i’m an Amazon seller who’s had this bad habit before, which is to assume everybody’s lying. You know that they just want returns for free product. They’re complaining, and it’s not true. It’s never true. I mean a lot of times. It’s true you messed up, or your manufacturer messed up, or the goods just aren’t good, and if you don’t fix it as you go, you’re killing yourself returns can destroy your profitability even on just a couple of products. They eat up all of your margin so that’s to me. The biggest mistake is this. I’m just gonna the inventory, and everything is great, and it’s just going to sell through it’s No, you’ve always got to be working to make things better.

And then how do you make sure? Do you put a system in place to do that? Is it? You know what’s the best way of making sure that you’re actually eyeballing everything and moving it along in general.

So Seller Central is the interface that everyone uses to manage their Amazon account. It was created by Amazon for Sellers, and there’s a bunch of reports that you can go in and pull on a weekly basis. You can pull them daily, monthly. Whatever you want. Most People’s volume

Lesley: weekly basis makes sense. So every week you’d want to pull your returns. There’s a thing called Voice of the Customer, which is essentially people complaining about you. There is your it sounds so nice. Wait, voice of the customer. Sounds like so lovely and nice versus Mitchy of the customer. Yes, it’s usually. Why did this arise that smashed? Yeah, it’s not. Oh, this was so great! That’s the voice of the customers, Never your friends.

Lesley: But it’s a useful tool. And then there’s your store feedback, your product reviews. So what most most of my clients have a Va. Somewhere who works for them. Most of them have a virtual assistant, because there is a lot of grunt work to an Amazon account, so I hope them to write an sop for this. So the sop is, Calculate your return rates read through all this feedback, and then, depending on your criteria choose your worst product, so you can train a Va. To choose that worst product, and then you investigate the reasons for the bad feedback and all of the problems. So i’ll give you a really great example that’s totally unexpected. I have a client who is able to resell nike clothing. Not many people get to do that, so he’s pretty special, and he makes a great living doing that. And all of a sudden

Lesley: he was having a ton of returns. What we sorted through all of his returns. Okay, clothing returns are already high. If you, if you’re below , you’re pretty ding happy. But he had this one line of women’s clothing that the return rate, was like . It was insanely bad and every single thing set too small to small, too small, too small. So clearly there was a manufacturing problem. Usually people who buy that brand of clothing for workouts. They know how it’s supposed to fit them right. So these aren’t all like stupid people buying the wrong size. This was a a manufacturing error, so he pulled all that inventory back out of Fba and stopped selling it because it was costing him a fortune getting resold to someone else, is good to return it and say it was too small, and he has to eat all the fees associated with that, so you can train a Va. To spot the problem. And then at the beginning it’s usually the owner, or whoever is managing the brand to make decisions about how to solve that problem. But over time you can even train someone to solve the problem with advice or within reason, You know, if you’ve got to go back to manufacture You’ve got a rejigger, a manufacturing line, or if you’ve got to stop selling a product, you know that’s an executive decision. But there’s a lot of small things like updating the detail page, making sure that people understand what they’re getting. Sometimes you get returns because your your explanation of your product is not clear. Your photos are bad, or whatever it is, a Va. Can fix those pretty quickly.

Stacy Jones: What are other things that you see that go off the rails.

Lesley: Oh, goodness! So since we’re talking about marketing in the Amazon world. Okay, Ppc. Is advertising, but it’s all part of the marketing spend on Amazon. So on Amazon you run Amazon only at campaigns. They are all pay per click and they can get out of control so quickly that your cost of sales can be over %.

You really have to monitor and continually refine your advertising, spend on Amazon. They even have guard reels, you know, like maximum daily spend, and you know you run out of money, and there’s all kinds of ways that you protect yourself.

It doesn’t stop people from making mistakes, and I see people get fired for ruining the a coast on a product, because all of a sudden every sale for the last month was, you know, to to sell the products it’s. It gets out of control really quickly. Also, people stack things like you can do coupons

Stacy Jones: and other discounts and deals on Amazon. I’m. Sure you all have all seen where you just click the box to get the coupon, and I would like that coupon just to automatically populate like I’m like come on, really, cause so many people forget to click.

Lesley: Oh, yes, and that that’s the beauty of it from a seller’s viewpoint, but also the reason that it doesn’t auto populate is because it’s popping up.

Lesley: You know it. It helps the coupons help. You populate hire and search a lot of times you get favor. There’s all kinds of reasons to do those, some of the deals of the day. All of these are a great chance to move more product, and also a great chance to completely torpedo yourself.

Lesley: I had someone a couple of weeks ago who came to us

Lesley: who did some kind of massive coupon bigger than you should really even do on Amazon. It was like % off, but it was that that it was stackable, and you could use . So he’s essentially giving away the product.

