The Amazon Math Nobody Talks About w/ Nik Hall

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to Marketing People Love. Today I have Nick Hall. Now, Nick is currently the CEO of Revive Marketing Partners, but before that he was a brand owner of Vita5 and grew it until its acquisition and now helps dozens of brands break through and scale up on Amazon. Today he's going to be sharing what he looks for in brands that are ready to take off and scale. What mistakes people make with their math. And he gives us the actual math formulas, if you will. What's the multiples of my product costs that need to make sense? What does it take to win right now? Not, not five years ago, not one year ago on Amazon. And we talk AI in Amazon. What are the influences there? And, and by the end of this, I had him auditing some of our accounts. The guy is an absolute guru, a great person and I would love to welcome him to the show. Welcome to Marketing People Love Nick. Welcome to Marketing People Love. Are you ready to unpack the future of Amazon right now?

Speaker B: I'm ready. Let's do it.

Speaker A: So you have an extensive background and I think to help people understand the perspective and the context you're coming from, what has your relationship been like up until we're talking April of 2026, reverse back in time. What's been your relationship to Amazon as a platform? How have you learned it? Used it before we get into the future of what you're doing now, uh, with brands and what they need to be thinking of for the future.

Speaker B: Yeah, so I, I ran my own brand company called Vita 5. We did Gummy vitamins, all direct to consumer at first, built that to millions a year. Then we went Amazon scaled that up and then we went retail. We went 0 to 25,000 points distribution within about two years. And during that time I worked with a number of agencies and it kind of finalized the whole story on, like where I'm at now. I ended up taking it back in house and grew up 450% when no one else was able to grow it at all. And then after selling the business, ended up going into helping others on Amazon to actually scale their brands.

Speaker A: Yeah, and, and Amazon is, it is a, it's a beast of a marketplace. It's so much more than, than just a platform. Like, why did you feel the need to take it back over what was not being managed in the way that you wanted? And what, what was the difference there, the reality?

Speaker B: So at first, uh, I had, I had gotten into Amazon because a buddy of mine was doing about $30 million a year on Amazon. He kind of gave me the Ropes gave me all the inside secrets. I started becoming friends with a bunch of top sellers on Amazon and we just all kind of shared our secrets of what was working. We all had something different every week and we would all test it and figure out what was the best or whatever. I outsourced it, truthfully, because I just didn't have the time, bandwidth, energy. And I thought, these guys are experts, let's go ahead and send it out to, um, them. And honestly, I think most of them had really good intentions and I think some of them had like, good opportunity to win. Where I think most go wrong is they don't understand the business. And so they've never been in the business. They don't understand the cash flow, the supply chain, the, you know, the depths of the marketing. Or better yet, when you look at Amazon truthfully versus a Meta or TikTok, Amazon is based off a search volume that's already out there. Verse, Meta or TikTok. These are discovery products.

Speaker A: I was gonna say. Oh, uh, that's literally where I was gonna head next. Maybe I'll, I'll wait until you finish your thought on that. That is where I was headed, you know, in terms of, you know, it's a, it is a, A, uh, place that captures demand and it captures people that are shopping in real time.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think that that's one of the biggest things that we, we figured out through it was when you, when you know, it's that you then start to launch products based off of those specific things. So really, when you look at it, I get so many people that come to me all the time and they, they sit there and they're like, hey, I want to launch Colostrum Collagen. I, I just did it. I, I did this as an example on a podcast the other day. I went on ChatGPT and Claude and I said, give me five good products to launch in the supplement space. The worst five products you could ever launch.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because it doesn't understand.

Speaker A: Basically, we're like, here's the bloodbath of what's working. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Speaker B: Exactly what it was. And so truthfully, like, what I did the best was my marketing. I do think that I set up the structure of the campaigns a bit better, more for scale. But I think what I did even better was find the product that, you know, that you can actually win on. And I'm not, I do not like getting in a bloodbath. Yeah, because someone has more money, someone's bigger, someone's Willing to lose more someone's, whatever it may be from my side, I'd rather get into a space that I can win in this little area and then gradually build it out and maybe I go launch my next product and then, you know, if I can get it big enough, then I own the entire category.

