Ian, together with evolve media, creates content for amazon sellers to increase their listing's conversion rate. With their product photo and video content, they can increase the organic rankings through CTR & CVR

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In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, host Josh Hadley interviews Ian Smith from Evolve Media about optimizing Amazon listings to boost click-through rates and organic rankings. They emphasize the importance of high-quality, split-tested content, particularly main images, to enhance product visibility. Ian shares strategies like using real-life photography, incorporating lifestyle elements, and leveraging AI for creative ideas. They also discuss the significance of video content and continuous testing. This episode offers actionable insights for 6-7 figure business owners aiming to scale to 8 figures by refining their Amazon marketing strategies.

Here are the 3 action items that Josh identified from this episode:

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This episode is brought to you by eComm Breakthrough Consulting where I help seven-figure e-commerce owners grow to eight figures. 

I started Hadley Designs in 2015 and grew it to an eight-figure brand in seven years.

I made mistakes along the way that made the path to eight figures longer. At times I doubted whether our business could even survive and become a real brand. I wish I would have had a guide to help me grow faster and avoid the stumbling blocks.

If you’ve hit a plateau and want to know the next steps to take your business to the next level, then go to www.EcommBreakthrough.com (that’s Ecomm with two M’s) to learn more.

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast. I'm your host, Josh Hadley, where I interview the top business leaders in e-commerce. Past guests include Kevin King, Adam Heist, and Michael E Gerber, author of the IMF. Today I am speaking with Ian Smith of Evolve Media, and we are going to be talking a lot about how high quality, split tested content is the key to help you increase your organic ranking on Amazon. This episode is brought to you by Ecomm Breakthrough, where I specialize in investing in and scaling seven figure companies to eight figures and beyond. If you're an ambitious e-commerce entrepreneur looking for a partner who can help take your brand to the next level, my team and I bring the hands-on experience, the strategic insights and the resources needed to fuel your growth. If you or someone you know is ready to scale or looking for an investment partner, reach out to me directly at Josh at Ecomm Breakthrough.Com that's E-comm with two M's and let's turn your dreams into reality. But today I am super excited to introduce you all to Ian Smith.

Josh Hadley 00:00:47  Ian, together with Evolve Media, creates content for Amazon sellers to increase their listings, conversion rate and click through rate with their product photo and video content. They can increase the organic rankings and reduce your overall PPC spend. So with that introduction, welcome to the show. Ian.

Ian Smith 00:01:02  Hey what's up Josh, thanks so much for having me on.

Josh Hadley 00:01:05  And super excited to have you on. We met originally at prosper, and you were telling me all the cool things you were doing, you know, increasing people's click through rates and everything you were doing to optimize those main images. So I figured it would be worth having you on the show to dispel to everybody else what you see working right now on Amazon. Because time and time again, one thing that I've learned from this podcast, the biggest lever you have as an Amazon seller is price and your main image. Those are the two things that are going to drive, I would say 80% of your performance on Amazon. It boils down to those two things.

Josh Hadley 00:01:37  And so really what you have the most control over because you can't, you know, go too low on your price, but your main image, you can always tweak and refine over and over again. So, Ian, before we get into the amazing hacks that you're going to share with us in main image optimization, why don't you give us all a little bit of background of, you know, how you got into this and why you're an expert on photo and video editing?

Ian Smith 00:01:56  Yeah, for sure. So what I really love the most about this space that I'm in, and what I get to do on a daily basis for Amazon brands is it's a great crossbreed or hybrid of creativity and right brain stuff and left brain stuff as far as data, research, testing things, looking at the data and the results like I love the the coming together those two worlds because I myself am very creative. I love getting out there and testing new things and just being creative with photo and video content. And then also, I'm kind of a nerd with the data and looking at, oh, which one actually worked? How did that increase click through rate? So my background is ad management.

Ian Smith 00:02:28  We used to run a lot of funnels and run ads on Facebook and Google. And you know, even TikTok back when it was first getting started. So we would run those ads. But the more that I started working with a lot of different brands, I realized, like them, having content is not a thing. Like a lot of brands don't have an abundance of content, and you need an abundance of content to really use them in your ads and get your ads performing as best as possible. So naturally, while we were running ads and finding brands that don't have content, we started just creating content for them for free. Just within our management fees we just created for them. And then we built up a good portfolio to where I was like, hey, I think we can start selling this now. So then we started monetizing the content side of things, and then ad management can be kind of stressful because these platforms can just turn off your lights and just disable your ad account, even if it's totally above board and you're following all the rules, but their algorithms detect some little thing.

