Amazon FAQs: Ask The Experts Panel

Experts from eComEngine and Marknology hosted a live webinar to answer your Amazon FAQs.

They addressed questions about advertising, product listings, creating variations, packaging, managing feedback and reviews, and launching a brand. Whether you are new to selling on Amazon, or you're already a top seller, you are sure to learn something new in this webinar.

If you're looking to elevate your eCommerce game, watch this webinar and you'll get a wealth of information about selling on Amazon.

Meet the Experts:

Andrew Morgans is the founder of Marknology, a full-service agency that serves as an Amazon brand accelerator. Andrew and his team have over 177 Amazon seller clients and are responsible for over $200 million in sales on Amazon alone. Marknology provides photography, advertising, optimization, account management, and other services.

Louis Mizzell is the Product Manager for eComEngine's feedback and review tool, FeedbackFive. Louis understands Amazon communication guidelines and policies. He works with sellers and brands to provide the tools they need to improve their feedback and reviews on Amazon.

You can watch the webinar above or check out the show notes below for the recap and a full transcript.

Webinar Recap

To answer your burning questions about everything from product listings and advertising to packaging and product reviews, we brought in the experts - Andrew Morgans from Marknology and Louis Mizzell of eComEngine - for a massively informative Amazon FAQ webinar. Our world has changed so much over the past year, so you’ll gain a lot of insight from this webinar whether you’re already a top seller or just starting out. Here’s a quick look at a few highlights!

Should You Start an Amazon Business in 2021?

With everything that has happened due to the pandemic, is it still a good idea to start an Amazon FBA business in 2021? As Morgans explained, there is no definitive, clear-cut answer. In fact, it depends on a number of factors which he went on to explain.

He also mentioned that it’s important to look at both FBA and FBM models as viable options. You have to be flexible to be successful. Overall, though, Morgans does encourage sellers to take the risk: “It’s not as easy as it was 10 years ago, but it’s still a great idea!”

How Can I Increase Sales on Amazon?

You’re already in the game and selling on Amazon, but need advice for how to take it to the next level. Morgans noted that there are many things you can do to boost sales and brand recognition. “You could focus on off-Amazon efforts,” he suggested. Look at things like social media, and influencers.

Beyond that, are you effectively using email marketing and tools such as FeedbackFive? Are you analyzing keywords? Do you have a professional involved in your PPC and advertising? These are all important questions to ask yourself. Morgans also offered another important way to stand out: “Focus on your branding. Make your product stand out. Tell your story. That builds trust.”

Should New Businesses Trademark Their Brand?

Over the years, trademarking your brand has become easier. Amazon even offers ways to get a trademark expedited. Having launched many brands without a trademark in the past, Morgans said that he prefers to register a trademark right away in order to access the benefits extended to trademarked businesses.

Having a trademark grants you access to Brand Registry which allows you to use headline ads, A+ Content, and add video, among other perks. “If you can afford it and you have an intentional strategy for growing your business, you should do it as soon as possible — but it’s not necessary to get started,” Morgans said.

How Often Should I Review and Optimize My Product Listings?

Your optimization strategy will depend on the number of products you sell. If you’ve updated some product listings but others need your attention, you should prioritize optimizing all of them before starting to review, advised Morgans.

If you only sell one product or have already optimized everything, you shouldn’t need to review your product listings more than every few months. Of course, it also depends on how well you started. As Morgans said, “if you started with just one photo or basic bullet points, you’ll need to review more often.” If you worked with an agency that helped you launch with strong product listings, you can wait a little bit longer.

What is the Best Way to Get Reviews on Amazon?

Sometimes the most obvious answer to a question is the best one. As Mizzell explained, “The best way to get reviews is to ask for reviews. It sounds simple, but it works!” Mizzell warned that, when asking for reviews, “You need to be doing it in a way that is compliant with Amazon’s Community Guidelines and Communication Guidelines.”

One option is to use the Request a Review button in Seller Central. A benefit is that you’ll know the message will be compliant. The drawback is that this is a manual process, so you’ll need to do this for every order. The good news is that this same message can be sent through tools such as FeedbackFive, which will automate the process and offer additional helpful features.

Watch the Amazon FAQs Webinar

This Amazon FAQs webinar is truly jam-packed with answers to additional important questions including:

How can I win the Buy Box?
What tips do you have for expanding into the EU marketplace?
How do you suggest measuring the competition?
How can I utilize Amazon Attribution?

If you’re thinking about selling on Amazon in 2021 and beyond, you will not want to miss the insight and guidance offered by these resourceful experts!

Recommended Resources From This Webinar

Article: Communication Guidelines for Amazon Buyer-Seller Messages
Guide: Winning the Buy Box
Checklist: Amazon A+ Content: Checklist for Success

Colleen: Thank you, everybody, for joining us today for our webinar on Asking The Experts, everything and anything you wanted to know about selling on Amazon. So we're super excited for you to be here with us today. Thank you to everybody who's submitted questions so that we can answer your direct questions. We will also open it up for live questions throughout the webinar. So feel free to put any questions that you have in the chat or in the question and answer section. And we will do our best to try to answer those throughout the webinar. But before we get started answering your questions, I want to introduce our experts.

Colleen: My name is Colleen Quattlebaum. I'm the mark marketing manager at eComEngine, and I will be moderating the questions. And here with us today, we have Andrew Morgans, who is the founder and CEO of Marknology. He joins us from Kansas City, Missouri, where he has built an amazing Amazon agency that has helped many brands and products launch on Amazon, as well as other e-commerce sites. And he's helped them with some amazing results. Specifically, he's helped manage over 200 million in sales on Amazon alone. So we're very excited for him to be here today. So go ahead and say, hello, Andrew.

Andrew: Thank you, Colleen. Always the best intros. I appreciate that. I'm just excited to be here and help people get some answers around questions they have in regards to Amazon. So thanks for the opportunity.

Colleen: Great. And next up, we have Louis joining me as well from our eComEngine team. For those of us who don't know about eComEngine, we are the makers of FeedbackFive, which is a feedback and review management tool. And Louis has been the brains behind that tool for many years now. We also have MarketScout, which is a product research tool, and RestockPro, which is an FBA inventory management tool. And so we're excited to have Louis here joining us from Maine. So say hello Louis.

Louis: Yeah, thanks so much, Colleen. I'm very excited to be here and look into some of these questions.

Colleen: Great. So as I mentioned, we invited you to submit questions after you registered for this webinar, we went ahead and categorized those questions as best as we could. So here's the different categories that we've put them in. So we'll try to address them in these orders.

Colleen: We have getting started, a lot of questions about how to get started selling on Amazon or FBA, questions about listings and keywords, product reviews and how to deal with negative reviews, launching a product, selling internationally, winning the Buy Box, advertising, inventory management just lots of, lots of great questions.

Colleen: So we will go ahead and get started diving right into your questions. So let's kick it off with some of the questions that we got about getting started. So, Andrew, I'll start with you.

Andrew: Okay.

Colleen: So is starting an Amazon FBA business still a good idea today in 2021?

Andrew: Well, I'm a long-winded answerer. So I just want to let everyone know I'm in preface with that. I think that it's not just black and white like that. I think it depends on a lot of other factors outside of just yes or no in Amazon FBA business. For one, I have a hard time, even just with the way people refer to the business being just FBA, because to really run a great Amazon business, you should think about FBA and FBM. During the pandemic, all of the FBA sellers that weren't in place where they were selling through Prime, needed to use other channels and like self-fulfillment and things like that. So think about your Amazon as just a business, not just using FBA to do it.

