#434 – The Creative PPC Revolution: Rethinking Amazon Ads with Chris Rawlings
Want to unleash the power of Amazon PPC while keeping your entrepreneurial spirit alive? Join us in an engaging conversation with Chris Rawlings, the mastermind behind Sophie Society. Chris shares his journey from a curious kid in a solar-powered home to a leading figure in e-commerce, blending fun with business success. Learn how the aggregator boom shifted the landscape, and explore Chris’s unique strategies for navigating Amazon’s complex advertising world with both expertise and humor.
Kevin and Chris also reflect on their unconventional paths to success, sharing anecdotes like the time Chris inadvertently carried a full-size sword at an industry event, breaking local laws. These stories highlight the value of independent thinking and creative problem-solving in entrepreneurship. From the challenges of scaling Juno Launch amidst changing review practices to the lessons learned from misaligned investor expectations, his experiences underscore the importance of resilience and adapting to adversity.
Finally, we unpack the exciting evolution of Amazon marketing, including the rise of AI and creative content. Chris discusses his dynamic five-day PPC event that transforms sellers into experts. They also venture into the future of Amazon search, predicting shifts towards intent-based, AI-driven strategies. Whether you’re a seasoned seller or new to the game, gain insights on aligning products with market demand and leveraging creative ads to capture attention. This episode promises a wealth of knowledge for anyone navigating the ever-evolving world of e-commerce.
In episode 434 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Chris discuss:
- 00:00 – Amazon PPC and Business Fun
- 02:21 – E-Commerce Industry Success and Failure
- 07:07 – Unconventional Upbringing Shapes Entrepreneurial Journey
- 10:09 – Impact of Isolation on Mindset
- 14:50 – Lessons Learned From Entrepreneurial Failure
- 21:28 – Authenticity in Teaching and Testing
- 26:01 – Navigating the Amazon Sales Market
- 27:07 – Advanced Amazon PPC Five-Day Challenge
- 32:01 – Leverage Creative for Amazon Success
- 32:23 – Effectiveness of TV Ads for Brands
- 36:00 – Effective Marketing Strategy for Long-Term Success
- 36:58 – Future of Amazon Search and AI
- 44:29 – PPC Challenge Sophie Society
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 434 of the AM/PM podcast. This week, my guest is Chris Rawlings. Chris has been doing this Amazon game for as long as I have, maybe even a little bit longer. He was a seller. He had one of the best ranking companies over in Germany for a while, got kind of squeezed out of that by his investors and then he started Sophie’s Society, which is a really cool concept when it comes to advertising. It takes a different approach when it comes to doing your PPC. It specializes just in Amazon. They do some really cool things, some cool challenges, and the way they work with their clients is really interesting. It’s got an interesting take on some of what you should and shouldn’t be doing when it comes to your Amazon PPC. We’ll talk about that more in this episode. Enjoy this episode with Chris.
Kevin King:
Look what we’ve got here. We’ve got an old school virgin. That’s right. You know, you’ve seen the movie the 40-Year-Old Virgin. I don’t know, this guy may not be 40. He looks like he’s about 25, but he’s been around in this Amazon space probably as long as I have, maybe even longer and he’s never been on the AM/PM podcast. So we have a virgin today. Chris Rawlings, how are you doing, man? How’s it feel to be here?
Chris:
Pop my cherry, dude.
Kevin King:
Pop in your my cherry, yeah?
Chris:
Pop in my cherry. You said you’d say whatever on this podcast, right?
Kevin King:
That’s right. You can say whatever it is. I popped your cherry. Welcome man.
Chris:
That’s right.
Kevin King:
Good to have you on.
Chris:
Pop my cherry. I’ve been a fan of this podcast for a really long time actually.
Kevin King:
That means you actually listen to it, or that means you just-.
Chris:
I listened to it. It started when? In 2016?
Kevin King:
It started? Manny started, I think in late 2014 or 2015. He started it.
Chris:
Okay, that’s somewhere around there. I remember listening to it 2015, 2016, 2017 a lot, because that’s when I was starting my first brand.
Kevin King:
Well, you look at our space, I mean the aggregator space. When the aggregator boom was happening from 2019 to 2022, really 2020, 2021, during COVID, you had all these people that got in at the same time me and you did around 2014, 2015-ish that had no clue what they’re doing. They were right place, right time. They had no clue about PPC. They built a moat around the product just by default, because they were first to have a garlic press or whatever it was. And now they got 20,000 reviews and they sold their company and that some of the aggregators tried to hire some of those people. Most of them didn’t want to work for the aggregators, but the few that did, they quickly fired most of them because most of them didn’t know what the hell they’re doing. Some of them went out and like, let me try this. I got. Now I got 3 million bucks and let me take a million of this and I’m a stud, I just built a $3 million company. Let me beat my chest, I’m going to become a consultant. And some of them are still out there doing consultancy and some of them should not be because they don’t know what the they’re doing. And then a lot of them started a new company and they crashed and burned.
Kevin King:
They just lost it, and so that happens a lot, and that’s why people like yourself, I think what you’re doing with Sophie Society and everything is brilliant, I mean the way and you’re having fun with it. I mean I remember seeing you like in. Was it Israel? An event in Israel five, six years ago? An event in Prague when you and your team were showing up in like orange prison jackets, prison suits or jumpsuits or something like that.
Chris:
Dude, it’s so funny.
