#390 – Beyond Amazon: Navigating Direct-To-Consumer Terrain with Brian Williams
Unlock the full potential of your e-commerce ambitions with Brian Williams, our expert guest, guiding you through a ton of effective strategies and real-world applications. From the art of creating impactful Facebook ad campaigns to the wonders of location-themed swag at trade shows, Brian doesn’t shy away from diving into the details that can make or break your online business. We tackle the transition from Amazon to Shopify, unveiling how pivoting to direct-to-consumer or D2C can reveal untapped revenue streams and substantial growth opportunities for your brand.
Embark on a journey through the evolution of digital advertising, where memories of Super Bowl ad extravaganzas give way to the precision of PPC and cookie-based tracking systems. Brian’s personal narrative, from his early days at Ubid to the thrill of catapulting sales on Amazon, underpins the conversation with a chronicle of the ever-changing e-commerce landscape. Brian and Kevin dissect the anatomy of a successful sales funnel and the surprising wins traditional print ads can still offer, illustrating how these time-tested techniques can flourish in the digital domain.
We round out this episode with an introspective look at mental health in the entrepreneurial realm, blending professional growth with personal well-being. The discussion charts a course through yoga practices, personal development, and the transformative power of consciousness work. Brian also shares his latest insights on Amazon PPC trends and the promise of AI, ensuring you leave with actionable techniques and a renewed sense of purpose both in your business and personal life.
In episode 390 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Brian discuss:
- 00:00 – E-Commerce Strategies and Success Stories
- 00:15 – Entrepreneurship and Success Missing Element
- 04:44 – Evolution of E-Commerce
- 08:53 – Partnership in UBID Going Public
- 12:08 – Evolution of Digital Advertising
- 12:30 – Super Bowl Ad Placement and ROI
- 16:58 – E-Commerce Strategies for Amazon and Shopify
- 18:33 – Amazon Business Success and Growth
- 27:01 – E-Commerce Sales Funnel Strategies
- 27:41 – Building and Utilizing Buyer Lists
- 36:54 – Maximizing Outside Traffic for Amazon Sellers
- 40:13 – Marketing With Print Media Lists
- 44:07 – Cost-Effective Marketing Strategies
- 45:31 – Entrepreneurial Success and Mental Health
- 53:44 – Actionable Techniques for Amazon Sellers
- 54:20 – Kevin’s Words Of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 390 of the AMPM podcast. This week, my guest is none other than Brian Williams. Brian Williams has been doing this D2C, this direct-to-consumer and Amazon game, and everything about as long as I have. So, we’re going to talk about some of the old school stuff running Super Bowl ads, what’s the best way, if you’re going to get off of Amazon, to actually do things, and how do you actually properly run Facebook ads to build a list. A lot of people are doing it wrong. Brian’s going to be sharing with you that. We talk a little bit about how, as entrepreneurs, we’re all successful, or a lot of us are successful, making a lot of money, but there’s something else that’s missing for a lot of us. We’re going to talk about that as well. Get your pen and pencil and paper ready, because you’re going to be taking some notes and may want to hit rewind to listen to a few of the things and tactics that he tells you. We give you actionable steps. Enjoy this episode with Mr. Brian Williams.
Kevin King:
It’s Mr. Brian Williams. How are you doing, Brian?
Brian:
I’m doing great Kevin, good to see you again.
Kevin King:
You know I’d known about you for a while in the space. You’re always the guy with the cowboy hat. You always are like wearing a cowboy hat. You know some people. They have a brand. You know my buddy, Norm. He’s got the beard, so he’s the beard guy. You’re always the guy with the cowboy hat everywhere we go. I think the first time I’d known you and run into you a few places, but the first time I heard you speak, you were talking about doing trade shows and stuff and a whole bunch of strategies on how to actually take your brand off of Amazon and actually master trade shows. You had some really good techniques of how you’re bringing people to the booth and you gave some good examples. And one thing stuck with me, though. That is like I’ll never forget your name because I copied, I took you, I implemented. You know I actually implemented something you taught, you said you know what we do is people always give away free shirts and everywhere you go, you know you go to an MDS event, you go to a Helium 10 event, you go to any show there’s always. I was just at an AI convention yesterday here in Austin. They’re like, make sure you get your shirt in the back. You know it’s got the logo, the name of the event or it’s got some stupid thing on it. And I never take the shirts, I never take the swag bags. I don’t want to carry around a bag full of pens and notebooks and some shirt that I’m never going to wear. But you said something at that show, like, don’t just give away a shirt that has a logo on it, make it. What does everybody buy when they go somewhere? They want a souvenir. They want a souvenir from the place that they go. And you know, if you’re going to Hawaii or you’re going to Puerto Rico or you’re going to some event in Orlando, you want a souvenir of Orlando. You don’t want a souvenir if I was at the pet expo or whatever. And so you make the shirts a souvenir shirt. So you do two birds with one stone you give them what they were going to buy anyway at the airport or at the gift shop and you get your brand on there. So we did that in Puerto Rico. So in Puerto Rico, at the BDSS last year, I took your advice and I actually made. We went actually into the when we went to scout it. We went into all the t-shirt shops and we’re looking on the walls to see what people were buying as t-shirts, took some ideas. Then we made a, had a designer make a shirt that built to put our brand into it and was a souvenir t-shirt for Puerto Rico. We’re doing the same thing for BDSS in Hawaii in May, which hopefully maybe you’ll get a chance to come. So that’s all you know I need to put down at the bottom. Courtesy of Brian Williams or something down at the bottom. So that was an awesome tip, and I’m sure you’ve got tons more, but I just wanted to, before we got started here, just to say thanks for that.
Brian:
Oh well, I’m glad you actually implemented it, because you’re the first person that I have heard that took that idea and ran with it. So, thank you for doing that and happy to help in any way, so that’s awesome.
Kevin King:
So, who are you? I mean, people are listening, like I may have seen this guy in a cowboy hat. You know he was on stage; he was herding sheep at an MDS event or something like that. But what? Who is Brian Williams? I mean, you’ve been around, you’ve been doing this for a day or two, so what’s your story? What’s a Brian Williams story?
