#447 – Why Amazon Listings Can’t Go Viral (But Your Brand Can) – Inside the Social Commerce Shift
Kara Babb, a former Amazon vendor manager, joins us to unravel the complexities of branding in the ever-evolving e-commerce landscape. Drawing from her rich experience, Kara emphasizes the necessity of an omnichannel strategy, highlighting how sustainable brand success relies heavily on building a presence both on and off Amazon. She shares her insights on the significance of external traffic and creative brand awareness campaigns, with compelling examples like Poppy and BirdBuddy, to show how they can create sales surges and foster growth in the competitive market.
Our exploration takes a fascinating turn as we examine BirdBuddy’s innovative use of TikTok to capture the millennial and Gen Z audience, uncovering how creative content strategies can lead to explosive viral success. We discuss the hurdles platforms like Amazon face in the realm of social media, and the cultural barriers that live shopping encounters in the West compared to its success in Asia. Kara provides a nuanced understanding of why companies like Amazon and TikTok sometimes struggle when stepping outside their core competencies, offering a window into the future of digital engagement and consumer interaction.
The conversation moves toward the frontier of AI in shopping, where we discuss how platforms like TikTok and AI models are reshaping consumer search behaviors. We introduce the concept of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and its implications for brand strategies, particularly for smaller sellers facing rising costs and international competition. Wrapping up, we delve into how brands like Scrub Daddy, Apple, and Chanel create deep emotional connections with their customers, emphasizing the power of brand identity to transcend mere transactions and maintain a lasting presence in consumers’ lives.
In episode 447 of the AM/PM Podcast, Kevin and Kara discuss:
- 00:00 – Branding and Social Media Strategy for E-commerce
- 01:59 – 1P & 3P Consulting Experience at Amazon
- 06:52 – Understanding the Concept of Branding for Amazon Sellers
- 09:45 – Bridging E-Commerce and Branding With Social
- 13:32 – TikTok Marketing and E-Commerce Insights
- 14:49 – Utilizing TikTok Trends for Business Success
- 18:47 – Cultural Differences in Live Shopping
- 28:13 – AI and Shopping Integration in AILMs (46 Seconds)
- 34:17 – Future of Social Media and TikTok
- 35:11 – Building Brand Affinity and Community Engagement
- 39:10 – The Value of Branding in Selling Online
- 45:32 – Kevin King’s Words of Wisdom
Transcript
Kevin King:
Welcome to episode 447 of the AM/PM podcast. My guest this week is Cara Babb. Cara Babb used to work for Amazon on the one-piece side, so she’s got a lot of experience there. She helps one-piece sellers and three-piece sellers now and she’s a big branding expert. So in this episode, we’re going to be talking about some of the ways that you can actually use social media for proper branding and some of the things you need to be paying attention to when it comes to AI, when it comes to search and branding. This is a very interesting episode I think you’re going to really enjoy. So here is Kara. Miss Kara Babb, welcome to the AM/PM podcast. How are you doing?
Kara:
I’m doing well, thanks. Thanks for having me.
Kevin King:
Now I remember you. You wouldn’t let me forget you because at the Prosper Show I think you stopped by our BDSS booth. I think they told me 29 times they counted.
Kara:
Nothing is not persistent.
Kevin King:
I’m just kidding. Yeah, I wasn’t in the booth a few times, so they said, yeah, this woman keeps coming back, she wants to talk to you. And then you came back and we started chatting. I was like you need to be on the podcast. You’d be perfect for that, so I’m glad you’re here.
Kara:
Yeah, I appreciate it, this is awesome.
Kevin King:
So, for those that don’t know who are you, what’s your background, what’s your story.
Kara:
Yeah, who is this lady who wouldn’t leave you alone? So my background is right now I’m a consultant, but what I do is I work with Amazon primarily vendors, but now also some sellers and the reason I focus on this area is I started my career at Amazon, so I was there. I was a vendor manager for a few years, so I have experience managing really large categories. One of my favorite anecdotes is one of my categories that I managed had 3000 vendors in it and of course I really only talked to the top three or four. But I have the perspective of what it takes to manage categories at Amazon and I found that to be really helpful now in my consulting. But then the other side is when I left Amazon, I went over to the brand side and I helped manage and launch Amazon businesses as well as then expanding to retailers.com and also kind of getting into managing brand advertising. And that’s part of what you and I talked about was how much offsite activity actually influences Amazon sales.
Kevin King:
Yeah, that didn’t used to be the case, I mean in the four. Well, it’s always been the case, I guess. But four or five years ago a lot of people said it didn’t matter. When the aggregator boom came in the 3P side and they were buying up everything, they didn’t really care. And a lot of times they actually said it’s actually bad if you’re off Amazon because we just want Amazon brands, we just want ASIN assets. Basically is what they want. And that whole mindset has shifted back to where it was before. It’s like no, you need to actually be off of Amazon and Amazon obviously now is rewarding that with a brand referral bonus and stuff, and they want that offsite. It’s free affiliate traffic for them. But they also want that offsite branding. And that’s what I’ve been preaching, and a lot of the top people that actually teach in the space are now like you cannot just be Amazon. Amazon is a shopping cart of choice for some people. It’s a great place to launch and prove something out. But to be a real brand is not just on Amazon. A real brand is Omnichannel and the whole flywheel works together. Is that what you’re seeing as well?