Speaker A: Yeah, really interesting. And so, um, what, you know, I mean, we get. So we have like over 300 brands a month that reach out to us. It's insane. Wow. Because of that, we see so many different shapes and forms of, like, what, what those businesses look like, what those business models look like. And the number of times I've met someone doing anywhere from 10 million to over a million on Amazon alone, like, they're like, we don't even. We. We have a website that doesn't really exist. Like, you would be shocked. Uh, potentially, I think everyone listening would be shocked by how many people can build a, A true business on Amazon, which to me is not that shocking. Like, that's like, say, you could build a business by having a product in Walmart or in Target as a gaff.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It's like, there are people there shopping. You provide something. And so, so as you are, you know, I, I would. I think about this through a lens of like, if people say, should I get on TikTok shop? I'm like, it depends on a lot of different factors. Like, can you. What is winning there? Why does it win there? So help. Help me unpack. Like, what are, what are the zig. When you zag type of, of brands that are out there or, or opportunities. I shouldn't say it's just opportunities because reason, reason I'm asking it that way is it's like everyone sees the most successful thing and then they're like, I

Speaker B: can do that too.

Speaker A: Or like, yeah, if I can get 1 or 2% of the market, like, that's great. Rather than, oh, I could own 20% of the market on Amazon on this thing. And to your point, I'm not competing with someone that just raised $30 million or $100 million. Uh, and so that. I think that's where more of my question is coming from is like, how are you looking at those opportunities? What are the levers?

Speaker B: I, I go through, I go through a couple things and, and this is formulaic for me at this point. One is I'm looking at, is the market big enough? Right. Because what. Where some people look at it in this massive market where it's a million dollars a month with 10 different products that are all crushing there's also the other side of this that does $2,000 a month, $4,000 a month. Well, you, no one's paying their bills with that. I mean there's no, nothing you can bet. You can hardly pay your electricity with that. So you got to make sure that there's enough size in the market. Then what I look at is what does competition look like? Like one of them, I, I sit here and think through and everyone thinks I have a different reason for this. But car seats, you can look up car seats. And Graco wins on just about everything. 4.8 and 4.9 star reviews. People love it. The price point's 150 to 250. And like, it's amazing. We'll, we'll go and look at some of these newer players in the market. They're winning from Meta or TikTok or other channels they did not win on Amazon first. That's not a channel that they were going to win on because really Amazon shoppers are Walmart shoppers, which I'm a Walmart shopper. So, uh, you know, whether it's good bed, whatever, most people want best value. Now, best value does not mean cheapest price always, but the price has to be reasonable.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: And that's why if you ever go look online for like the best quality headphones, you don't find the best quality headphones. You find $40 pair of headphones that are good enough rated. Uh, uh. And so that's where we've got to shift things then when I start to look through is after, after the reviews, how are the competitors and how do you line up against them? Are they a 4.2 and you can be a 4.6 or are they all 4.9s? Because the reality is a 4.9 people are pretty dang happy with what they have. Right.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know the experience of the shopper too, where uh, if the price is the same and it's kind of commoditized, you're like, I'm going to go with the one that has 10,000 4.9 ratings. Like not the one that had. Or even if it's 4.7 or 4.6 got 10,000, I'm not going to go with one with a 5.0 rating because they have a hundred like it just. Exactly. Yeah. They have such a massive lead in that sort of like category space. That's a good point.

Speaker B: Yeah. And the last thing that I'll look at is cost per clicks. A lot of people don't look at this, but uh, like you can look at all those things right there and you may say, like Colossians, a great example, or protein powder is a great example, or protein shakes, whatever it may be, until you find out that the cost per clicks are $5.50. And then I just do a quick formula. You know, your typical website, you're converting what, three and a half percent? On Amazon, you're gonna do three to five times that. So you're gonna be 9 to 15% ish where you should be and depending on your product price point. And so long story short, let's just say you have a 10% conversion and it's costing you $5, it's costing you 50 bucks to acquire a customer on Amazon. Amazon's model is not the same as your website.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So.