Kevin King:
Something like that. You’re all showing up like what the hell? But it stood out. Just like you said the orange shirts, orange jackets. You saw me and Norman at the Titan event it stood out. We had to take a thing out of your playbook. And then you do it with your trainings, your classes and your challenges and stuff, where it’s all fun. It’s like a night up at the top and all this night stuff and all this. And when I see you out at whether it’s a Titan event or some other event uh, you’re always like having just having a fun. You know you’re the guy’s skinny dipping in the pool or you’re the guy that’s dressing crazy at a mermaid thing.
Chris:
Are you gonna get me in trouble here?
Kevin King:
Whatever I mean. So I mean it’s cool how too many people take this always too seriously. But you’re like, hey, I’m going to do serious stuff in business, I’m going to seriously have fun too.
Chris:
I appreciate that you appreciate that because I know you’re the same way. We party together actually quite a bit. And I mean you and I have known each other for a long time.
Kevin King:
I don’t jump in the pool naked though. I don’t jump in the pool naked though. If I jumped in the pool naked, all the water would splash.
Chris:
Yeah.
Kevin King:
I’m like a I’m like a big whale jumping into the pool.
Chris:
I might convince you to get in next time. We’ll see, we’ll see. I’m pretty good at convincing people to get in or tossing them, and I know people in, but we’ve, I think. Uh, you and I first connected at least 2018, possibly as early as 2017, because we used to be a global sources seller summit every year, me and you I remember that. Always in Hong Kong, we were always both speaking at that event. That’s how we first connected. And then there was like all kinds of other events and then tie in and there’s for a bunch of reasons we’ve been connected. But I know you’re the same way as me. You like to have fun, which is why you host the Iceland event and you’re doing all kinds of crazy actions and adventures with your stuff and I do. That’s how I feel, because when I first started a business, I thought that I had to act like a business guy, like I came from the sciences, so my background is physics. I got a degree in physics. I thought I was going to become like a physicist, like a physics researcher, and that didn’t happen. You know, that just wasn’t my path.
Chris:
But, um, I didn’t have any business background at all when I started my business. So I was like kind of playing business. I was like going through the motions and acting like the people that I saw in business, because I thought that’s what you had to do. I had like business cards and I would hand them out and I wore a button down shirt and I would wear a tie at conferences and stuff, and then, like after like a year of that, I was like you know what this like, if this is what this is, I feel like, just you know, talk about pleasantries and just be like polite and like I’m from Jersey, I don’t, I just don’t like that shit. And so I just made a conscious decision like whatever I do in business, I’m just going to do it as me, however that comes across, and sometimes it doesn’t come across great, like you said. You know, I dress up like a knight for the PBC challenge that’s coming up next month, and some people think that’s goofy. Like we’ve had people come through the challenge and they were like you know, man, like I didn’t really take you seriously because of all the like night medieval stuff, but whole shit, did you deliver on this challenge? And I was wrong. But like they had that impression in the beginning, like, oh you know, this guy is, like you know, a jokester or whatever. But then when they come in to the fam, they find out how serious I actually am about business and about money and about growing business. But in the meantime I’m definitely gonna have fun.
Chris:
I don’t know if you saw when we were at the event. Where was that? Oh, Innovate or Accelerate. Innovate or Accelerate I always switch. I think it was Accelerate. I had a legit full-size sword with me and I was carrying it around. It was actually it turned out to be illegal, which somebody pointed out to me like after. They were like you know, like the max length of a blade that you can carry publicly in Seattle is like six inches or something, and this was like a like a 14 inch sword or not 14, it was like a three or four foot sword, like a full length sword and so that almost got me in trouble that time.
Kevin King:
I mean you had, I mean it’s always been about the money. I mean you had an interesting childhood too. I mean growing up it was non-conventional, right.
Chris:
Yeah, really non-conventional Like. I mean, that’s honestly, that’s part of what like led me to study physics and want to understand, like the basic nature of reality, like all throughout my childhood I was watching Nova and all I could think about was like how far does the space go? It, and all I could think about was like how far does the the space go? It has to have an end somewhere right. And then, if it ends, what’s beyond that? And like what are things made of? And like how did the material that made like my hands get there? You know, it’s that these are the things that were like going through my mind like ever since I was conscious, and so I wanted to study physics, to like learn about the nature of reality. But I think part, part of what made me that way is um, I grew up in a really, really strange, like very non-conventional environment, as you pointed out.
Chris:
Um, my dad actually got a government grant to build an experimental house. Uh, that was completely photovoltaic, like solar energy and also passive solar design. Like we had big giant walls of wax in front of our window that would melt during the day and then throughout the night, they would phase change from liquid back into solid and emit a bunch of heat, so it would like regulate the temperature of the house. We had special tiles and a reflecting pond that reflect more light in the winter into the house to warm it up during the coldest months, and all kinds of other crazy.
Chris:
You know experimental passive and active solar designs at a time when solar wasn’t an industry, it was just a science experiment back then. There was no solar city or you know any of these companies that do it and uh and it was in the middle of the woods so I didn’t have neighbors, so it was literally like we were totally isolated in the middle of the woods in a government experiment funded, you know, off-grid solar home, which is a very weird way to grow up. You know it was basically just me and my brother, you know, gallivanting around the woods, blowing stuff up in our yard, tinkering with electronics and making stuff we would like. We made like a solar reflector from a bunch of AOL free AOL discs which, like a bunch of people listening to this, probably don’t even know that that was a thing, but used to be able to get free AOL CDs like at stores, because they just wanted to give out the software. We made a massive solar reflector that could light anything on fire and pure sun within seconds, because it would focus all the sunlight onto one point like 17 of the reflector.