Brian:
So, I am always wearing some kind of a hat. So today I’m wearing a ball cap. So, yes, a lot of people recognize me because of my social media profile. I’m in a cowboy hat and there’s a story behind that. If we get into that, later I can share how that all happened and why. But basically I’ve been around e-commerce since really its inception. The first business that I had a stakeholder in is a business called UBID, U-B-I-d dot com, which we launched in 1997. Leave that. Maybe you shopped on UBID and I was really young when that started. I used to be the youngest person in the room. Now I find myself being oftentimes the oldest person in the room. So, it’s kind of come full circle and that’s how I got my started. So, I started in e-com was with UBID, and back then it was a lot harder in most ways. And it’s interesting because all the challenges that you know we talk about today with Amazon fees and you know it’s really hard to get approved on TikTok shop and all this stuff which bother us, and you know, maybe rightfully so. It’s like man. So much better now. It’s so much, so much cooler now and so much easier to start and launch a million-dollar company than it ever was before.
Kevin King:
When did you make your first e-commerce sale? So UBID goes back to the late 90s, right?
Brian:
Yeah, it was December, literally the first. It was December 9th. I’ll never forget this. I’m sitting there at the computer with the CEO of UBID and I was like man, I don’t know if we’re ready to launch yet. Things were still breaking technology-wise. We didn’t have things like Shopify back then. And he’s like no, we got to push the button and go. And so literally on December 9th in 1997, we pushed the button to go live with UBID.com and our first week I don’t know if it’s, I think a sale happened that first day, but that first week we did $9,000 in sales in week one, our first week, and that’s what started my career in e-com.
Kevin King:
This was like an eBay kind of like an auction site, right?
Brian:
It was similar. It was all the purchases were done in an auction format, but nobody could post products Like. It wasn’t a person-to-person environment like eBay or Amazon, it was just us selling in an auction environment.
Kevin King:
Yeah, so you’re buying. think it was. If I recall it was stuff at a discount, like liquidated stuff or excess stock, and then, starting at a low price. They’re like, look, you can get an iPad or they didn’t have iPads back then but you could get a Razer flip phone $199, you can get it for $7. And it’d be some refurbished one or something that fell off the back of a truck or whatever and then bid it up and a lot of times you’d actually get more than it was actually worth in that, because people didn’t know what it was worth.
Brian:
But yeah, you’re absolutely right, Kevin. We used to buy. It started with electronics, and so we would buy the overstock inventory from like Compaq Computers, Hewlett Packard, SONY, Palm, things like that, and then we would buy their overstocks and their liquid and we will liquidate that online.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I think I made my first sell around 2000, not 2000, 1995, 90s, maybe late 95, early 96. It’s back when you could game Alta Vista and you know you remember Alta Vista and you remember Lycos and Yahoo was different back then. There was no Google and you could just rank just by putting a keyword in the meta tag, the meta description. You’d instantly rank to page one. Or if you hit some words and put them in white type at the bottom, you know instantly rank. It was just crazy what you could do and we had our first little sale. I even remember one video back then. I think it was RealPlayer or something. Was it RealPlayer? It was a precursor to RealPlayer. I remember the first time I was able to get a postage stamp size video on our website that would play. This thing was like I don’t know, 120×90 or something pixels. It was so small but it would play for 30 seconds without stopping and I was like holy cow, this is amazing. And I remember talking to a guy late 90s. He’s like this is nothing. There’s something called MP3 that’s coming out and being worked on and one day you’re going to be able to watch a full movie on your computer screen full screen. I’m like no way. And now look at us, we’re 4K streaming. It’s just crazy. So, you and I have seen the evolution here.
Brian:
We have seen it all and it’s been great. It’s been a great career. I’m so blessed to be part of it.
Kevin King:
So, on UBID, were you a partner in that, or are you just working for them, or what was your relationship?
Brian:
There we went public. So, I was one of the original inside shareholders of UBID. And then we went public towards the summer of 1998. And that was when a lot of businesses like ours were raising lots of money, tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars in the stock market before the first sort of bubble right the dot-com bubble burst about 2001, 2002. So prior to that we raised all kinds of money in the stock market.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I remember those times I had a buddy that worked for a company here in Austin. He was doing programming for me, but he was doing programming for them. I think they were charging something like $50 a month for their service. They had had seven paying customers. They had seven paying customers. They raised something like $50 million. They were taking there you know; their break rooms were like ping pong tables and foosball tables and like all kinds of stuff. They took the entire team and their wives to Cabo for the weekend. As a company perk. They bought a Super Bowl ad. Back then they weren’t crazy $7 million Like now they’re I don’t know a million and a half, two million. Whatever they were. They were a couple million bucks back then. So, they bought a Super Bowl ad, and they got like five more sales or something like that. They ended up going out of business about the same time as Pets.com and all that stuff and I remember going to them. He told me Hey, we’re auctioning off all of our servers. I remember going and buying back then. You know what’s now? A $200 server was 20 grand or something. I remember buying these like 20 grand servers that could do a T1 line handle, a T1 line handle, you know, 150 simultaneous connections or some crazy stuff for like 300 bucks at auction I was like man we scored. But yeah, that’s crazy times, man.
Brian:
It was crazy. It was funny. You mentioned the Super Bowl. I actually ran a Super Bowl ad to promote UBID. Probably one of the few people I know that’s that was a part of that and they were. They were a million and a half dollars for a 60 second spot back in 2000. And you know we UBID stayed in business for many, many decades. So that did not that we did not party like some of the startups did, but I’m familiar with attending many of those parties from other companies and but no, that was a cool experience running a Super Bowl ad and I’ll never forget it. It was, it was neat.
Kevin King:
So, were you involved in the creative on that, or are you just the media buyer and his organizer, or did you have a role in like helping kind of guide it?