Ian Smith 00:03:15  And what I was learning is that Facebook's algorithm was faulty and it was just constantly disabling ad accounts when we were totally in line. So I was like, you know what? This stress is not what I'm really loving. So let's just go all into the content creation side of things. And furthermore, let's jump into the Amazon niche even more to just focusing all in on the Amazon platform content creation. So the storefront, the brand story, the listing, the content for ads. And so that's where we're at right now.

Josh Hadley 00:03:38  I love that. Well, Ian, I think that background is super, super important to have though because you are focused on, you know, how do you stop the scroll, right? If you're creating an ad in Facebook or Instagram or anything like that, like you've got to have people that are literally scrolling down the page be able to stop and say like, wait, what is this that I saw? for them to want to learn a little bit more. So you've got to have the right hook, gotta have, you know, eye catching images, etc., which ultimately that's exactly what's happening on Amazon right now, especially as Amazon has more and more competition, more and more ad placements, like, it's never been more important to have your organic ranking be be able to help people stop the scroll when they're on their mobile phone and scrolling down all the different listings.

Josh Hadley 00:04:16  So let's dive right in. Ian, and I'm interested to hear from you. What are some of the best performing things, or the best hacks or strategies that you're using in Main Images right now on Amazon to help stop the scroll?

Ian Smith 00:04:29  So our main approach with our content creation is all about performance driven content. So our two main metrics that we look at are the click through rate and the conversion rate. And I love taking a funnel approach to it. You know what the customer's journey is. So a lot of customers start with the search results, right. They type in a keyword phrase. They look at the search results, boom. They click on whatever intrigues them. Right. That's that click through rate metric. Then they land on your main listing and they're going to look at all the other content, the other main images that you have, the A+ content, obviously your price, your reviews, all that kind of stuff, but you can't really control it like you mentioned earlier. Like you can only go so low in your pricing and you can only do so much with the reviews.

Ian Smith 00:05:00  So really, the content on your listing, your main images, your A+ content, premium versus basic, A+ content, all that kind of of your brand story like that's fully within your control. And so I'm a big believer in trying to do your best with that content and split test that content over a period of time to see which is working the best and really dial in that conversion rate. And the beauty of focusing purely on these two metrics is it takes away all the cloud, and it really just helps you focus on what's most important, because those two metrics are going to help your organic ranking, right. They're going to make you rank higher. They're going to help your sales velocity. They're going to help your PPC ad spend, and make sure that every dollar that you spend is being most effective, and you're really maximizing the value on your ad spend. And then also, you know, the higher your conversion rate is, the higher you're going to rank naturally, organically. So it seems like everything just falls into place if you just focus purely on those two metrics.

Josh Hadley 00:05:48  Yeah, I love that makes a lot of sense. And obviously I think Amazon's favoring brands that have a good high click through rate. Right. We see that that will increase the organic ranking really quickly. So what are those strategies that you're implementing with those images and content to increase that click through rate.

Ian Smith 00:06:02  Yeah. So naturally when we have a brand that engages us for photo creation, you know, photo shoots, video shoots are part of our package is just to provide five different versions of that main white background image. And it really comes down to the product. And like, how creative can we get with those five different versions. And that's just a starting point. Many times we overdeliver for our clients, but some of the things that we found is inserting more lifestyle human elements, real life photos work the best. Now, I know some people will say 3D renders have worked the best by far for me, and that's great and all. But what we found works for us is real life, real life stuff.

Ian Smith 00:06:33  So a really good test that you can do is search in the search box. What is your ideal keyword phrase? And then just look at all the search results and really try to look at what is something that everything has in common. Like what do all the listings have in common and how can I be different? What we found of being different is hands inserting hands into your main image, different variations. So let's just say it's a gummy supplement. It's a little bottle, right? That fits perfectly in your hand. The beauty of putting a hand in your main image is one. It's very different from all the other search results, and not many products are going to have hand, you know, hands in their actual main image. So right away you're going to grab more attention because you're just being different and unique. Second is scale. Immediately people know how large your bottle is by, you know, we all have pretty much the same size hand, so the bottle being in a pretty average hand is going to immediately set that expectation.