Andrew: It's still a great idea if you have a great product and you have a product that can stand out from just everything that's on Amazon. If you're a brand that maybe has done well offline, brick and mortar, great opportunity on Amazon. It's not as easy as it used to be 10 years ago where you could just source a product through Alibaba, ensure that it was quality, put it online, and do well. So it's harder, I think, a little bit more like a complexity to entry, but it's still a great idea. We're still launching brands all the time, launching products all the time. So I would say yes, it's still a good idea.

Colleen: Okay, good. Thank you. And since it is a good idea, what's the best way to increase sales on Amazon for somebody who is actively selling right now?

Andrew: Well, I think question one and question two, a little bit different because I would assume question two, they're already selling. So they're already in the game a little bit and they're just like, "Well, how do I increase sales?" And I almost always think that there's so many things you can do in e-commerce. You could focus on off Amazon efforts. Things like social media, things like email lists, things like chatbots, things like influencers. Those are ways to increase sales on Amazon. You can think about what do I do exactly on Amazon, which could be, do you have emails plugged in? Are you using FeedbackFive? Are you doing things like that? Are you analyzing your keywords? Do you have a professional involved in your PPC in your advertising? That's a great way to increase sales. So lots of things like that.

Andrew: I think one of the, maybe the intangibles that I would say is focus on your branding. I think that's a way to really, really, really stand out now as we go into more advanced selling on Amazon is, make your product stand out, tell your story, make sure it doesn't just look like a commodity product, but make sure it looks branded, because that builds trust. And so I think building trust in the long term increases sales.

Colleen: Okay, great. And speaking of brands, how do you know when to trademark your brands or do you do that when you first start? What do you recommend there to protect a brand?

Andrew: Well, it's become easier and easier and easier through the years. At least the 10 years I've been on Amazon, it used to be something you had to wait almost a year for if you registered for a trademark. And I think within the last six months, Amazon even has a program where for less than a thousand dollars, you can get a trademark expedited. I've launched tons of brands without the trademark, but as someone that's now been in the space a long time, I want all of those extra levers, I want all those extra options, and having a trademark allows you to get brand registry on Amazon, which allows you to do headline ads in the A+ Pages and add video and all those kinds of things. So if you can afford it, if you've got a real intentional strategy to growing a business, then I think, yes, you should do it as soon as possible, but it's not necessary to get started.

Colleen: Okay, good. And for somebody transitioning from FBM Fulfillment By Merchant to Fulfillment By Amazon, what are some tips that you have to help make that transition as smooth as possible and how does it affect their listings?

Andrew: Okay. So let's start with question two, how will this affect our listings? I've seen and I know people could speak to the data a little bit differently, but on average, seven X, 10 X sales, whenever you get into Prime. And the reason is, FBA is almost more important as a new seller, because think of it like this, you launch a new store, Amazon doesn't trust you, no one trusts you, you don't have reviews yet, you're essentially a new person on the block.

Andrew: And so whenever you go into FBA, for example, you essentially get big brother's trust. You get what Amazon is giving you, their like, "Hey, we trust you because we're the fulfillment, we're handling the returns, we're handling if something gets broken or a customer has an issue." And so whenever you move into FBA, it can really affect your listings in a good way, because it can build that trust quickly, customers see that they get it super fast, that's why they're on Amazon. So you'll see sales really climb. And if you're a new seller, it helps you get the Buy Box immediately.

Andrew: So that can be complicated. I don't want to get into that too much, but FBA can essentially get you right into the Buy Box if you're a seller, versus FBM. Is almost like you have to go through this process of proving yourself with Amazon as a new seller, you have to ship correctly, you have to ship on time, you have to keep your return rate low, and then maybe after a couple months, Amazon's like, "Okay, let's actually show these to customers." So using FBA almost always increases sales or really can catapult sales and getting more views by customers, to number one, how do you make that transition as smoothly as possible?

Andrew: Let's say you've been using FBM because you were nervous to get into FBA or you just want to make sure you had stock for your website and for Amazon all in the same place and you're ready to make that move into FBA, what I would suggest is that you create a separate SKU for every ASIN. So you have an ASIN, which is your product on Amazon and you might, let's just say you call it 001-FBM. And that's your FBM SKU, and you've been selling on that. We'll create a second one. Just go to, Add a Product, choose that same ASIN for that product. But this time when it says SKU, maybe do 001-FBA. And on this time we're going to send in products to Amazon's fulfillment center through this new SKU.

Andrew: So it's the same product, one's an FBM, one's an FBA. The FBA one won't be in stock. And then as you send it in, it might take a week, might take two weeks. Maybe you're sending in five, maybe you're sending in a hundred, as they get checked in, you can either back off that FBM stock now that these are in stock, or you can leave it in stock, so they'll run parallel. The FBA will almost always have the Buy Box, and then your FBM becomes a backup to the FBA. If FBA ever runs out, then FBM's in place.

Andrew: So that's a little bit of an advanced strategy, but I think it's a great way to transition because instead of coming out of stock, back into stock and things like that, essentially, you're always in stock in FBM and you've now created a second SKU that's going to be an FBA. So happy to chat with anyone about that offline, if that's a little bit confusing, but I think it's really worthwhile trying to understand and be able to mitigate that loss in sales of transitioning.

Colleen: Okay, great, quite advanced tips there too. All right. So we were talking a little bit about listings, so we have several questions on this topic, but the first one is, how often do you recommend that sellers review and optimize their product listings?

Andrew: Am I taking this one?

Colleen: Sure. Yeah. I guess if you don't mind, we'll stay on.

Andrew: No, I love this one, I just wanted to make sure I was giving everybody an opportunity. Okay. So I think that it depends on how many products you have. That should be a good rule. You shouldn't be reviewing listings that you've already optimized. If you still have some that need your attention, okay? So number one, let's just say you only have one product just to make it easy, I think you should probably go several months before you come back to the data really and be like, "What can I improve?" It depends on, really, how well you start. If you start with just one photo or basic bullet points or you haven't done a bunch of research and you've just got your product up, maybe you're reviewing it more often. If you worked with an agency or a consultant that probably knows how to start you off pretty good, then you can wait a little bit longer.

Andrew: And what you're really trying to do is build data with your advertising once you've launched the product, and the advertising will give you a lot of feedback in regards to what keywords are working, what keywords aren't working. It won't tell you things about the photos, it won't tell you things about the A+ pages, those are in your own way of finding how to A/B test or figure out what works. But as far as the keywords and the advertising, I would say, you're thinking about looking at it every couple of months and giving it a refresh or at least a re-look on how can we make this better?

Colleen: Okay. Thank you. And this is a specific question from someone who has given, I guess, a hypothetical situation, but if you have an existing store that has not been properly set up, so you have a poor listing, terrible branding, incorrect price, are you allowed to create a new store and sell the same products, but with better branding and listing?

Andrew: I would say no. In certain circumstances, yes, if you're a completely separate company or you want to completely create a different LLC with different UPCs and things like that, you can, but really what you should get is a trademark, register for brand registry, attach your listings to that brand registry. What you do by that is just, once you get brand registry, it allows you to assign certain ASINs to that trademark work. And then once you're there, you should be able to improve the existing listings. And so that's more recommended than trying to create duplication or trying to gamify Amazon system, so to speak, that can really get you in trouble down the road. So I would just say put in the hard work, get that trademark and just improve the listings you already have.

Colleen: Okay. Good. And then this last one, what are some tips that you have to improve a listing? Are there any small or overlooked things that you can recommend to help somebody get up the rankings?