Lesley: and he sold it. There are all of these people out there who are always looking through Amazon for deals, and they put them like on their tik tok, or they put it on their Facebook group or whatever. Well, one of these people found his deal, and so he sold thousands of units in a matter of hours, and they were all free.

Stacy Jones: We were doing partnership years ago for White Cloud, which is a paper Goods Product

Stacy Jones: Company, and at the time they were only sold at Walmart, and they come to my agency to be able to reposition and get messaging out that they were now at all these grocery chains and all of these other big box, because Walmart, of course, was coming in and creating their own product line. And so they were losing shelf space, and we did a partnership with live with

Stacy Jones: Kelly and Ryan. The talk to show, and it was a glorious, awesome, multi episode. Many segments there was fashion makeovers, because there’s nothing like having paper goods help. You have a good old fashioned makeover.

but we ran a coupon. And what you’re saying is so true. The coupon that was downloadable like before, like within a minute of it going live? Someone had scraped all of them, taking them all, turn them all in and like the people out there with couponing, do holaciously crazy things that you’re just like, what are you doing to my marketing campaign? So this is legit.

Lesley: Oh, yeah, I they they! They! They make a living at it practically they end up getting free. So i’m surprised that they don’t get like money back after they buy things. They’re so good at it.

Stacy Jones: I think they probably figured out how they roll in their truckload to the back of toilet paper and say, here it is, and do make money somehow back somehow.

Lesley: or they’re just selling it, and they actually do, because some of them set it up on a blog with Amazon associates. So they get a referral.

Stacy Jones: So they get a referral from the sale, but then it ends up, being free for the person who buys it. I mean, it’s insanity. Yes, yeah.

Stacy Jones: it really is

Stacy Jones: Okay, so couponing has some dangerous, treacherous, potential murky holes that you need to be aware of

Lesley: any kind of deal on Amazon. You really need to calculate down to the penny, because, for example, day deals on Amazon and lightning deals on Amazon. Well, you can move amazing amounts of product. They’re very effective for the brand, but you gotta make

absolutely sure that the numbers work for you because you can end up losing money. Now, the the rate you get out of it is awesome because everything’s algorithm driven on Amazon, and it helps. You have best seller rank, and you’re gonna continue to have better sales after the deal expires, but it still got to make sense.

So you could be potentially looking at a lost leader where you’re going to actually spike your algorithm by creating a revenue loss that people are going to make go viral, and they love it so much. And then once it’s done, and

you’ve realized that you’ve just done a spend to change your positioning. You then get going again with potentially a higher return.

Absolutely it’s just like when Amazon does prime day, a lot of people spend a lot of money on prime Day on their advertising, because Prime Day, and now it’s really more like prime  h is, or however long it lasts, you’ll continue to have great results if you put in that spend and have good deals.

Lesley: even after your prices to just higher, usually for to days. One of the things i’m fascinated about as a marketer is looking at all the ways that Amazon dials in and help certain brands market better, and I’m still trying to figure out if you know the brand is actually paying Amazon to do this, or if Amazon is choosing their top performers, where they know that they’re getting a lot of money on the back end, and they’re setting up the editorials and the links that you’re seeing on Yahoo and the product reviews.

What are they doing? Is this a money driver that they’re being paid to do? Or is it that they are more so doing it as an investment for themselves.

Lesley: So it depends. Amazon does nothing for free. In fact, Amazon makes hallacious amounts of money off of sellers.and even off of vendors. So where Amazon does invest, money is on the retail, or the one P. Side, which is where they have vendors. So when someone’s talking about one. P. It means first party selling.

They’re a vendor to Amazon just like You’d be a vendor who backs a truck up to the target and delivers your goods to the target warehouse. You can be someone who sells to Amazon and then on the listings, it says, Sold by Amazon, shipped from Amazon. Right? So there are companies that are are vendors to Amazon. In that case Amazon has co-OP agreements so with those co-OP agreements. Amazon does advertise those products. They do promotions on the products they even put products like in that cool toy guide or some of the online book. You know the best books of whatever all of that is Amazon Investing, however, the seller does have a co-OP fee associated with that and it’s usually quite large. So the vendor in that case helps to fund all of those expenses, and in some cases the vendor gets a lot out of it, and in some cases the better. It doesn’t get much on the third party selling side, which is about thirds of the goods sold on Amazon.

That’s when it says it’s sold by Leslie, shipped by Amazon, or shipped by Leslie. For those products, almost everything. The expenses covered by the seller Amazon will sometimes decide to invest in a very small promotion, and where I’ve seen this is Amazon, will do a coupon that you didn’t authorize on your brand. Amazon will sometimes lower the price of your goods and like, run a stale, and then they will actually eat that cost. So they will pay me the brand owner my regular amount when the good sells, and so they’re eating that cost differential.

