#344 – Secret Listing Optimization Strategies From The Master Copywriter Emma Schermer Tamir
In episode 344 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Emma discuss:
- 01:23 – Why Is Emma Infamous For What She Do
- 02:30 – How The Amazon Selling Industry Changed Over Time
- 03:50 – Emma’s Backstory
- 05:50 – Working Together With Your Spouse
- 08:40 – Moving From Missouri To Las Vegas
- 10:20 – How Kevin And Emma Met
- 12:12 – Biggest Mistakes Amazon Sellers Make On Their Listings
- 16:30 – Titles, Bullets, And Descriptions: Does It Really Matter?
- 20:45 – Incorporating Your Copy Into Your Image Stack
- 23:00 – The Difference Of Features And Benefits
- 26:29 – Hardest And Easiest Categories To Write Copy To
- 28:45 – Making A Boring Product Fun And Interesting
- 31:15 – Creating A Product Sub Category
- 32:00 – Writer’s Block And New Tools To Help In Copywriting
- 34:27 – How Does ChatGPT And AI Impact Amazon Sellers
- 38:30 – Kevin’s Take On AI And It’s Impact
- 47:50 – How To Contact Emma Schermer Tamir
- 49:14 – This Week’s Golden Nugget Tip With Kevin
Transcript
Kevin King:
Here we are again. It’s episode 344 of the AM/PM Podcast. My guest this week is none other than Emma Schirmer Tamir. Emma is a copywriter, one of the best in the business for Amazon Sellers, and we’re gonna be talking about the psychology of writing good copy, what it takes to actually write good copy that’s gonna convince people to buy and how AI is affecting what she does. And don’t forget this summer, I’m debuting the Billion Dollar Sellers newsletter. It’s 100% free for listeners of this podcast. So be sure to go to billiondollarsellers.com and put in your email address and name to get on the beta list so you can be one of the first to get this brand new newsletter. It’s gonna be chock full of advice and tips and strategies and hacks for e-com and Amazon sellers, billiondollarsellers.com.
Kevin King:
This week my guest is none other than the famous or some may say infamous Emma Schirmer Tamir, how are you doing, Emma? It’s so good to see you. What’s it been? Just a few hours since we saw each other, right?
Emma:
Yeah. Hey, Kevin. I’m really excited to be here. I’m not sure what I’m infamous for. I think I need to go search myself on Google after this
Kevin King:
Well, you’re infamous for, because you’re a master wordsmith, so you’re infamous for taking other people down. You’re infamous because people are like, that’s the person who caused my competition to jump me and outsell me. And you’re the one that killed my business because I was doing so good until you came in and redid the listings. That’s why you’d be infamous.
Emma:
Okay. Well, thanks for explaining that.
Kevin King:
So for those of you that don’t know, I mean, you’re, you’re not a seller in the Amazon space, but you’ve come to this space, you’re one of the, like I said, the master copywriters. You’re the person behind the scenes helping people create their listings, whether it be write their bullet points or their title research some keywords or do their A+. That’s what your company Marketing by Emma is known for, right?
Emma:
Yeah. That’s what we’ve been doing since 2016. So we’ve been in the space for a while. We’ve seen it evolve many times, and I think now we’re in the midst of the largest shift that I’ve seen. Not, I mean, not just in Amazon, but just with everything. So it’s definitely been a wild ride and eager to see what, what awaits next. But yeah, we, you know, Amazon back in the day, it sort of didn’t matter what you wrote and you could be successful just by choosing the right product and having even a mediocre keyword strategy. But as the platform became more sophisticated, as the customer evolved and as competition grew, so did the strategies necessary to be able to stand out, to get people excited to buy your products and to really be successful on the Amazon marketplace. And so we’ve kind of been by sellers side on that journey and helping them figure out what’s the best way to be able to achieve the success that they’re looking for when selling online.
Kevin King:
What’s your background in this? So you started in 2016. Were you in journalism or what was your background? Were you writing copy for some other company? What was your background before this?