Chris:
So, we did all kinds of crazy stuff like that. We built ziplines, we were telling each other around in go-karts. It was like a very wild way to grow up. And so when I kind of entered society, because we were so isolated, with no neighbors or anything, the only exposure to actual society that I had because we didn’t have smartphones when I was growing up at least was school, and my school was like this little country school with 40 kids in my class and it was the same class, K through 8. So it wasn’t until I was like in high school really, where I like entered society, you know, and that’s an exaggeration like to a certain degree, but we were pretty isolated. But by that time I was already programmed to just think so so differently, I think, and I’d notice it a lot, you know, throughout, throughout my life, I’ve noticed it a lot where I am way more likely to rely on myself and my own problem solving abilities than to look at what other people are doing, and I’m more likely to be cool with or confident with whatever like route that I lay out, because that’s kind of how we grew up when something broke, we had to like figure out how to fix it. When we wanted to do something, we had to, like build it from the raw materials around the farm, as we called it. So yeah, I think that’s part of what made me a little a little bit of a gives me a quirky vibe, which is maybe one nice way to say it in this industry.
Kevin King:
Now, when you came into Amazon, you started, like you said earlier. You started out selling, but you also had it. Didn’t you have an agency that was doing like graphics or something like that, or am I confusing?
Chris:
Judo Launch, Judo Launch.
Kevin King:
Judo Launch, that’s right. You’re doing launch services for like was it Germany?
Chris:
All the European marketplaces we did. We also did the US, but we weren’t that big in the US. We were the biggest European market launch service provider at that time, which was 2017, 2018. And I made this stupid mistake of trying to make a high growth tech company out of something that wasn’t meant to be that. Like Judo Launch we, there was a software component to it and a services component to it, so it was like tech enabled service sort of um, we had a product launch software service. It also did rank tracking, a bunch of these other stuff that.
Kevin King:
Now this was before the buy with 100% off coupon days. Leave a review.
Chris:
Yes exactly. You facilitate those launches and respond. We had like a system where when you wanted to rank a certain like level, it was so much easier back then, like we would do the one-time discount coupon codes, put them out and we had a huge audience of like nearly a hundred thousand buyers on the back end that we’d collected for this business as well. Um, I actually still have them, but, uh. But so we would like allow you to kind of like regulate how much you wanted to give away daily to reach, reach a certain ranking and with super URLs, it was like clockwork, like you could literally calculate it like oh, it’ll just take me this many units to rank this much and it works so well. It was just like it really exploded and Judo Launch grew actually really fast but—
Kevin King:
Explain what super URLs real quick for the people listening that started selling in 2021. What’s a super URL?
Chris:
Yeah, so the super URL is a link that bakes in the keywords that would have been searched in that bar. So then when you click it, you go to search results that are already typed in for you and baked in. So when you click a product after clicking a super URL, it tells Amazon’s algorithm oh, this product is something people buy after searching this term. We should rank it higher for when people search this term. So what super URLs did? Was it basically like it automatically boosted your ranking if you use that instead of the product link for whatever keyword you plugged into the super URL.
Kevin King:
And those don’t work anymore. Just that this is old, old school, so don’t try to do it right now, when you’re listening to this. I just want people to—
Chris:
Don’t do it. This is a 2017, 2018, even 2019, maybe same, but yeah, I know it’s not a thing anymore. But yeah, my big mistake with Judo Launch because, you know, the spoiler end of the story is Judo Launch actually ended up getting taken over by one of my investors. Same thing happened to Casey Gauss, by the way, at Viral Launch, but it got taken over and I got completely booted out. I didn’t even know that was a thing until that time. You could lose your company that you founded. They changed the name, changed it to a whole different company, they took half of my staff and just ripped apart my company from the inside, and the reason that happened is because I made the mistake of trying to make a tech company out of something that wasn’t a tech company. I was on my high horse of having already had a success with a brand and building a seven-figure brand relatively quickly, which also was a good amount of that was luck and timing, like you pointed out, and then I was like, all right, the next thing is I’m going to build this big tech company, but that actually wasn’t a good tech idea.
Chris:
Helium 10 is because the value provided by the software is in the software itself, whereas for us it was so mixed in with the service. It wasn’t scalable in the same quick way that a pure SaaS play would have been, but my investors expected it to be. So there’s this misalignment of what kind of company we are, because I was presenting us as a tech solution when we were really a tech-enabled service and that caused a ton of friction and caused a lot of frustration from my investors and me when they started just wanting month-on-month growth. We want next month to be 20% more than the revenue of this month, and the month after that has to be 20% more than that month, otherwise we’re going to start causing problems for you. Whereas I was looking towards the long term, I really wanted it to be a big company long term and I was making decisions for that. So they ended up getting enough leverage and I gave away enough of the company that they were able to do this, to take it over, turn it into something totally different, and I got completely booted out for that.
