How To Generate More Profits & More Sales With Your Amazon Ads With Ritu Java

Andy Splichal 0:02

Welcome to the Make Each Click Count Podcast. This is your host, Andy Splichal. And we're happy to welcome this week's guest to discuss today's topic, which is How To Generate More Profits And More Sales With Your Amazon Ads. Here today representing PPC Ninja, a PPC automation software that helps Ecommerce businesses get the biggest bang for their buck on Amazon is Ritu Java. Hi, Ritu.

Ritu Java 1:11

Hey, Andy, how's it going?

Andy Splichal 1:13

Great. Well, thanks for joining us today.

Ritu Java 1:16

Yeah, absolutely delighted.

Andy Splichal 1:18

Now, before we start in full disclosure, I want to say that I discovered PPC and Ninja a few months ago. And it's becoming an essential part of my business and managing my private clients accounts who are using Amazon Seller Central. And I say that not because you're paying me as a sponsor or anything like that, but just because of how useful your service has been on an ongoing basis on optimizing bids. And this comes after I've used both taking Metrics and Sellics. So my question to you Ritu is, Why do you think your service is superior to the competitors out there?

Ritu Java 1:54

Yeah, that's a great question, Andy. So you know, I would like to say that we are a software company and an agency ourselves. So we actually use our own dog, like we eat our own dog food. So first of all, the software has to be useful to our agency, or else it just doesn't, you know, work for us. So we've really taken the time to design the software, keeping the agency in mind and keeping, you know, large customers that have their own internal teams, and who really need to be on top of their numbers and who really need to get, you know, results at scale. That's basically how we've kind of designed the software. And we took our time, we took several years to do you know, to produce the software. So some of the things that are very different from our competitors, you mentioned to take Metrics, Sellics, there's a bunch of others, there's almost 50 competitors, I guess, in this space. So yeah, some of the key differences, I would say, number one, our software is not a black box solution. So many customers, many of our, you know, peers and our competitors, they have this black box solution where you know, it's like set it and forget it, you just do a few initial setup, you know, routines, and then from there, it's all automatic, right. So that's one of the biggest differences between, you know, those types of software's and ours, because ours are our software is really ideal for agencies that would like to have creative control over their data, they want to see what's happening and not just accept things, you know, automatically. So that's one of the biggest kind of differences. And we kind of like that, because, you know, we can apply the bid recommendations that our software suggests on a daily basis, but with some human intelligence, like we don't just have a numbers based rule box, you know, so to say, that just does things automatically, because that could be disastrous, because there's so many, you know, things that could go wrong with a complete AI based solution, or

Andy Splichal 4:12

Yeah, no, I completely agree. That is definitely an advantage of just not, you know, setting up the rules, but having to go in and authorize them. I think that that I mean, it's a huge difference as far as what I've seen in in terms of results. Now, besides the software, you also you mentioned, you manage the services. So you continue to have hands on experience managing Amazon, ads accounts, and of course using your software. But when you first get an account, I'd be curious on what are some of the biggest mistakes or most usual mistakes you see as far as wasted ad spend when a company first comes to to PPC Ninja and how do you fix these money wasters?

Ritu Java 4:54

Yeah, you know, one of the biggest, you know, mistakes that I see over and over again, is that people focus too much on keywords. Now, that is like a vague statement, because everybody needs to focus on keywords. But what I mean is that there are certain ad types that are keyword based. And then there's other ad types that are, you know, let's say category targeting ads, or product targeting ads, or even display ads that are, you know, underutilized at the moment. Even video ads for that matter, they're very underutilized. Most people flocked to the sponsored product, keyword based ads. And those tend to be the most expensive ones, because you know, CPCs, on Amazon are just, you know, rising every year, you have like a, at least a 15% increase in CPCs. In cost per clicks, and there's no stopping there, you know, ads are just getting more and more expensive. And then, you know, people continue to believe that, you know, they need to rank for certain keywords, and they need to put their money behind keywords alone. And I think that's a big mistake, because that's, you know, like fishing in a very crowded pond, if everybody is focusing on keywords, we basically run out of cash, you know, because CPCs are extremely high. So there's different ways to show up on page one. And that doesn't have to be through the keyword route. If you are, for example, targeting a competitor, who is, you know, because of their ad spend, they are showing up on page one, then by targeting those competitors, you can piggyback off of their success by showing up close to them, because that's how the, you know, product targeting ads work, they will show your ads wherever your competitors show up. So that's kind of like an easier way to get, you know, onto page one without spending the dollars of keyword based advertising.