Emma:
Yeah, so I’ve always been a strong writer. I did study journalism for a period of time, but I’m also somebody that is very curious. And so I didn’t get a degree in journalism. I actually got a degree in political science and Spanish. And as I, even before I graduated college, I pretty much every job I got into my bosses would discover, oh, she knows how to use her words. Hey, do you wanna help out with this newsletter or this blog? And so at first it was just kind of extra tasks that I was taking on. But as I began to navigate post-college world and figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I, I kind of just gravitationally fell into marketing. And so I did a lot of content marketing and copywriting, and really just learning all of the basics of what it takes to develop a brand voice, to be clear about who your customer avatar is, and to utilize language in order to be able to create connections and get people to buy your product, but also to stay customers long term. So I’ve done that for fine dining, I’ve done that with software, and then I slowly started to dip my toes more into the freelancing world. And I guess idea of my husband and business partner eras, we started to kind of hone in more specifically on the Amazon space. And so that’s when we started entering that world and haven’t left it since.
Kevin King:
Aris is always selling. Her husband Aris, every time I see him at an event really nice guy, really great guy, but he’s always, always selling. I’m always giving him a hard time. Like, dude, you’re always selling something. It’s like, yep, that’s right. That’s how you get ahead. That’s a great partner to have, I mean, what’s it like though working? How do you, how do you guys get any kind of quality time or how do you separate business and work? Because if you’re working together, you’re talking throughout the day about different things and then at night something about business related could come up, or do you have rules? That after certain time or when we’re watching a movie, there’s no business talk or Fridays or our day off or anything like that to try to balance between the two.
Emma:
You know, I would say, there are some nice ideas of rules, but also as I’m sure anybody in business knows, unexpected things always happen. So what is it like working with your partner? I would say, first of all, it’s not for everyone. I can’t think of anybody else that I would rather be in business with, but it is also incredibly challenging and definitely tests our relationship and puts all sorts of pressures on it that can make things really difficult at times. But I think first of all, one of the biggest game changers for us, was in the very early days, it was just him and I. So he was doing sales and interacting with clients, and I was doing the work. And so there were a lot of points where we needed to interact directly and about a client or about a project, and that was not sustainable.
Emma:
So when we hired somebody to sort of be that middle person that he could go to with questions or I could go to with other things, then it made a huge difference. So that our conversations shifted to being more about big picture or strategy or so solving more complicated problems instead of all those little day-to-day things that can be sort of irritating, for lack of a better word. As far as creating boundaries of work time and non-work time, I’m much better at that, but I also have the benefit of not being the salesperson. So my phone isn’t always message, you know, getting messages or calls from all over the world anytime of the day. And so for me, I really need to be able to unplug and take a step back for work. But I think areas is also just that always on kind of person. And so I’ve tried to establish rules of, you know, on the weekends, no work, talk in the evenings, no work talk, but things also happen. So for us, I think the biggest game changer has been, we relocated to Las Vegas about a year ago. And one of the intentions really being to begin to also prioritize our lives as individuals. And so being able to get out of the house and do different activities both together and individually has made an a massive difference with all of that.
Kevin King:
Yeah, you came from a little small college town in Missouri, right? Sort of bright lights of Las Vegas. That’s a big shift, but I know Aris is loving it. He’s like, it’s the best thing ever. I feel like I just escaped jail.
Emma:
Yeah, he’s, people ask him, so you think you’ll stay? And he just looks at them like, I’m never going back to Missouri. But I’ve actually surprised myself and really fallen in love with this place, too. The first time he suggested, Hey, let’s move to Vegas. I was like, absolutely not. No way. I never wanna live in Vegas. What are you thinking? Are you crazy? But it’s a really awesome place to live.
Kevin King:
Of people think of it as just the strip or just the gambling, but there’s a whole city of two plus million people outside of that. And there’s a ton to do there. Not only do you have all the big entertainment acts and, and anybody who’s anybody coming through town, you have almost all the conventions at some point are coming through there, so you don’t have to travel as much, and it’s easy for you to go to some probably cool different things that you just never would or wouldn’t make financial sense to, or you can just hop in for a few hours, you know which you couldn’t do if you were flying in, having to spend all that time. And then there’s tons of natural beauty around Las Vegas. I mean, there’s national parks and within half a day’s driving distance, you can go down to the Grand Canyon all the way up into Utah.