And when I’ve seen this happiness, for example, they did a beauty day once, and and so beauty grants. I sell beauty products, and some of my beauty products were suddenly on sale, and I was like what the heck I didn’t put anything on sale. Well, Amazon put my stuff on sale. They ate it but that’s a rarity, and it’s usually with a big event. Amazon wants third party sellers, and even the vendors to cover their nut when it comes to promotions and so they do nothing for free out of the good of their heart is what you’re saying.

Lesley: Even things like the day deals and the lightning deals. I’ll tell you. I’m sure that you most people out there know this. If you are a bargain shopper, or someone who likes to cruise for deals, or like. If you need to buy gift for someone, you go check out the lightning deals with day deals. I I’ve done that before. Those bring a lot of traffic to Amazon, I mean, there are people who only go by deals, or who put things on their wish list, and if it’s on a deal it pops up that hey? You should buy this today. It’s at the lowest price, all of those cost the seller even though it benefits Amazon a great deal.

Stacy Jones: Is there anything that Amazon sellers can do to up their own marketing that they’re doing so, you know. Obviously, yes, you can do. Pr. You can advertise your brand so that more people are aware of it. But are there specific ways that people who are on Amazon should be trying to drive awareness and then traffic back to Amazon. So you did mention earlier editorial, which is the editorial recommendations. Yeah, those costs a fee, but they’re very effective. They’re extremely effective. And so if you’ve been on Amazon.and you’re scrolling down the page and you see where it says like i’m trying to think of one that’s like a a best best charger. Banks like, you know the banks for your phone, and it’ll say fastest, and then it’ll say highest capacity. And and there’s a product under each one that’s actually an editorial. So that is button pay for. They’re called the editorial recommendations. I’ll tell you why They’re fantastic. Number one is they are not pay per click. You pay for actual sales on those, so it’s much more cost effective. There’s an upfront cost to slow. But then you’re paying per purchase, so it makes more sense.

The other exciting thing about it, though, is, if you’ve got Ppc. If you got paper-click ads running, and you’ve got that you’re showing up on the first page of search twice already, and then, if you organically rank. You’re on the for first P. Of search times. So the chances of you actually converting a sale. Go way up and it builds brain recognition. So that’s one thing I do. Have clients who advertise on Google and send the traffic to Amazon, which is an interesting strategy. In some cases it can be more cost effective because Google ads can be cheaper than Amazon, Ppc. For some categories.

Stacy Jones: So this is when I mean to interrupt real fast. So this is when you’re writing in a long tail keyword you’re just on Google. You’re looking for something. The ads coming up. You get served it. There’s your digital banner. You’re clicking on the digital banner, and off you wish over to the Amazon storefront for your brand.

Lesley: Absolutely, Yes, and it really depend. And like you, said Long Tail. It’s really going to make sense on Google because Long tail keywords on Google are cheap. Compare it compared to everything else. Nothing’s cheap anymore, but compared to everything else, they are cheap. Long Tail keywords on Amazon are cheaper than the you know, Short, piffy, awesome keywords. But there still can be really expensive, depending on your category where you have to be really careful, though, if we want to go back to a mistake. Is there a lot of things that seem like they should be okay to promote your products. You can’t do with the names on seller, and it’s very frustrating. So, for example, like what? Yeah, You can lose your account or have your license taken down. If you do things that Amazon believes are non organic manipulation of your sales rank or that you’re getting reviews in a non-organic way. So, for example, you create a facebook group, and you give away a bunch of coupon codes.

Lesley: They consider that manipulation, you say. Hey? If you’ll review my product, then i’ll send you a coupon for another bottle. I everyone on earth who’s bought a supplement on Amazon has gotten this right. Review this product, and we’ll give you another bottle for free. That is a manipulation, and Amazon does not like that if you say, write me a Star Review, and i’ll give you a free product or a coupon. No, you can’t do that. Either. All of those can get you blocked. And here’s the really scary part.

You can get suspended for a bunch of things, and you can even get suspended suspended over and over. But when it comes to platform and product review manipulation you can get suspended once, and if you get to spend a day second time, you’re never getting back, and I don’t care who so we have seen Major Brands very large companies who have gotten the strikes you out and never gotten back on Amazon.

Stacy Jones: and so they can’t even get back. It’s not about. Oh, i’ll put in another sign or upper for this. They’re looking at the brand. They’re looking at the product. They’re registering their website. It’s not even about changing your domain name at that point. They’re just saying, Nope, you’re done. See? Ya!