Ian Smith 00:07:17  And expectation is a really big thing. With me selling a product online, I want to be as accurate as possible with the expectations I set, so that the shopper has a realistic understanding and then having that human element. So let's say that your gummies, your supplement is for women, right? So you'd want a woman with nice nails holding up that bottle, you know, versus if your product is for men, you can kind of show a more masculine hand. and that will immediately kind of grab the right attention that you're looking for, whether you're looking for men or females. Attention. Right. And then split testing these different versions of hand placements of the actual gummies outside. Maybe you have like one hand that is holding the gummy like this. So immediately they know how large the gummy is, and maybe you have a second hand that's holding the bottle. Maybe you have two hands in it. So that's one split test variation that another split test variation is one hand with the gummies just sitting next to the bottle.

Ian Smith 00:08:05  you know, play around with how many hands you can throw in there, the color of the hands. You know, what is the race of the hands? and then maybe like, one bottle is tilted over. So sometimes I've seen sellers put two of their product into that same image, even though they're only selling a one pack, they'll put like maybe one, one bottle, tilt it over, like spilling out gummies, and then there's another bottle, like in front of it. So sometimes that's a little deceiving. It goes against my setting expectations accurately, because shoppers may think it's a two pack that they're buying. So you just can be very clear in your other images and your other listing content, like exactly what it is that they're buying, what's included. But yeah, I could go on and on, but, yeah, there's a lot of different things that you want to split test with that main image, and then just look at your click through rate and let your click through rate tell you let the data tell you which was your best image.

Josh Hadley 00:08:45  Yeah. Makes makes a lot of sense. And I think the advertising click through rate data is going to be your fastest way to know whether it's something's working or not. Right. So in your advertising console, you can easily see like click through rate is one of the metrics that Amazon measures on a daily basis. And so that's one easy way that you can like upload your image, test it out and see. You should be able to see a noticeable change in that click through rate if that image is performing better or not. But you know, I love I love the track you Were Going Down. You talked about some gummy ideas. Maybe give me more ideas of different main images that you've created for other brands. You don't have to list out the specific brand names, but just give us some more examples just to peak our audience's mind of like, here's all the different creative ways that we've displayed. You know, here's a supplement, here's a, you know, a pack of party invitations, or here's a woman's, you know, hygiene product, here's a makeup kit or whatever it is, if you wouldn't mind, maybe like jumping in and diving into all the creative things that you guys have done.

Ian Smith 00:09:37  Yeah. So the kits are really I mean, when you have a kit and it's like five pieces, 3 to 5 pieces, you know, it really opens up a lot of opportunities for split testing and different ways you can arrange the kit. So if you have like a flagship product, that's going to be the main thing that they're looking for, you probably want that as big as possible front and center. Maybe the hand is holding that thing and then the other things are sitting next to it. some things don't necessarily photograph well, like bags or like certain things that are white. Like, we did this product kit for this boat, an RV restoration product, and it was like a white mitt that you use to put on the actual product. And it came with like, scrubber brushes and all that kind of stuff. So sometimes it's as easy as just lining up the kit, taking a picture and then testing that. But sometimes you need to compile the image where you will have an individual picture of the scrubber brush and take different angles of that, and then you're going to bring that in in Photoshop and arrange that in a certain way.

Ian Smith 00:10:27  But the challenge there when you start compiling your main image is scale. I'm really big on setting accurate scale expectations. I see so many times people will Photoshop in their product into a stock photo, and they get the scale way off and immediately you're shooting yourself in the foot. Because if the bottle looks this big and somebody's hand and then they get it and it's way smaller, they're going to be let down. They're going to possibly return a product. They're going to possibly leave you a bad review because they feel bait and switch. They feel lied to. So you really need to set expectations accurately with scale. And when you photoshop together images, I really recommend against photoshopping your product into a stock photo. but you just need to make sure that you get that scale perfectly accurate. So again, going back to the compiling image, just make sure that you know it looks somewhat close. Or sometimes like we have a pickleball client and they sell a lot of different pickleball sets. And you know you're going to show that it comes with a bag.