Speaker A: Right. You know something that, that's really, uh, I have two, two thoughts to share or recent stories share. You know, one is we've noticed with brands that are D2C only, and then they, so they're only selling through their website and then they pop up Amazon, um, even if they're very early on, six months in a year, in almost 30% of their sales will happen at Amazon. Right. So it's like even though all of the attention and traffic is being sent to the website, people are. 30% of the buyers are breaking off to buy on Amazon anyway. Which does not shock me because I do that too. I've seen stuff on, uh, TikTok shop, I've seen stuff on Meta, where if it's a commoditized thing, I'm like, it's a click and a swipe. I have the backing. I know that I'm going to, I can deal with Amazon customer service. I know that returns are easy. Like, it makes sense why it's an additional like capture channel for these brands. But your point, just because you can capture demand there doesn't mean that you can grow your, your share of what, what else is on the platform. Like, we see that all the time that, you know, the, you can only spend so much to acquire a customer on Amazon on any platform but on Amazon. So that, that really hit me when you were saying that, that uh, you know, it is a channel that you can have either capturing demand that you're creating somewhere else, or if you want it to be something that can grow and scale on its own, it has to have its own map that works. Well, my other, I guess question or thought was I had a friend recently share with me and I didn't know this because these are the Type of nuances that people might not know about Amazon, where he was sharing that, and correct me if I'm wrong, something like, if the product is under $20, Amazon takes a lesser percentage share than if it's over 20. Like, there's, there's certain breakpoints where Amazon, where. So it's like if you have a product 25 bucks, he's like, it's actually just as affordable to make it like 19.99 based on the way the Amazon fee structure works and stuff. And that blew my mind. I was like, wait, what?

Speaker B: Yeah, so it's it for, for like grocery and gourmet, it's under $15. Some categories it's under $10. And so because the reality is, I mean, if you look at the way that Amazon's been over the number of years, 10 years ago, your ideal price point was about $15 to launch that because of the fees and all this stuff. And let's be real, Amazon's a public company. They will always be charging more fees, like their advertising costs, their fulfillment costs. There are all these things that they're doing and not doing is strictly for them to make more money. It's just the reality. But what has been nice is they have allowed this under $15 and under 10 in certain categories. And so, like, literally, we did the math on it. It's like 1650 is the exact same dollars to you as $15, but your conversion rate should be substantially higher. And that's what everyone's trying to figure out is what is this point of equilibrium? Do we do this pack size at this price, or do we do this pack size of this? Because consumers, what people still can't get through their head is it's all about, like, value, but you've got to be comparable. And so, like protein shakes, 30 bucks. 30, 35 bucks is typical. Right. Energy, uh, drinks, 20 to 30. But, like, if you go look at certain products, they're like 10, 12 bucks. Right? Well, don't do something three times the size, even though it's better value in terms of dollars per unit, it's not going to be able to compete.

Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. No, man. What's crazy is this is what. You know, I think about this all the time that I know you guys work with. We'll say dozens of clients. I know it's. It's more than dozens. And one of the things that, uh, I've always found so interesting is I have this phrase, someone said it to me and I. It's almost like a mantra. I've been Repeating to myself, which is there are the things that you know, you know, there's the things you know you don't know and then there's the things you don't even know you don't know. In that last bucket. In that last bucket. Because we do, you know, we help brands launch, we advise in brands, you know, at a founder level with people. And I realized that like everything that you were just explaining about all these things that these nuances that you know, can save people so much time, money and heartbreak and like get help to narrow the focus to like what can work like pretty quickly and that, that is the value of working with someone who has not just seen so much but is currently seeing so much. You know, it's like I, I feel that way, you know too about like people that are even running it internally. It's so, so nice to have external perspective on like, oh, is this, is this normal? Are these, are these click through rates normal? Am I, is my conversion rate normal for my category? Should I be, Am I, is there an obvious thing that I'm not doing or something I'm not pricing it at, or you know, if I just changed it from, you know, a 16 stick, uh, 16 stick pack count to a 10 stick pack count and lower the price point. This thing is a $50 million company. But because I haven't, it's a one million dollar company. It's like, it's crazy how much that, that, that can alter and change. I, uh, Any reactions that I know you agree?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, if I was, if I was a founder today in the CPG world, what I would try to do. I know it's hard to get time on your calendar because you're so busy and time on a lot of people that are like super legit in this space. A lot of people say like, how can you build my brand? I would do it the other way of. You've seen so much. You guys have 300 brands that come to you every single month and you deny a lot of them. And other ones you just genuinely try to help and guide. And what I've found from like working with brands, the ones that are the best to work with are the ones that are willing to work with certain things and pretty much don't take. They don't say no. They just. Let's, let's figure it out, let's adjust, let's. We had a company that was doing 13 grand a month for 18 months straight. And I was friends with the guy and I told him like, hey, your pack Size is completely wrong. You're selling it way too expensive. Your conversion rate's less than competition. You will never be able to rank up above them organically. And he was like, okay, I'll tell the agency. Well, they were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. He comes in, the guy does, like, 300 grand a month right now. And this is like. I mean, yes, of course we restructured ad campaigns and all that, but honestly, it was majority of it. He could have scaled probably to 50 to 100 grand a month just after fixing the pack sizes. And so what I wish I had, in the early days of me being a founder of Vita5 or whatever, was like, what's your take on this? What price point would you say it should be? Because we just get, like, as founders, we just get stuck in our heads, and we're like, oh, uh. The worst, though, is those. I talked to someone yesterday, really sweet lady, and she was like, I'm just too emotionally attached to this. I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker A: Back it up. I am. I am with you when you. Right? It's funny. It's like, Nick, you were on my. You were writing my mind. Because I have found that it gives me empathy. Having launched our own brands gives me empathy for people. Because when you come to somebody and they're not emotionally attached and they can just look at the math and look at the competition and be like, this is the game you're playing. Are you aware that you're playing the game versus, like, oh, like, I love it. Or this is meaningful to me. This is why. You know, it's like, you get. You get precious with it. And it's like, well, that's not helpful. That's just. But you can't help it. It's like, uh. It's like being unattached and unemotional to what you spent so much time building is like, I would say, either a rare ability or, uh, something that you just have to be honest with yourself about and find people who will have those honest discussions with you. Um, so when you said that, I was like, oh, man, I have. I have so much empathy for people who are emotionally attached to what they're building. I have it, too.

Speaker B: Oh, for sure. I know.

Speaker A: It's so cool to see that. Let's talk not just what has been working, but what are you thinking about for the future? I mean, this is one of the main reasons I wanted to have you on was, one, I know how much value you have to offer, but two, I know how much you're thinking about the future. Right. And um, I'm one of those people too. I'm like, I'm like where is the puck going? What do I need to be thinking about and trying today to get to where we want to be? So as, as I understand it, AI, which is a very broad term but like AI is starting to fuse its way into the Amazon world. What are some of the shifts you're already seeing? What are you noticing? What are you. What's on your top of mind for, for, for brands as they move into uh, we'll call it the rest of 20, 26 and beyond.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean if you go. If let's go back like a year, year and a half, maybe two years max. The seven years before that. Truthfully there was very little adjustments, changes, anything within Amazon. I mean I felt like it was twice a year. We had an update, the updates in the last year and a half and now at the speed that it's running is absolutely insane. In AI Claude chatgpt name the things, whatever it may be. Google's this, that whatever like these are just like uh, in, in a sense hyperds. This is where I. Is where I believe one of my favorite pastors, Craig Rochelle, he always talks about Craig and, and everyone over.

Speaker A: I know who he is. That's right. I just felt the need to like sh. Cool dude up Craig, he always talks

Speaker B: about how from like a leadership perspective we always over exaggerate our goals in the short term and under exaggerate our goals long term. And that's what I feel like AI has done so far in this and just the world in general where we all think it can do anything and everything today, that we're going to all lose our jobs to today, tomorrow, whatever. And the reality is that's just not the case now. It's moving really quick and so this may, this long term may be shorter than we think. We are already seeing a massive shift on the Amazon side. And I don't say that for some clickbait title. I don't say it for anything crazy. I would call myself a second mover. I'm not your first mover in most things, so I'm not gonna be the first one to get the newest iPhone, ipod, I. Whatever it may be. But I'm gonna be right. I'm gonna learn enough about it and then um, go. We've seen in the last year people are searching different now. They have not gone full in on this yet. Just so you know, keywords are still really, really Important. The old classic way was Amazon wants you to convert on your product with specific keywords higher than the competition for every specific little thing because they want to make as much money as possible, as much profit as possible and you have to pay to get there. However, the reality is now if you go and search the example I gave earlier of high quality headphones, you will not find Apple or the expensive Bose or the expensive JBLs. You'll find the $40, $50 pairs continually because the average consumer was converting higher with those Interesting.