Andrew: Yeah. So a couple of simple tips, I'll give you a tip on the listing but also on the advertising. On the advertising, you can advertise on exact keyword words in an ad group that are also in your listing. Let's say you're selling an elephant stuffed toy or a stuffed animal. And you have elephant stuffed animal in your title or in your bullet points. You can also advertise on that with the exact keyword match and that will increase your listings' ranking for those keywords. And I think that's a big opportunity that a lot of sellers miss by really focusing on what keywords they want, instead of just all of the keywords. And then another tip would be the photos. I think the photos is a really big opportunity. They can almost always get better.

Andrew: So instead of just having lifestyle photos or four different pictures of the same product from a different angle, think about as a customer, what you would like to see, think about how you can tie in your bullet points to the images or to create a graphic of before and after, or just really thinking about photos. I think a lot of people don't think of themselves as artistic when they're Amazon sellers. And so they're just trying to do the bare minimum when it comes to the artistic things or the storytelling things. But if you don't know it or you don't have confidence, get someone that can help you find a good listing that you think looks amazing, and then try to emulate what that listing is doing with your own listing. I think those are a couple things that can really help you increase your ranking.

Colleen: Yeah. And depending on the product, using infographics and text overlaid on the images can be really, really helpful as well.

Andrew: Exactly.

Colleen: Great. And so when it comes to your title for your listing, do you recommend that they have a short, concise title or it's jam-packed with a bunch of keywords?

Andrew: I think you need to see what results you get. I think some people are used to seeing the big title. It's a pros and cons. In the shorter title, it looks better on mobile, people feel like it's more an American product when it's a shorter title, I would say that, versus coming from an overseas seller, when it's like jam-packed with keywords, that's more of one of their strategies. So I do feel like that's a subconscious thing with trust and just being like, "Are they just trying to get everyone here, or is this just a product they're selling?" But at the same time, sometimes you need that extra space for keywords. So if you can have a shorter title, and if you can get your keywords that you need in a shorter title, I think that's the better way to go. But also, I guess there's a use case for either, and just really depends on what's working for you. Try both.

Colleen: Okay. Good. And Platinum Keywords, that's only available to Platinum sellers, correct? Not the individual product sellers?

Andrew: Correct. So that's something that confuse me right at the beginning too, to whoever wrote that question. You have to be almost brought into Amazon as specific Platinum seller. And then whenever you get that, you're able to use these Platinum Keywords. So it's basically a boys' club that most of us don't have access to. So just ignore those, act like they don't exist or they'll stress you out, but yeah, you're right, Colleen.

Colleen: All right. And then as far as keywords go, can you use your brand name effectively as a keyword? So this person said that occasionally they'll search using product keywords not a brand name, but the brand name appears as a suggested term.

Andrew: Yeah. So this is actually a pretty good question as well. I've seen both. A lot of times, if I have a brand that's well known, meaning, they have off Amazon efforts, they have top of funnel brand awareness, then using the brand name can be beneficial because people see it and people trust it, and so people want to buy it. But if you're launching a product that no one knows who your brand is, don't use Amazon to build your top of funnel brand awareness, right? So use that space just to sell your product and what it has, and then also it seems like between the different categories, like Amazon has gone back and forth on what they do. And so it's not just a straightforward answer as well. Sometimes you won't include the brand name and Amazon will just automatically put that at the beginning and other times they won't.

Andrew: And you also have sellers doing all types of things where they're putting their name in the backend keywords or they're advertising on them or different things. So there's not just like a standard for that, but I would just say, if you are investing in off Amazon brand top of funnel awareness, then yeah, include that brand name. If you're not, then maybe you approach that a year down the road once you've got some sales and people start to know your brand and then you come back there, because it's valuable, valuable real estate in your title, and if no one knows your brand name, and it's the first thing that they see in the search results on a mobile device that might be this big, and all they see is your brand name that they don't care about, is that the best opportunity? Right? So you just have to take into account your own situation.

Colleen: We're going to hit you up with one more question, Andrew, and then we're going to put Louis in the hot seat. So this question comes from actually a seller here in Richmond, Virginia, and her product description has the bullet point that says protects from germs, but the word germs is triggering Amazon to believe it's pesticide and keeps taking her product down. So where can she edit or find that edit for the additional details that are at the bottom part of the description?

Andrew: Yeah. So this can be tricky, especially when you make a claim that they can't necessarily validate or not. I've ran into these problems all the time, because it seems a little bit of a gray area versus a black and white area. And also the pesticide issue is a huge Amazon issue across every brand I've ever sold in the last year. So the pesticide issue is one you have to go through this course. I don't know if everyone that's listening knows about that, but you get a listing flag with pesticide issue and you have to go through this pesticide course for every single listing. So my team has taken way more pesticide courses than they should ever have to, but that is just a glitch almost in the Amazon system that is flagging items for that.

Andrew: But the way that you go through that as you go through the course there, if you're trying to remove this part from your listing that you can't find, whenever you're just trying to edit it, you may need to do a hard feed update with an Excel file, or a CSV update where you get a lot more columns than you just get whenever you click on Edit a Product. Whenever you just click on Edit a Product, you might get 75% of the fields that you can use. If you use a hard template, which you can go to. If you go to Upload a Product, you can go to Download a Feed File and it might be something you're not comfortable with because it's not super user friendly, but that's where you're going to be able to find some of these fields, these additional fields or these things that are in there. You may even to do a delete and then a re-upload without that information in there with that file and see what happens.

Andrew: So it's hard to explain right here, exactly how to do all of that, but you really need to be outside of Seller Central editing platform and then do a CSV file. It's more like a hard refresh, like restarting your computer kind of thing.

Colleen: Okay. All right. Good tip. All right. So, Louis, we'll turn it over to you for a few questions that we received regarding product reviews. So if you have more than one listing can reviews for all product listings be collated in one place?

Louis: Yeah. So this is a good question. Seller Central is awesome, it has so many different reports and great ways for a seller to look at their data, but unfortunately, there's no report or UI for pulling together all of your product reviews, unlike the Feedback Manager in Seller Central or various reports, there's no one place to pull together all of your reviews. You do get some advantages being brand registered. You can see, I think, last 30 days reviews, so that can be helpful, but really your options for managing and analyzing all of your reviews are either to just go into Amazon, go into all your listings, and try to compile all those into one big Excel workbook, or you can use a third-party application like FeedbackFive, to monitor your reviews and collect all of them in one place.

Louis: So FeedbackFive has a feature product review management, allows you to add your ASINs and we'll immediately start pulling those in, will alert you as you get new ones, and provide a nice interface to search, sort, filter, and even download a CSV file so that you can pull all your reviews into a spreadsheet and do any analysis that you want to do on your reviews. And certainly, there are other providers out there that do that as well. I would just say, if you're looking at a third-party application, just make sure that it is an application that's on the Amazon Marketplace App Store.

Colleen: Good. All right. And what is the best way to get reviews on Amazon? And you might be able to piggyback on the next one too, and some best practices. So the best way to get reviews, the best practices to get reviews.

Louis: Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing I would say, the best way to get reviews is to ask for reviews. There's a number of different ways to do this, but for all of your orders, you absolutely should be asking your buyers for reviews. It sounds simple, but it works. This gets you more reviews. The second thing that I would say is that if you're going to be asking for reviews, you absolutely need to make sure that you are doing this in a way that's compliant with Amazon's guidelines. So you want to make sure that you are following the community guidelines on reviews and also the communication guidelines. And I'll touch on just a few of the ways to ask for reviews.

Louis: One is, in Seller Central, there is a Request to Review button. And if you click this button for an order, Amazon will send out one of their messages that asks the buyer for both a product review and a seller feedback. This is a great message, it works, and the best thing about this is that you know it's going to be compliant. The drawback is that, if you're doing it this way with the request to review button in Seller Central is, you have to do this order by order. So if you're selling it scaled then this can be time-consuming.