Kara:
Yeah, and actually when I was at Amazon, one of our biggest challenges was traffic. So we were where customers wanted to convert but we couldn’t figure out how to get them to our platform and we would have random spikes. Like I said this on I mentioned this on the Smart Scout podcast, but we had an instance where George Takei tweeted about like this random coffee mug that looked like a prescription bottle and we saw like 3000% spike on that skew and we could not figure out. Because, you know, every week we look at the when I was at Amazon and now even you know they look at the weekly business review and you have to speak to like big, outlying things that happen and nobody can figure out why this one random skew is just blowing up. But really, if you think about it, like, amazon is where customers choose to convert, but by not looking elsewhere, a brand is blinding themselves to where customers discover products, because Amazon’s never been a good shopping destination. You know, you go there, you search for something you want and then it’s like Hunger Games, with brands bidding for that click but they’re discovering products off of Amazon, whether it’s a listicle, you know from some publication or affiliate, TikTok, you know. And so how do you influence, get like? The smart brands are the ones who are getting a step beyond or a step prior to that PPC bloodbath and getting customers before they even search.
Kevin King:
Well, you look at that drink brand. Was it the one that just sold to Pepsi for 1.8?
Kara:
Poppy?
Kevin King:
You look at Poppy and look at what they did. I mean, all they did to build that brand is they did no DTC. They had no Shopify site. They had a site but you could not order anything there. It’s just information and they didn’t do any. They let all the marketplaces do the fulfillment. They had no fulfillment. They oversaw none of that stuff. All they did was focus on brand awareness and branding and brand awareness and that was their number one focus. They spent all their money on that, not trying to build out a DDC website or their own fulfillment networks or their own systems. They let the people that do that best do that best and they just focused branding. And look what happened. They sold for 1 point. Was it 1.7, 1.8 billion to Pepsi and that’s. I think that’s a really good case study and a good example of how doubling down and focusing on brands could make. It can be huge, and I think that’s the problem that a lot of three-piece on the one-piece side you’re probably dealing with a lot more bigger, more established clients in a lot of cases, some of the big brands, fortune 500s and people that actually might for lack of a better word have a better clue a little bit about branding and not necessarily have a better clue, but be more aware of it versus the three-piece sellers. A lot of these guys have come up either by the seat of their pants or they took some course. They saw on YouTube and they don’t really know what branding is. They think branding is a logo and a name and they don’t understand. So, what is branding?
Kara:
Yeah, and that’s I mean. It’s so different depending on who you talk to, but the way I look at it is it’s getting customers to have an affinity for what you’re selling, for who you are, and so it’s kind of an. You know, the way you think about it is like sellers are selling. They think of themselves. Okay, I’m gonna sell a product, I’m going to source it for really cheap, I’m going to find my product niche, I’m going to load it up and then I’m going to try to get the clicks. But really what customers resonate with is they. It’s. It’s like it’s kind of a minor a little bit, but customers resonate with people and with stories and they don’t connect emotionally with products. So when I think about branding, I’m thinking about you’re trying to get a customer to connect emotionally with you in some way. But the way you do that is you can’t be product focused and you talk about these big enterprise brands and they’re actually really struggling in the most cases with this because they are so commercialized with their content. They think of marketing as being like an advertisement during the Super Bowl. You know it’s very product focused, but really these days marketing is about people and person to person authenticity. And if you look at like for better or for worse, like Duolingo, what they did, right, they created kind of a whole persona and a connection to their mascot. And or, if you look at the other example I use, is Scrub Daddy right, people are developing an emotional connection to a sponge because of how they’re framing it.
Kara:
And so I think you know both sides have their challenges. Where on the enterprise side they’re too commercial, it’s very product focused, it’s not connecting with people and they’re so rigid in their brand guidelines that they’re not able to really break out of that in most cases to go to their end user and understand what they want to hear and connect with them. And then on the seller side they don’t think of themselves as being a brand or something customers connect to. They think of, just okay, I’m just a product, you know. And so it requires it’s a just total mindset shift to think, okay, how do I show up authentically to people who are going to resonate with this product and maybe not even talk about my product? Figure out how the way to either entertain the way Scrub Daddy does, or provide some kind of information or education, like Poppy did, their whole thing was around the benefits of um, like probiotics in apple cider vinegar and like how they’ve structured their sodas and how this is a soda that was good for your gut, you know, and so it’s just it’s. It’s very much breaking out of fixed mindsets, whether you’re on the enterprise side with brand, or you’re on the seller side with like PPC and product to get that direct customer connection.
Kevin King:
But it’s also more of a long game. A lot of these sellers, a lot of people that, especially on the 3P side, they don’t have the funding or the patience to play the long game. You look at some of the take Coca-Cola, which is where you’re talking about stories. Look at Coca-Cola’s advertising over the years where it’s give the world a Coke and they have people on top of a mountain singing in a kumbaya style. They have the Clydesdales. Or even look at Amazon. What they ran I think it was the year before last Super Bowl ad was really not about come buy anything on Amazon. It was about two grandmas going sledding or something like that. It’s all trying to appeal, to tell a story and appeal to a certain audience. I say we got, we got you. And I think that’s difficult for Amazon because they’re more in a direct marketing mindset, more of a selling mindset. So how do we bridge this gap between selling physical products by e-commerce versus and branding at the same time?