Speaker A: However you're saying that's with what would the phrase be if you don't mind me asking? That you said it would be premium headphones.

Speaker B: Yeah, something like I'm typing premium headphones.

Speaker A: Hold that thought. Ah, hold that thought. Premium headphones.

Speaker B: Headphones. Now as you're looking through this

Speaker A: sponsored. And we are into interesting. Yeah. Wow. So I'm looking at wow, that is so interesting. The sponsor. I'm laughing because I'm like the sponsored is throwing me. Well let me put it this way. Crazy. I am going through this page right now. Top two sponsored results. Third one down. Sponsored. Fourth one down. Sponsored. So the two top ones, 6.99 for Bowers and Wilkins as uh, the first top two and then it's Sony at uh $300 and Skullcandy at 149. We're still in sponsored results. The first non sponsored result is a 199 beats the 26,000 reviews 4.9 stars. The next one is Sony at AH400. But then we're also getting from frequently shop brands. I'm Getting everything from JLab, JBuds Luxe at $41.99 to Skull Candy again at 150 Soundcore again. All of this is I am amazed to say that on my desktop 10 of the first 13 things are sponsored and you don't really pay attention to the difference. Wow. Nope.

Speaker B: As a consumer you rarely notice wow and what's and and what's what's cool and what it has done over the last bit and is getting better and better with this is it starts to understand the consumer. And so I'll use myself as two different consumers. Back 10 years ago when I first launched my last business, I made seven grand. My first year I was buying the cheapest wireless headphones that broke every month and a half because I got too much sweat in my ears. You know nowadays I just use the AirPods. It connects to my phone and my computer and everything else out there. And so it's just easiest. Amazon now starts, uh, to understand me as an individual and we'll personalize it to that. And so I don't think that their AI today is as ideal in that spot. But where it is getting better is the asking of the questions which will gradually build it deeper and deeper. And you'll find that the questions are all very, very similar to what keywords

Speaker A: were back in the day.

Speaker B: Right back.

Speaker A: So functionally, how does that change what you're doing now? Is it just being aware of it? Like how does, how does that matter now? Like what are you doing differently or are you doing.

Speaker B: Yeah, the, the number of releases that they've had on Amazon seller central and advertising and all the stuff in the back end has, has completely shifted. They've added more tools in the last year than I bet they did the five years before that. And, and with it, what I'll say is the tools that they're adding, they're adding more audience type style people that are likely to buy from you, people that have added a cart new to brand people because the reality is you're okay getting a certain ROAS or the Amazon World acos. You're, you're willing to spend more money on a new to brand customer than you are something that's coming back. Right. Even if they're not searching your brand name and that. And so you'll find way more audiences on that. You'll find there's now gradually. Right. We're, we're about, you know, April of 2026. You're starting to see a little bit of like the AI questions and some of that stuff, but this is very slowly moving.

Speaker A: Testing it or what?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Amazon is ab testing like crazy on all of this stuff to see what works best.

Speaker A: Yeah, it is a good point that based on all of your previous purchasing history, all of your previous reviews, et cetera, et cetera. Like I guess what I'm trying to say is like Amazon already knows I'm not going to buy the $700 headphones. Like, ooh, I had never done that. Now I feel like they, they know me well. Like I feel like they could triangulate pretty quickly which three headphones I would buy in three different tiers. And why. I think that the part that I'm, that I'm trying to. It was a question that I didn't have until I did this search, which is I am just floored. And this might be because premium headphones is such a competitive category. It's a high AOV category. I'm just floored by the number of sponsored results. So I'm like at what point is Amazon actually get. Because it how about this, what they prioritized in this is serving the ads, right?