Brian:
For sure, you know, for those of you that have ever considered doing something crazy like that and it’s crazy, its starts with interviewing ad agencies and the pitches, the pitch decks from these ad agencies and we had a McCann Erickson, we had Ketchum interactive and Saatchi and Saatchi pitch us. I mean they must’ve spent a hundred grand each just to pitch us on us hiring them to actually produce the ad and there were these elaborate presentations, and they brought these large teams of people out to our offices and it was just like cool to be sitting there in a room like watching this going man. These guys spent a lot of money just to get our business. And then you hire the agency to do the creative work and you work with them and I think we spent about a half a million dollars on the actual ad itself, like creating the 60 second spot with talent and sets and all this other stuff, and then a million and a half to run the ad back then.
Kevin King:
Was there? Did you just run one spot?
Brian:
One spot, one time national for the Super Bowl was a million and a half, I think, and I think you’re right, Kevin. Now it’s about 7 to 8 million for that same.
Kevin King:
For 30 seconds spot.
Brian:
Well, we ran a whole 60 seconds back then.
Kevin King:
What placement did you get, was it bidding based on because there’s certain areas that you want to be? Was it in the first quarter or
Brian:
Yeah, we were right, I think before halftime we had a really good placement, in part because another part of the story is we were being wooed by a company called CMGI which doesn’t exist anymore. They were like a holding company for a bunch of tech startups, and they had bought the naming rights to where the New England Patriots play, and so we had some interesting leverage when it came to that Super Bowl ad spot. But it was just some crazy stuff happening back then, yeah.
Kevin King:
Did you find that it was? Did you get a good ROI off the ad? I mean, this wasn’t a direct response ad. This was just a direct response ad or something right.
Brian:
Honestly, Kevin, I, from the moment the CEO of the company said that we’re doing this. It wasn’t a suggestion; it was we’re doing this ad. It was more of an ego play for, I believe him, and for the company. It was more of an ego play for, I believe him, and for the company. Honestly, I couldn’t track a single sale to the running of the ad at all. We developed what we think is the first cookie-based ad tracking system that ever existed, and it was utilized by us, BestBuy.com and Alaska Airlines, of all places.
Kevin King:
Do you remember when GoTo.com came out? It was the precursor to Google’s pay-per-click. Do you remember it was called GoTo.com, I think? Did Google buy them? Or Yahoo? Somebody bought them, somebody, but it was a penny a click. It was a penny a click and you could bid whatever you wanted, but everybody’s just bidding a penny and most people were getting it. That’s right, and I remember they raised it. It’s like no, this is not okay. Now the minimum is two cents a click and I spent $2 or $3 one day advertising and I thought I was just living high on the hog with all the sales coming in. So, after you left, you stayed with UBID for a while. Then what happened next?
Brian:
So, we ended up acquiring our biggest competitor, which was a company called OnSale.com, and that split off from us. Then I ended up building up OnSale between 2002 and 2004. And it wasn’t the right fit for me. It was a totally different culture than I was used to, and then I just did a lot of consulting work with e-commerce startups. I did a lot of consulting work with infomercial companies that were running television ads to sell, you know, as on TV, as seen on TV, products, and I would help them with their conversion rates on their websites and things like that, cause I was at that point, you know, one of just a handful of people that had that kind of experience, and so I made a really good living at an e-commerce consultant before getting back into the game and owning Amazon and other e-com businesses myself.
Kevin King:
What led you down the Amazon path? Did you see something online? Was it amazing.com? What led you into the Amazon world?
Brian:
Yeah, great question. So, the first thing that led me there was a buddy of mine. His name is Adam. I don’t know if he wants to be identified by his last name, so I’ll leave it as Adam, which is a common enough name. He asked if I could. I was working on this process to take YouTube videos and rank them on Google in the highest number one search position, and he said hey, do you? Think this would have been 2000. I’m going to say 2009-ish.
Kevin King:
Okay, so YouTube was a couple years old.
Brian:
Yeah, 2009-10. And I asked well, why do you ask? He says, well, I’m launching a supplement line on Amazon. And I thought he was crazy. I said what do you mean? You’re launching a supplement line? You’re already successful in doing something else. And he said, no, there’s this new thing that’s called Garcinia Cambogia, you know, and it’s a weight loss supplement and he wants to do this he attended one of those events that you mentioned, like AWS, and he got all fired up and so I said, yeah, I think I could probably do that. So, I basically he paid me a fee and I we created some YouTube ads, and we ranked them number one for Garcinia Cambogia, weight loss supplements, things like that on Google, using my YouTube advertising strategy or YouTube SEO strategy. The guy ends up making that drove the traffic to Amazon and he ends up like making literally millions a month in this supplement Amazon business and I was like, man, I should have just partnered with him and not like charged a fee. I had no idea how big this could be. And so then I was like, okay, I better get back into like owning and building up an e-commerce brands or get back into like owning and building up e-commerce brands. And so what ended up happening is and my background is like direct to consumer right, which we call B2C these days, you know so launching Shopify stores or whatever you know big commerce platforms, and in using a lot of traditional media, which we can talk about if you want during this call to drive sales. And what happened is in oh gosh, this would have been relatively recently, 2019, right, I’ve been building these brands using direct to consumer. I decided, you know what? I bet this. I want to see if these things will sell on Amazon, and so I put a product on Amazon, not really knowing a whole lot about you know any of the cool stuff that
Kevin King:
A client’s product or a product of your own?
Brian:
No, my own product Okay. And on day one the thing starts selling for $3,000 a day. And I did nothing Like all I did was copy the listing of Shopify and put it on Amazon and let it roll. And I was like, okay, this Amazon thing is still a big deal and obviously people are wanting to shop there thing is still a big deal and obviously people are wanting to shop there. And it had no, it had no effect on my sales on my Shopify store zero, Like. The Shopify kept going up and Amazon started adding a bunch of revenue. And so that’s when I was like, okay, I really got to find a network with some people that can help me understand how to really build up this Amazon business. I really didn’t get back into the Amazon sales game until 2019. And it was at a party where I met some people that were really big into Amazon. I was like, yeah, I need to start meeting with more people like you and learn this whole Amazon business deal.
Kevin King:
So, you started this brand. Is that brand still running right now, or have you exited?
Brian:
I exited, I was bought out by my partners about 8 months ago, so the brand is still running. I’m no longer with that brand.