Chris:
So that’s a little lesson learned for people out there Don’t try to, you know. I mean you have to be fully aligned with any kind of partner at all times. Otherwise, even if there’s a small misalignment there, it’s all going to crumble and fall apart eventually, because that will come out. And if you’re not fully aligned, or you’re not fully kind of like transparent, on like where you want to go with the company, what state your company’s in with partners, with investors, with advisors mostly partners and investors then those cracks will show and it ends up just destroying the company.
Kevin King:
And so then, when you got booted out of there, you went and cried a little bit and took a walk through the woods and said you know what? Sophie Society. Yeah, where did the name come from?
Chris:
Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. I had a little cry. I had a couple months where I questioned my own identity, because you know you’re building, we’re building companies, like I think we all do this. I didn’t think I did it, but it turns out I do do it pretty heavily, which is you start identifying with your creation, like people do with their kids. They’re living vicariously through their kids. I do that with companies and I know that because when I lost it, when I lost it all, I went from between a $7 and a $9 million net worth to negative a quarter million of personally guaranteed debt and no assets in the bank within the span of a year. So I felt what it feels like to lose it all and go from thinking you’re a rising star to being worth less than the most personal on the street say. So I had to learn then the hard lesson of like oh, I’m not my company’s, it’s not that my company failing means that I’m a failure, it’s just a company failing and I can try it again. So in my head there was like two paths. I was like all right, I can just accept that I wasn’t good enough to make this work. I lost it all. I didn’t have the skills that I thought I did. A lot of it was luck and timing. And you know, I actually don’t have what it takes and I should probably just get like a normal nine five, like a regular person and, you know, have a real security and life and be normal.
Chris:
And then the other path was or we could just run it again. You know, and that’s the path that I ended up taking, because I made the decision, I spent a lot of time like solo traveling. I know you love to travel, Kevin. You and me are the same way that way. I like to travel solo and I’ve done a lot of like backpacking adventures. I’ve stayed at dozens, maybe even hundreds of hostels. At this point I’ve been to over 50 countries. And you know, and I thought to myself, I can live a really happy life, really cheap, and I’d rather be like a homeless, vagabond, living free and doing what I want, than being strapped in some corporate job in a cubicle so that I can make a lot of money in finance or whatever other industry and be not free, enslaved. And there are great companies out there that are great to work for where it wouldn’t be that environment, right, but this was the trade I was making in my head and so I was like, yeah, so good. In that case. If it doesn’t work out, fine, I’m still fine. I can stay at a hostel in Thailand for like $8 a night and I can eat pho for 80 cents a day and I’m good, right, so I can live on like a couple of hundred bucks a month and be a happy person. So then I was like, all right, good, then I’m doing it and I spun up Sophie Society, and that was in 2019.
Chris:
So end of 2019 is when I started Sophie Society and I was starting from zero. Like I really lost everything. I even lost my brand, because that was like spun into the books. I wasn’t good at separating the books and stuff. Like I said, I wasn’t a business guy. I was like a science guy before this, which would make you think that I’d be good with numbers, but apparently not. So I lost it all. It started from zero, but I called the Sophie Society to answer your question because Sophie is the Greek root for wisdom, it’s in the word philosophy. It’s in my perception of the meaning of the root. It’s wisdom gained from experience, or gained from, in my case, tough experience. And so I really thought to myself like all right, this is the wisdom society. I’m not going to make the same mistakes that I made before. I’m not going to let this failure define me as a person. I’m going to start from scratch. Learn the lessons from those failures objectively not identifying with them and move forward to build something from truth like from the standpoint of truth, from wisdom and truth, which is, you know, I wanted to be the guys, and I believe we’ve done this, done a really good job of this. We wanted to be the people at Sophie Society, where we’re getting we’re not like taking strategies from blog articles and YouTube videos and then implementing them as consultants or something like that.
Chris:
We are the ones creating those insights by experimenting on the marketplace to find out what actually works, which, again, I know that’s something that you and I have in common, Kevin, because I’ve seen your presentations. You like to experiment with all kinds of crazy stuff, like with the hand sanitizer one that you did, where you guys dressed up as sharks and you were out there in the park and you were doing all kinds of guerrilla, crazy marketing stuff. Because you’re down to test to see if something works. You’re not worried about oh, I haven’t seen this work for someone else so I won’t test it. You’re down to just try stuff out and then, when something works, you do more of what works and you try to split that off, split off variations, so that you’re always like expanding on what works and that becomes like a bigger and bigger world for you, whereas the things that don’t work you just cut them off and they die. And it’s like a process of evolution to find the things that work better and better and better, and you’re constantly experimenting and testing.
Kevin King:
Well, I think that’s one thing there, what you just said. I don’t want that to just fly by. What he just said is he’s not taking what’s on blogs and what other people are saying and then teaching that. He’s actually going on and doing his own tests, and I find that to be the case too. There’s a lot of people in our space that teach or that go do webinars or seminars or speak on stage, that are teaching you things that they’ve actually never done themselves, never even looked under the hood. They heard it from someone else in the company, maybe their employee did it, maybe they saw it on a blog or saw something and they put their own spin on it, and they may even put a little spin on it that makes it even cooler, but they actually even haven’t tested that spin, and they’re usually showing examples that are photoshopped. You know different things, so be careful. I mean so what he don’t. Don’t let that gloss by. I just want to make sure that’s a very important point that sets you apart from a lot of people.