Lesley: I even had a guy who sold supplements that were really big seller on Amazon who accepted his fate. And so he decided, I’m gonna wholesale so my product out to this other seller so he can get, you know, so he can sell it on Amazon, so I can get rid of my millions of dollars worth of inventory, which is what he had and was on suspended.

Lesley: The duty sold it to, even though it was legit, a wholesale relationship, just trying to get rid of this stuff we were able to get that guy reinstated after like a month or . It was really tough because he had a massive investment in this. I’m. Sure.

Lesley: Yes, and but that’s how seriously they take it. And if you think oh, i’ll just, I’ll just use a VPN. And i’ll do all these really nifty things, and they’ll never catch me. Well, if you end up selling the same brand again, they’re gonna figure you out.

Stacy Jones: Yeah, You’d have to do a lot of marketing changes to that brand and product and everything else to be able to confuse them.

I always remind people that you know Amazon has aws, which is some of the largest server firms in the world.

Lesley: and as part of aws they actually work for the Nsa. Of the United States Government. So if they can track people’s back in cell phone micro data to Link Terrace, I promise they’re gonna figure out if you open another account. Really.

Stacy Jones: Lesley, how can our listeners find you if they’re like? Oh, my God! I have screwed up my Amazon account so badly. I have a client who has, or I just need, help in general in this space, so that I actually get sales to happen.

Lesley: So head on over to Riverbin consulting.com. We have forms you can fill out so someone will reach out to you. But even more exciting for some of us we have a phone number in the corner, and we actually answer our phone. I know that is revolutionary these days

Stacy Jones: a real phone number that people can talk to you, and you’re not a chat. BoT

Lesley: Human beings answer and listen to your problems and help you. It’s amazing because a lot of people who call us. They don’t even know if we can help them, or if anyone can help them. So we have those conversations to figure out. Can we help you do. We refer you to someone? What’s your problem? You know. What can I do? So give us a call, or if you’re on Linkedin and you type in Leslie Hensel over on Linkedin I post a lot of fresh content about Amazon and e-commerce week.

Stacy Jones: That is awesome, perfect, and that will also all that information will be in the show notes just in case you are not available to be writing and typing and walking and listening and doing all of those multi testing things. So, Leslie, what are some of the other commonalities of Amazon sellers of what they experience, that like? Are there any other hardships upward climes.

Lesley: A huge issue for people right now revolves around fulfillment of their goods. There have been so many changes through Covid, and now, since Covid.

Lesley: with warehousing space available at Amazon and Pl’s. Third party logistics, providers.

Lesley: One thing that I really stress with brands is

Lesley: a lot of people really want to go all in on Fba. That’s where Amazon ships your products out for you and buyers are very comfortable with products via Fba. They just see it. It’s buying it from Amazon. They don’t even realize they’re buying it from a third party, and they get that prime shipping, and they just love it.

Lesley: And so yes, you want to have products that are Fba, because of all those benefits to you and your brand. However, you gotta have some backup, because every single Christmas season we run into the same problem of Amazon, not accepting inventory, not accepting enough of your inventory. It can start all the way back in August with not being able to ship in enough goods. So if you don’t have a third party, logistics provider, or your own shipping operation.

Lesley: you’re gonna You can do all the marketing and advertising in the world doesn’t matter if no one can get your stuff. If they can’t order it and receive it. You are just stuck, and I know too many people who, even this year, when Amazon allegedly had the warehouse space, couldn’t get their goods received in time.

Lesley: and so they still have stuff sitting after the holiday season, so I it does not matter what size you are. You’ve got to have a backup plan

Stacy Jones: that is just dreadful, and does Amazon to shut you down like when they don’t have the inventory in their warehouse to fulfill? Do they just turn off your ability to sell in general, if you don’t have that backup fulfillment.

Lesley: No, they don’t turn it off. It’s just that particular awful offer will disappear off the site, because there’s units. The great news is, though you can have offers on any listing. You can have a an Amazon fulfills that offer, and then I fulfill it offer, whether I me fulfilling it means my Pl. Or me actually packing it and shipping it myself. So as long as you have that second option always available. You’re not gonna get nailed in the fourth quarter and let’s face it. It’s about the fourth quarter. Well, Leslie, thank you so much for joining us today, and really sharing and shedding lots of light on the beast of Amazon that can make or break you.

Lesley: Well, thank you again for having me. This has been fun

Stacy Jones: absolutely, and to all of our listeners. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of marketing mistakes, and how to avoid them. I look forward to chatting with you this next week, and if you’re ever interested in exploring how you can potentially market your brand, whether it’s sold on Amazon or somewhere else. Reach out to my team at Hollywood branded, and we can explore talking through influencer marketing or how to we have a celebrity become part of your AD campaign, or the wonderful world of product like placement and movies and TV shows and music and until then have a great one. I look forward to speaking with you soon.