Kara:
Yeah, the great thing about social is that it’s truly democratized marketing, so a seller does not have to put aside a million dollars to go do a Super Bowl ad. You can get as many or more views from a TikTok video as from a Super Bowl ad.
Kevin King:
That’s true.
Kara:
Right? So I think really what the first step I would do if I was a seller, or even like a vendor, maybe with smaller budgets is go and figure out how to launch your brand on TikTok not TikTok shop, but your organic content on TikTok. That’s really the first step. Tiktok is such a huge channel for Amazon. That’s where most of those customers choose to go shop right after they see a video. You see a direct kind of traffic response and understand that it’s not necessarily going to be immediately measurable. So the brands who get stuck are the ones who want to think about. Okay, I have to be able to directly attribute anything I do on TikTok to my immediate Amazon sales. But there’s a way you can structure kind of your reporting and how you’re viewing your traffic to be able to see directionally what’s happening. But you also want to think about it like TikTok’s not just for going and talking about your product. It’s also about getting the closest you can get to your customers outside of knocking on their door, and so you may have an idea of what your product means and what your product does for customers, but they may have a completely different idea. So you just have to get on there and start posting, start engaging, think about how you connect with your customers and that’s like sometimes the most cost effective way. All you have to do is pay a creator, for the most part, to start to post on your organic content and then from there you can build into affiliates. You know, working with different creators on TikTok eventually get into paid ads. But that first step is the organic engagement.
Kevin King:
Well, I think a lot of people sellers make the mistake is they go straight in for the pitching the product. They’ll go to creators and like let me send you a sample of my product and, you know, talk about it and use it and show people how it works and then oh, by the way, pitch it to TikTok shop or say it’s on Amazon. You can’t, there’s certain rules you can’t do, but that’s what they’re doing, rather than actually taking a hard look at their avatar and what’s their customer base and then understanding their pain points and then creating content that has nothing to do with their product. They don’t even send the product to the creator and have the creator start creating content around that. If you’re selling cases that hold coins for people that collect old nickels and dimes and whatever it may be some niched down little thing you don’t ever. You don’t ever talk about your case. It may appear as product placement from time to time in the video, but you talk about the joy of finding a rare 1905 nickel, and you have someone that’s a coin collector and that maybe you start a little almost like your own little reality show where they’re going around to auctions and finding stuff or whatever it may be, and you’re telling a story and bringing that audience into that, and once you’ve built that big enough and then you start doing a little bit of placement or a little bit of sales or a little bit of selling the product, would that be a better approach that you think a lot of people are missing. Something along those lines?
Kara:
Yes, absolutely, and also really being in tune with the trends. So what’s happening on TikTok and then translating that trend and a good example I can think of is one of my past clients was BirdBuddy, and the kind of bigger story was that we were seeing declining traffic on Amazon. They were battling with lower price competition and BirdBuddy is like a smart bird feeder. It was one of the first to market, but then they had an issue with low price manufacturers coming in and selling cheap versions of their product, and so what we did was we went over to TikTok and did like a brand awareness boot camp is what we called it. Four posts a day, seven days a week for 60 days and we saw 30 million plus views. We acquired 45,000 new followers. But what they did was so clever because they knew that their target customer was like an elderly person, retired, who likes to watch birds, but for the most part, this was a very gifted item. So they knew they had to go and reach the millennials and the Gen Zs who’d be giving this to their parents and their grandparents, and so they managed to do content. I mean, check them out on TikTok, they’re awesome. They managed to do content. We managed to do content, where we took the content and translated it for the audience that we were kind of selling to, that would eventually buy the product for their grandparents or their parents, and it was interesting, it was funny, it was engaging. You know, we’d have videos of birds but then we’d be tapping into kind of trends, trending sounds, trending music and it was so successful because we got people liking and enjoying the content, continuing to engage. Then TikTok gives you better kind of ranking, right, you show up more and that’s just. I mean that’s a strategy that’s working now because—
Kevin King:
Yeah, I’ve heard Gary Vee talk about that and a couple other, I think Neil Patel, and they’re like one of the things. If you want stuff to have a chance to go viral, to build something quicker, tie into a trend. Somehow tie into, like you just said, whatever’s trending music-wise, fashion-wise, whatever’s trending on some things going, some funny videos on TikTok or something, can be a way to actually ride that wave and kind of break through and catch the wind in your sales.
Kara:
Yeah, and the tricky thing is is that if you are listed as a business account, you’re actually not able to use some of the trending songs. So what I tell new TikTok brands is to load themselves as a personal account, because then they can actually tap into those trending songs. And the other thing is that the great thing about TikTok is because the volume of people that are on there. You don’t even have to go viral. The trick is making sure that you have consistent posting. So it’s three times a day or twice a day, five days a week, and don’t just stop. Don’t be sporadic, because you not only want to have a consistent kind of engagement mechanism that TikTok likes in their algorithm, you also want to be driving consistent traffic to Amazon, because if you’re a vendor, that will affect your POs from Amazon because their system, their forecasting system, looks at the consistency of external traffic. But if you’re a seller, that just goes to positively feed the flywheel and improve your organic ranking and improve the number of people searching for your brands and ideally you can shift some of your spend from being on category to your branded terms. So it’s not about virality so much, it’s more about consistency.