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: 10 out of 14 results were sponsored. It wasn't like they were trying to give me whatever the most organic one was. No, I can go in and, and set it to say number of reviews, whatever, whatever. So I'm, I'm, I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm like will it ever be any different than pay to play? Like it is pay to play. I'm like it already is.

Speaker B: I mean I think it was the last three years. I may be a little bit off on these numbers here but last three years the Amazon uh, sales have gone up 91%. However the ad costs have gone up 387%. Principal point being there. Right. Maybe I'm off a couple percent or something like that. But the idea there is sales have gone up. I just saw something this morning. Of the U.S. households that have 200 million households, I'm like, you don't have much more that you can go there, right? Like how much more are you going to be able to get there? And so where they're going to have to win is like, I mean this is, this is way wild to me. I mean these are recent tests that I've just recently seen. But I mean they're putting frequently return.

Speaker A: Yeah, I saw that. Yeah.

Speaker B: And I'm like that is like the biggest thing to like not get me to buy something. Well they don't want you to because you're going to return it. It's going to cost them money. It hits the P and L just buy the one that actually converts. What's crazy is that like the AI is not where it exactly should be because once it hits that someone's just paying the $700 product they say hey we've got dollar margin. We have a lot more dollar margin than the forty dollar company.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Naturally. But they don't have the conversion. And so right now the 700 company or the person that's super highly funded is just going to go up there and go what? I genuinely believe which this has become more and more the case over the last number of years. They want, they want fewer and fewer Chinese kind of sleazy companies and copying. Yep, yep. Like the classic Amazon brand. They do not want to turn into Teemu. Yeah, it's not, not the ideal. So they are getting a lot more legit which is great for most Brands now there's gonna be a number of hiccups.

Speaker A: Right. Until then, this is, I mean, I knew my mind would be expanded. I, I, I think what, what I'm, what I'm processing right now, I need to search for something else. I need to search like, give me, give me, give me another thing to search for here. What would be, uh, we'll say, let's say creatine gummies. Okay.

Speaker B: You're gonna get a lot.

Speaker A: All right, here we go. Creatine gummies.

Speaker B: One.

Speaker A: Okay, so top. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Okay, so this is crazy. I'm looking right now. So of the first 14 I see 11 of them are sponsored. I don't, Yep. I, I was not ready or prepared for the idea that, like, Google has always had like 2 or 3 sponsored pay per click type things. Now it's like, if you don't pay money, you're not showing up.

Speaker B: Uh, for sure. This is how I explain it to people. Amazon's a public company. They are getting the consumers as much as they can now. They've got to get the vendors. And so that's why you have to be on the sponsored side and you have to convert. If you don't convert, like, I talk to people all the time and they're like, oh, we're putting money in. We're putting money and we're putting money in. And I'm like, no point. At a certain point, if you're not converting better than the market.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Why are you going after this specific term? And so it's, it is super interesting. We're going to continue to see more and more sponsor. I mean, it's almost obnoxious how much sponsored stuff. I think it's personally pretty obnoxious. All of the, uh, we're in a, we're in a spring sale right now for big spring sale. Don't worry if you miss it, though, we'll have another one in two and a half months. I mean, these are kind of getting watered down at this point. 20%.