Louis: The good news is that Amazon has exposed this same message through an API, and so providers like FeedbackFive are able to automate this for you. So with FeedbackFive, you can set up a campaign that will trigger this exact same message coming from Amazon, and you can set up rules around it. You can determine exactly when you want this to go out, at what time of day, and for which ASINs? Maybe you want to exclude a few products from that.

Louis: So this is something I would absolutely recommend that sellers do. And it's a great way to be sure that you're asking for reviews and that it's a way that you can do it that's compliant with Amazon. If you're sending out this Amazon message, you don't have to worry about keeping up with all these changing guidelines and worrying about getting in trouble.

Louis: The one drawback from this message though, is that, it's important to you to control the exact message that comes out and doing it in a way that's consistent with your brand, sending a branded message that is important to you. Then another option is to send a request through buyer-seller messaging. And this is something that you can absolutely do. It is still compliant and services like FeedbackFive can help you do this.

Louis: The one thing with this though is, you want to make sure that you are staying on top of Amazon's policies, and really the biggest thing is, when you ask for review, you have to ask for it in a neutral manner. Do not ask for a positive review, don't even use the word positive, and do not say any if-then statements that could get you in trouble. "If you had a great experience, we would love you to leave a review, if you had any trouble, please contact us." Amazon doesn't want you diverting folks that had a negative experience to contact you and that sort of thing.

Louis: And I would say, one thing to keep in mind is that the way that Amazon is policing a lot of this is in an automated way. They're flagging it with their software. So don't even use words that could possibly get flagged by something automated. Just try to be as neutral as possible.

Louis: And one of the great things about FeedbackFive is, our customer success team is really great at looking at your message and coaching you through how to stay compliant. And just making sure that what you're asking is not going to run you into any trouble with Amazon.

Louis: And a few other things I would mention is, you can also ask for a review with packaging slips. This can absolutely be effective. The one thing I would say there though is still just make sure that you're compliant. I think we've seen certainly in the news lately, some big time sellers and big time brands on Amazon have been taken down and it's through these packaging slips that a lot of bad stuff has been going on. I'm sure if you're ordering stuff on Amazon, you've gotten some packaging slips that maybe will incentivize a positive review, they'll give you a coupon or ask you for a positive review, and it's because you can get away with a lot more if you're printing something in a box, but I would say, steer clear of that, Amazon is more and more aware of that, and I think they're going to be turning their attention towards that.

Louis: So yeah, the thing that I would recommend is, ask for reviews and stay compliant. And the Early Reviewer Program, that's something that was an effective program and is something we used to recommend, unfortunately, that is no longer. I think that went away a couple of months ago. And then if it's right for you, I think the Vine program can be good. That is for brand registered products that are FBA and you have to ... That's more of a launch tactic. If you have less than 30 reviews, that can be good for you. But yeah, that's my thoughts on strategies for reviews and best ways to get them.

Colleen: Yeah. Thank you. And then let's address negative reviews, because reviews are great when you get the good ones, but obviously, it can be really detrimental to get the negative ones. So a couple questions here on negative reviews. Besides reporting abuse, how can a seller respond to a negative product review on Amazon? So as we know that the comment section is no longer there, that was taken away a few months ago as well. So what are the options?

Louis: Yeah. That is a great question. And unfortunately, I don't have a great answer anymore now that as of about December or so, Amazon took away the ability to comment. So there's really not a lot of options for directly responding to a specific review like that. I would recommend going through the questions and seeing if there's a question out there that's similar to what that negative review was about and just be really great about providing good, thoughtful, thorough answers to all of those questions that are out there. Also, see if this negative review gives you an opportunity to update your listing. Maybe your listing didn't set the right expectations with the customer or your images. So take this as an opportunity to improve your listing, look at the questions, but unfortunately, there's just not a great way that you can directly respond to a specific negative review.

Colleen: Okay. And this next question is similar, but again, you can't delete a review, but if there is something that's unfair or unjust, reporting it to Amazon, of course, is an option. But if we've tried reporting it and they've gotten nowhere, where do you recommend they go?

Louis: Yeah. So this particular question they're saying, the customer misused the product and they posted a review, and what they attempted is absolutely the right thing. You want to see if that review is not following Amazon's community guidelines and you want to do everything you can to make the best case for that being a community guideline violation and submit that to Amazon. The thing there is just, I would set expectations that it doesn't always get removed. Sometimes it's a low probability situation. And for this specific case, they're probably going to be out of luck.

Louis: The community guidelines do have a section on whether or not the review is helpful and relevant. So I think that's the route that I would take there, but typically I think the way you could get something removed for that is, if it wasn't about the product at all, or if it was only something about the seller and not about the product, but since this person is giving a review about the product they just didn't use it in the right way. I wouldn't have high hopes for that getting removed by Amazon.

Louis: One person that I would recommend, one of our partners who is absolutely great when it comes to anything with Amazon like this, is Chris McCabe. He runs a business at ecommercechris.com and has a lot of experience taking these issues to Amazon. So that might be a good avenue for something like this, but sometimes it can be difficult to get Amazon to take one down.

Colleen: Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So I know you mentioned divine program about launching a product, that that's of course, an option to help get new reviews when you have a new product, but Andrew, can you share, what are some mistakes to avoid when launching a new product?

Andrew: Yeah, first off, I just want to say, Louis, that was very insightful and right on in all of those ways. I think one of the things I just wanted to piggyback on is, you were talking about, think like, that they have software combining your emails and don't even include verbiage that might get you flagged. And I think that's the problem with so many sellers is that they think that there's a human on the other side, making these decisions and there not. It's software, it's an algorithm, it's automated selling, so think like a software. And if it's looking for certain things in certain flags, try to avoid those. So I think that's a great tip that I just wanted to echo, but onto launching a product, what are the mistakes to avoid when launching a new product? I think that try to avoid the, for lack of a better word, the me too product.

Andrew: Try not to just launch a product that's just like every other product, just because you have a good price on it. Look for something that has a brand story, that has potential behind it. Look for something that has value in product differentiation. I think that's one of the number one things I would say to new sellers, if they're looking to source product and sell is, find something with some product differentiation. Why are you better? Would you buy you versus from the other people, or are you just exactly the same? That's super, super, super important. So avoid that mistake.

Andrew: Another one would be, don't skip on quality control when you're sourcing the product and launching it because Amazon will just rip you apart with reviews if your product is bad. So make sure you're selling a good product when you launch a new product. The other thing would be to inventory. If I had to say, "Hey, here's the 10 commandments of selling on Amazon," I think my first three would be inventory, inventory, inventory. And so that's not to buy 50,000 of this, but just ... As much as there is like, you need to expect the worst and some of the bad things that can happen, you need to expect the best as well. And what happens if you just sell out of everything, that can really put you in a hole in regards to momentum on Amazon and keeping that success that you had going. So, I can talk about mistakes all day. I've been doing this 10 years, so I've ran across all of them, but there's a few, if that's helpful.

Colleen: And that's one of the things you call them Marknology effect, right?

Andrew: Correct.

Colleen: Is, all these customers and products that you've helped launch, the Marknology effect is, all that combined knowledge-

Andrew: Correct.

Colleen: ... that you can put into helping people. So, great. All right. So next question is, in the case of supporting a launch, what tasks would you have scheduled and what tools would you suggest using to evaluate results?

Andrew: Okay. So two great questions, kind of high level. So let's do number one. In the case of supporting a launch, what tasks would you have scheduled? I can go to gambit. A lot of times whenever you're working with a brand, it's like, "What do they have available?" That's what I'm first asking them when we're going through that onboarding, getting to know each other, and talking, it's like, "What do you have available? Do you have email lists? Do you have influencers? Do you have a brand off Amazon? Do you have a strong website? Are you an influencer yourself? What's your budget like?" You're going through all these things to say, "Okay, what's in your toolbox?" And then inside of that toolbox, you're like, "Okay, we've got these tools now available to us how can we use them?"