Kevin King:
Have you started another brand, or that was the only Amazon brand that you did?
Brian:
Yeah, so today I have interests in 3 brands and equity interests in 3 brands. They’re all startups, they’re all Amazon and Shopify companies. One’s in pickleball, one’s in pets and one is in supplements.
Kevin King:
So what, you have an interesting background. Most people that get into this have no direct marketing or DTC background at all. So, they’re just watching YouTube videos that are taking a course on “Here’s how to rank on Amazon”. And then everybody always tells them oh, get your eggs out of one basket. It’s so dangerous just to be on Amazon. You need to have a Shopify site and you need to drive traffic and own your customer and all this and those are all. That’s all good advice, but the problem is that’s a whole different animal and it’s a whole different way of doing things. And people don’t understand that selling on Shopify is complete U-turn from selling on Amazon. And so what is it that you see that a lot of people just screw up, that are that come up through the Amazon ranks and they know the Amazon, maybe they’re really good at Amazon, Maybe they’re really good at PPC on Amazon, and then they put their toe in the water on DTC or setting up a Shopify site or trying to drive Google traffic or even TikTok shop or whatever it is, and they just blow it. What is it? What do you see people doing all the time? That’s just like oh my God, you guys just wake up.
Brian:
Yep, I’m happy to answer that, Kevin, and it’s a great question. And sadly, I see the same screw up happening over and over and over again. And so, if anybody’s listening please.
Kevin King:
There’s two people, two people listening.
Brian:
At least two, take note. Because, yeah, because this is what it boils down to. So, on Amazon, when you have a product up for sale on Amazon, a lot of the qualifying job has been done for you by Amazon. People are going to Amazon to buy something, period, right? So, you know that. So, yes, you need to be really good at your image stack and your copy and your reviews and all that stuff, because they’re going to compare you to your competitors that sell similar things, but you don’t have to convince somebody to buy. Amazon’s already done that for you. So, the big difference it’s a mindset difference is, if you’re advertising your product on, let’s say, Facebook, which is arguably the most popular traffic source for a lot of Amazon sellers, hey, we’ll run some Facebook ads to our Shopify store or even to our Amazon product. This is what I see happening 90% of the time, and what is not working what is happening is you’re running a Facebook ad that’s promoting your product and it’s not working, and it won’t work. And you might be thinking well, duh, of course I’m running a Facebook ad to promote my product. This is not what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m a product seller and it’s actually not what you should start with if you’re on Facebook, because of what I said earlier, Facebook is not a place people are going to buy things necessarily. They are going there for all kinds of reasons, and on Amazon, they’re only going there to buy things on Facebook or Google even, or YouTube, they’re going there for all kinds of reasons and you don’t know what reason they’re there for. So what you do to be effective in selling products, either on your Amazon store or on your direct to consumer site like Shopify off of Amazon, is you build a list of people who are have a high propensity to want to buy your stuff, and so your goal with your front end advertising ought to be building that list, and the way you do that is very different. I’ll give you an example. So, in the previous company, we were in the firearms accessories niche. So, you know, think of holsters and training devices and things like that for firearms. So, we were looking for people that obviously had a firearm. But you can’t just put an ad on Facebook or Google and find people that own a firearm. So, what we did is we used a strategy which is called a tripwire funnel, where you give away a product or a piece of information that is only going to be attractive to your ideal customer for your product. So, what we did is we gave away shooting targets, things that you would hang up, you know, at a gun range and shoot at for free, and we would advertise that, hey, get a free shooting target. Get a free shooting target and anybody that put in their information and paid the $2.99 or whatever it was to ship it, right, we’re doing a number of things there. We’re attracting people that want this shooting target, so we know that they are probably a candidate for a firearms accessory. Number two, they’re giving us their name, their email, their phone number, their credit card, because they’re paying for the shipping for the free target. So, we’re already getting them into our sales funnel and so we can immediately offer an upsell or a cross sell to maybe what we sell. But even if they don’t take us up on that, we have them on our list and we can then remarket to them over and over and over again through text, through email, through retargeted ads on Facebook and Google and YouTube, and now we can become really effective at converting them either into an Amazon purchase or to a Shopify purchase. And so, the mindset is different. It should be different is what most people I see doing is they have a really successful product on Amazon and they go okay, we’ll just put an ad up on Facebook and we’ll send with an offer like 10% off or 15% off on buying our you know whatever our widget, and they’re like huh, I’m not getting a good return on my advertising investment. Well, because you’re not reaching the people that are your ideal customers. You’re just putting an ad up for your product and you think everybody that’s going to see it loves it, and they don’t. So first come up with something that you know your ideal customer wants, give it to them and then market your product and that’s, it’s a different approach. It’s not a straight line like it is on Amazon, where you just run a pay-per-click ad to your product, and it works.
Kevin King:
So what’s the? How long does it take to know if that’s working? So, if I’m running a, if I’m running a Tripwire, it’s going to take me a while. I’m going to build up a list of 5,000, 10,000 people, or hopefully, or more, that have taken me on the Tripwire. And then then I got to put them through a nurturing process, you know, with a sequence of emails or whatever you’re going to do until usually they’re not going to buy just off of the next email. So you got to warm them up. You know, sometimes some of these email marketers say you need like 10 emails in a welcome sequence or whatever. So, it’s a long-term play. So how long is it until you know, okay, that ad that I ran on September 1st it is January 15th before you, that guy, on average, is going to end up buying. And you’re like, okay, now I know this is the runway and this is this is my lifetime value, and how long does it take? Now I know this is the runway and this is my lifetime value, and how long does it take? So, a lot of people give up too soon.
Brian:
100%.
Kevin King:
So how do you forecast that or manage that, if you’re going to take this approach?