Kevin King:
And there’s tons of stuff just right outside Vegas that a lot of people don’t realize it’s there. They just think of it as the casinos. And they don’t understand why would someone wanna live there if you’re not working with the casinos, but not you. And I met, I think it was in New York at ASGTG. And I remember, was it like 20, I think about 2019, I guess. And I remember I was sitting there just listening to whoever was speaking and this little girl comes up and sits and kind of squats next to me and says, hi just want to introduce myself. My name’s Emma and is there anything I can do for you? I’m like, no, I’m good. But nice to meet you. And we just, you know, exchanged pleasantries and information.
Kevin King:
And then I remember, you must have been on my list or something and you got a promotional offer for the Billion Dollar Seller Summit, like an email. And you, you sent me a message back, said, hi, Kevin, it’s pleasure to meet you. I’m paraphrasing here, but pleasure to meet you in in New York. And this copy in this message could, maybe it was Aris doing this. Maybe it wasn’t you, maybe it was Aris.
Emma:
No, this was me.
Kevin King:
I dunno if it’s a salesman or, okay, it was you all right. And it is like this copy, you know, you could, this is not as you were polite about it, but you’re basically saying, Hey, you could write this better all right. And you’re like, I’ll do it for free just to show you. And I’m like, all right, sure, why not? And then so you rewrote it, and then I, I resent that marketing message out, and the sales went in half and I was like, what? No, I’m just joking. I’m just kidding. I, okay. No, but you already rewrote it.
Emma:
Heard it here first guys.
Kevin King:
I was like, never, ever again. That was it. You just kill me. No, but no, actually, it was really good. And, and then we ended up hiring you to write some of the stuff for a couple of our other companies that we started during the pandemic, and that, that was that was great as well. What are you finding when it come, when someone, a client approaches you about writing, maybe they’ve already written their listing. What are some of the things that you’re like, oh my God we gotta clean this up. What are some big mistakes that a lot of people make, whether it’s in their title or their bullet points, or that you’re constantly just seeing and like, ah, this is an amateur here we go again. What are a few things that people need to be aware of that they, maybe they think it’s great and awesome, but it really isn’t?
Emma:
Yeah. So I think the biggest mistakes actually happen Before you ever put a word to down, if you’re writing in a bra, in a document or whatever, before you type even a word. What you do as far as researching and thinking strategically about how to, to position your product are some of the biggest things that are going to impact how your listing actually performs. You know, when you’re thinking about Amazon, it’s very unique compared to your own website or a lot of other types of funnels where you kind of control the journey of the customer and you control what they’re looking at. Whereas on Amazon, the customer is overloaded with options of what to choose. And so you need to be really aware of how you fit into that whole competitive landscape in order to be able to gain any traction at all.
Emma:
And so one of the biggest things that I see is trying to go too broad, too generic, and copying what the top competitor is doing. And especially if you’re thinking about, you know, just launching a product that has no reviews, no brand recognition, nothing at all. If you’re copying exactly what your top competitor is doing, who has 5,000 reviews, 10,000 reviews, you know, whatever it is, why would a customer choose you over the one that is, has all of that social proof that’s showing that this is a, a great product already. And so that can look like a lot of different things. It can look like actually just the product page being very, very similar. But another piece of that is just not having a clear sense of why customers should choose you over someone else. And, and so if you are just kind of giving me very generic basic language that’s talking about that I could easily copy and paste onto any other product that’s the exact same thing, then you’re not going to win win over the customers that you’re hoping to.
Emma:
So that’s one of the things that I am really looking for and that I’m most critical about when I am taking a look at a listing. As far as some of the other kind of quick things I’m just still surprised. Everybody knows that customers are visual, but the amount of times that I open a listing and their images are garbage, there’s nothing, no lifestyle too much text, no text, all of those things to me are some of the easiest, quickest wins that you can have. And what I’ve been really encouraging people to do, both clients, and then just when I’m talking about this topic, is really thinking about your product images almost like social media. So like, you know, if you’re putting together a carousel on Instagram and thinking about what’s the story that you wanna take people through with your product images so that they’re getting everything that they need to know about your product without even having to look at any other part of your listing.
Emma:
And it’s not just because that’s why, how customers are consuming information, but when you’re on mobile, oftentimes when you’re scrolling through that you have the product images at the top, and then you scroll down a little bit and you have the full gallery of product images before you even get to the A+ Content or the bullets or anything else. So these take up a massive amount of real estate and really failing to maximize that space, you have to create a sales opportunity is just a huge loss on a seller’s part.