Kevin King:
You said when you read Amazon, they were trying to figure out how to get more traffic in. We got to figure out we have not a buying problem or conversion problem, we have a traffic problem. Why has everything that they’ve tried to do in social media failed? Inspire and all the different, the posts thing and everything. What are they missing? Why can they not get this right? I mean, there’s talk of them potentially being interested in buying TikTok. I don’t know if that’s going to happen or not, or if that’s even true. They’ve denied that. But why have they failed? Why can’t they get, I mean, someone as big as Amazon? Why can’t they figure this out or hire someone that can figure this out?
Kara:
I think it’s all about their roots. They were built as a fulfillment mechanism for buying books online. They were not built as a social engagement platform. So the reason why I think TikTok wasn’t able to figure out their fulfillment right they’re still really struggling with TikTok shop is because they’re a place that people go to find content that they enjoy whether it’s like short little videos of people dancing or you know anything else like it’s there to go as an entertainment platform. Amazon people go there to buy something they are looking for and have it fulfilled in two days, and Amazon itself is very much a platform. It’s like having a robot, you know, and then you expect the robot to go tap dance. Like it’s not what it was built for and so like. I think that’s why they struggle. They don’t have, and it’s also feeds into what they invest in. Amazon is investing heavily in AI and infrastructure and their fulfillment. They’re not investing in being an interesting and kind of cool brand. They’re a trusted brand because of the customer service they provide and the fact that people know that they can trust Amazon to replace products or give refunds or anything like that, but it’s not a place that people are like, oh, I’m going to go be entertained by Amazon. It’s no, oh, I’m going to go and make sure I get my items on time and in two days.
Kevin King:
What about live shopping too? Has it taken off in the US? I mean, it’s huge in Asia and Indonesia. In the US it just hasn’t taken off, and there’s some people saying it’s coming. Don’t worry, Kevin, just be patient. It’s coming, but it just seems to be moving at a snail’s pace in the West. What do you think the cultural differences are that are causing that?
Kara:
So I used to live in China and one thing I noticed there was it was very much about like competitive. It’s so competitive from a resources standpoint and so if you think about it like it was a prior, you know they went, they’ve been through famine, they have, you know, a couple billion people. It’s very. The competition is cutthroat for resources, for eyeballs, for time, for money, and so when you think about what live shopping is, it’s it gives an idea around scarcity and urgency to say, hey, buy this right now before someone else does. And so I think you know there’s that underlying culture of competition where people want to buy it before somebody else does and they want to buy it before it goes away. There’s also the gamification, like I always had a hard time looking at websites in China because it was like it was just too much. It was, you know, shining lights and spinning wheels and games and this and that, and it was just like overwhelming to my brain I couldn’t do it.
Kara:
But I think that the difference between that and the US we’ve never felt that type of scarcity here. We know that we have an abundance in the US, whether it’s how we manage our resources, how we consume resources. We have all this selection to choose from. We almost are paralyzed by choices, and so if you’re on a live stream, live shopping, you maybe think, hey, I want to buy this thing, but I know that there’s 10 to 15 other options out there that I could look at and I need to research and make sure I’m buying the right one. So I think that’s really just from my living in China and studying Chinese I speak Mandarin you know that’s really the underlying cultural difference that I see. Now, to be fair, QVC did this really well with live shopping, but they were also kind of selling to a captive audience. You know people who are just sitting home and they would just watch it for hours. There wasn’t so much the urgency of it, it was hey, I’m going to talk to you about this beautiful diamond bracelet for 35 minutes because you have nothing else to do. But QVC has really struggled to translate that to TikTok, because they’re just translating their existing strategy. They’re not adjusting it for TikTok and not making it kind of what that platform is meant for.
Kevin King:
Which one of them is it QVC or HSN or Home Shopping Network HSN? That just actually basically is de-emphasizing all the old school cable network TV stuff and actually doubling down on live shopping.
Kara:
I believe it’s QVC, but they’re still struggling to get traction on TikTok because they’re not truly creating a TikTok strategy. They’re trying to make TikTok into another distribution channel.
Kevin King:
So what do you think is going to happen? Do you think it’ll ever start to gain some steam in the United States, or do you think it’s just going to just kind of putter along?
Kara:
I think it’ll possibly putter along. There’s a couple different ways this will go. I have a feeling that if TikTok starts to be a place where there’s a lot of products just being pushed, I think it’s going to lose its value in a way to customers and then I think that TikTok’s gonna start deprioritizing things that are really about product. I think that there’s a chance now with Gen Z to get into live shopping, but it just needs to be maybe done a different way. Instead of this urgency of like buy this product now it’s on sale, it needs to be more educational about like here’s one product, here are the other options that you have. This is how we went through and found this product to buy. Here are similar products like it. This is how it’s different. So I think if there’s an opportunity to inform the customer and get them that understand their customer research journey, how many things they look at and kind of put that into what the buying, the live shopping is, I think that’s a way I would watch that. If someone could do the research I normally do, you know, and put it all together and then be like and that’s why this is an option, you know, an awesome option. Here are some other options too. I think that’s a way it could, but it’s just like you need to understand the US customer’s buying journey, not try to take again, take a model that did well in another culture and just copy and paste it here, which is what’s been done so far.
Kevin King:
Without the blinking lights.