Brian:
So, I’ll tell you, Kevin, what I like to see in this approach is what we call an SLO or self-liquidating offer. So, I’ll explain what that is for those of you that have not heard that terminology before. So, a self-liquidating offer works like this. I’ll just use some simple math so that you understand the math here. So, let’s say, you spend $100 on a Facebook ad campaign and what a self-liquidating offer would do for you is it would return at least $100 in revenue or profit. For you it would return at least $100 in revenue or profit. You can measure it any way you want. So, you want to sell $100 of, let’s say, your product, or maybe make $100 in profit to really be a true self-liquidating offer. So, essentially, if you spend $100, you’re making $100 back and you really want to see that happen. What I like to see happen is that happen on the front end. So, there is no waiting period for that. And the way that way that can happen is, let’s say and we’ll go back to my target example. If I give away a free target for just the cost of shipping it for, let’s say, $3, and I’m running a hundred dollars’ worth of ads to give away these targets right. What I want to see is I want to see that the immediate take from someone that comes in and gets the target to my offer right. I make an offer right away. If you come in and Kevin and you say, yeah, I want that free target you put in your information, you pay me the 3 bucks in my funnel. I’m going to offer you my holster. Let’s say now, if enough people take me up on that offer, let’s say 10% or 15%. It’s called an upsell right. That’s going to help self-liquidate my ad cost right, because I’m going to be underwater if only I sold the target for free. But if enough people take me up on my upsell, now I can self-liquidate, meaning I’m just break even on my ad cost to sale. And what I’ve done here is I’ve built a list of buyers, essentially for free potential buyers. And so now you mentioned the nurture sequences and all this other stuff. You can do that and that costs really very little, because now they’re in your database and so you can nurture them. Or you know, really, I say hammer them with text messages and email messages until they get off your list, because you have nothing to lose at that point and if anybody buys from that, whether it’s immediately or six months from now, that’s a hundred percent kind of money in your pocket. And you can use that list not only to sell directly on your DTC site, but you can absolutely use that list to rank and sell on an Amazon product launch, which is really a beautiful thing, because if you’ve got a list of even 10,000 people this way and you’re going to launch a variation on a product that you have on Amazon, well, sending a brand attribution link through email to that list, to your Amazon launch, is going to do wonders for your conversion rate and your ranking and everything else, and much faster than if you were just running an Amazon PPC or doing whatever the latest flavor of the day is to launch a new Amazon product is.
Kevin King:
It’s something I do, just as things. I’ve talked about this on other podcasts, but I have account in one of my business, a calendar business. So, I do two things. One is to build lists. I have an insert, a product insert that says congratulations a little 4×6 inserts it says “Congratulations, you won a free calendar.”. Because when you print, when you make calendars, they’re like selling milk they expired. Nobody wants a 2022 calendar right now, in 2024, unless it’s a collectible item or something. So, once it comes into January, calendars start losing their value. You see them in the stores for half off. You know. You see them everywhere. People are trying to get rid of them. So inevitably, every year it’s a guessing game on which calendar is going to sell. You know, I always have one that I sell out of by mid-December and it’s too late to get more because I print in Korea. Or I have one that I like. This year I had 1,500 extra. I still have them sitting right now 1,500 extra that haven’t moved. So, they’re basically throw them away or, you know, or liquidate them out. But what I do is I put an insert in and it says “Congratulations, you won a free calendar. Just pay $10 shipping and handling.” You can go to my website and order. You can send a check or money order through the physical mail and a lot of people do and then I liquidate these calendars. My land cost about $1.60, cost me about 6 bucks to actually send that out via first class mail and they pay 10 bucks and so it’s a self-liquidating offer. And I just got a highly qualified lead off of someone who just bought a calendar, was just gifted a calendar and I’ve done the same thing similar to what you said on Facebook where I run a similar ad free 2024 wall calendar and I’ll run this in December. Just pay $10 shipping and handling. This is a $19.95 calendar. Normally it’s $19.95 plus $9.95. It makes a great gift for your husband or wife or boyfriend or whoever. It’s self-liquidating because as long as my ad cost is about $250 to $300 per sign-up, it’s self-liquidating and I’ve got a highly qualified lead. That’s something that a lot of people don’t understand. I think it was Sean Hart. That’s something that a lot of people don’t understand and I think it was Sean Hart actually that gave an example one time of if you’re going to sell a pizza oven, go and buy a whole bunch of pizza cutters really dirt cheap, for 50 cents each. Give those away for whatever $5 shipping and handling free plus shipping offer. And everybody that wants that free pizza cutter just pay shipping is qualified. That you know they like pizza. And so now, and they wanted a pizza cutter why, if they’re always ordering Domino’s, they probably don’t want a pizza cutter but sometimes Domino’s don’t cut it very well, but anyway. So, they’re likely to buy a pizza oven or pizza brick or whatever. And that’s a longer process and I think so many people in this Amazon world they get. They want instant gratification; they want to be. Let me launch it. I want to start, I want to quit my job or I want to start making money. In two weeks, three weeks. They don’t realize some of this takes a while to get the ball rolling and get the momentum going.
Brian:
After you run these self-liquidating offer campaigns for long enough, you know the return can happen pretty quick. It doesn’t have to take weeks or even months to do that, and it’s just a different way of thinking about the mindset of the person who is seeing your promotion, versus on Amazon, which is a site where they already are there to buy something. I don’t know about your behavior on Amazon, Kevin, but when I go to Amazon as a consumer, I’m pretty much leaving with something in my shopping cart and it’s getting, it’s getting shipped to me, like I don’t go to Amazon just browse around and see what the latest things are right. It’s like I’m going to Amazon and I’m going to buy something right, and even if and sometimes I’ll buy stuff I didn’t even intend to buy right, which is great. That’s great for our businesses, because you know we pick up revenue that way. So, if I’m on Facebook or Google or YouTube, you know I may buy something, but maybe not, you know. So, it’s our job as the sellers, as the brand owners, to bring the people into the fold that either are going to buy something now or could buy something from us soon, and this is a way to do. This is a way to do that. Is it the only way? Probably not the only way. But I will also say, for those Amazon sellers that you know are, let’s say, your business is 100% Amazon or 90% Amazon and you’re thinking about exiting. You know, at some point, or what have you? Having a list of buyer, a buyer list and having a second channel that’s contributing to your business is incredibly valuable and will produce multiples, way beyond what you would potentially earn if you were just an Amazon seller, and I believe that is going to be well. If history is anything, the lines are pointing in that direction, so it’s a really important thing to be focused on as part of your strategy these days.