Kevin King:
A lot of people, there’s debate out there and people say, what does it matter how well written it is? Because you see listings that are in, you know, broken English that have lots of reviews and their BSRs top 100, and they have, in some cases, even cruddy pictures may maybe cuz they have no competition or it’s a brand name or something. But a lot of people say the bullet points and the description and all that doesn’t really matter. That’s just there, nobody reads that stuff. Everybody’s just looking at the pictures and making it in the price and making a decision. What would you say to that? What’s your thoughts on that? Do people actually read that or they only read it if it’s a technical item and they just need to know something? I mean, a lot of people put a lot of effort into that, but does it really matter on Amazon? On Amazon?
Emma:
Yeah. So one of the things that I always think about when people say this is okay, let’s say that yes, you’re super successful. Maybe you’re converting 35% in a really like highly competitive category and your listing is garbage. So why would you invest the time to make it better? You’re already selling how much more could you be converting if you did take the time to really develop out a strong listing? And what I’ve seen happen a lot is people that got into the Amazon space early who were able to have that first movers advantage, they got tons and tons of reviews. They sat in the number one spot in their category for years, and then they start coming up to us a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, saying, I don’t know what’s going on. I haven’t changed anything, but all of a sudden these new sellers are coming in and they’re unseating me and I’m losing market share.
Emma:
And so I think that if you have the opportunity to be able to put your very best foot forward, why would you not do that? So if I’m going to a trade show and I’m a salesperson, I could go and I could be a great salesperson, but if I’m looking kind of sloppy and if I smell like the club from last night and I am like just not at my peak, yeah, I can sell, but how much better would I sell if I got a good night’s sleep, I put on a great outfit. I’m really focused, I’m clear about what I’m doing, and so that’s one piece. Then there’s this other piece of do people actually read, there are so many different types of customers out there. So there are definitely customers who are not going to read.
Emma:
There are customers that are just gonna see, you know, the one with the top reviews or the cheapest, and they’re gonna buy that. And that’s just how they make their purchasing decisions. But it’s a real loss to only sell to those people. There are also lots of people who drive themselves crazy researching to find the best product. And so if you have an opportunity to impress those people, those people that are super thorough are also probably the ones that really make sure that they’re buying the product that’s going to be the best fit. So they could be a really good customer for you. They might be the ones that are gonna tell all their friends about you. And so every opportunity, make the most of it. Make sure that you are able to really connect with a whole variety of shoppers. So you have those visual shoppers, you have the ones that are highly analytical and are going to be reading things. You have also a combination, you know, it’s not that we all follow the exact same buying habits for every single type of product, whether it’s because it’s something that we’re more interested in, or maybe we need it for work or we’re buying it for someone else. And so that, that’s my long answer to probably one of the most common questions that, that we get asked.
Kevin King:
So if someone’s creating the images and they need to emphasize the main points of their product and analysis, you’re probably gonna be writing those in the bullets and most likely covering some level of that in the bullet. So what’s a good way to actually take it from that copy that you’ve just written and actually incorporate it into the image stack where, you know, a lot of people are making decisions by just scrolling through that. Because in the bullets you can be a lot more verbose in the images. You need to cut that to the chase and make sure that, like you said, it’s on a mobile, it’s not tiny print and they’re having to enlarge it to read and stuff. What are some techniques or strategies that you can advise on taking that message that’s in your beautiful copy and actually conveying it in the image? Should it just be, create an image based on that bullet point that explains it in, an image, just a thousand words? Or should you take bits and pieces or what’s your thoughts on that?
Emma:
Yeah, so we definitely, all of the most important things, we don’t just want to reinforce between the bullets and the images. We actually want to reinforce those through the a plus as well. So every piece of the listing, if there’s something really important we want reference to it all of those places. How you actually engage around that topic might sort of be impacted by the specific part of the listing that you are speaking or writing for. So for example, as you mentioned, the bullets can be a bit more technical. What we like to do with images on the other hand is really lean into more of that emotionally engaging or thought-provoking or curiosity building language to grab people’s attention. Because it’s not just about giving them the basic information they need, it’s wanting to pull them in and make them keep learning to either get their questions answered or to get enough of the reassurance and enthusiasm that this is the right product and go ahead and add to cart. So we don’t try to cover everything in the photos, but giving the highlights of what are those need to know things, how can we present that in a way that’s going to make me curious, make me want this product.