Kara:
Maybe a little less blinking lights, you know, but it’s funny because I was reading about like this there’s all these new apps that are coming up, buying directly from China with the Terra stuff, and one of them is DHgate and it’s got like games and you can spin wheels and stuff, and at first I was like God who is using this? But funnily enough, a lot of boomers and like older, older generations are enjoying edge NX and boomers are enjoying, you know, doing the games and doing this stuff in the app, which is not what you’d necessarily think. So I think it’s also like important that brands don’t assume who their customers are and what they’re going to be doing, because you might be really surprised if you actually dig into what’s really happening on the platforms.
Kevin King:
I find it interesting that DHgate has jumped in with this app. DHgate’s been around a long time. They’re very well known for counterfeit products. That’s what you know. When I the first, I didn’t realize this. But when I started selling 3P on Amazon back in 2015, I want before I launched my own brands, I wanted to. I’d been selling online for 20 years before that, but I was doing the FBA model on Amazon and I wanted to just see what’s it like, shipping stuff in and how does the process work and everything. I bought some eyelash serum off of a DHgate that turned out to be counterfeit stuff.
Kara:
Oh, I’d be terrified to put anything from there on my body.
Kevin King:
Yeah, and I ended up putting it. I didn’t know back then. I didn’t know who DHgate was, I didn’t know, and I ended up putting it up and then getting all these complaints and stuff. But yeah, DHgate’s, there’s a ton of counterfeit stuff on DHgate. So it’s just kind of funny that now they’re getting all this buzz. Like there’s this hot new, cool little thing. And they’ve been around a long time. People knew the history. They might think twice about it.
Kara:
Yeah. Well, I didn’t even know about it, but just looking at the site I’m like I’m pretty sure half these things will poison me.
Kevin King:
Yeah, I will not trust anything.
Kara:
But is it worth getting one of these bog bags. No, I did not. Well, and also I was going to, I was going to buy. So I was looking at some like I was going to do as a test to like do it for a LinkedIn content, be like. This is my experience with it. But I was looking at these like bog bags and stuff, and you can buy a bog bag. That’s normally like what 50 bucks for like $7. But then I got all the way and then the shipping was like twice as expensive as the products and I’m like I should have probably predicted that, but I still don’t like it. So I ended up not buying it because I’m like why would I? I’m not saving any money now and I could have just bought from the legitimate brand you know.
Kevin King:
You have Meta and YouTube. Both are supposedly in development of TikTok shop clones right now as well. I mean Meta’s got Marketplace, which is huge. A lot of people don’t realize how big Facebook Marketplace actually is. It’s a huge marketplace. But they’re actually developing their version of TikTok shop as well. Part of that’s just to compete and part of that’s in case something happens with TikTok and it goes away. I think they want to be ready to step in, but what do you think they, do you think that TikTok has got such a big lead that anybody else can have trouble coming up on you? You look at, like you know, X was around and whether you like it or not, or like Elon or not, but then Facebook announced Threads and Threads had this big boom at the beginning of it. It just hasn’t taken off. Do you think another platform is ripe for coming in or do you think we’re kind of at the point where there’s winners already?
Kara:
I think there’s always room for disruption and I think social commerce is struggling in a way. Like you talk about all these big booms like oh, this brand’s doing 80K going from 5K on TikTok shop, but really TikTok shop is struggling. Like it’s not doing what it was supposed to do. It’s supposedly their leadership.
Kevin King:
It’s supposed to be in billion dollars last year in total sales. It’s got all this buzz but that’s not even a. That’s not even a.
Kara:
It’s like a rounding error for Amazon. I mean, if you think about Amazon’s consumables category is a Fortune 100 size company. So when you look at the volume it’s like I don’t even think TikTok shops, not even where I’d be worrying. I think TikTok, from a engagement platform, is strong because it had a differentiating factor when it started. The whole thing was you took what six to 10 seconds or 10 to 15 seconds of a song and you’d like make up dances and do stuff.
Kevin King:
It’s called Musically.
Kara:
Yeah, and I think, and I think that there’s I mean, everything’s always right for disruption, but I think that there’s a chance to have a new platform come up, especially if TikTok starts to get more commercial. I think that Meta now is going to have its own problems if it has to break up or, you know, get you know with the antitrust lawsuits and settlements. But I think the place I would be focusing on that I know that at least Bezos is is the shopping integration into ChatGPT and perplexity. So shopping integration into these AI models, because it’s starting to be a place where people go to search for product, because they can research products, they can have a conversation and kind of what I said about hey, if live shopping could actually give you all the research, that’s what these AI models do. And you know Bezos is an investor in perplexity, I believe, and now perplexity is going to have a shopping function. ChatGPT just announced being integrated with Shopify. So I don’t know if it’s necessarily going to be live shopping or social shopping. I think generative engine SEO or generative engine optimization and how brands show up there, which is directly influenced by the context of how they’re showing up in the non-Amazon market, right, so, like, what PR are you doing? What social are you doing? Your blog posts, all the stuff out there, because AI sources from content that exists. I think that’s an area.
Kevin King:
Yeah, there’s a whole new area called AEO. Instead of SEO, it’s AEO.
Kara:
GEO is what I call it, but yeah, everyone has a different name for it, right?
Kevin King:
Yeah, AIO or AEO.
Kara:
I know.