Andrew: And I think, that's almost always the LaunchPad, is like, if you don't have any of those, it's better to focus on a few than to just try everything. But if you've already got some of those, we can bring those to the game. So things that you've had scheduled. Let's say, we're assuming that your listing looks amazing, you've got photography already great, you've got your keyword research done, you've got your A+ page bill, I just want to assume that that's where we're starting out whenever it says, "What tasks would you have scheduled?" So your product looks amazing, your product is in stock, you're ready to go, you've got to launch.

Andrew: I think you're looking for something like the Vine program. If you're early, you're looking for something to help you get reviews started, you've got advertising campaigns scheduled. So you're set up, you've got some that are going to gather data, you've got some that are already based on the keywords that you already chose. For me, a lot of times I'm using influencers at the beginning. I like to get a few influencers that can buy my product, promote it on their Instagrams or their TikTok or whatever that case might be. I love that approach. Definitely trying to get reviews.

Andrew: A couple of other things that can be is add a coupon, get something that's eye-catching in that way. There's just so many things. That's why I love Amazon versus a lot of the other marketplaces. And why I was just drawn to this years ago was, Amazon is a proactive platform. It's not just, you put the product up and you wait, a lot of times with eBay, it was like, there was a couple of hacks, a couple of tips, but really you put the product up and you just wait. And with Amazon, there's so many things that you can do to be proactive, to push your product. And I love that part.

Andrew: And then the tools for evaluating results, you've got tools like Helium 10, you've got tools like AMZ Tracker, you've got tools like FeedbackFive, that's letting you know how your reviews are doing depending on how you're doing, you've got tools like ... It really runs the gambit. I've almost tried all of them. But you want something that's tracking your keywords that you have in your listing to know if they're improving or not improving, because that's really going to be important for your success, not just on advertising, but these keywords that are in my listing, are we improving in the catalog? Meaning, are they getting closer and closer to page one results? I think that's really important. So you've got that for results.

Andrew: The rest of it, if you know what you're doing, you can find in Seller Central. You're looking at conversion rate, you're looking at sessions to be how many people are getting there and of the people that are getting there, how many of them are converting? So things like that.

Colleen: All right. Thank you. And this next one's very specific. Someone is asking if they can sell homemade food items like sauces or ketchup, I think, that they mentioned that they had, on Amazon US and the UK. Are there rules and restrictions around homemade?

Andrew: Yeah. So let's just say that this is a gray area for the sake of this conversation. And I am definitely not speaking from Amazon's terms of service, I'm going to talk to you guys from an entrepreneur standpoint this time. I would say, yes, but very quickly, you need to have a plan in place to get official. And so that would be my best answer is, whether it's going to be a reviewer, that will be like, "Hey, this isn't certified the way it should be, or eventually someone's going to find you in that way and it's going to set you back and then you're going to have to figure it out." I think it's worthwhile to just find a commercial kitchen or find a manufacturer or a co-packer that can work with you in your recipes to get you the labels that you need and things like that.

Andrew: So I do think that you can start on Amazon without getting kicked off and you can start selling product, but you need to be thinking about how to get legitimate as fast as possible.

Colleen: Right. Great. And of course, I'm sure that there's differences from US to UK and the different markets depending on-

Andrew: Yes ma'am.

Colleen: ... the different associations that manage all that.

Andrew: Yeah. I haven't sold anything homemade food on UK. So I'm not speaking to that. I've sold lots of products on the UK, but most of the homemade or local type of manufacturer type products I've worked with have been on the US.

Colleen: All right. So speaking of selling internationally, we have a few questions on that. So the first one is, someone who has a product brand on Amazon, that's working well in the Spanish market and would like to know what services you have to help launch the product catalog market by market in Europe.

Andrew: Okay. So this is something I am very passionate about, international expansion. I think that through my career, I have leaned into what Amazon is pushing, whether it's brand registry, whether it's video, whether it's attribution and those have always benefited me. I think that's why I'm a front runner in this space, if I can say that, is because I've leaned into what Amazon is pushing instead of going against the grain. And one of the things they're pushing is international expansion. It's really big. Some of the brands that I've had, maybe we're going into a difficult market in the US and trying to get market share, well, we expand to Canada, we expand to the UK and we get great success.

Andrew: I think I've only had one brand in 10 years back off from selling in the UK. And that was when Amazon made a change around having a fulfillment or a business license in that country. And he just wanted to pull back for a while and then they've actually changed those rules. So it's just been going along with the flow of what's there. So I say that to say, really big on international expansion, I think that it's worth every brand considering, specifically if you have a seasonal product, think about Australia and how we're opposite seasons and things like that. It's just a big, big opportunity.

Andrew: My agency is managing in 11 different countries. I don't know if we're the biggest, but we're definitely in a lot of different countries, and have figured that out. For example, in Japan, I worked with a different firm to actually help me get launched with one of my brands in Japan, and then Marknology took over because I just don't understand Japanese.

Andrew: So the UK and Germany and France, Spain, Italy, Netherland, approached them a little bit differently. At first, we went with just English, and then we went with Google Translate, and then we actually have hired a company called YLT Translations that a lot of people in this space know about to help us with localized translation. So it just takes it to the next level and makes your advertising that much better.

Andrew: So as far as what services you have helped launch the product? It's very similar to what you do in the US, you just have to understand that and tax and importing tax and things like that, which is more on the business side than it is the Amazon side, and there's partners like SimplyVAT, there's a ton that can help you. Amazon's actually doing a lot of incentivizing sellers to go to the UK by helping them pay for that first year of VAT or things like that and helping you get set up.

Andrew: So Amazon itself has services, but there's plenty of service providers that I partner with along the way. If I'm taking a brand, I'm going to contact this partner, I contact this partner, I'm going to contact this partner to help me with some of those things that are not something we live and breathe every day.

Andrew: So that's a little bit longer answer, but I wanted to say, one, I'm super big on the international expansion, two, more and more partners are coming around that can help you just take everything to the next level. So start with the English market if that's where you're at, start with the Spanish market in Spain or Mexico, and then branch out into Italy or some of the others and work with a localized translator.

Colleen: Okay, great. And the next one is, someone who's used ManyChat to try to launch products on Amazon Italy, through Facebook, but it doesn't seem to be working. Obviously, each market probably responds differently based on the product and what software you're using, and the avenue you're trying to reach them. So what forms of product launch do you recommend in each market or are there certain ones that really stand out to work really well in specific markets?

Andrew: Yeah. So I would just say that of all the sellers I'm working with, and I have five brands that are from Italy in my portfolio right now that I work with. So it's quite a few from Italy actually, but we are selling in the US. So we're importing product from Italy to the US and that's more of a ... Because we have an Italian product that's made in Italy, it is a product value add in the US that a lot of the US sellers don't have. So that is a product opportunity there. In the Italy market, we actually haven't seen a ton of sales. I feel like it's one of the smaller European marketplaces for Amazon right now. So I don't know if that's what you wanted to hear, but that is my feedback in regards to the Italian market. So maybe ManyChat would work just fine, it's just that the Italian marketplace is a little underdeveloped and is still getting built out. That could be one of the things there.

Andrew: I almost always use my same exact strategies, no matter the marketplace. The same thing I would do in the US, I'm doing in Canada, I'm doing in Australia, I'm doing in Japan. Although Japan has a different marketplace with the credit card point system and things that they do there, it's a little bit different, but I would just say, I work through the same strategies. I would need those to almost fail before I would get into completely different strategies for that country. And if I did, I would reach out to probably an agency that specializes in that country and try to just, I would try to collab with them or ask them what it would cost to have them look at the listings I had already made and use them like a consultant.