Kevin King:
I think a lot of people misunderstand or misinterpret this too when they’re, when they’re trying to create their own copy of their own marketing stuff, is what’s, what’s the difference between features and benefits?
Emma:
So a feature is this product does this thing or has this component of it. So the material that it’s made of the practices around how you make that material or the basic functionality of what it does, they’re essentially the facts of the product. The benefits are how those facts of the product relate to the needs and wants of the customer. So you’ve probably heard, if you’ve consumed even a little bit of information about marketing that people don’t buy things they buy, you know, they buy the solution to the problem or the aspirational thing that they’re after. And so we are emotional creatures as much as we like to tell ourselves that we’re rational, we are not you can read all sorts of psychology and statistical books talking about the ridiculous ways that we make totally irrational decisions all the time.
Emma:
But knowing that and being aware of that is really going to give you an advantage when you’re thinking about how to position your product. And so when we’re talking about benefits, the way that you can find that is you take a feature and you say, why does this matter to the customer? So if we go back to this idea of a portable and professional microphone, so it’s portable, but it has really high quality audio capabilities, why would somebody care about that? So you could say, okay, well they want to produce a good sounding podcast no matter where they are in the world.
Kevin King:
Like produce studio quality podcast no matter where you are.
Emma:
Yes. But I would argue that’s not really the full benefit. That’s like an intermediary benefit. That’s good. That’s something that you would wanna talk about, but you can go even deeper than that. Why would it matter to somebody to be able to produce a high quality professional sounding podcast from anywhere in the world? Well, maybe it’s because they are dreaming of financial freedom or they aspire to really being able to be seen as successful and it’s going to make them feel more confident. And so there are all of these really sort of sensitive emotional undercurrents beneath all of that. And you don’t always have to speak directly to those things because sometimes that can be a bit off-putting, but having that awareness can allow you to be able to create way more engaging copy that’s going to pull at some of those emotional levers beyond just the sort of surface level more generic sounding copy.
Kevin King:
What are some of the products that are, when clients come to you, you’re like, oh my God, how am I gonna write about this one? Is there a category that you’re like, oh, this is so tough and there’s, and on the flip side that is there a category like, ah, man, this is, I got, this is easy. This,
Emma:
Well, you know, yes, there are a lot of categories that are just really complicated to sell on Amazon because of Amazon’s rules around them. So anything in the adult category space is quite challenging. Anything that’s more on the sustainability side can be really tricky. Anything that’s in supplements, really anything that’s consumed or topical also runs into a lot of things, not just challenges with Amazon, but you also then have to be aware of FDA compliance. So there are a lot of different things to have to navigate when you’re writing for categories like that. And that’s why it’s really important to make sure that you understand the rules on and off Amazon for the category that you’re selling in. Because sometimes you can unknowingly get yourself into trouble because there was just a blind spot and, and it can really create a lot of challenge and be expensive and things like that.
Emma:
So as far as easy things, I suppose things that are more straightforward on the one hand can be easier, but on the other hand, then they give you less sort of things to really write about, you know? So if you have a pencil, people aren’t really innovating in pencils much anymore to my knowledge. So yeah, you might not have to worry about some of those rules and how to work your way around them, but you’re also going to be a little bit limited with the things that you can say about a pencil. So even the more straightforward or less regulated categories can be challenging in a different way just because you have to get particularly creative when it comes to thinking about ways of positioning them.
Kevin King:
So like in a your pencil example, how do you make a boring products fun and interesting? Is it by using humor? How do you do that?
Emma:
Yeah, so I think that’s when it becomes really helpful to lean into who your brand is, like who you’re trying to be as a business, and also who your customer is. So if you’re just trying to come out with a pencil, it’s probably going to be really challenging to beat. I can’t think of what pencil brands are. BIC maybe, I think maybe they make pencils. It’s been a while since I’ve bought a pencil, if I’m honest. So if you are just going after the general pencil market, it might be very difficult to gain traction, you know, cuz people have their pencils of choice that they’ve had for years and they’re probably buying those same pencils over and over and over again. But if you have a pencil and maybe it’s really fantastic for people that are wanting to sketch images that they take a picture of and then create AI art off of, cuz maybe there’s something about that, that it captures the image really well when you take a picture of it.