Kevin King:
That’s huge. I’ve been trying to emphasize that in my newsletter and I think a lot of people are just ignoring it right now, but—
Kara:
It’s another thing to think about, and it’s just they’re so oversaturated and it’s also hard to know how many people are searching. But now this integrated I think this could be a topic in itself. Now the integration of shopping into these AILMs makes it a real thing, because it’s sourcing I mean ChatGPT and those guys. I mean it’s not coming up with new and revolutionary ideas, it’s only sourcing from what it finds already out there in the webiverse. So if your brand is not talked about, either in social content or blogs or anything else, it’s not going to show up. And not only that, it looks for specific phrases. So if a customer is searching for the best skincare products for anti-aging, it’s going to look for and this is like I’ve really dug into the way it works it’s going to look for products that are associated with that exact phrase.
Kara:
And so in order for brands to tap into that, they have to understand, really get closer to their customer, understand what they’re searching for and then make sure that whatever phrase they think is going to come up most often is featured in amongst or next to their brand name wherever they’re putting out content. And so I think the really smart brands are going to use this time to get very close to their customer, starting with social, starting with social. You know, social listening, engagement on social, because, as you said, we’re in an area that’s ripe for disruption. Whether you are a large enterprise brand, something like a Procter Gamble brand or something like that, or you’re a scrappy seller that’s trying to outpace others, there’s a big risk if you’re not close to your customer, because I think some of these smaller sellers have immense opportunity to move so much faster than these entrenched enterprise brands, even with their big checkbooks for marketing spend.
Kevin King:
Yeah, and the beauty about AI is just what you said earlier. It’s like if you had someone on social media that was doing all the research for you in the way that you do your research and could say this is the best one to buy. That’s what AI is.
Kara:
Yeah.
Kevin King:
I mean, AI with agents is that’s exactly what that is. You can tell it. It has the world’s knowledge, like you just said, out there. So it’s your job as a brand to make sure that exactly what you said the phrases and the terminology and that you’re out there so they can pick it up. And then there’s ways to optimize on that. But the ways to optimize is to know exactly what your people are looking for and really know your avatar, and to know your brand position, your brand positioning.
Kara:
And getting into niche. Yeah, it’s not just brand people who are looking for like skincare products. Now it’s down to like people who are looking for skincare products that feature this certain snail goo. You know Korean skincare products that have this snail serum that’s for this particular type of biodynamic whatever. Like it’s not about breadth and putting out one Super Bowl commercial that taps a billion people. It’s about getting into niches and, like I think you’ve said before, niches are riches, right. Getting into these niche areas and then really understand the customers in those niches and what they want.
Kevin King:
What should I be doing If I’m a third-party seller that’s been selling for like the last five years on Amazon? I’m doing okay, I’m doing several million dollars a year. What should I be most concerned about right now? What should I be doing?
Kara:
I’d be most concerned about your PPC costs climbing and not having any type of, if you don’t have any type of brand loyalty. If you’re mainly, you know, pushing on price, then other companies, maybe Chinese companies, who don’t have to deal with, who have a little bit extra room in their margins because they’re manufacturing the products right. So think about tariffs. If you start to raise your prices and you don’t have brand loyalty, you’re going to lose customers. So the first thing I would do would to be start a TikTok account for my brand, get an intern or—
Kevin King:
A personal account or a business account?
Kara:
A personal account to start, but personal account named for the business. You know TikTok’s not super. Unless you get super big, then they’re going to like make you change it over to a business account. But to start, start a personal account with your TikTok I mean excuse me, with your brand information partner, you know, reach out. I’ve got creators that I work with, partner with a creator, work with them on developing a customer engagement strategy. So these are creators that are just like in TikTok all day long, right? So they understand all the niches, understand what customer cohorts you need to be going after, and then have that creator start creating content and then engaging with comments and with other brands on the platform as you, as your brand, start doing that and then start to think about like okay, do I go out and talk to other creators on TikTok? The beauty of creating your own organic content is that creators will reach out to you and say, hey, I would love to do a partnership with you, versus going out and trying to pay top dollar to compete literally with, like Unilever, who’s going out and spending 50% of their budget on influencers.
Kara:
Influencer marketing is going to go the same way as PPC in terms of costs, because now everyone’s like oh, influencer, so I would just literally start with posting once a day. If you can make it five days a week, that’s ideal and just start being consistent and see what your feedback is. You’re not going to see a lot to start, but if you have a good creator you’re partnering with and you’re tapping into songs and trending things, you might see some good stuff and then just start to monitor it. Right, there’s various social listening tools that you can see who’s engaging. Look at what your competitors are doing on TikTok. Or look at like trend, like look at, so, say, if you’re a skincare for anti-aging right, or like a red light therapy device, whatever it is. Search for that on TikTok and see, like, what are the trending conversations, what are people talking about, what are other influencers talking about? Go and comment on those things as you yourself as a brand. But it’s really just starting. It’s kind of like you know, if you were going to go tell someone to start selling on Amazon, you probably would say you just need to start. You just need to start and be consistent and then you’ll build from there.
Kevin King:
You know Reddit’s another place, that a lot of goldmine that a lot of people don’t pay attention to. On social and diving deep, there’s tools out there that will mine all the comments and sentiment on Reddit and a lot of that stuff applies.
Kara:
Yeah, you can even use ChatGPT.
Kevin King:
Yeah, exactly, a lot of that stuff applies across different social media channels too, so you can get a lot of ideas and there’s tools that will mine that stuff and then translate that over. What do you think is going to happen with TikTok? What do you think? Do you think one of the big US companies is going to end up owning a piece of it and the algorithm changes because the Chinese say they won’t give the algorithm, or do you think it’s just going to keep going as is or go away? What’s your opinion of what’s going to happen?