Ian Smith 00:11:14  And the bag is going to obviously be a lot smaller because it's not the main focus. They're buying the pickleball set. So your main focus in the image wants to be maybe your coolest design paddle, or maybe like you have it's A44 set and you've got like two paddles that are the unique ones, and then the other two are just the same, right? So maybe you show those two ones in different variations, overlapping upside down. You know, I would say get creative, get super creative with your split testing, sometimes putting something upside down, maybe just enough to grab attention or maybe having like two hands like that, or maybe even throwing in a face, throwing in someone's face and a full body image of, you know, a human into it. Just get wild and crazy with your split testing. Run that main image for a week. You never know if it's going to be your best performing. I've been so surprised so many times in the past by like, wow, I did not think that that image was going to perform, or I didn't think that that ad was going to actually do well.

Ian Smith 00:11:56  And then it does like the best, like ten Roas or something that I've ever seen. So don't be afraid to get a little risk taking where like you test something that doesn't make any sense to you, and then sometimes it just, like, stands out enough in the search results to grab attention.

Josh Hadley 00:12:09  Yeah, I love that. Do you have any other examples you talked about the boat kit? Pickleball? any other ideas or maybe some surprises where you're like, wow, I'm surprised this did as well.

Ian Smith 00:12:18  Yeah. So we've got a dog chew toys client, and they sell a wide variety of dog chew toys. And so when we looked at the search results and a lot of our split testing is backed by research. So we'll look at what is everybody doing. And if the search results look the exact same for everybody, do something different. Like don't just try to do what everybody else is doing or else you're not going to really change your clickthrough rate. So we have this dog client, and it seemed like the thing to do was to put just a standard picture of like a dog holding the, the, the chew toy in their mouth in the corner of the image, and then to have, the chew toy right there.

Ian Smith 00:12:49  So we really experimented with having a hand like the, like taking away the dog and the main image altogether and just having a hand holding that, that big ball like a chew ball, kind of a thing that did pretty well. And then we experimented with having like a full size human and a dog in like the corner of the image, you know, with them playing with the toy and then having the image by itself or the product by itself. So it's kind of like the product was in the, let's say, the top left corner. And then you have a full size image of a human and a dog playing with it in the bottom right. So this was something that nobody was doing. They were only doing dog specific or product specific type of images. So by just testing bringing a full human adult, you know, if you think that you want to appeal to more male shoppers than use a male model, but just, I guess things that don't look right. And sometimes the scale was not accurate at all because the the main product would be huge.

Ian Smith 00:13:39  And then you'd have a really small dog and human in there. but ultimately, what worked in that whole split test was really product only hand holding the product like this and not having a dog in the image at all, which was completely against what you saw littered in the search results, is just everybody had a dog and the toy, a dog and the toy. But when you just get all that out and you do something completely different, it just worked. It was our winning image.

Josh Hadley 00:14:03  I love that love that. Any other examples that you have on the top of your mind?

Ian Smith 00:14:06  You know, I've seen a lot in some product categories, like the bedding product category. They will do a full out non-white background image, and it's like a full picture of a room with a bed in there. So when you're in a product category that that's allowed and you can go full lifestyle image, then test it, see what happens. The main thing that you're trying to do here with click through rate, is just be different than everybody else.

Ian Smith 00:14:30  and be intriguing enough to get the click. So if you look again, it's going to be so different for all different products in different categories. The size of the product, the demo you're trying to appeal to. If you can do real lifestyle images. But I guess the main thing that I just want people to take away is be a risk taker. Be willing to test, be willing to try different new things. That is way different than what's currently going on in the search results. And, you know, running some ads behind it to get more exposure on that image. Maybe a quick and easy way for you to tell if this is giving you a good click through rate or not. Like maybe you don't run it for a week if you've got a high ad, spend behind it and you can get some solid data off of, you know, 2000, 3000 impressions, you can quickly see, this is not working. This is giving us a horrible click through rate. And then you change it immediately.

Ian Smith 00:15:13  Right? So just trying different things, thinking outside the box and being different than all the other options that are out there on the in the search results.

Josh Hadley 00:15:19  Yeah, makes a lot of sense. So my next question would then be, you know, how does I play into this? Because there's been a ton of AI tools that have been introduced that allow you to just upload your image, and then it's going to, you know, basically come out with different lifestyle shots or images. So what's your take on AI? Any tools you would recommend people using? Do you recommend not using it? What? Give us the lay of the land.