Andrew: So I'm not above that either as an agency owner. If I run into a speed bump or a roadblock reaching out to someone that's more localized to that industry and be like, "Is there something I'm doing wrong?" A lot of times, it's the translation. I'm assuming that if someone's there, they'll probably speak Italian and already understand this, but you have to understand where your country is in regards to tech and eCommerce and that direct consumer model just as a whole and take that into consideration.

Colleen: Okay. The Netherlands is one of Amazon's newer marketplaces, do you have much experience there?

Andrew: Yeah.

Colleen: Any tips specific for that market?

Andrew: I'm not doing FBM there, we are doing FBA, but it's a good channel, and I love the opportunity to be in these channels when they first start. Imagine just being on Amazon when it first launches and the benefits you're going to get just from being a first mover. So love it. What is FBM? FBM is Fulfill By Merchant. And what that means is, instead of taking a box of product and sending it into Amazon's warehouse and having them ship it to customers, you're shipping it. So if you were going to use FBM, you would need to contact a 3PL or a warehousing or an FBA prep, those kinds of facilities that are comfortable with direct-to-consumer fulfillment, and you'd need to say, "Hey, I'm selling in the Netherlands, I would love to use your facility to fulfill for my brands, my products." And then work out with them to connect your Amazon and be shipping your products.

Colleen: Okay. And this one is very specific about importing wood products in the US and UK. Are there any guidelines that exist?

Andrew: There's not. But if you are talking to a broker or an importer that doesn't understand what needs to be done to get here, then I think you're dealing with an amateur in regards to the importer and the broker and things like that. I do a lot of wood products from India and they have a specific way of doing things. That's not on me to learn, that's on my partner that I'm using to help me source the product and import or export to the US. So don't have information around a list of what needs to be done or not done. But I would think that I've worked with some amateurs and more professionals and the more professionals are thinking of those things for me. So maybe just try to, even if you're just pricing around, and see if there's some other brokers you can talk to in regards to sourcing wood and see if they have some of that information for you.

Colleen: Okay. And you've given us a lot of great tips about selling international, but any last-minute tips here on expansion to EU making that a smooth transition?

Andrew: Yeah. I think that there's a lot of partners out there that can help you. And you can figure it out yourself and save some money, but you can partner with, and I'm not an affiliate of SimplyVAT they're just coming to my mind, but I know there's a lot of other partners like SimplyVAT that can just help you through some of these paperwork hurdles that can honestly get you very discouraged. The actual selling in EU is not that hard. It's actually like on the business to get it set up, the paperwork, that can be the hardest. So I would just say, I'm not trying to sell services, but I just really think that these are some of the areas that are like, "This is one of the areas I want to pay to get some help." And that's like, just getting your paperwork right, making sure your tax is set up. Those are the things that can bite you in the butt. And if you feel comfortable, you're going to jump into it.

Andrew: Another thing would be don't take on all the countries at the same time. I think that now that we've had Brexit, the UK and the rest of the EU are separate in regards to fulfillment and FBA centers and things like that. So do some research on your category, figure out if Germany is best for you or the UK is best for you, those are the two biggest, but maybe just start with one of them, get that under your belt and then expand into the others, versus taking on, "I'm going to translate for Germany, I'm going to translate for Italy, I'm going to translate for France. I'm going to do everything all at the same time." It can be a lot.

Andrew: And you really need to think of all of them as, that Amazon made it easy by just shipping to one and then having Pan-European fulfillment. But really you need to think of all of them as individual channels because they have their own advertising, you're getting your own reviews, you're getting your own store reviews, FeedbackFive needs to be plugged up in different languages to each of them or whoever you're using, you need to translate those emails. It can be a lot of work and overwhelming, but well worth it. I would just say, bite off in small amounts, is I guess what I'm getting at.

Colleen: Good advice. All right. Let's see. Louis, can you help us tackle some Buy Box related questions here? This is the one that everybody wants to know. How do you guarantee to get the Buy Box?

Louis: Yeah, great question. Well, so the only way to guarantee it is to be the only seller for that listing. And so that's why obviously, developing a brand is very important, but I'm going to assume that this question is talking about a competitive ASIN with multiple sellers, how do I get the Buy Box? So the short answer is, you can never guarantee getting it even if you are very competitive for all the criteria of winning the Buy Box. Amazon, doesn't like to award it to a single seller. They will rotate among the higher-performing sellers, but the criteria or the factors that you want to focus on, if you want to consistently win the Buy Box, there's a number of them, but I would say, four are the most important.

Louis: One is your fulfillment method. Andrew alluded to this earlier, but FBA is going to help you there. Seller Fulfilled Prime is also important. So those two fulfillment methods are going to get you to Buy Box better than Fulfilled By Merchant. Number two is obviously price and specifically the landed price. So factoring in the shipping for that if it's UK. Price is something that a lot of times sellers really focus on with the Buy Box and it is incredibly important, but I will say, we have seen sellers with a higher price win the Buy Box. So if your seller performance metrics are a lot better than some of the competing seller, it's possible to win the Buy Box, not at the lowest price.

Andrew: Correct.

Louis: Yeah. And so some of the other important ones, shipping time, obviously, and for this, the actual location of the buyer can apply to that. If your goods are located across the country from that particular buyer, then that's going to have an impact. And then the fourth one is your inventory. Obviously, if you're out of stock, you are not going to get the Buy Box. You want to make sure that you have a good record of always being in stock with that product. So fulfillment method, price, shipping time, and inventory. I think those are the big ones, but the other seller performance metrics that I would say are also important are things like your order defect rate, valid tracking rate, late shipment rate, delivered on-time rate, your feedback rating, of course.

Colleen: Louis, we're losing your audio, I think, a little bit.

Louis: Sorry about that.

Colleen: There you go. Better.

Louis: Yeah. So, yeah, I was just listing off a lot of the other seller performance metrics that can impact the Buy Box. But those first ones are really the biggest.

Colleen: Okay. And do you have any tips and or suggestions for measuring the competition, looking at the second question here?

Louis: Yeah. The first thing I would do is just go to that listing and see what other sellers are on there and see how they stack up with some of those things. So look at their price, whether or not there's some shipping associated with that, look at their fulfillment method and you can actually see what the estimated shipping time would be for the different sellers. That's obviously key, but if you're wanting to do this for a lot of products in bulk, there are certainly tools that are helpful. eComEngine we happen to have MarketScout that allows you to upload a list of ASINs or UPCs, and will tell you things like, how many FBA sellers are competing for this ASIN. What's the lowest FBA price? Is Amazon a seller or what's their price? All that sort of thing, to help you analyze the competition for a large amount of products in batches.

Colleen: All right, good. And the last question here, I'm not sure if they're meaning more Buy Box related or SEO related question, the way it mentions indexing, but if the prices on their store are low, do they have a lower chance of being indexed compared to similar items with higher selling price and they have the same title and are just starting out at Amazon with no historical sales?

Louis: Yeah. So, not sure if I... Yeah, I don't know. I totally understand that one, but I would say that Amazon rewards lower prices, whether it's for the Buy Box or whether it's for indexing for search terms, and where you show up on the page, Amazon rewards lower prices. So if that's the question, then I would say, absolutely, if your prices are low, it has a better chance of showing up than higher price.

Colleen: Right. And a couple questions on advertise here, Andrew, what marketing or advertising avenues should new merchants be using or prioritizing to grow their sales and list ranking?