Kara:
I mean, if I was a betting person, I’d probably place my bet on. You know, Trump has 70 million followers on TikTok or some ridiculous number like that, so he has a vested interest in keeping that alive. I think that the Chinese won’t sell the algorithm. I think they’ll sell the product or the platform to Oracle or someone who’s not necessarily a direct competitor, and then they’ll come up with another one. You know they’ll come up with something else that becomes the next cool thing. You know, because they know that this gives them such competitive advantage. You know they’re not going to give that IP away, and so I think there’ll be some kind of a deal, but I don’t think TikTok is going to be. I don’t think it will happen immediately and I think it’s still like a legitimate thing, right, but brands need to think about this as, like, TikTok right now is your tool, but really social is your strategy. It’s not like if TikTok goes away, this all stops being real. You have to find the thing that your customers are on and engaging with, whether it’s TikTok or Reddit or Meta. I think that’s the tool, is agnostic to a tool yeah, exactly, or Blue Sky eventually, with all the rebels, but the social listening is the tool. It can’t be about the product anymore. You have to get back to talking to your customers, regardless of where that is.
Kevin King:
So how does the branding fit into this what we started? How does the branding fit into the social play?
Kara:
I mean social is everything for branding. You’re building a brand on social. You’re entertaining, you’re engaging, you’re getting like look at Scrub Daddy right, that is the most entertaining sponge I’ve ever seen, and people who have see it and engage with it have an affinity for it. And so you’re building your brand by building that customer sentiment for it. Because what is a brand? A brand is not your logo and your font. A brand is how customers see you and whether or not customers value you. That’s why Poppy is such a valuable brand. It’s because people trust it. People see it as value added to their lives. Otherwise, it’s just a can of soda that has probiotics, I guess.
Kevin King:
Yeah, it’s kind of funny, you see that during this tariff wars there’s some stuff that went viral out of China on TikTok about some of the big brands that it was a Birkin bag. Like this Birkin bag is $35,000 and we’re the factory that makes it. It only costs $1,400. So then a lot of people are putting in the comments yeah, we’re getting ripped off, we’re getting stolen, all you’re buying is a name and a logo. I was like yep, that’s exactly right, that’s exactly what you’re buying. That’s called a brand.
Kara:
The funny thing is is that I saw that and I thought if I had the money would I still buy a Birkin bag?
Kevin King:
I would yes.
Kara:
You would.
Kevin King:
It’s a status thing, it is, I would still buy a Birkin bag. Now your people that would never buy a Birkin bag might buy the cheap imitation, just so that they but it doesn’t say Birkin on it, it’s just. It’s the same thing that happened in Walmart. Walmart was selling some sort of bag.
Kara:
Oh the drip. Yeah, yeah, Want to be Birken.
Kevin King:
There’s people that go buy, but there’s people want to identify with that brand. They want to be walking down the street with that logo of Louis Vuitton the LV, you know, on the on the side of the purse or or whatever. Because it’s a statement about them and it’s an association about them. And people buy brands not only because of an affinity, because of a way it makes them feel, or that feels, like they’ve made it, or that they’ve arrived or that or something, and that’s also part of branding. It’s not just an affinity but it’s an arrival. I mean you look at Apple when the new iPhone, it’s not so much as much anymore, but in the early days of the iPhone, the lines out the door, people camping out to get the new iPhone when it would come out. I mean that’s massive brand affinity.
Kara:
Well, and if you think about what it, it’s because the customers not only ascribe a perceived value to it but, to your point, about affinity. If a company wants to be more than just a product that gets sold on Amazon, then they need to become a brand. So, you look at, and if they want to survive long-term, they want this thing to be something that lasts. They need to build a brand. Look at Chanel, Chanel has been around and just a core brand for over 70 years. You still look and want to buy a Chanel jacket, a huge Chanel jacket for $5,000. So that is because, to your point, it was a lifestyle, it was a meaning. There was meaning ascribed to it. If you wore a Chanel jacket, you felt different. And now not saying necessarily that if I use a scrub daddy sponge, I feel different, but when I look at a scrub daddy sponge and I use it, I smile because I think of the funny stuff that they’ve posted and how they make me laugh. So I think it’s like you want to think about how you want to make your customer feel with your product and that emotion is what is going to keep you in their minds as a share of their wallets lasting beyond the next holiday sales cycle.
Kevin King:
Another thing that really drives home the lesson of branding is I went through a divorce a couple of years ago and I ended up with a bunch of jewelry and the engagement ring. I went to sell it. I paid $14,000 for this engagement ring and there’s no branding or anything on it, it’s just a nice stone. I went to sell it and I used one of these top sites out of New York that auctions it off to jewelers and stuff and I got like $1,200 for it.
Kara:
Because it didn’t come in the Tiffany box.
Kevin King:
Exactly. And then there’s some other jewelry that I ended up having that was left behind. That was Versace bracelet or it was a Louis Vuitton watch or whatever, and this bracelet, I think the receipt was 2,600 bucks, I think, for this one not bracelet, a necklace, sorry, a necklace and I put it on the real, real and I got like 1,900 bucks for it. Um, you know, on a used as a as a used item, um, which held which much, much more closer to holding its brand as a used item without the original box than a much more expensive unbranded thing. That’s just an illustration of the value of that brand.