Ian Smith 00:15:40  So I love AI. I'm a huge fan of AI and I actually hired an AI consultant. This dude was a very smart guy. He just dabbles in all the tools. And I hired him to give me a crash course on the different tools he's found. And, and I, I love that that worked out because he gave me some really good insights on some great tools.

Ian Smith 00:15:56  So I've done a lot of testing. What I found is I'm not a big fan on the image generation tools right now where we're at right now and the video generation tools, I'm not a huge fan of that yet either. Just a little side note, Canva recently acquired Canva is now worth like $28 billion, which is just crazy to me. but Canva recently acquired Leonardo, AI and Leonardo, if you don't know about that one. It's very similar to Midjourney, and these are basically image creation tools, very similar to Dall-E, like in ChatGPT. I just, I messed around with Leonardo for a bit, and I just wasn't really digging the results that I was getting for from a Amazon seller product standpoint. Like, it's really great for illustrations. Like if I'm trying to create a kid's book, it would just I would use a ton of image generators. So I'm not the biggest fan yet right now on the image generator AI tools. But I love the copy AI tools. And so the AI tool that I would mostly recommend that we use the most is Claude AI getting ideas for main images to test, getting obviously copy for listings.

Ian Smith 00:16:55  Getting ideas for videos to create for selling the product. ideas in general have just been so great to get from Dalian, and I'm sorry from Claude. and the beauty there is that when you're trying to brainstorm in your head, you hit these brick walls, and sometimes your brain just doesn't want to create new things. So when you get like these, these ideas seeds from Claude, and it just helps your gears start to turn, then you can then run information back into Claude and kind of refine that idea. And so I really loved using it as a brainstorming tool for all the different creative things that we create with.

Josh Hadley 00:17:27  I love that, and I think that's that's probably the biggest tack of them all right now, is utilizing Claude to generate ideas of, hey, have you considered, you know, having a dog featured in your image for the dog toy or whatever it is? so my question for you, Ian, would be this, like, do you have, like a set of prompts that you normally send to get, you know, Claude to give you a good output? Because as everybody knows, with AI, it's, you know, garbage in, garbage out.

Josh Hadley 00:17:49  If you have a crappy prompt, you're not going to get a whole lot out. So would you mind walking us through, like, what's the type of prompt that you give to Claude?

Ian Smith 00:17:56  So I used to think that the prompts were the secret sauce where the magic. And so I went and I researched and I created Google Doc after Google Doc of just lists of prompts. And what I ultimately found is massaging it with shorter prompts. And, you know, this is just what's worked for me is, kind of rinse and repeat. It's kind of like you put in your initial starting prompt that's going to give you your list. And I actually in those prompts I'm very specific. So let's just say I'm looking for video ideas for ads okay. So I'll tell them give me 20 video ideas. Give me. And I don't start super general like that. Give me 20 video ideas I, I get very specific with Give me 20 video ideas for this product that will target this audience and act like you are, you know, this type of marketer.

Ian Smith 00:18:40  You know where these are, your main value is in your marketing. And so I'll give it an initial prompt like that and I'll just see what it what it comes back with. And then if I like one of those things I'll copy paste that and I'll be like elaborate on this idea, mentioning this. So it's a lot of back and forth. It's not necessarily like I'm just gonna put in this one huge prompt and then just get back out gold. It's a lot of like massaging it, putting it in, taking it out, putting it, you know. And then I also love testing the different tools. So the three tools that I use is Claude ChatGPT the latest version, I paid $20. I forgot what number they're on. I think they're on like 5 or 4.5 or some like that at this point. so getting a prompt from cloud, throwing into ChatGPT, seeing what chat gives me. And then another tool that I use is called Cody I Cody. I now Cody is a bot that I've actually trained so you can upload thousands of PDFs.

Ian Smith 00:19:28  You can upload, web like website indexes and site maps of websites, and it will go and crawl an entire website. You can upload YouTube transcripts, YouTube videos, transcripts. You can basically teach this bot all about the Amazon marketing strategies that that you believe in. And then when you prompt that bot, you'll get back information with that in mind. So Kodi is actually a really cool tool to be a little bit more skewed towards the Amazon strategies that I really believe in, because I've taken that time to train that bot. so again, like getting outputs and kind of cross-referencing other bots to really usually to be honest with you, it doesn't take that much cross-referencing because I get gold pretty quickly. I mean, these bots are really good. And then with my own ideas as well that I'll kind of mix into, you know, oh, this sparked one idea. Okay. So then I'll add that into the prompt over here. So yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:20:17  I love that. And I and that's one of the biggest hacks that I learned from Perry Belcher, when I attended.