Speaker A: Unbelievable. Okay. And so what I'm feeling the tension of here is, I think a lot of times, consumer. So how do I put it? Okay, there's, there's three, there's three thoughts going through my head at the same time. One is, I think one of the misconceptions that people have is that, you know, I was talking to somebody yesterday and their price for their product, they're like, this is a fair price for my product. And I was like, look, I get that, but you need to raise your price from $11 to $17. Because if you don't, you'll have no money to actually acquire customers and run the business. I get that it's a, that to you, it's a fair price and it's what you would want to pay. But if you can't make this a business that also can have the freedom to invest back into it. If you're constantly, if you're, if you're at 50% product cogs, uh, meaning 50% of what you're of your product is just pure cost. There, there is no room for you to. Unless you have the distribution channels. There's no room for you to pay Amazon to be in these searches. No room for you to pay Meta to be in the searches. We were talking about, of course, like bundling other things. But what I'm realizing in this moment is you have to have enough margin to make the business work. It still has to be in the right value for the customer. And, and now if you're layering it on top of that, it has to be enough to have you even be seen. Right. It's like it's the classic term is, is table stakes. And I hadn't even. I've never thought of the third one. I've just always thought to myself, if you can't, if there isn't enough margin in there for you to get in front of people, then there's just no way to be in the game. And I think the other part of this is like, you know, these creatine gummies are great. I'm looking at them, I'm like, it's just if that doesn't already. Doesn't already exist, it's just a matter of time before Amazon has Amazon, you know, creatine gumm. They undercut your pricing and so does Costco. With Kirkland, I'm like, so at some point you're always, you're never really going to be able to compete on price because someone can always do it a little cheaper and the platform is. Or the, the retailer can always white label and do it cheaper. It's a sobering, sobering thought, but we're seeing it, man. You can't get yourself caught in trying to be the most affordable option. You will pretty much always lose.

Speaker B: Well and on Amazon. I like giving this just because it's good math for people to understand. On Amazon, your cost of goods multiplied by 3 to 5x. That's the range that you should use for Amazon. And there's different math for, for your D2C site, because everyone always looks at things and they just take it for face value. And everyone goes, I'm going to start doing mine on Amazon or I'm going to do mine on, you know, my website and do meta and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, no, you got to figure out what model is M, what model works right. On your website. You got to have a certain average order value. Average order value is not the same. Yes, of course you want a certain average order value on Amazon, but the reality is that is not a metric you're going after. You're not trying to upsell and upsell and upsell. Like you're trying to get something that becomes a long, lifetime value. Yes. And so you're trying to convert for conversion on Amazon. So you may do different pack sizes. You may. And that's where all the difference comes in of do you do.

Speaker A: Right. What are the letters that are going to exactly get you to the math that scales? And it's. And you and I both, uh, am laughing because, you know, I'm aware of Amazon as a channel. But. But the, uh, the math that I can immediately do is on the D to C side, right? Like, just, it's reflective people. Like, people. Some people, when I meet with them, they, they, it. They're like, they look at me like they've just seen someone do, like, A Beautiful Mind, like, rendition of, uh, like, they're like, oh, my gosh. How do you know that? I'm like, because it's math that, you know, it's ma. It's just math. And then it's hard because a lot of times the math does help take the feelings out of it. Because I'm like, well, I hear you. That you don't feel like people will pay more, but I'm telling you, they have to or your business will never grow past where it is today. And they're like, oh, that makes sense. And so these are, these nuggets are so good in terms of just like some of those foundational guardrail pieces. Let me ask you this before we wrap our discussion here and thank, uh, you for, for dropping these knowledge bombs. What is. When you work with people, but what is the process that you take them through? And let's assume in this case that they are not on Amazon yet. Right? Because that's going to be a much large, larger learning curve than like, we're on Amazon and we're doing all right. And I'm guessing most of your. I don't want to assume. I'm guessing Most of the brands you work with are either maybe like a funded startup or, or already have momentum on Amazon and are maximizing it. So just give me a sense of like, what is the, what is the process you help take them through to get them to a healthy place?

Speaker B: Yeah, the first thing I always do on Amazon, off Amazon, does not matter is is it worth it to go after? And so I have calls all the time and I, I always pull up data to back this and we go through some of the things we talked about earlier. What's the, what's the amount of revenue in the industry? What are the main competitors doing? Reviews, price point, uh, cost per clicks, all that stuff. And what I'll do is I'll pull it up and I'll say, hey, there's a certain math point here where this does not make sense to do and this is for your sake, not mine. Right. Like there's too many agencies out there that go out there and they say, hey, I'm just going to close.

Speaker A: Amen to that. That is the biggest thing, that's the biggest thing that I say is I'm like, we could sign three to four times as many brands now. That will mean that more and more of them will fail, which, which will ultimately impact our long term reputation. I'm not in the business of that, but there's a lot of people that are. And so I hear you on that. Like, I love that you start with like, can I actually be successful with you? That is. Yep, yep.