Andy Splichal 6:50

And those, those ads are just based on the ASIN fit your target is a by ASIN or by competitor.

Ritu Java 6:57

Yeah, so you can go after an ASIN or you could go after, you know, a whole category. You can also go after specific brands like you can in your category targeting ads, you can specify which, you know, competitor brands you want to target. So your ads will show up wherever all of their ads show up, you know, which is kind of cool. And people don't realize this, and they continue to focus on keyword based advertising, which is very expensive. So I think that's one of the first things we do, we'd like to have a full funnel strategy, where we set up at least 40 to 50 ads per ASIN. And that way we get every type of placement that Amazon has to offer. We get it at different rates. So we can almost like test and see which placements are working best for us. And we double down on those. We don't have any ego around wanting to make our sponsored product, keyword based ads the best. We don't care. We care about sales, we care about a cause we care about bottom line. So whichever ad type will work. I will take it, you know if it's under utilized. That's where I want to be not, you know, forcing my way in a place that's very crowded.

Andy Splichal 8:08

Right. Yeah, no, I you know, I haven't heard that 15% average per year increase in Amazon ads. How long has that been happening?

Ritu Java 8:16

Well, it has been happening slowly, like you can look up marketplace polls, I think there was a recent report by one of our peers. I think it said something like 14 to 15% rise and CPCs year over year, across most categories. Yeah.

Andy Splichal 8:33

Now, when you're working with a company as far as managing their ads, do you work with them to increase their conversion rates by by improving product pages? Or are you exclusively working on the bid optimization and creating the sponsored brand ads? And in the ads, the ads in the bids?

Ritu Java 8:54

Yeah. So you know, I think there's, you know, some merit in being specialized, and we like to be specialized, and our area of focus is advertising. That's what we're good at. And that's what we excel at. So, you know, obviously there is a lot of, you know, codependency with the listing and the listing quality. So what we do is, we focus on ads, but we use every opportunity that we can get to kind of recommend keywords that, you know, our clients should be using in prominent places, like in the title or in the bullet points or in the back end. So we kind of work closely with our clients to you know, let them know when we see an opportunity, but that's not our main kind of focus, like we're not right writing copy for them when you think we have done this and we do it one off, but it's not like the main thing. In addition, we also offer localization in Japanese because that is one of our special kind of skills. We also have a team in Japan that works on translations. So that one thing But we do do but other than that, most of the English, you know pages, we don't really do the copy for it, but we work closely with those teams.

Sorry, I didn't realize that are you with PPC Ninja? Are you advertising on marketplaces throughout the world then?

Yes, we are. We recover all markets. And we have special skills in the Japanese language. So we also run PPC for our clients in Japan, which is kind of a unique skill. Most people, you know, will just use some sort of software and just let that do the work. But in our case, we we also have people that can can do that for Japan.

And how much of your business is US based versus International?

Well, it is still mostly US based, I would say at least 80 to 85% comes from the US. So yeah, that's our main kind of bread and butter.

So now, are there certain products, certain product types that you have found to be more successful than others when you're selling on Amazon?

Um, yeah, I think one thing I'd like to say is that, you know, Amazon is a, you know, search engine, right for products. And so, if there is like an existing demand for certain types of products, then Amazon is great for, you know, sell selling on Amazon. But if there is no demand, or if let's say you have a very unique kind of product that, that requires a little bit of explaining, then I, you know, I've seen that it doesn't tend to do that, well, like sometimes people want to go after extremely unique products that, like they have no competitors, that's actually a mistake. Because you know, there is no such demand, there's no likelihood of great conversions there. So you do need to have a little bit of competition in order for your product kind of show up and be relevant, you know.