Andrew: Yeah. So I would say, almost all of them. Use all of them. They all have different pros and cons. So if you don't know anything about anything, let's just start there, then I would say, at the beginning start using an automatic campaign that can just gather your data, but an automatic campaign, let me just say, will not work unless your product page is optimized. So unless your title and your bullet points have great copy and keywords that customers would actually type into Amazon search bar to buy your product, then automatic campaigns aren't going to actually get you any good data. So assuming your product pages look great, use an automatic campaign to get some data, run that for a couple of weeks, make sure you're getting quite a few clicks a day, the more clicks you get, the faster you're getting data.

Andrew: And then go through that data, what I mean by data is, you're going to have search terms that either say, "I spend a dollar to get a click and a purchase or not." Go through that, you can find that in the back end of that campaign and pull out all the search terms that bring a sale. And then you would put those into a manual campaign and you keep going. So that's beginner level. If you're using sponsored products, then you should probably have sponsored display, DSP ads, which you can set up like retargeting, for anyone that understands what retargeting is, you can also have product targeting ads, which are to show up on other competitors' products. So if you have a new invention that no one knows about, for example, a great ad type is a product targeting ad. Who else would buy this product? Is it beach moms? Is it soccer moms? What else are they looking for? "Okay, they're not looking for my product, but they are looking for these things. Let me show up on those pages." So if you don't have direct searches people are looking for.

Andrew: So the advertising is a really robust system. It's super, super important for getting sales on Amazon and understanding your data. It's two-pronged approach, getting data and getting sales. But I think that those are the really important things. If you've been selling a while, then you're going to get lightning deals, if you're on LaunchPad or one of those vendors, you're going to get different marketing opportunities. You're going to get all different types of opportunities. I would just say that you need to test them all. You need to figure out what works for your brand, what doesn't, if you're not getting results, there's a lot of consultants out there that can help you even for a short amount of time, help you get your program on track. The one thing I would say is, don't just use automation just because you're insecure about your advertising. You need somebody with a human brain behind software helping you figure out what the data means and how to use it best in your program.

Andrew: So I'm passionate about that because that's definitely where I got my start and help brands be successful was in that advertising piece, and I just know that it's one of the one things that brand owners or sellers are spending their money on, outgoing money, and so it really needs to be used for the best purpose. And so it can be used very well or it can be misused. And so just focus on those things. A lot of people feel insecure about that. So get some help that you can trust. Yeah. Sorry. I'll leave it at that.

Colleen: Yeah. That's good. And Amazon Attribution, that's a newer program still in beta, correct?

Andrew: Correct.

Colleen: For brand registered users. So would you recommend? Do you need to get on a list or be invited?

Andrew: I love this program, it's in beta. I believe it's available for anyone. Marknology is actually in testing with Amazon. So we're one of the beta partners. We're an advertising partner and we work hand in hand with another Andrew from that team that we're developing the product together across our products and our customers, what's working, what's not working, what has issues, and it's really come a long way. At the beginning, it wasn't accurate enough that I was so excited about it because we used to use coupon codes and things like that to really understand, is a Facebook ad working or not? And that's not great. I have so many sellers that are spending tons on our off Amazon traffic to their websites, for example, and we weren't able to tell what was coming over to Amazon and making purchases.

Andrew: So Amazon Attribution is a program that you can have a pixel placed on your Facebook or your website. You're driving traffic to your website, you can see them come over to Amazon and purchase, and now you're able to track, those Facebook ads I'm spending are actually more profitable than I thought. And even for people that don't understand Amazon, Amazon Attribution can help them. So your other vendors, your other consultants that might not know about it, this might be something you need to bring up to them and say, "Hey, can you look into this for me?" And it can help with email, it can help with all kinds of things.

Andrew: So definitely look into Amazon Attribution, I don't know exactly what it can do for your business without knowing, but really it just helps you tell the story of I'm spending money, where is it going? Is it working? Is it not? Which is my best performing marketing initiative outside of Amazon ads? Is it email? Is it influencers? Is it crossover traffic from my website? That's the best way to use Attribution.

Colleen: Okay. Very good. Thank you. And I know we're at the top of the hour, we do have a few more topics that we're going to cover. So if people want to stay on, great. If not, we'll be sure to send you the recording. So let's address inventory management. So Louis tell us where somebody can download an inventory report for their catalog that contains all the information from the Seller Central. So this person is doing it manually and wants to keep a copy of that in an editable format.

Louis: Yeah. So there's a lot of great inventory reports on Seller Central. I wouldn't say that there's anyone that has everything. Probably the one that I would recommend that comes closest to that is the All Listings report. So if you're in Seller Central, you go under Inventory, then select Inventory Reports. The All Listings report, it has a ton there, but there's really not one single report that I would say that contains everything you need. And then some of the other helpful for reports, if you go into the reports section of Seller Central and go under Fulfillment, the Restock Inventory report is a good one. A lot of good product data there, also, I would recommend the Inventory Health Report, but there's obviously a ton of different fulfillment reports and inventory reports. But those are the ones that I would recommend, and the All Listings report probably comes closest to what they're looking for.

Colleen: Okay. Andrew, do you know of any other reports or anything you want to add there?

Andrew: Yeah. I was going to say that this used to have to be one of those things you knew about but wasn't available. And so if you opened a case with customer support, you could say, "Can you just export this?" And they would do a one-time export of your listings that you have there. And so you could use that as your Excel sheet going forward. But that was a special request. I haven't been in the weeds in a while. So for anyone taking that tip, use your best judgment and good luck, just open a case with support and see if they can give you all the product information you want. I know it's gotten a little bit like, you can take two or three different reports and build one. My team here, we build a master spreadsheet for every single customer we have and we do it by hand.

Andrew: And so we have a master that we work off of. It takes work, but we know that we have the data perfect in one spot, that if something happens, we can re-upload it, we can get back on track as quickly as possible. Some of these problems that happen, because this is a catalog with millions of products, right? So you got to think of it like a catalog to database and those things break, databases break, things happen, glitches happen, product gets mismapped or whatever. And so the best thing to do is have a master of all of your product information and your products that you can say, "Hey, I know this happened, this broke, this sucked, but I'm going to upload this and get us back on track."

Andrew: A lot of times Amazon Support will say, "I need you to delete and re-upload a file." And if you don't have that file already built, it takes quite a bit of time while your listing is broken to do it. So as an agency, when we onboard a client, one of our employees jobs is to start building a master file for that product data if they don't already have one. So one answer might be getting customer support to help you, the other one would be take the time and build it out yourself.

Louis: Yeah. That's one other thing that I meant to mention is RestockPro, which is eComEngine's FBA inventory management tool, that's really one of the benefits of that tool is that we bring a lot of different sources together. So we're pulling together a couple of API, NWS calls, a bunch of different reports as well, pulling that all together into a central location to try and solve that exact problem that this question's getting at.

Colleen: Okay. And the next question is about the new restock limits. I believe it was back in April that this was changed, but Amazon changed the limits from ASIN level to, by storage type for restocking. So does this apply to all the stock that's currently in FBA or previously, I guess, in FBA or only on new stock?

Louis: Yeah. So it does apply to everything that you have, and it also applies to your inbound shipments as well. So if you are doing a lot of volume, that's something that you would need to keep in mind. But yeah, this is not just for all your net new stock going forward. This is everything that you have and also everything that you might have tied up in inbound shipments.

Colleen: All right, we're going to hop into two quick questions about stickers and barcodes. This one's a little lengthy, but basically, it's getting at will the FNSKU be listed in addition to Amazon's generated FBA ASIN or in place of Amazon's generated FBA ASIN? So on that barcode.

Andrew: Is this one you, Louis, or is this me?

Louis: I'm going to defer to you on that, Andrew.