Kevin King:
What’s your opinion on the difference between someone who if I put an insert card you know there’s people that say you can’t put insert cards, you can’t direct traffic off of Amazon, that’s all hokey. You can do whatever. You can put an insert card and that’s good, sell things off of that insert card. What you can’t do is influence reviews at any step of the way and there’s a lot of gray area here where people are giving bad advice on what to do and what Amazon’s rules are and they don’t understand it. But irregardless of that, if I put an insert card in and I say come register for my, I’m trying to build a list, like you just said, “Come register for my warranty. It’s a free sign-up.”. I got the name, I got the email. That person bought on Amazon, so I know they’re a buyer, supposedly, of my product or it was gifted to them. What’s the difference in that versus saying they just bought a blender from me and I say come get, we have this special attachment that’s crushes celery in like 6 seconds. That’s, you know it’s. You can go buy it on Amazon right now for $29.95. And here’s the. You know, here’s the link. If you want, or just get it from us. We’ll give it to you for free. Just pay $9.95 shipping and handling. Which customer is better, the warranty customer or the person who paid the $9.95 to get that additional item for you for free?
Brian:
I would say by far the person who takes you up on the Tripwire offer and gets the free blade for shipping and handling for sure.
Kevin King:
See, Brian and I think alike. Brian and I think alike. So, I just want to illustrate that point there. I asked that as a question so people listening could be like I don’t know.
Brian:
No, it’s clear. Well, and the coolest thing, Kevin, as you know because you do these campaigns is when they come in for free. You know, in this case, you know thing that crushes salary. You don’t let them go right there, right, and you immediately say, hey, if you like this, add on this other thing that blends yeast or whatever the hell it is. You know, you know, or needs bread or whatever the heck, right, and that’s another $11.95. And you will get a lot of people to go. Yeah, I’ll click that button and add that too. So now, it’s hugely profitable for you.
Kevin King:
And you have a very qualified buyer that bought from you. So, you’re building a relationship with you instead of that relationship still with Amazon. So, there’s a lot of things that most people they just don’t have the marketing experience like we do or the DTC side, they don’t come from that world. I’m surprised more people haven’t actually migrated to the Amazon world that do have that old direct marketing background or that old media background. You know some have, like you and I, but there there’s not the whole lot. I just wonder why that is.
Brian:
Yeah, I don’t know why either it’s. I think it’s we do what we’re familiar with and comfortable with and there’s definitely a lot of people that I know especially since getting into the Amazon space again that are just very comfortable in that Amazon world and it’s scary for them to spend even $5,000 on a Facebook ad campaign, or they’ve tried it and it hasn’t worked. I’m like, ah well, that doesn’t work for my product. That’s not actually true. And vice versa. If someone is really really skilled at the kind of offline or the D2C space, Amazon might seem a little scary because it’s like, oh, they take all these fees and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and how do I make money? It’s a different mindset and you’re competing with a different kind of character. Look, I mean I even run. When I was building the firearms accessories company. We ran a ton of print advertising which really converted quite well and that’s almost unheard of in our industry these days.
Kevin King:
I do postcards I mean, I still do direct mail postcards and look at, even Amazon does it. Why does Amazon send something through the mail around Christmas time? Here’s a little. It’s like a little 24 or 48 page like gift guide or something. People are like. Why is Amazon? Because direct mail works. People think of it as, oh, that’s junk mail or that’s, but so many people have cut back on it. There’s actually less of it now coming into mailboxes than there used to be and it actually works and a lot of times it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than running a Facebook ad. And there’s lists that you can buy, there’s trades that you can do, there’s all kinds of co-op things. There’s tons of stuff, and then you can drive it to your Shopify page or drive it to Amazon, drive it wherever you. Let give them a choice and let them do their shopping card of choice, whatever that. It’s super powerful and we did that during the pandemic. We used postcards to sell hand sanitizer and it worked really well and it’s cheaper than any kind of Facebook ad that I could run to reach that same audience, and I still do it with like back on this example, the calendars um, I have the self-liquidating offer, but that. What do they get? When they get that free calendar? They get a fold-out brochure that has 30 other calendars on it. They go to the website and buy it, or they can send a check or money order in the mail. I still have a business that that gets 6 figures a year and checks and money orders and in the mail with handwritten letters and a stamp on the corner, and people are like they every time I say that people just look at me like what decade are you living in? I’m like right now there are still people that don’t have internet access, that still prefer to do it that way. They don’t have a credit card, they don’t like the internet, whatever. There’re so many things that people leave unturned and just they’re so myopic. So, when it comes to outside traffic, what do you think is best right now? If someone’s an Amazon seller, where should they be? They’re like all right, I’m going to. They should. They shouldn’t go off Amazon until they maximize Amazon. In my opinion, you need to take make sure you’re doing everything right on Amazon Cause, like you said, all the traffic is there. You’re just standing in, standing on a busy freeway with a credit card reader out and, as long as you’re in the right lane, people are coming by just swiping. If you’re going to maximize that, you’re like all right. I really don’t want to expand to Europe. I know I could and it’s kind of the same model, but I’d rather capture those people that want to buy on Shopify or buy somewhere else. Where should I go first? What should I do first outside of Amazon?
Brian:
Wow, there’s a lot of different answers to that question, Kevin. For me, I would go DTC on a Shopify store and start building my list off of Facebook, for sure Shopify store and start building my list off of Facebook, for sure. And secondly, Google and YouTube search. That’s just because I’m familiar with it. I’m comfortable with that. It’s an area that I know. Outside of that, if you have a product. So, I talked about some really offline advertising, like magazines. For those of you that are younger than Kevin and me, those are things that are made from paper which comes from a tree. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. So, you hold it in your hands. You don’t have to plug it in. There’s content in it.