Do you think you can have too much competition? I mean, you had mentioned, one of the ways that you're not gonna be successful if nobody's searching for it.

Yeah.

But what if you got, there's tons of volume, but there's tons of people selling it, and some of them with really good brand recognition?

Yeah, yeah. So I think it all comes down to data. And you know, if the market is huge, and if you can get a slice of the pie that is significant, and you're okay with it, you know, as part of your portfolio, your you know, your diversification strategy, then, I don't think it should be a problem having a lot of competitors. But, you know, as we all know, there's always short tail and long tail to everything, right. So if most of the, you know, the market is taken up by the top three, it generally tends to be that way, right? The top three players in the market take take up 80 to 90% of the whole entire market share, and then everything everybody else is you know, kind of fitting into the long tail. And if you're if you don't have ambitions to be number one, two or three, then you know, even if a market is crowded, you still have an opportunity to make profitable sales.

Now let's talk about the buy box and how your bid adjusting works for those that then aren't selling on Amazon actively the buy box is when you click the Add to Cart button, the Buy Now button, and Amazon gives that order to those sellers. It's called the buy, buy, buy box, but in regards to your ads, sponsored products sponsored brand sponsor display, how does that work with having the buy box?

Yeah, soyou know, it depends on whether you are a vendor or a seller. So Amazon has these two big platforms, the vendor, the Vendor Central and the Seller, Central. Vendor Central is great for people who are maybe reselling, or are, this is for, you know, Amazon's own products, right? They kind of, you know, buy products from manufacturers and then sell it under their own brand. So those qualifiers vendors, vendors can have access to the to advertising even when they don't have the buy box, right, because it's not their product. Whereas sellers, you know, once they lose the buy box, for whatever reason, whether they're out of stock or another another seller has the buy box, then their ads tend to you know, you know shut down automatically so there are there's a you know, system in place where sponsored products will stop working if a seller doesn't own the buy box at any point, but there are still some types of ads that will continue to run even though you don't have the buy box. For example, the sponsored brand ads they will continue to run or the sponsored display or the sponsored video those continue to run. So I guess it depends on, you know, whether you're a seller or a vendor, and then you kind of just have to make sure that you know, once you're out of stock, then you turn certain ads off, otherwise, you continue to spend money on them.

So your software doesn't take that into effect, account? Really, it's the ones like the sponsored brand or the spot, the ones that continue to run even though you have the buy box, it'll it'll continue your software just continues to optimize?

Yeah, that's how Amazon works, actually. So Amazon doesn't stop. And so we just follow Amazon, our API, we basically use Amazon's API's. And if Amazon continues to run those ads, then we continue to run those ads.

Yeah, you know, and we had mentioned, some of the different types of ads, sponsored products sponsored, brands sponsored display, do you optimize the bids on all those different types of advertising on Amazon.

So we do have, you know, made recommendations for sponsored products, sponsored brands, and sponsored video, we don't currently have those recommendations for sponsored display, only because it is such a different beast like it. Sponsored display has a range of ad types within it, like you might call it sponsored display. But under that umbrella, there is CPM based ads, and there are CPC based ads. And you know, even at this point, Amazon doesn't give us the data in a clean manner. Like it has many reports that are kind of split out, depending on the sub type of ad. So at this point, it's very hard to kind of give recommendations on those ad types. But it's not that, you know, we won't be supporting it, we will in the near future. So at this point, sponsored products, sponsored brands and sponsored videos have daily recommendations. And by the way, our recommendations are data sufficiency based, and I just wanted to briefly explain what that means. It means that, you know, when a keyword for example, has accumulated enough data, then it's kind of ready for a big change. But if it hasn't accumulated enough data, then you know, prematurely changing those bids might be a mistake, right. So our system actually takes into account how much data has been collected for each keyword or target before it recommends a change. Now, you can compare that to a system where someone is maybe using a time based, you know, data, or time based sufficiency model, which means that they just look back, let's say two weeks and say how many clicks in these two weeks how many sales in this two weeks, and then they make a decision. But that's a mistake, because you know, every keyword has a different sales volume. And so there's, you know, two weeks might be too much for certain keywords, and two weeks might be too little for certain keywords that are slow movers. So our system kind of takes into account those subtleties, and gives you very precise kind of recommendations only when a keyword is actually ready for a change.