Chris:
Thank you, man. Yeah, I appreciate you saying that, because that’s like the core of like who we are. We in Sophie we run an internal mastermind that’s pure, like we don’t sell this or like sell tickets to it or anything, like it’s not open to the public. We run it for our people, where we have a structure, where we talk through the experiments that were brought up last time and we say, okay, what worked on this? Oh well, we’re testing a vertical sponsor brand video to see if it performs better than a horizontal one, and we’re doing the exact same video content so that we have a good A-B test to see what works better. Okay, what was the result of that? Oh well, it turned out, you know, video got way more impressions but it was lower click-through rate. Oh good, okay. So now we know that and we just build upon that body of knowledge. And anybody who’s on my email list or comes to the PPC challenge that I do twice a year, you’ll see every example that we share is an example from one of our brands.
Chris:
We only take examples from our portfolios of what’s actually working, so you’ll never hear us talk about something that we’re not actually doing and we might get inspiration from another thought leader in the space who tried something. We’re like, oh okay, we should test that out, but we’re not going to take that and then parrot it out. We take it and then we’ll test it on our brands. Because the way we work is a brand comes to us to take over their advertising at least that’s what they think they’re coming to us for and then if it’s a good brand and we think the founders are strong and the products are strong, we partner with them and we call it the PPC partnership. We take over all their advertising. But then what we do is we use their advertising data, their PPC data, to inform changes to the rest of their business. So we’ll see okay, and honestly, anybody can do this.
Chris:
If you open up the search query performance report or the search catalog performance report in brand analytics, you can see this yourself, like what particular search terms or search term families are getting high click-through rates on your thumbnail and what particular search terms or search term groups are getting low click-through rates on your thumbnail. And then, for those same search terms, what’s the conversion rate for that particular search term family. If you go that deep in the data, you get insights that allow you to instantly improve profit. You could say, okay, I have like icebox and ice cooler. There are a bunch of icebox keywords and a bunch of ice cooler keywords, so those are two like keyword families. For my icebox keywords. I get a really high click-through rate. For my ice bag cooler my ice bag or ice cooler I can’t remember what it said. Whatever Icebox and ice bag say, it is Ice bag. I’m getting a low click-through rate even though this is technically a bag because it’s malleable. So what I need to do obviously now is change something in the thumbnail that communicates to that group, because, even though it has a low click-through rate, their conversion rate is high. So I know they want to buy. So people who search Icebag, they buy my product, but they’re just not clicking as much as the people that search Ice box.
Chris:
So what I’m going to do is show the top of the Icebag or the cooler, whatever, folding back, so that it’s clear that it’s a malleable bag. So you just added like a whole new flow of free clicks from people who were already showing impressions but just not clicking before. So stuff like that. We take the truth behind the data, the insights that you get from going deep enough into the data to see those things and then we turn those into actions for the brand to take to increase the actual traffic and the sales everywhere else in their business. So they think they’re coming in because oh, I don’t know PPC, I don’t know how to do PPC, and we’ll take that over and then we show them. Okay, now here’s the real issues with your brand and with your thumbnails and with your products and even your review velocity and stuff like that which we could see from the data.
Kevin King:
It’s amazing how this data is just on a silver platter now from Amazon and most people don’t even use it. They don’t even know how to use it and where. Back in 2016, 17, 18, you and I and everybody else that was serious was trying to get this information from nefarious sources. Yeah, you know there were companies that were sneaking it out of India.
Chris:
People won’t even click into it.
Kevin King:
Sneaking it out of India and China and all this kind of stuff.
Chris:
Dude there’s an underground web of it, that same conference that you and I were talking about, the Global Sources Seller Conference. I remember standing outside that conference and being in groups of people where we were showing each other the WeChat groups that we were in, where there was like an uh, a closed, dark market for like algorithm, secrets and stuff like that. And a bunch of that stuff, like you said, is now just available, made available by Amazon.
Kevin King:
Yeah. So do you just do Amazon or do you also help with like TikTok and Walmart, or is it you specialize just in Amazon and Sophie Society?
Chris:
We only do Amazon. We made a decision to just do one thing and do it really really well. So we have partners for that stuff that we trust that we’ll send people out to. But when it comes to partnering with a brand, they’re partnering with us to juice their Amazon sales and that’s it.
Kevin King:
So how do these challenges work? So you do these twice a year and I usually promote them, help you get the word out in my newsletter and stuff. I see them, but I’ve never actually personally been through one, but I hear really good things. So it’s like a five day event, right, or something like that. Walk me through what is this? It’s not just like show up and here’s a presentation about how to do your PPC. Walk me through what happens in one of those.
Chris:
Yeah, so these are pretty cool. Last year it was the most well-attended Amazon PPC focused digital event of the year by sellers, so it’s become just a big thing. We started this in 2022. We only do it twice a year. It’s completely live and it’s now a thing where Amazon has sent their people to check it out. Other agencies send their employees to train them on how to do PPC. It’s a very high quality step-by-step Amazon PPC training where you basically come in the first day of five days you could come in a complete novice, or you can come in already an expert or thinking you’re an expert, but by the end of the five days you pop out like a PPC wizard and whatever your issue was, you get that particular issue solved. So if you have an issue with product launching, or you have an issue with overwhelm, or you came in and you had another tool that messed up your campaign some AI campaign tool and you don’t know how to unwind it, whatever the issue is, you get your particular issue solved because every day we go through like a step-by-step framework of how to set up PPC, how to transition messy PPC, how to make PPC actually profitable, how to run campaigns that generate profit, not just revenue, how to get low hanging fruit, all kinds of stuff like that.