Emma:
Maybe that could be an interesting way of sort of positioning it. And the fact is that that pencil might be made of the exact same thing as all the other pencils, and it might do the exact same thing as all of the other pencils, but it’s just that none of those other pencils are really leaning into this more specific kind of niche and direction. And it’s one of those things where when you’re shopping, when you have your customer hat on, sometimes when you don’t see that a company is saying that their product does this thing, even if you assume that it does, you can kind of have second thoughts about whether it is in fact going to be a good fit for you and what you need. And so being able to kind of almost create a new product subcategory can be a really fantastic way of gaining traction in a more crowded and more generic kind of space.
Emma:
And then eventually over the time you can expand that out. So it’s not like, okay, if you’re only going after people that are looking to create AI art, then you know, how big is that market really and how much success can you really have? But if you really win over that market, then you can begin to kind of expand outwards and capture more and more people, maybe people that are just intrigued by this new futuristic world that we’re moving into and want something that seems like it’s current or cool or not everybody is purchasing things because they’re actually the target market. They might aspire to be that target market.
Kevin King:
What do you do when you sit down to write about your pencil and you’re like, huh, my brain is just not, I’m just not in the zone right now. What do you do? Do you set it aside and come back to it? Or do you have a methodology to like get that creative process and those juices going? Or what do you do around that?
Emma:
Well, there are a lot of things that you can do. You know, we’re a business that we have deadlines and we promise people that we’re going to get work to them by a certain time. So we don’t have the luxury of just kind of saying, you know, today is not the day. I think I’ll come back to this tomorrow, regardless of whether you have the creative muse with you or not. You just have to do it. And, and honestly, that’s also just what it means to be a professional doing any kind of more artistic endeavor is you don’t wait for the muse, but sometimes the muse comes once you’ve started and sometimes every single word is a slog. So things you can do, we’ve already talked about a few of those going places, like the reviews and social media can be great to stimulate the mind.
Emma:
We also have some new tools out there now. So we have tools that are fantastic for ideation. So if you’re feeling stuck and you’re not sure how to phrase something or you’re, I’m not sure about, you know, even why someone would care about this thing. I’m sure probably the majority of you that are listening to this have heard something about ChatGPT or these different AI tools that are out there. And I think one of the easiest places to get started with these tools is to use them for ideation and getting those creative juices flowing. It takes more skill and refinement to be able to start to use those tools to actually create things. But something that almost anybody can become proficient at really quickly is going to one of those tools and asking why would somebody want this product? Or what are the most common objections to this product? And then how can I respond to those objections to make them, to turn them into reasons why somebody should buy this. Now
Kevin King:
You’re talking about AI here on ChatGPT. Some people say, you know, I saw a list recently, here’s the top 10 professions that are gonna go away because of AI. And one of those was like writers. But, but what you you’re saying is that, yeah, it may take some, some jobs away, but it’s actually gonna make your job easier and better in some ways because if you know how to harness the tool and know how to do the prompts correctly, it can help you when you’re in one of these mind slumps or it can help you maybe see things that you don’t see because it can go out there and just analyze basically everything that you know, super fast. So how do you see AI affecting what you do? You know, it’s the hot rage right now where people are using it, all the tools pretty much out there in the Amazon space are either have or are about to incorporate where we’ll write some of your titles for you or write your bullet points. Maybe you’re not a native English speaker and this will help you clean up stuff. But how are you seeing that AI is gonna truly affect what you do and what we do as Amazon sellers?
Emma:
Yeah, it’s a great question and it’s one that I’ve been thinking a lot about both because you know, this is what I have a business doing. And so I think any smart business owner really with whatever you’re doing right now, I think it’s very important to be considering what the impacts of AI are going to be on the world and how that might impact your business. So there are the more obvious ones like copywriting for example, or graphic design where we can, or translating where you can clearly see the evolution happening in real time with the way that those industries are changing. But this is going to have profound effects throughout all parts of our society. And I think that this is really sort of just the beginning of a large change. And so do I think that it’s going to eradicate the need for copywriters?
Emma:
No, I think what copywriting is, however, is fundamentally changing. And I think it actually becomes that if the playing field is getting leveled, so people that weren’t good writers or didn’t have you know, native English are going to be able to create something much better than what they were able to before. So there’s that first layer of things. So I think that the competition is going to get much fiercer in that respect, because everybody is going to have the ability to have, have an a higher set point. So then I think what it really becomes is having that strong understanding of the craft, what good looks like, how to creatively position and how to use all of these tools to help streamline, to help analyze things and to help sort of turbocharge these skills that you already have.