You know, that's great, because that is something that you can't do manually adjusting, you know, you can look at the last x timeframe, you look the last two weeks, you can look at the last month and make a decision, but you can't go back and look at it all that stuff that your your algorithms taken into account. Which makes me you know, how long how long is PPC ninja been around for it? And how, how was all this created?

Yeah, so this is, you know, we really go back in time, because, you know, we, we actually started as an internal project of an eight figure Amazon seller, this is a global seller, it's the electronic space. And, you know, our, you know, goal was to create, like a suite of tools just for ourselves, like just for this big brand. And it got to the point where the investment in the software development was kind of not worth just limiting to one client. And so we kind of, you know, kind of broke off from the main company and created our own kind of software company. And that's how we started kind of offering our tool to many other sellers in the space. And, you know, this tool in this current form has been around for two and a half years. And the company has been around for two and a half years. But like I said, this was an internal project that has its roots back a five or six years, you know, into the past, and we've been at it for a bit so yeah.

Are there any struggles since you've opened it up to to everybody that you've gone through with PPC Ninja in in delivering results for clients?

Yeah, you know, I think we've had all kinds of, you know, good and bad experiences. One of the struggles that we've, you know, had is kind of related to what I was saying earlier about the product type. If a product is not ready for Amazon, then no matter how much we pump into PPC, it doesn't work like it won't turn around. If the product isn't already doing some amount of, you know, decent conversions, PPC can help kind of boost that and enhance that and kind of help you grow and scale. But if your product is, you know, from the very start, it's struggling and flailing, then there's very little likelihood that PPC can turn anything around. So

You can you can bring the horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

Exactly, exactly. So one of the examples of this, you know, struggle we had was with one, one of our gaming clients, they had a very unique product, that, you know, almost nobody else in the world was making, like, it was a unique thing. It required a lot of explanation. But you know, the thing is, they were doing great off Amazon, because people love the concept. As soon as they heard about what this thing does, they were just wowed. And they were like, Oh, my goodness, this is the end people would buy, right, so their website was doing well. But on Amazon, since nobody really knew what the product would do. There was there was very little conversion. So the conversion rate was extremely low. That was on the organic side of things. And we tried with PPC, we tried, you know, through educational ads, like video ads, or, you know, you know, custom image based ad types. However, there was, you know, still that barrier to understanding what this product does, it required more explanation than was possible through even videos or to a plus content. So, in the end, you know, it didn't quite work out. So those are some of the struggles, where, you know, the product itself intrinsically is not suited for Amazon.

Now, on the flip side of that, do you have a favorite success story of a client that you could share either an agency client or a client that is used for managed services?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, so one of, you know, you know, our recent customers with their in the supplement space. So which is, as you guys know, it's a very competitive space. And there's no dearth of competition from China on in that in that category. And it's pretty brutal, because there's a lot of blackhead going on. And there's a bunch of, you know, copycats, and inferior products that pass off, as you know, being the real thing, and so on. So, we have been working with this client for almost like five months, I would like to say, and recently, we, we took over that DSP, so this was about two and a half, three months ago. And so DSP, as you know, is the demand side platform, or this is one of the most kind of powerful, and pretty complex platforms that Amazon provides. It's different from sponsored by the way, it's very different, and it requires special skills, it requires a tremendous amount of like settings, and the it's pretty involved setting it up. So one of the things that DSP helps us do is use Amazon's first party data to advertise outside of Amazon. So you can be advertising on let's say, The New York Times or the CNN or what, you know, something post and so on. Those placements, you know, can be programmatically purchased, you can buy media, on these placements, through the way we set up these ads and the way we set up these ads were, so that we could kind of reach out to remarket to, you know, a lot of their previous customers in the past 365 days, which is amazing information for us to be able to lay our hands on. And it comes from Amazon, right because these customers have a history on Amazon. So remarketing was one of our kind of very successful campaigns. But the more important thing than just free marketing is that we were able to focus on increasing their Subscribe and Save customers. What that means is that you know, with supplements what happens is that you buy one bottle but then you want to replenish it after a while, right? So instead of just focusing on one of customers that you know, you can have them buy one or two or three bottles, what you're getting here is the ability to increase the lifetime value of your customer because they become Subscriber and Save customers so they will keep buying from you over and over again, which is kind of pretty cool. So you know targeting these bottom of funnel customers as well as targeting them visitors and customers of their competitors, we were able to really help this brand, you know, grow not only through direct sales, but we saw like an overall lift in their new brand on Amazon as well as you know, their overall account levels, you know, health and sales. And so we were able to kind of deliver with a robust of 12. And it's still growing, which is really interesting and exciting for us, you know, so that I think that was one of the recent kind of success stories in the DSP space that I wanted to highlight.