Kara:
Yeah, I mean you can buy a $15,000 Tiffany ring with like a half a carat diamond and like decent sterling silver for the same amount as like maybe a much larger carat diamond that’s unbranded. Yeah, it’s because you’re getting it in the box and you have that experience of owning something from Tiffany’s.
Kevin King:
And I think one other quick point I think on branding is that it’s going to become more and more important as community and especially in the AI world, and I think a lot of brands and a lot of, especially e-commerce and Amazon third-party brand and first-party brands need to be doubling down on developing community, and one of the things and experiential things just like you said, the experience of the Tiffany box I think those are things that’s going to set you apart and can really is going to be very much desired in a world of AI and automation and everything else that’s happening. And I think that’s where a lot of people are missing too. When it comes to having that community I mean, with my BDSS events that I do I think I’m one of the only ones that doesn’t have a paid membership. You know, there’s, there’s sites, there’s companies out there that you join and pay 5,000, $10,000 a year and there’s a little community as part of it. But when you come to a BDSS, like the one I just did in Iceland, you automatically add it to a WhatsApp group. It’s just a simple little WhatsApp group and you have to have come to one. That WhatsApp group has persevered for six years and it’s extremely active and it’s extremely a community-based thing. And then I have people that have never been to one of my events that come and they’re like holy cow. This community here because I create its branding. There’s experience to our events. It’s not just go to another conference like everybody else. There’s a whole experience element to it and it’s totally different. And I think that’s where a lot of people need to be doubling down on when it comes to their e-commerce is how can you be completely different, no matter how generic your product may be?
Kara:
Yeah, and I mean that community. It’s thinking about it. It’s your long-term. You’re building a higher lifetime value of those customers. Probably your average community member invests in three more events than a regular one, right? So the lifetime value of one of our community members is exponentially higher than someone who’s not in your community. And it’s a similar idea to what brands you think about, and so I think one of the most valuable roles that a brand can hire for now, whether it’s a contractor or full-time, is a community engagement manager and strategist. Someone whose job, as part of social and otherwise, is to go out and engage with customers, because if customers are commenting on your posts, you have to engage with them. You have to go and engage with other brands and start to build that community.
Kevin King:
Just one quick note on that, though, that you do need someone to help get that going and kind of oversee it, but there’s a difference, I just want to explain, between audience and community. A lot of people have audiences and you might be able to go out. This community manager that you’re just saying might be able to go out and create audiences or engage, but they have to be part of it. In my opinion, you don’t have a community until you can be completely removed from it and then it’s going on its own. For example, my WhatsApp group. If I never posted anything in there, the thing still goes because they’re talking to each other and they’re sustaining it. If I die tomorrow, the thing will still go on until WhatsApp shuts the account or someone shuts the account. That’s a community, and otherwise you just have an audience, and I think there’s a big distinction there that needs to be made, and you might need someone, like you said, a community engagement person that just gets it going, but at some point they need to just be sitting up on top and not even playing, and so other people are doing the answering back and forth and the correcting, and they only step in when absolutely necessary.
Kara:
That’s such a good point, and there’s so few brands that actually build that Like. I think of Crocs. They’ve done such a fun job reinventing that brand and the only thing that’s missing is having a community where I can go and post my like awkward Croc photos to others in the community and like engage with each other. I think you know the gaming industry whether it’s Dungeons and Dragons or you know video games. They do a really good job of building communities, but regular consumer products not so much, and I know there’s privacy stuff around it. But that is something I think is a is a big opportunity for sure.
Kevin King:
Well, cool, I think we could keep talking for a while, but I know you got to run.
Kara:
I know. Yeah, I gotta go do some work.
Kevin King:
We’re having too much fun here.
Kara:
I know, talking about branding.
Kevin King:
I know this is awesome. Well, if people want to know more about you or reach out or get some help on branding or on 1P or 3P stuff or whatever it is, you may do what’s the best way to do that?
Kara:
Yeah, definitely reach out on LinkedIn, so that’s where I spend most of my time. So, Kara Babb, on LinkedIn, k-a-r-a-b-a-b-b. And yeah, you know, if you want to talk to someone about Amazon growing Amazon branding, 1P, 3P, you know I’m here to help.
Kevin King:
Awesome. Well, I really appreciate you coming on today. This has been fun.
Kara:
Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for having me. Great talk.
Kevin King:
I totally agree with Kara that as e-commerce sellers in the past, we’ve been mostly focused on selling products, not actually building brands. And now is the time that you’ve really got to start doubling down on building a brand. And as our discussion pointed out today, there’s several different ways to do that and some of the greatest tools we can compete against some of the biggest, most established brands in the world at a fraction of the cost now exist. So I encourage everybody to go out and maybe re-listen to this episode and implement some of what we talked about. We’ll be back again next week with another awesome episode with Andrew Bell. Andrew and I are gonna be talking about the Rufus algorithm, the Cosmo algorithm, some of how AI is affecting search and what you need to be doing, a little bit of what Kara and I touched on, but we’re gonna go a little bit deeper on I think you’re going to really enjoy that. So make sure you tune in again next Thursday for that episode. In the meantime, remember a brand is how you make somebody feel when they have your product. It’s not about the logo or the letterhead or the font or anything like that. It’s how you make them feel. See you again next week.
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