Andrew: Okay. I think I got the answer to this one. The FBA ASIN is a catalog identifier, the FNSKU is a SKU identifier. So that's why you can have three different SKUs. Think of it like this, if you were selling a food product and maybe you had different expiration dates on those products, you might create three different SKUs for different batches of product. So you'd be able to track what's what, for example, and so you would have an FSN SKU for each one of those. The ASIN would be the same ASIN for all three SKUs of those batches.

Andrew: So if you want to create your own label, you can have the FSN SKU and the ASIN and the UPC if you want, you can fit them all in there. The FSN SKU is the see-all be-all of making sure it's exactly the same product. So I would stick with the FSN SKU over the ASIN for a number of different reasons. But there's a difference between the two and that's why it's not going to choose one or the other.

Colleen: Okay. All right. And then the next one is a product that already has individual UPC barcodes, and doesn't require stickering, but sometimes Amazon seems to be adding labels. Do you know why and any advice to fix the sticker issue when it's clear that they already have a barcode?

Andrew: Yeah. So some of it can be that the way that you set up your product, whenever the first time you went into FBA is that you didn't tell Amazon to use your UPC as your product identifier. And so whenever they get it, even though they have a UPC that could identify your product, they add an FSN SKU label. Another issue could be if you have commingled inventory on or off. What commingled inventory means is, Amazon's taking your product with your UPC, other sellers have the same product. It's putting you along with 10 others in this box, as something sells it knows that you have one, it's picking it and selling it, but it could have been actually Joe's that send it in to the warehouse. It's commingled inventory. And so if that's not how your product is set up, then it's going to say, "This isn't a commingled inventory item where I can just add that UPC and put it in this box. I need to add an FSN SKU label."

Andrew: You also have to understand that this is a system, an algorithm, this is a warehouse taking in thousands of inventory and humans there as well. So what I always try to say is, it needs to be perfect on your end before it gets to Amazon, and if you're counting on Amazon to work your inventory perfectly by getting the right labels and all those things, they will make mistakes and it can cost you.

Andrew: So what can you control? Can you get your stuff labeled perfectly where Amazon's never having to touch it? If so, that's the best way to go. But otherwise, it's probably one of those little issues like that, where it seems like it should be this way, but it's one little setting you chose whenever you're sending the product into FBA or something like that. And getting to the bottom of that might be your solution.

Colleen: Right. And Andrew, these two go hand in hand. One person's asking for best practices for shipping product to FBA to ensure that it's received correctly, and if it is not received correctly, or they map it wrong, can you get Amazon to re-map to the correct ASIN?

Andrew: So sometimes you can do a bin check. If I answer question number two first, you can do a bin check depending on the situation and have Amazon actually see if that's the right item. And if it's their mistake, if you sent the product in wrong and it got checked in under the wrong product, they're not going to do anything for you. And you have to understand what's happening behind the scenes and make that interpretation for you. There's probably been a dozen plus times in my years of doing this where we had to pull back thousands of product, because it got mismapped and have to figure that out. It's one of the reasons I launched a warehouse with my own brands and things like that, as I wanted to be able to have a resource that I could use to sort some of these issues out for my own brands even, as well as the brands we work with.

Andrew: So, if they make the mistake, there's a chance that they will fix it. But you have to understand they're a beast, they don't really make custom fixes for people, you might have to fix it yourself. So start with a bin check and then make a decision. Sometimes the bin check can take two months. And so it's not even worth it in that regard either. You might be not selling for two months, because you're having Amazon sort through eight warehouses of bins and things like that.

Andrew: The best practices for shipping product to FBA distribution. That's a big question. For every single product type and category, there is a different specification for the way you should be sending it in whether it's the wrapping, whether it's listing it as heavy, whether it's saying "Sold as a set." Whether it's shipping it in a pallet or a UPS box. That's why I say, understand what your products need. You can find that information in Amazon's help center even, or by contacting a pro and figure out what is needed exactly for your product and do the most, whatever you spend 5 cents, 10 cents in an extra sticker or packaging is going to work out in the long game in regards to getting products to customers without them being broken, getting the right product there.

Andrew: I think that people try too hard to save money in the wrong areas versus spend the extra dollar let's say in your packaging, raise your price by a dollar. You're going to have no bad reviews from people getting bad products in the long game, and it's going to pay off for you. So figure out what that is, invest the money to get it right.

Colleen: Right. And on that note, just to piggyback on that, when do you know it's time to invest money in tools or delegating to or outsourcing to somebody else when it comes to PPC reviews, launching new products, et cetera? When do you know that your time is no longer worthwhile you doing that yourself and hiring somebody else?

Andrew: Well, I'm an agency. So coming from my perspective, it's hard. I'm not just a seller but I partner with FeedbackFive because your team helps us onboard clients. And so we're outsourcing or delegating some of that thought leadership to you guys, for example, that's one of the areas that's like, "Do we want to know every single thing about Amazon's terms of service when it comes to reviews?" I'd rather work with an expert partner. For example, that's how we outsource. PPC, we do in-house, launching new products, we do in-house, translations we outsource to YLT. Why? Because I don't have Spanish speakers and Italian speakers and those kinds of things. So I think it just comes down to, what's your expertise? What's your desire to learn? How much desire to learn do you have, and being self-aware about that as a seller and then making those decisions with what's right for you.

Colleen: Good. And do you have any advice on whether or not to outsource or offshore marketing services?

Andrew: Well, I think you need to think about your budget, you need to think about the long game, and sometimes it's just, you just got to do what you got to do to get by, and other times you get that option of getting to choose. I think localization really matters. I think Americans selling to Americans is more efficient just by the language, just by the wording, I can just tell for the most part. So I think it does matter. I think it's worth the money to spend, there's other things that you can offshore like graphic design or maybe some things like that, that aren't so language-focused or things like that. So it's got to be an individual decision.

Colleen: Okay. And lastly, we received several questions about whether you're a new seller or experience or you're doing this part-time while you're also working a full-time job, where do you go to find training and resources? I can certainly point you to the seller forums, there's a lot of information there, eComEngine, we have a blog, there's a lot of newsletters you can sign up for, webinars and such, or working with an agency who really stays up to date on a lot of the latest advertising and tips and terms of service, et cetera. But Louis, Andrew, any other educational resources or training that you recommend that people subscribe to or?

Andrew: I feel like you covered it. I think it's reaching out to a mentor or an agency for help, I think it's seller forums, I think it's getting part of some of these mastermind Facebook groups. I think if you do a course, you need a course that comes with a mentor or a real-life person on the other side of that because you're only going to get so much. So we can teach you, but you need some practical help when you get to some of those problems. I do coaching more on the higher end of that, so happy to work with people that seem like a right fit, happy to chat with anyone if that's helpful.

Colleen: Good. All right. Well, and I know we got a few questions that came in as well, so we will be sure to sync up with everybody after this webinar to address your individual questions, but I just want to thank everybody for attending and submitting these questions in advance so that we could get to these. I know this webinar lasted a little longer than we expected, but hopefully, we answered your questions, and here's just a couple of special offers. If you want to talk to Andrew and his team, please reach out to them at info@marknology.com, they're happy to do a free consultation with you.

Colleen: And then a couple of the tools that Louis mentioned from eComEngine, we have RestockPro, FBA inventory management, and FeedbackFive for review and feedback management. We are offering a 30 day free trial on both of those as well. But again, please reach out to us with any other questions, and we'll definitely sync up with those who asked us some live questions here so we can reach out to you individually.

Colleen: But thanks everybody for attending. Thank you, Andrew and Louis for dropping all that knowledge and hanging out with us today.

Andrew: Thanks everyone.

Louis: Yeah. Thanks guys. I enjoyed it.

Andrew: See you next time.

Colleen: All right. Thank you.

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