Yeah, no, that you know, that's, that's really interesting. And I can see where especially in the supplements where it's a product to use up and if you like it, you're gonna want more. That would work with the retargeting and even following those customers off of Amazon, how how, like, approximately how big was their list of customers they were retargeting was it was a huge or?

Right. Yeah, so the thing is, so their DSP requires at least 20,000. Yeah, so you need to have 20,000 emails. But in fact, this particular customer did not have 20,000 emails. So we did not use that route of remarketing, we actually used Amazon's first party data to say anybody who had purchased from them in the past 365 days needs to be targeted. So that's how we got access to that data. It's all anonymized. We don't actually see those emails. We don't know who these profiles are. But we know that they fall in the, you know, in that particular audience segment.

That's really interesting. Especially, I mean, there's so many questions, I don't want to get stuck up on it, but especially with the iOS privacy issue, it changes is that how long is that going to be? You know, I don't know. I mean, yeah, it's very interesting, though. Now, personally, um, are there any business books out there that you can attribute to your journey as an entrepreneur?

You know, I love Eliyahu Goldratt writing, like, he's written a bunch of different books. I, one of my favorites is The Goal. And this was, I actually read it way back in 1992, when I was just like, starting out, you know, in my, in my company, and I believe I've just learned recently that this book is a required book for all Amazon managers, and Jeff Bezos recommends it. So I was quite, you know, when I learned about that, I was like, Oh, wow, that's pretty cool. So yeah, I liked this book I have you kind of used it. You know, in my, I guess, in making business decisions all along, like it's been at the back of my head, it's in my psyche. And I really like the way it's written. It's very easy business, style, conversational and business novel type of writing. So it's pretty cool.

Now back to PPC Ninja, who do you think makes the perfect client for for your agency?

Yeah, so. So like I said, we have both software, which is self serve software. And we have an agency that is doing managed services. So for our software, I would say that, you know, the best type of customers are the slightly advanced PPC users who know what they're doing, who can get the most out of our software, because it has so much, you know, creative control, it allows you to slice and dice your data in so many different ways. And we have like 50, plus bulk operations that, you know, you can use to, you know, affect changes across your entire, you know, account very quickly within a matter of seconds. So, I would say that people who can use our software, our agencies, and, you know, grants that are slightly advanced, who would like to get the most out of there, PPC, and then on the services side of things, I think, brands that are really looking to grow their business to the next level with DSP ads with sponsored ads. And with Google ads, we do all three, we do DSP sponsored and Google ads. So anyone who is kind of in that space, we have a few verticals, that we're pretty good at, like electronics or supplements. Yeah, and a few others. And so these, you know, with all the experience and expertise that we've built up over time, we really think that we can add value to our customers.

And how does the fee structure work for the individual companies? Well, I guess the MDM, the agency side as well.