Emma:
I don’t know if I’m fully articulating this idea to in the way that I’m imagining it in my head, but essentially it becomes that the copywriter is not necessarily doing all of the writing, but they need to know where they’re aiming at. They need to understand what good looks like. They need to be able to think really strategically about how to position things. If they’re able to engineer really great prompts that are going to create even better outcomes than what the average person is using, all of those things are going to be to their advantage.
Kevin King:
I think some copywriter are, are gonna lose their jobs to ChatGPT, but they’re gonna have to evolve with it. And like you say, they’re gonna need to become an editor. I think, you know, one of the things we recently together at an AI conference and one of the big pushes there was this email subscription models we’re, you’re taking a subject matter and you’re creating this email that goes out daily that kind of summarizes all the news or the latest and the greatest things about that. And that, that’s a hot trend right now. And they’re using AI to go out and find a lot of this stuff and and to write it. But you still need an editor at the end of the day that’s gonna actually look through that.
Kevin King:
That’s a writer. More advanced writer that’s actually gonna look through that and say, ah, this wasn’t quite right. You know, they gave an example of he did it live at this AI conference where someone said, throw out a topic. And they said, you know, it was one of the recent shootings at a school, one of the sad cases. And they told the AI, they gave it a link to like a recent article and said please summarize this article or what happened here. I forget the exact wording. And so really quickly it came back and it actually sped out several paragraphs of a kind of a summary, and it looked good. And then someone in the audience was looking up and like, wait a second paragraph three there it says this, this, and this happened.
Kevin King:
I live in that town, and that’s not what happened. And so some of this AI stuff hallucinates, it’ll just make up stuff. And I had that happen. I think I gave you this example when I was playing around with ChatGPT a few months ago when it first came out. I told it to rewrite one of my listings for a slow feed dog bowl. And I was like, lemme just see what it does and say, create me five bullet points and rewrite the description. And it did some beautiful work. A lot of it was like really cool and well done. But as I started reading like the fourth bullet point, it actually says something to the effect of these slow feed dog bowls are awesome. We use it for our dinner as well in our house.
Kevin King:
You know, and you gotta watch it. So like you said, it’s a great tool to help you ideate and to help you refine and to help you get more information. Cuz you can go in, you can type, you know, what are the five biggest pain points people have when they buy a new pencil and it’s gonna come back and tell you it’s gonna analyze a whole bunch of stuff way faster than you ever could and tell you. So I think using it as a tool and writers are gonna have to evolve and the people that are gonna be good are the people that are good at prompt engineering. And just like, like you said on creating images, there’s people creating some amazing artwork using Midourney and DALL-E and some of the other image tools and there’s a lot of people that are just, they tried it and like, that looks like that looks like junk. And it’s all in the prompt engineering. And I think that’s gonna be where writers will need to shift is like learning how to talk to the computer to get what the desired result. Do you agree with that?
Emma:
Yeah, I agree with that. Well, completely. So I think that that’s kind of the baseline. And then the second piece of that is also having a really strong understanding of whatever your expertise is because you also have to understand what you’re aiming for, what is good versus not good. How can you, you know, like when we were at this workshop, they were even showing how you can prompt it to write in different styles of copywriters or to follow different frameworks, but you have to have an understanding of when would you want that style of writing versus this style of writing or that you know, particular framework versus this other one. And so I think in some ways
Kevin King:
That’s known your avatar, right? I mean, that’s known your avatar. So you can say, write this listing, write me five bullet points about this pencil in the style of a mom who has two fifth graders and a third grader or something like that. And it will do it, but you need to know that avatar before you can do that, otherwise you’ll get something completely different.
Emma:
Right. And so it, it really, I think is something that can turbocharge the skills of the people that really know their stuff. And I agree with you. Like something that, you know, maybe you needed a huge staff of writers to be creating. You need far fewer. I have a friend who’s a translator and she used to live in France and worked for a translation firm and, you know, it was a lot of people they were doing luxury translations for all of the high-end French brands. And then her industry totally shifted, and this was actually a couple of years ago that it started shifting with some of these really sophisticated translation AI tools. And so her job, even though she has a master’s degree, she’s you know, highly skilled in translation, her job became editing the translations that the AI generated. And so just like you said, it puts you more into an editor role into a curation role and into sort of having that big picture strategy in mind. And then how can you execute it with the assistance of these tools to make you hyper efficient?