Josh Hadley 00:20:22  So I was at Bdds and then Kevin King's Level Up summit in Hawaii earlier this year. And what Perry Belcher talked about is creating a whole host or an army, so to speak, of your own custom. And so what he recommended was go follow whoever you feel like are the experts in whatever space. So if you're looking for an expert bot that is really good at making image optimization on Amazon, go follow all of those guys. And and what he recommended is like, if they have a course, go purchase the course, download the transcripts, move them into a PDF, upload those PDFs right as kind of the brain for this bot, and then do that with a few of the experts. Right. And so that's something that you could do. Like with this podcast episode. Go download the transcript from YouTube for this video, upload it. And now that becomes like the knowledge center. So that that way you're not just relying on, you know, whatever random information you know, ChatGPT is, is gathering from the web in order to provide a recommendation.

Josh Hadley 00:21:15  But like you can create very detailed. So like have a copywriting bot. thought right. Have a main image optimization, have a video like viral video bot and then all you're doing is like have your VA go through all the courses or the people that you love to follow, download the transcripts, upload them into the bot, and it makes all the difference. So is that kind of what you do, Ian.

Ian Smith 00:21:35  Yeah, and I would say codify gives me it makes it the easiest to train that bot because they have this whole platform and dashboard and you can easily create those multiple bots. Your main image bot, your video ID is bot, or you can create a Perry Belcher bot. I mean, you can literally go and download as much content and find as much information around Perry Belcher and create upload that and create a Perry Belt. What would Perry Belcher recommend me do in this situation? What would Frank Kern recommend me do in this situation based on his strategies? And then you go and query that bot.

Ian Smith 00:22:02  the beauty about ODI is that you can have a back end bot where you can go and query it with your own private queries, but you can also have a front end bot where you can basically then embed this little window on your website, and then your Vas can query that your customers. You can create a customer support bot where your customers can go and query that bot. And then you've got all your manuals, your, your, your warranty information, your product information, like all that is uploaded on the back end. So you've taught that about all about your brand standards, how you communicate with your customers. And you can literally make like a customer support bot. bond.

Josh Hadley 00:22:32  Love that. Love it. That's, Those are brilliant strategies. So, Ian, in addition to this, any other unique ways that you're using AI in helping create images or optimizing somebody's content?

Ian Smith 00:22:45  Well, I guess I would say so. Canva and Photoshop, in my opinion, are the main leaders of photo editing, right? We've chosen to go more down the Canva route, and it's really just because they're being extremely innovative.

Ian Smith 00:22:57  They're quicker with the innovation than Photoshop is. Photoshop has their like smart fill technology and like they're getting there, but Adobe's just moving slower than Canva. I feel like Adobe is like this massive cruise ship, and Canva is like the smaller $28 billion, ship. But seeing that Canva literally just acquired Leonardo's eye and already knowing what AI features are already in Canva like, I love that they're adopting things faster. So like the background removal tool in Canva is actually pretty powerful if you use both together Canva and Photoshop and use the best of both worlds. I mean, then you're just way ahead of the curve. but yeah, Canva AI tools are really, really getting there, and I'm sure if they don't already have it, they're probably going to have like a copywriting, integration where you can you can just have ChatGPT right there in the platform. I'm sure they probably already have that though. I mean, Facebook Ads does when you're trying to write ads, it'll it'll give you ad copy right there, which is just awesome.

Josh Hadley 00:23:48  Yeah. It's fantastic. So Ian, what else would you say to, you know, the audience here, seven figure plus Amazon sellers, they want to scale to eight figures and beyond. What other tips or recommendations do you have for them to increase their click through rate or conversion rate that we haven't yet touched on?

Ian Smith 00:24:03  Well, I would definitely say video content is the future. Get a lot of video content creator don't just think you need one video for your product, like having an arsenal of a war chest of videos that touch on different selling points and fake video, a social media influencer style video, or maybe five of those where you have different people talking about kind of giving like a review on the video or, you know, having their different take on what they specifically liked about the product. The smell maybe is influencer A, but then influencer B really liked the texture of your lotion. Let's just say it's a lotion, you know? So having these different videos, then you have a brand story type of video.