Yeah. Yeah. So on the software side, well, you know, our software pricing is up on our website, so PPC, ninja.com/pricing. But, you know, just to give you a small summary of that, we, we count ASINs, and our we don't take a percentage or anything like that. It's Based on the count of ASINS, across all of your, you know, all of your profiles, whether it's multiple markets or multiple clients, we will add up all the ASINS and then give you a quote based on that it's on our website for, for the most part, but if you're, you know, number of ASINS beyond that, then we can give you a special code for that. And on the services side of things, again, it depends on how many ASINs you have, if you're, you know, under five, you know, there's a base fee of 1500. If you're under 20 cents, then there's a base fee of 2500. And then beyond that, it's like a small percentage added to that. So and then, of course, the DSP and Google ads are different data, like I said, they are pretty complex, and they are their own beast. So we can give you a specialized code for that. One of the advantages of doing DSP with us, versus doing it with Amazon is that you know, with Amazon, they require a minimum spend of 35k, over two months, which is a lot. Yes. And, you know, most brands will never be able to touch DSP for that reason. But if you go through an agency like ours, we can actually do your DSP for much less, we don't really require any minimums. But we do have like a minimum recommended so that it makes no sense to you. Otherwise, it doesn't make business sense to, you know, spend a bunch of money on our services. And then also, there's a 15% platform fee that goes to Amazon. If you count all of that in, it really starts to make sense when you have at least 5000 a month to spend on DSP advertising, that can really open up your business and take your brand to the next level.

Now is an agency and I'm an agency but if their agency owners listening out there and decide to bring clients in to use PPC Ninja, which is I have done, but I guess a worrisome might be. How are they to know that you're not going to try to poach those accounts?

Right. Yeah. So I do believe that trust is very important, and it's very hard to earn. We know that and we've been, you know, around in this space for a long time that, you know, we wouldn't ever do something that would jeopardize the trust that our clients have bestowed upon us. So it's just a matter of, you know, trusting that and not that we can give anything in writing, but it's not the thing we do, we have plenty of interest. And we're constantly being asked to manage. In fact, we have the opposite problem of not having enough resources to take on more clients at this point. So I think that's not something that I would worry about.

And how can an interested listener, learn more about working with you and PPC Ninja?

Yeah, sure. So, you know, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. So if you just want to follow me there, or just send me a message there, I'm happy to engage with you. So my, you know, LinkedIn handle is Ritu Java, my full name are Ritu Java. So yeah, just look me up, follow me or just connect with me. And I'm happy to answer your questions or just help you out. Other than that, you can also reach out to our support team. If you have any technical questions about our software. If you want to see a demo, we have a one hour long demo on our YouTube channel. And it's also on I believe, our help page on our website. So you can actually look, look at that. Or you could even look up a full demo that we have on demo Mondays, which is another kind of service that helps to kind of demo software's of all kinds. So, yeah.

Well, this has been fantastic. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap it up today?

Yeah, so I would just like to say that, you know, I'm pretty passionate about PPC and about advertising, in general. So, you know, if anybody's interested to learn more with us, we actually have a mastermind program that we run periodically, like last year, we were running it every month. This year, we've kind of brought it down to once a quarter at least. So you know, if anybody's interested to kind of learn more about PPC and has, you know, some amount of advertising spend on Amazon, then they're free to kind of join this the program runs once a week, and I do it twice a day because I want to cover the whole globe. So people who are in Australia and UK and US everybody has their own kind of timeslot and they can pick so if you would like to sign up, please go to our website, ppc-ninja.com. And then just look for the mastermind tab in the menu and just sign up for it. Whenever we have the next round. We will invite you and then we can connect on Zoom as well.

Well that is great. Well, thank you very much for joining us today, Ritu.

Yeah, thank you so much, Andy for the opportunity. I really look forward to connecting with you again.

All right. Well remember if you liked this episode, please go to Apple podcasts and leave us an honest review. And if you're looking for more information regarding Ritu, or PPC Ninja, you will find links in the show notes below. In addition, if you're looking for more information on growing your business, check out our all new podcasts Resource Center available at www.makeeachclickcount.com. We've compiled all the different past guests by show topic and have included each of their contact information in case you would like more information on any of the services I have discussed during any of the previous episodes. Well that's it for today. Remember to stay safe, keep healthy and happy marketing and I will talk to you in the next episode.