Chris:
But most of the value from the event actually comes from outside of the sessions, where you’re in these small private chat groups. And it’s very small, like we separate it into many different groups so that everyone doesn’t feel like a number, everyone is like a name, and you have dedicated mentors in that group and these mentors are like my guys. They’re my senior strategists who handle the PPC for our portfolio of accounts. So they’re really high level. They know what they’re doing, they have a ton of experience, have millions of dollars of ad spend under their belt and they’re with you in this small chat group with only a couple dozen people. So you can just bring your issues, you can post your search term reports, you can send Loom videos and you’re going to get your particular issue with PBC Salt.
Chris:
This event takes an enormous amount of energy for me and my team and, honestly, from like a marketing perspective or like a logical perspective, like a lot of people have told me, like it doesn’t make sense for you to do this. Just make it evergreen, turn it into you know a course or recording, whatever. But I’ve kept it in this format because I like to get close and personal with sellers and it allows me to like make these really strong bonds. When I’m in these office hour sessions after our official presentation, I’m connecting with sellers who have struggles that I know that I can help them because we have a brand just like that, or we had a brand in the same space or whatever, and I’ve seen the problem before and same with my team. So, even though it’s not the most efficient way to get the word out about us, it is the funnest way and I like it. So we’re doing the next one in March. So it should be fun. We’re only going to do two this year. Every single one we’ve ever done has sold out and we cap it as soon as we fill all the groups, those small groups that I mentioned. We fill six of those groups and then we just cap it, shut it off. So if it sounds if you’re listening to this and this sounds interesting to you like you should definitely join.
Kevin King:
That’s at sophiesocietycom, or where’s that at.
Chris:
Yeah, there’s a link on sophiesocietycom, but PPChallengeophiesocietycom is the main page for you.
Kevin King:
How’s AI affecting everything? There’s a lot of agencies, especially in the PPC space. They’re saying that, hey, I don’t need 20 people managing all my accounts anymore. We can cut that down to three babysitters and have AI do a lot of this stuff.
Chris:
So I’m a big advocate of it when it comes to maintaining and optimizing existing campaigns. But to pass off the whole goal of running advertising, it’s just not a thing, at least yet.
Kevin King:
What are some of the newest things that got you excited in PPC I mean, Amazon PPC three or four years ago was extremely basic, especially when we started. Now it’s evolving. They always say Google is so far ahead on Google AdSense and Amazon is rapidly catching up and now you have all these different placements and all these different things and you have DSP and now you can retarget people who put something in the cart but never bought, and now you can do videos and you can do stuff on Amazon Prime and Alexa devices and all this stuff. What’s got you most excited? That you’re kind of tinkering with right now. Like man this has some serious potential to move the needle.
Chris:
Yeah, there’s a lot of cool stuff coming out. You know like every month there’s new capabilities coming out. Like a lot of sellers will notice that in the past couple of months you can almost anybody can advertise on TV. Now they’re even giving out credits. You know, $500 advertising credits just to get you to try out sponsored TV ads, which is like the fourth ad type now Sponsored products, sponsored brands, sponsored display, sponsored TV. If you don’t have DSP, that is.
Kevin King:
And you don’t need a fancy, slickly produced commercial to do that right. I think a lot of people think well, I don’t have TV ready.
Chris:
No, not even really, you actually don’t like we’ve. So we’re not running a lot of TV ads for our brands because we haven’t seen the proof yet that it produces profitable sales, but I have seen breakdowns from that interpreted sponsor brand TV ads as being profitable, even though it’s very hard to measure that properly. You really have to kind of see like, oh, without any other changes, how much did my overall sales boost during this time? But you can make a sponsor brand TV ad really easily with a bunch of stock footage and your product rendering or your product and just a bunch of messages and background music. It’s actually it doesn’t have to be super well-produced or anything like that and there’s like a QR code on the TV to buy it. But that’s not really what I’m most excited about, honestly. I think that’s going to be something for brand awareness and maybe some degree of direct response sales. But for the most part, I think the biggest leverage that a seller is going to be able to have throughout the remainder of this year is leveraging really good creative. Like you know this from posting content in a bunch of different places as well as I do that other platforms, creative is everything.
Chris:
Like if you look at like the YouTube ecosystem and like what good YouTubers are doing to get clicks, they’ll start with what’s a good thumbnail and title that would get clicks and then, how do I make a video off of that? So what’s the Amazon equivalent of that? That would be oh, what’s a good primary image and product title that would get clicks? How do we make a product out of that? Nobody thinks like that. Nobody thinks like that at all. But Amazon is getting way, way more content heavy. Only in the last couple of months, Amazon has let you start running sponsor brand video ads top of search. At the beginning of last year you couldn’t even do that and now you can. Not only that, but they’re giving you more options to push your video to top of search. So if you run like, for example, sponsor brand ad but you choose VCPM instead of BPC or cost per click, you can get a bigger video that takes up more space and you could push it like force it to the top of search, which is like the most views obviously that’s the very first ad that shows up.