Ian Smith 00:24:36  Then you have like a ingredients focused video. And having these different videos allows you to split test with your ads, split test in your main videos. Now premium A+ content allows you to put videos in there. I'm sure that the brand story section will allow you to put a little video in there. Obviously, videos in your storefront Amazon posts now allow you to have videos. So Amazon is more and more on a daily basis rolling out more video placements. So, you know, if Amazon believes in video, it would make sense that you as a seller should believe in video. And so it just goes about, you know, create those videos. Don't let the lack of knowledge of what to create the video about or the professionalism hold you back. You know, you don't have to have the most beautiful, polished video I've actually seen a lot of like the lowest budget, no cut, you know, just straight talking head videos holding up the. I've seen those, perform incredibly well. So it blows my mind that, like so many of these sellers don't make video, but everybody has the capabilities because we all have a cell phone.

Ian Smith 00:25:30  So you could literally just pop out your cell phone, hold your product like this, turn it around, dump it out, do all kinds of things and upload that to your listing in your main in your main images area. Right. And that would be so much better than having nothing at all. Like it doesn't have to be this super high production value video. It can be basic stuff, but the I think the goal is to have a wide variety of multiple videos for the shopper to look through, because you're going to really separate yourself from all the other listings out there that don't have any videos at all, or their videos are like slideshows or other videos or 3D renders and stuff. So it leads me to my next thing is realistic photos and videos are really the best way to go. And again, it's my opinion, but you're setting the expectation as accurate as possible. You know, when I'm shopping I go straight to the reviews and I want to see realistic images in those reviews or real videos, even if it's very low res quality.

Ian Smith 00:26:16  It just gives me a better virtual representation of what this product is. How large is it? what do people think about it? What's the actual color? Because I think as a shopper, I've gotten programmed to know that sellers lie and there's false advertising just everywhere. And so I just want the most accurate and realistic representation, because I don't want to go through a return. I don't want to have a bad experience. So if I can just get the most realistic idea of what this product is going to be like, then I can make my buying decision based on that. So the sellers should be trying to give as much realistic content out, you know, put it out there, put it on your listing so that the shopper just has the most realistic expectation. Because I think if you like this, like if your the expectations you're setting are here, the shopper is either going to have a better, reality than your expectations or a worse reality than the expectations that you set. If their reality is worse, you're going to get a return or a bad review, right? If you can just be realistic, like their reality is accurate to what you set, you're probably gonna have a good time.

Ian Smith 00:27:15  Like you're probably gonna get a fine review. You're probably not going to have a high return rate. And overall that's going to increase your organic ranking. I mean, Amazon looks at the return rate and they're like, hey, let's rank this accordingly. If you've got a high return rate, your organic ranking is going to go down. And obviously, you know, your profits are going to hurt because you can't always just resell an item that's been returned. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:27:32  I love that. And I just want to double down on that video aspect. so the basic version of this is just like there's a lot of AI tools that will basically create a collage or a slideshow for you of like at least at the bare minimum it goes listing images and upload it to this AI collage slideshow to produce a video and get that on your listing. Here's why I think that is so, so important to just have. Like, even if you don't have any time and you're like, I can't do any of this, have your VA do just this, which is create that slideshow of your main image and then your secondary images.

Josh Hadley 00:28:03  And here's why. It's going to unlock two things for you. In my interview that I did with Kathleen Coble, she helps teach, influencers how to create shoppable videos on people's content. Now there are influencers. So if you're using Amazon Creator connections, the main reason why influencers are going through that platform is because if somebody watches their video about your product before they then purchase your product, Amazon's going to like pay them extra. Okay, so that's the that's how much Amazon is leaning into this. Like they want organic UGC content from creators on their platform because they know that that's the future. So Amazon's incentivizing these creators. However, here's what I learned from Kathleen Coble. These influencers cannot upload any videos to your listing or related content to your listing if you do not already have a video in place. So just by having some stupid video uploaded on your listing, it then unlocks it for other creators. When you do your Your Creator Connection campaigns to be able to post content on your listing. It's free, doesn't cost you anything, and now you know you've got even better content.