Kevin King:
It usually has a smell to it. You’re like
Brian:
Right, it smells usually good. It’s like yes, yeah, I mean everybody loves the smell of a magazine or a new book, right? So, if you have a product like if you go to Barnes and Noble or some magazine stand in your neighborhood and you look at that magazine stand and you and you’re looking at the titles of the magazines and you go man, you go man. I bet somebody that reads that publication would be a good potential buyer of my product. If that resonates in your brain, right then there’s a good chance that you could be very successful in doing something with that publication. And I’ll tell you, one of the coolest things that we do with those publications is they all have an email list, all of them. Sometimes our email lists are 25,000 people, sometimes they’re 125,000 people, sometimes they’re a million people, depending on the publication and what. What we would do is we would want access to that list and you can get access to that list. And I don’t necessarily have time to go through the whole negotiation process here on this call with you, but there are ways of buying their list and putting your offer in front of them. And I will remind you that your offer should not be a direct offer for your product. It should be what we talked about before, which is something of value to your ideal customer, like a tripwire, which you can replay this and learn what that is. Again, not a direct offer for your product, don’t make that mistake. You can do that on Amazon pay-per-click all day long. But if you’re going to go off of Amazon, make an offer for that free giveaway item in exchange for them paying you for shipping in a magazine ad or to their list, and you can have some really, really great success. So that’s something else that you can test, and it’s surprisingly inexpensive, especially when you compare it to what some of you are paying for Amazon pay-per-click ads. And I’ve got friends in this business, and you do too that are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on Amazon pay-per-click Right, and so it’s silly to me. Why wouldn’t you test a $10,000 full page ad in a magazine that has a list of 75,000 people that you could potentially bring into your, bring into your fold Like it’s? It’s silly not to, and you’ll probably find you’ll be in a somewhat blue ocean situation where none of your Amazon competitors are even thinking about that.
Kevin King:
Yeah, like Brian said, there’s entire agencies out there that specialize in mailing lists. So these agencies, you can get them on labels, you can get them the name, the physical name and address, or you can get them by email. Usually they don’t actually give you the emails. They will email on your behalf just to prevent spam. But they’ll give you the physical address because there’s an extra cost. It actually costs you 50 cents to a dollar to send something in the mail. Once you have print costs and postage and everything versus email it’s next to nothing. But they rent the list and the way they do it is there’s different pricing. There’s what’s called hot lists, which are like the last 30-day buyers. There’s 90-day lists and there’s the last called hot lists, uh, which are like the last 30 day buyers. There’s, you know, 90 day list and there’s the last one year buyers, last two year buyers, the whole list, and the price goes down the longer it’s been since they they’ve bought. But you can go to them and I used to get these on like big real tapes, I don’t forget what they’re called big like brown tapes, you know. And then and we’d run them and you know I’d I would get them from Cigar World Magazine, I’d get them from Pet Magazines. And what you do is like you said, maybe they have 100,000 people on the list. You don’t mail the whole list. You take. Usually a minimum is like 5,000. And you take 5,000, you do a test, so they randomly pull 5,000 out and you mail your offer through the mail. Or nowadays you can do an email offer and see if that response works, if the numbers work. And if they do, then you go back to them and say now give me $20,000, or whatever the number is, make sure to validate that they didn’t just give you the cream of the crop and it actually works. And then, if that works, then you can roll it out to the whole list and that can be extremely successful. And you’re paying about $100 per thousand names, roughly, I mean, it varies but just as a ballpark. So that’s a penny. What’s that a penny a name? No, no, 10 cents a name. So you’re paying 10 cents a name and then you’ve got the cost. If you’re mailing a postcard or a flyer but you’re doing this bulk mail, it depends on the elaborates and how many pages and all this, but anywhere from 30 cents to a dollar maybe. So it’s basically like a dollar a click. You can think of it in a way it’s like you’re paying a dollar a click for a highly qualified list that should be interested, all the riffraff is out and can you convert to sell your product off of that. And then you, you scale that and it can be, it can be magical, and get them on. Just do exactly what you just said and get them on your list. And there’s lots of ways out there to do this besides just what everybody thinks, and someone I know comes up with this idea. Sometimes they think it’s the oh my god, did you know you could have rent list? This is the new hot thing. And people like me and Brian like no, we were doing this like 30 years ago. Everything that’s new is old. It’s just a different way, a different technology, a different. You know, it’s all psychology, it’s all marketing, and so what. You may have different technology, different ways to do it, but this stuff works, and so that’s the thing I think the point here is that Brian and I are saying is like, think outside the box, don’t think the same old you don’t have. There’s not one, just one way to do it. It’s people that have massive success doing this other stuff. But speaking of success, one of the things you’re big on too, Brian, is mindset and mental health. When it comes, you know a lot of entrepreneurs. They get caught up in this world and they just work, work, work, maybe a little bit of play. They go to Prosper and go to some parties or whatever, but there’s a mental health aspect that a lot of people don’t talk about, and I was just at the last Prosper show. You held a little mastermind afterwards and we had a handful of people that came to this, and I think a lot of them are expecting we’re going to talk about the latest hacks and here’s how to do something, but you led it in a different direction, which I thought was cool. What’s your thoughts on, I know you do a lot of work in this space, but what are your thoughts on something that no one really talks about, with taking care of yourself and the mental health aspect of actually being an entrepreneur and being successful?