Chris:
So obviously Amazon is like pushing all of us like custom content, custom content. But most sellers still are not focusing on that or it’s like a really small element of their focus. So this is something that we do with brands that come into Sophie Society. We’re like, all right, we have to reprogram you, brand owner. You’ve been programmed to think that selling on Amazon, you just fill in the details of the listing that they give you in Seller Central and then you run ads and the ads are automatically generated. That’s just not how it’s going to be. The more and more of these ads it used to be like sponsor brands would be like a small sliver. Sponsor products was like the big majority on the pie chart of the ads that you run. That sponsor brand sliver is getting bigger and bigger, and sponsor display too with the retargeting. So that’s honestly, I think that’s going to be the biggest leverage. Is people really understanding to the same degree that TikTokers or YouTubers or Instagram people understand that content is first, that content is king. The Amazon sellers that really embrace that, that having a video with an amazing hook that people just can’t help but tap or can’t help but click those are the ones that are totally going to crush it this year.
Kevin King:
Yeah, it’s a problem solution. I did a webinar back in December called the Psychology of Marketing and I did exactly one of the things I talked about in there and showed examples of how to actually create your ad before you actually find your product. Now everybody’s taught to go on Amazon and look for products, use tools like Helium 10, which are all great and other tools to actually find where there’s opportunity and where you can fill in the gaps or where someone’s not optimizing keywords and you can step in where there’s not review modes, and I show like no, that’s actually an okay way to do it, but that’s short-term thinking. If you flip it around, start with the problem and then you’re the solution and create the ad, and I show how to do a two-second ad, a two-second ad that creates that problem. And this may be a problem that people aren’t even aware of, that they don’t even know exists, and that’s where, like TikTok and some other social channels, can be a good top of funnel for that, and we talked about that in a previous episode of the AM/PM podcast. You want to go back about a month or so and take a listen to that. That’s basically what Chris is saying here is that you’ve got to switch your thinking for this long term success and the way things are evolving, especially with AI, search and the way AI is looking not so much at keywords but it actually intent and what other people are saying, that’s a big shift for a lot of people.
Chris:
It really is. Yeah, we actually run into this a lot because a lot of times we’ll have people reach out to us because of our reputation of being a partner, not an agency. We have a lot of inventors reach out for that reason. So I talk to inventors very frequently. Every month I’m talking to a couple of new inventors and the problem with inventors on Amazon is that they’re so excited about their invention. They went product first, they invented something to have this new invention and then they’re just trying to figure out how to sell it. Whereas it may or may not fit into an existing customer problem, and a lot of times I see inventors trying to convince the market first that there’s a reason for them to need the product and then selling them the product. That’s too many steps away, dude, Like especially on Amazon, you’re trying to step in front of existing demand and then you can. You know, as long as you’re designing or supplying a product that is in line where the solution is in line with that problem that people already have and a demand that they have, which you can see with search term velocity, a search term volume, If there’s not search term volume for it, and you’re trying to convince the market to start searching for this problem. You’re in a bad place, especially on Amazon. Maybe not on Kickstarter, which is like a place where people go to just see new cool stuff that they didn’t even know existed, but on Amazon.
Chris:
If you’re solving a problem that people don’t know that they have and you’re trying to convince them first of that, just so that they’ll then buy your product, that’s a real losing battle. So when it comes to an inventor, my advice to them always is make sure that your product fits in with something that customers are already searching, Because if we’re thinking that your marketing outreach is going to convince people to start searching for a problem that they never would have anyway, you’re definitely wrong about that. You’re not going to be the grand Johnny Appleseed educator of everyone to show them how much they need this product and then convince them to buy it. You want to step in front of what people are already searching for, they already really need, but then you have a better version of it. That’s the best winning combo on Amazon.
Kevin King:
That’s Amazon, but you can do top of funnel problem solution awareness and then drive that to Amazon. So Amazon’s not the, because people are coming looking to buy and as of now they’re typing in keywords but that’s starting to change to where they’re typing they’re going to be. I think search is going to go from keyword based to intent based. People are going to be asking questions and problem-based, intent based and they’re going to be asking more questions. And you look at you look at people now that are using perplexity instead of Google as their open AI as their search engine instead of Google, because it’s just so much better if you know how to ask it the right questions. And I think you’re going to see an evolution over time on Amazon and I think we’re going to have to ride this kind of middle ground where you’re still focusing on keyword based stuff, like you just said, but you’re also got to appeal to some of the AI and some of the new ways that are coming for search and sometimes that problem solution is going to be a good way to actually teach the AI that your product is right for this, even though they didn’t type in the exact keyword that you might use otherwise used if that wasn’t searched like that. So I think there’s going to be some evolution that’s coming in this.
Chris:
That’s good insight. Yeah.
Kevin King:
And I’ve seen that already in a lot of things and it’s just—
Chris:
With Rufus?
Kevin King:
With Rufus, with Cropping Hand, and I think it’s going to become more and more. You’re seeing that with some of what AI is doing, the way it’s evolving quickly. This is not an overnight thing, I think you’re going to see. You know, used to people went to the Yellow Pages to find a local tailor or to get the number for the local pizza hut. Nobody goes to Yellow Pages anymore. That’s going to happen in a way to Google, unless Google changes. And they are already changing and they’re evolving with Copilot, with oh that’s Microsoft with Gemini and a whole bunch of other stuff, other stuff. They’re already starting to evolve and you’re going to see that 10 years from now we’re going to be like people used to type in ice bag to actually find an ice bag. Why the hell would they type in ice bag? Why didn’t they type in I don’t know trip to a stuff cool trip to Alaska. I’m going taking a trip to Alaska and I need to keep my sandwiches and beers cold or whatever. What works in Alaska and Fairbanks, I don’t know. Is it this time of year? Is it this temperature? Oh, you’re going on this trail. You don’t want a big heavy thing. You need this and this, all the shit, to recommend exactly what you need.