Speaker B: And then just being like super real. Like, I talked to a lady the other day, her dad's an entrepreneur. Not in this space, he's in the SaaS space and I know him from years and years ago. I would say this to her either way. And she's been building this pet brand and she thought she was being innovative by going after calming chews for dogs. Right, we'll go look at calming shoes for dogs. Every massive competitor that you do not want to fight against because they are just blowing money through this stuff and they're also making millions and millions and millions of dollars a month are in these spaces trying to hit the number one spot. And so I, I just told her, I said, hey, if the Math is over $3.50 a click, I would never get into this. Boom. It was like 550 a click. I said, but I had to pull the emotion out of it because I'm like, I never want you to be

Speaker A: emotional with it if you should or shouldn't.

Speaker B: Now there's always a little Bit of like variance, right? Those brands that are. I'm looking behind you. You got Everyday Dose. Right. They do so much volume on their DDC site that they're with people. And this is the old school thing. I mean, I love it because there was a five, six years ago, Liquid iv. And they just launched something recently, which is hilarious. Liquid iv. There was. Or sorry. On Amazon, there were searches for Liquid IV variety pack. For years there was a company, and you can still look it up today, that has jank looking branding deliquid. I look and has a variety pack and they were. They were doing 700, 000amonth with this product. And I'm like, I literally called up someone at Liquidity and I'm like, oh, my God. Uh, you'll make 10 million bucks a year. Hydra something. It's not a brand you'll ever remember.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, uh, Hydromate. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker B: Wow. I think so. Yep.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: And I'm like, how crazy, right? Like not even a real, like, I don't want to call it not a real brand. Good for them. They're making a ton of money. They've had an opportunity where opportunity was. But I sit there and I'm like, that is from Liquid IV not paying close enough attention to what the search volume was. There's tens of thousands of searches a month because people were wanting to try multiple of them. Um, because it was too much of a risk to put 20, 30, 40 into one product. And so what they did is they just took the flavors that they had and went after it and were strictly keyword based.

Speaker A: So. Yeah, that's wild. That's wild. Okay. All right. So you take them through the process of does it. Does it work? Can it work? And then where does the. Or in this case, let's say they are already working, then what?

Speaker B: Yep. Next thing you got to figure out is like ads is a major part, right? We've been talking about this. And while we all wish that it was less of a part, the reality is it is. And so what we then go through is try to figure out like, is the structure of the campaigns, right. One of the biggest things that I found is that people mess up the structure. And what I'll always tell people is if you have a campaign with multiple ad, uh, groups, multiple products, and then multiple keywords within. What happens on Amazon system is all those keywords go to certain ones. Well, it will not tell you which product got the sale. So m. You have no ability to scale.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: As a dangerous spot to be in. So you Want to be in a spot where it's the opposite. Where it is, you know exactly which product. So you do. Now, this is a pain, but you do single campaign, single ad group, single product, and then your single keyword on the ones that are meaningful and impactful for your business.

Speaker A: Yeah. All right, well, Nick, if someone has just, just could not get enough of the wisdom m that you have brought today, what's the best way for them to follow along? Um, obviously reach out to you and everything else, man.

Speaker B: I'm trying to. I honestly, my goal through this year is to give out as much free information as possible through LinkedIn. I'm gonna do it through YouTube and tick tock. So if you see me there, I'm probably gonna be a bit embarrassing to watch, but LinkedIn's the real way that I'm just. I'm literally opening up my full playbook to everyone because there's too many people out there that are being told the wrong things online, through courses, through YouTube videos, through all this stuff. And so I've taken dozens and dozens of brands that I've worked with and just sharing exactly what works for most brands.

Speaker A: All right, so Nick hall. Nik Hall on LinkedIn is the best way. And then obviously through the website, if they want to check out, uh, revive marketing partners as well. Correct? That's right. Cool. All right, well, thank you for, uh, for rocking this with us. I already feel like I'm rising in my own, uh, rankings. Of course it's sponsored, but I am feeling good about your paying for it. About, um, my understanding of Amazon.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I appreciate you.

Speaker A: All right, that's what we have for you today. If you got value from this conversation, please make sure to follow so you never miss an episode of Marketing People Love. Until next time, I'm your host, Jock Spitzer.