Brian:
Yeah, thanks for asking that, Kevin. So, look, I mean, here’s something I’ve learned. It took me maybe way too long in life to learn this, but that is that every person, regardless of what your perspective is of that human being, their financial success, their station in life, their family unit, their whatever it is, the car they drive, the house they live in, whatever your perspective, every person has struggles and challenges. Every person has limiting beliefs and I’m no different, you’re no different, anybody listening to this call if they’re honest with themselves or not any different in that area. And I’ve had the privilege of sitting down and getting to know some, some highly, highly successful people from a financial that are really like leaders of industry type people, and getting raw and real with them, and during those conversations I realized, man, we are so much more like each other than not. It’s beautiful in a lot of ways and we all need some help. And so I, for the past couple of years, with earnest, have been on my own personal development journey, growth journey. It started really got kicked off with participating in some breath work, facilitations, which I had never experienced really before. If you had asked me what breath work was two years ago, I don’t know, don’t we all breathe? And that started just awakening me to like what are some of the human possibilities that I wasn’t even tapping into. And then through there I met other people that were into various forms of yoga and other just good stuff, like really healthy stuff and I have been a student, a bit of a devotee in a lot of ways to this some people call it consciousness work or spiritual work or whatever and it’s been very, very powerful for me and for my wife and for my kids and for those that I associate with in business, because I’ve begun to share this publicly. Like what you experienced, Kevin, where we started off a mastermind event, literally with a five or seven minute. It was a short little breath exercise, and what I found is that we, as a community of human beings, we need that. We need that to thrive in life and to really get as much out of this existence as possible. And so we need that to thrive in life and to really get as much out of this existence as possible. And so, yeah, I can sound a little woo-woo and it is a bit weird. I’ll admit it is kind of weird, but it’s a good weird. So, yeah, so I mean I’m happy, I mean I could talk for a long time about my own journey in this, and it’s ongoing and I encourage everybody to explore it, you know, and open yourself up to the possibilities of something bigger than yourself. That’s there.
Kevin King:
And that’s one of the reasons that you know I don’t know if you know this, but you know, I know I run the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, which is we have one coming up in a month or so here in Hawaii at the end of May, and that’s all. Amazon e-commerce, like what’s the latest cool PPC techniques? What’s the latest hacks? What’s the latest way to get ahead? What are people doing? That’s just crushing it. You know, with all the AI, how do you adapt to all this? So it’s cutting edge stuff, not what you see at a normal show. It’s the best of the best, the brightest of the brightest in the space, and they’re all competing because there’s a cash prize on the speakers, and so it’s a competition to like deliver like this. Your a game. This is not just let me get through a presentation. This is like don’t embarrass me, because I’m gonna get voted on and rank really bad and I don’t want that. I want to win this. So, yeah, that’s all cool, but I’m adding something in Hawaii called level up, and a lot of people still don’t get it what I’m doing, and about 30% of the people or so are probably going to stay for an extra three days. But the whole idea is let’s get away from the Amazon stuff. We’re switching resorts to the one which is a hundred just went through a 300 million dollar sustainable rebrand and refurbish. But it’s all about. We have some speakers coming in, like Perry Belcher’s one that you know, and we’re not talking to Amazon stuff. Some of them are talking a little AI, a little bit attractive character like McCall jones, and a little bit of one of David Guilliam, who’s got a $300 million Amazon business and he’s not talking about. Here’s the latest hacks. He’s like this is what it takes, mentally and mindset wise, to actually run something like this into what happens at each of these phases. And we got some other people talking more about mental health and things. But then we’re mixing in to it because this resort has it all built in. We’re doing hot yoga, we’re doing sound therapy, we’re doing cryotherapy, we’re doing cacao tasting, we’re doing some sort of Chinese stretching thing I don’t even know how to say the name we’re doing. So, it’s a mix and it’s a little, like you said, a little woo-woo. People can opt out of different things, but we’re mixing that in. So, it’s entrepreneurship with mental health and body work and body health and networking. So, it’s a new concept that nobody’s really ever done, and so I’m probably going to lose money on this event, but I think I want to do it and there’s enough people that are coming over and so if it works, they’ll praise its blessings. And then the next one I do next year. More people will kind of get it, but I think it’s something that’s needed in this space and that you talking about it. You know I’ve talked about it a little bit on stage At a couple of presentations. I opened with a story about my ex-wife and about a buddy of mine who was found dead after three weeks in his apartment, and I tie that all into mental health and to you know, the four burners theory and all this kind of stuff, and I think it’s something that needs to be talking about more, because we look at successful people. You know you’re an MDS and you got all these guys just crushing it seven, eight figures but behind there everybody’s like looking up to them, but behind the scenes you don’t know what the heck’s going on. Some of those guys are miserable. Some of those guys are going through a lot of knowing and being transparent and knowing that this is normal and it’s OK and you can still be super successful despite all these things. I think it’s an important message, and how to take care of yourself when you’re working this hard so that you can enjoy the fruits of your labor later on is important. Well, Brian, this has been great. We could sit here and talk forever probably a long time. We’ve got more stories. We have plenty of stories to tell about the old days and the new days. It’s been great having you on here. I appreciate you taking some time out. I know you’re busy at a show right now and you took some time out to come and do this, so it’s been great. If people want to follow you or reach out or learn more, well, what’s the best way for them to do that? To keep up with the world of Mr Williams?
Brian:
I’m happy to give out my personal information. I sign all my emails with my cell phone and so I’m happy to share that if that’s appropriate. Kevin, you let me know.
Kevin King:
It’s up to you whatever you want?
Brian:
Yeah, sure. So I mean, look, I mean easiest thing is to text me at 702-600-1470. And I’ll never forget the first time I sent that out to over a million people during doing an affiliate promotion with my friend, Roland Frazier, and I thought he was crazy for us putting our cell phone numbers in an affiliate promotion and I figured well, if Roland’s doing it, I’m going to do it too. And it was a really cool experience. So call me, text me or just follow me on Facebook, Brian A. Williams, I’m the guy with the cowboy hat, not this hat on Facebook. I’m pretty active there.
Kevin King:
Awesome. Well, thanks again, Brian. Appreciate you coming on today, man.
Brian:
It’s my pleasure.
Kevin King:
Maybe we’ll see you at Level Up you never know.
Brian:
I have a feeling.
Kevin King:
Hope you really enjoyed this episode with Brian. That was some great stuff, some very actionable techniques on building your list and building your audiences off Amazon. Still use Amazon, but there’s some great things that you can do off of Amazon. Some very practical, actionable stuff there. I hope to see you out in Hawaii at BDSS. Brian should be there as well, as he’s probably going to be leading some stuff at Level Up what we talked about at the end of the episode there you can go to BillionDollarSellerSummit.com to check that out billiondollarsellersummit.com. We have a few tickets still available for that, so hopefully we’ll see you in Hawaii. Before we leave you today, I’ve got a few words of wisdom. The one who does the marketing is the master, not the servant. The one who does the marketing is the master, not the servant. Have a great week. We’ll see you again next time here.
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