Chris:
Here’s the link to the potential products.
Kevin King:
Here’s three of them that we think you would like. Oh, you don’t like these? Click here. Tell us what we screwed up on. Oh, we’ll refine it or whatever, and I think that’s where it’s going to get. It’s not there anywhere close to that now, but I think that’s where it’s going to get in visual stuff with glasses. You know, you look at what Ray-Ban is doing with Meta and you look at, there’s another company called Solo now that actually has open AI tied into it. And I could be walking at a party and like, who’s that guy in the black shirt over there? It’s a Sophie. I can’t remember his name. I can just look at you and it’ll pop up in my glasses. Oh, that’s Chris Rawlings.
Chris:
Yeah, yeah, that’d be great for me. I forget names so much.
Kevin King:
You’ll be able to look at a product and just say, I don’t know, hit a button or tap your finger or whatever type of thing on your wrist and he’ll buy it and it’s on its way to your house. I mean, I didn’t know this existed, but Meta already has something called Meta Assist. I just was at a party, or I was at a party back over the holidays in Florida and this blind lady was at the table at this house the next day after the party. It was the mother-in-law of one of the people. She’s totally blind and just watching her grab her stuff and try to eat and I was like how does she get around? We were gone and she was here by herself and said, oh, she wears these Meta glasses called Meta assist.
Chris:
Oh damn. I don’t know about this either.
Kevin King:
I’m like what the hell is that? And then these glasses actually she can just say something. She can be walking in the house and go. I don’t know was there some keyword like uh, Alexa or, you know, Siri or something, whatever it is. She says some keyword meta and all of a sudden a voice pops onto the phone in her ear because she’s got the glasses over here says, yes, how, 24/7, how may I help you? Uh, and they get there’s cameras on these glasses and she’s like I’m trying to get to the kitchen and I think I’m confused and they can see the whole area and they’ll say no, take three steps to the right. Be careful, there’s a stair right there. Oops, the dog is running around and don’t trip over the dog. That’s going to become AI and that’s where search and everything’s going to go. So this whole industry, e-commerce is not going away, but I think it’s going to have a big flip on its head and we’re all going to have to adapt, from both the advertising side and the search side and everything. I think it’s exciting times to be living in.
Chris:
It definitely is, but there’s still fundamentals that you can like hold on to.
Kevin King:
Exactly.
Chris:
That will be relevant right.
Kevin King:
Like human psychology, human desires and human psychology hasn’t changed in 2000 years. So if you go back to the fundamental, it’s just the technology and the way to do it changes. So if you understand that core psychology you said some of it earlier the core stuff that motivates humans, and can tap into that using the latest technology in a cool way, then you win.
Chris:
That’s 100% right. The structure of a human brain is not going to change, no matter what happens with AI.
Kevin King:
No, we have our eight desires and those eight desires are not going to change. But cool, this has been great, Chris. I really appreciate you coming on. If people want to take part in the next challenge or learn more about what you guys do, what’s, what are some of the best ways to do that?
Chris:
Yeah, they can just go to PPCchallengesophiesociety.com or just sophiesociety.com. The link is there. If you scroll down, um yeah, and you can jump in, um yeah, and do exactly what I said. It’d be five days intensive with me and my team learning all about PBC, getting great at PBC, becoming a PBC master and, yeah, if you’re, if you’re listening to this and that sounds like something that you need, you should, you should definitely join.
Kevin King:
Thanks again, Chris. This has been uh, this has been a pleasure. We’ll have to make sure we don’t wait nine years before the next time you come on.
Chris:
I know, dude, I’m glad that I’m finally on. It’s really great. I’m a big fan of this podcast, big fan of you, obviously, and yeah, I was stoked. It was really fun to do, looking forward to the next time.
Kevin King:
Cool, thanks man.
Kevin King:
Always a blast talking to old timers in the space like Chris that have been around and that really know what they’re doing. So I encourage you to check out his challenge that’s coming up next month, in March, and I think you’ll learn a lot from it, whether you end up doing anything with his company or not just going through that challenge. I think it’s going to be amazing, and Chris really knows his stuff and likes to have fun, like we said, but he also really really knows his stuff. In the meantime, make sure you’re subscribing to my newsletter, billion Dollar Sellers BillionDollarSellerscom, every Monday and Thursday. Also, don’t forget next week.
Actually, out in Austin, I have my BDSS think tank with a lot of the Dream 100. And then in April, BDSSIceland. It’s not too late to grab a ticket to come out to BDS Iceland and Elevate 360. You can find that information at BillionDollarSellerSummit.com. Billiondollarsellersummit.com. Some of the Helium 10 team, like Carrie and Shivali and a few others others, will actually be out there as well. We’ll be back again next week with another awesome episode. And remember, I always have some words of wisdom for you, but these aren’t my words of wisdom, these are Jeff Bezos words of wisdom. Your margin is his opportunity. Your margin is his opportunity. Ain’t that so true? See you again next week.
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