Kevin King:
What do you think a lot of Amazon sellers think this is the, the holy grail. Like, I don’t need to hire an agency and I don’t speak very good English. Now I can just use my tool choice to actually write whatever I want. Are you think you’re gonna see a lot of very similar listings coming out or a lot of, even though it’s written, well, it’s not, it’s not selling well, it’s, people just are using this as a, as a, as a shortcut and thinking that they’re doing great work and when they’re really not.
Emma:
Yeah, I think we’ll see a lot of that. We’re probably already seeing a lot of that. I think, you know I think the people that are on Fiverr are probably really feeling a big impact of all of this. In particular, I’ve looked at the majority, if not all of the Amazon specific ai listing generators that have come out over the last few months. And I, I haven’t felt particularly impressed by any of the ones that I’ve taken a look at. And a big part of that is because the really exciting things that I’ve seen with the AI generation comes when you start iterating on things and when you get really specific and when you develop that avatar and then have it right to that avatar. And a lot of these tools are really kind of drag and drop. So it’s like, put in your competitors and then we’ll write a listing or, you know, something along those lines.
Emma:
And so there aren’t enough inputs or enough space for iteration to really be able to create something of impact. Let alone the fact that none of these tools that I’ve seen seem to be trained on all of the different rules that you have to be aware of when selling on Amazon. So, you know, we talked about categories that might be more or less difficult to sell in. And so you might unintentionally be using words that could get your listing suppressed or saying something that is not compliant with FDA or all of those other things. So yes, these tools can, can really give you a good starting point perhaps, or help give you some new ideas, but you do wanna make sure that whatever you’re getting from them, you do not wanna just go and directly upload those to Amazon without having professional oversight of that or a really just slow, meticulous eye on them.
Emma:
Because as you mentioned Kevin, they can make weird conclusions about things. They can hallucinate, but also they might just, even if none of those things happen, they could just be sort of saying something they shouldn’t, or assuming something about your product that isn’t actually true. And then what happens? You’re, you create an opening for negative customer experiences, negative reviews, more hassle, more returns, more costs. And so can this speed it up? Absolutely. Is this something that can, if you are short on budget, make something that’s, you know, pretty passable? 100%. Is there still value in working with people that really understand this stuff and are going to be taking the time to utilize these tools to the best of their ability so that you get something that is, you know, still smoking all of your competitors? My opinion is yes, of course. You know, this is my business and so my opinion is going to, to to have that bias kind of implicit implicitly cooked into it. But that’s my perspective.
Kevin King:
Awesome. I love it. Emma, this has been great chatting with you today. If people wanted to learn more about you or reach out to you to get a little helping hand with any of this? How would they do that?
Emma:
Yeah, you can find us at marketingbyemma.com or across all of the other places. I think we’re pretty much everywhere, but our website has our phone number and links to and contact forms and all of that stuff. We also offer a free listing analysis. So if you’re like, I don’t know if my listing is good, you know, I used one of these tools to create it, I think it looks pretty good, but now I’m having second thoughts fill out the free analysis form and we’d be happy to take a look at your listing and give you some feedback.
Kevin King:
Awesome. That’s incredible and that’s great, Well Emma, I really appreciate it. Again, taking the time today and I look forward to seeing you the next time I’m in Vegas for some sort of conference or who knows, maybe you’ll actually get on a plane and travel to a conference yourself sometime in the future, but I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other somewhere.
Emma:
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Kevin. This was great.
Kevin King:
Thanks. Great stuff as always from Emma. And don’t forget the Billion Dollar Seller Summits happening in just a few weeks. And also, if you’re coming to Sellar Con on June 1st to the third in Austin, make sure you check my Facebook feed for a party that I’m hosting there on June 1st. You don’t wanna miss it. It’s gonna be really, really cool. Another great episode will be coming your way next week, but before you go, here’s your weekly words of wisdom. Remember that one day you’ll wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted to do. So do them now. One day you’re gonna wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. So do it now. See you again next week.
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