Weekly Update June 20th

Amazon for CPG Brands đź’»

June 20, 2022

Hey , 

Hope you had a great weekend. Happy Father's Day to all the dads reading this. Happy Juneteenth as well! Last week I recorded a podcast with Laura at Envision Horizons and talked about the role Amazon can play in your business. Here are some pointers from the conversation below:

PS. If you were forwarded this newsletter, please 

. 

  Amazon for CPG Brands

Talk with any CPG founder and they’ll have a strong opinion good or bad about Amazon.

Personally, I’m a huge fan of Amazon and how it benefits CPG companies, but there’s a huge learning curve and lots of possible mistakes along the way.

Today I want to break down one of my favorite ways of leveraging Amazon for your CPG business, beyond sales.

First thing first, if you’re looking for basics about how Amazon works for business, listen to my Startup to Scale Podcast episode 9 with Daniela Bolzmann and episode 21 with Shannon Roddy.

Both of those are amazing resources on how to get started.

Ok, now let’s get into the use case.

Known Demand, Unknown Demand, and No Demand.

Launching on Amazon is an amazing way of testing your product market fit. Why? Amazon is one of the top product search engines for people ready to buy. This means that people looking to purchase your product (or something similar) are looking on Amazon first. Because of this, I learned from Shannon Roddy that you can identify your brand’s:

Known Demand: people searching for your products by name.

Unknown Demand: people searching by product type or for competitive products.

No Demand: people aren’t searching for your brand or product type.

How does it work in practice?

Known Demand - once your products are listed on Amazon, I recommend running a simple ad campaign with your brand name as keywords. That way when ever someone searches your brand, you’ll show up in the search results. Amazon Ads Manager will then show you how many impressions your ad received, and how many clicks. With a relatively low budget, you can track the search volume for your own brand, and how many people are looking to buy you.

If you’re not currently selling on Amazon, but have been around for a while, try typing your brand name into the Amazon.com search bar. It’ll auto-fill popular search terms, so at a quick glance you can see if people are searching for you.

Unknown Demand - Let’s say you just launched a new protein bar with functional ingredients for brain health. On Amazon you can create hyper-targeted ads toward people searching for protein bars. Amazon will then tell you how many impressions you received and how many clicks. Did a shopper search for “Quest Bar”, clicked on your ad, and then purchased? Amazon ad campaigns will give you that level of detail (when applicable).

You can also get data on category search volume. How many total people are searching for “protein bars” vs. “brain health” vs. “Lion’s Mane” (Lion’s Mane is a popular functional mushroom used to help support brain health.

No Demand - Amazon is an unbiased way to test your product / category assumptions. Honestly, many CPG ideas don’t have a large enough market that’s easy to reach to sustain a profitable business. Amazon can quickly tell you if your products are in demand, or if no one is looking for products like yours.

You might say, “but Jordan, there’s no products like mine on the market, which makes them so unique.” New to the world products can be successful, but require millions of dollars in marketing spend or years of personalized selling to be successful.

When I launched TeaSquares, we called them “Tea Infused Energy Snacks”. Looking at Amazon, ZERO people are searching for this product descriptor at all. Going back in time, that would be a good indicator to call it by a different name, something related to what people are actively looking for.

The best products do well because enough people are already looking for a product like yours.

By leveraging this data, you can understand your brand’s product market fit. 

Optimize Your Amazon Page

Looking for help optimizing your Amazon listings? Daniela's

is an awesome Amazon expert that can quickly get you started or optimize your pages for strong ROI. 

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FOODBEVY

.

Jordan Buckner

Foodbevy

WEBINAR: 6 STRATEGIES TO BOOST YOUR E-COMMERCE SALES

Friday, June 24th at 1pm CT | FREEIn this webinar, we’ll hear from Scott Jones, Senior Growth Coach at BigCommerce, on his six top recommendations to improve your ecommerce website. 

As a Growth Coach, Scott works 1:1 with BigCommerce customers to provide recommendations to help them optimize their stores and improve conversion metrics. He’ll share examples of strategies he’s seen work well for his customers, and answer your burning questions on what you should be doing with your ecommerce site.

WE’LL BE DISCUSSING:

  • Building Trust

  • Simple Site Structure

  • Homepage Design

  • Product Page Design

  • Upselling Strategies

  • Social Selling Strategies

GET EARLY ACCESS TO CRAFTED

Are you looking for a new way of building brand fans? Crafted just launched their sign-up page for it's shoppable livestream cookalongs. It's designed to get your products in front of potential customers as they're following along with cooking videos.

How it Works:

  1. Add products

  2. Creator purchases products to use in cooking video

  3. Creator goes live and uses your product

  4. Viewers can purchase your products directly from the livestream

Sign up as a brand partner today

BRING SAME-DAY DELIVERY TO YOUR E-COMMERCE SITE

I'm testing out a new service,

, which enables Same Day & Next Day delivery for DTC brands at ground shipping rates while maintaining your brand identity from start to finish. 

It's as easy as downloading the Shopify app and setting up your pickup preferences. Customers can select "Same Day / Next Day Delivery" at checkout, and see live rates appear.

partners with companies like DoorDash and others to come to your facility, pickup, and deliver to the customer up to 100 miles away.

For it to work, you need to have a facility with pickup capabilities.

Let me know if you want an intro to their team to learn more

WEBINAR: 3 PRINCIPLES TO SCALE FROM 7-8 FIGURES THROUGH D2C DESIGN

FRIDAY, JULY 1ST AT 11AM PT | 1PM CT | 2PM ET - FREE

Are you looking to update the look of your website but don’t know where to start? Join me as I talk with Ben Sung, founder of D2C Design as we discuss how to improve the design of your D2C site to improve shopper education and increase conversions.

NEW PODCAST EPISODE: 45. Building a Sustainable E-Commerce Brand with Bon Bon Bon

This is such a fun episode. I sit down with Ale Rodriguez, Head of Marketing for Bon Bon Bon, a chocolate confection company based in Detroit. During this episode, we discuss building a sustainable E-commerce brand, from packaging to people. We also discuss the tools you need to build a high-functioning e-commerce site.This episode is in partnership with BigCommerce, a leading e-commerce platform that empowers merchants of all sizes to build, innovate and grow their businesses online. Learn more about how BigCommerce supports food and beverage businesses here.

DISCOUNTS

- Mindful Goods 

is an awesome Amazon expert that can quickly get you started or optimize your pages for strong ROI. 

 use code FOODBEVY.

- Maverick Lab 

allows you to create individually personalized videos (with a customer's name) welcoming them to your community. Foodbevy members save 40%. Reply to this e-mail for an introduction.

- Chop 

is a

that allows you to drive in-store trial, collect customer shopping data, and build customer profiles to further drive your business. Foodbevy members save 20% off. E-mail me for the discount.

- Stripe 

is now providing $20,000 in fee-free processing for new and EXISTING customers.

The Accountrepreneur 

is your go-to outsourced CPA and CFO firm for the food and beverage industry. Receive

- Airtable

 can store information in a spreadsheet that's visually appealing and easy-to-use, but it's also powerful enough to act as a database that businesses can use for customer-relationship management (CRM), task management, project planning, and tracking inventory. 

With your help we're building an amazing community of Food and Bev entrepreneurs helping each other!

Jordan

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