Josh Hadley 00:29:05  So that's number one. But number two, the other thing that it will unlock for you is we've already seen Amazon testing in the search results where like sometimes it's instead of the image it immediately goes to a video. Right. And so while you're scrolling down you notice like wait, why is a video playing while I'm scrolling? that's because like Amazon's beta testing this right now, who knows whether that becomes a thing. And like every result just has a video playing or not. But if Amazon's beta testing that they can't beta test anything for your listing if you don't have anything. Right. So just having something there is going to allow you to stand out in those search results. If Amazon beta test your your video for whatever reason in those search results. So a lot of low hanging fruit there. and before we wrap up, is there anything else that we didn't talk about that we showed up today?

Ian Smith 00:29:51  Well, one thing I'll just say is that I was talking to this brand the other day, and one of the guys were like, why would we do that? None of our competitors are doing that.

Ian Smith 00:29:59  You know, he's in the supplement space. We work with a lot of supplement brands. And so he was saying a lot of our competitors are just, you know, photoshopping their bottle into stock photos. They're not doing real lifestyle style stuff. They're not doing this. They're not doing this. It's just. And I'm like, why do you want to do what? Why do you just want to fit right in and mesh right in with your competitors when if you're different, you're probably going to stand out from the shopper. That's comparing all these different people, and you're probably going to get the sale just from being different, just from being more realistic, less virtual, you know, less 3D renders, less stock photos like real photos with an actual person holding your bottle like the shoppers seeing that you took the extra step to actually get real life photography and videos and stuff like that's going to build more trust with them, more authority as a brand. And then potentially when you want to sell your brand, that content will help you get a higher multiple because you look like a bigger brand.

Ian Smith 00:30:48  So when you're selling something online, a lot of this stuff is trust building. It's trying to make your brand seem like a big professional brand. It's the conversion rate. so there's so many different, like, spokes on this wheel that add up to make the investment into getting more content created a no brainer. Like content works, it's not going away. The more content you have, the better. Amazon obviously values content. Amazon is investing big into content, all forms of content. So it just shocks me that not more sellers are investing in content, and especially when you look at the shelf life of content, like let's say you had ten videos, those videos are going to be salespeople, sales robots, or whatever. They're going to help you sell your product and bring in multiple seven figures over the next 3 to 5 years. So it's like you're if you amortize that cost over a 3 or 5 year period on a monthly basis, it's like a very low cost. and that's just an easy way to make logical sense of investing 5 to 10 grand into content today.

Josh Hadley 00:31:51  Yeah, I love that. Really well summed up. All right Ian, we wrap things up. I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from every episode. So here are the three actionable takeaways that I noted. You let me know if I'm missing something. Action item number one is if you're in a rut trying to figure out like, oh, how do I make my main image different? Number one go use ChatGPT. Go use Claude. And what you want to do is if you can create a custom GPT that understands all the, you know, best optimizations and stuff, you know, you can check out this episode. You could upload that into the brain of the AI tool. You can upload the conversation we had with Mina Elias. he had some really great tips in terms of what he's seen working for main image optimization, upload those and then ask, you know, you can ask the bot, hey, what are some different, unique ways that I could maybe present my product in a main image? And it's just meant to get your juices flow and to give you some ideas.

Josh Hadley 00:32:40  And honestly, the more wild the idea, the, you know, probably the better, because you just want to, you know, even if it's like turn this product upside down, it's like, well, that's weird, but right, you should always be testing. So that's action. Item number one is like go to AI to generate ideas, not necessarily to do all the work for you, but to get the ideas well.

Ian Smith 00:32:58  And just to piggyback on action item number one, I would definitely say hands down, get some hand shots, throw in some hand shots, split test a hand holding your product and see what that does for click through rate.

Josh Hadley 00:33:09  Yeah. Agreed. So action item number two is just that. So focus on your main images and focus on the click through rate that that's going to drive in okay. Ultimately your main image is going to be meant to stop the scroll. So as Ian mentioned, one of the best things that they have found to be working really well is in having some hands included in those images.

Josh Hadley 00:33:28  So incorporate some hands in there. Those could maybe be Photoshop, they could be real images. He talked about the importance of having like it be like a life size image. For comparison's sake, Mina Elias talked about how important it is, like take the main keyword and whatever, you know, even if it's not on your product packaging itself. Photoshop, Photoshop it onto your product packaging, even though it's going to be different than what the customer is going to receive. He's seen really good results there just by having like the main search term being right on the front and centre on the bottle, or whether it's, you know, put the product packaging on there, even if it's like a tumbler that doesn't need product packaging, you could still have it sitting off to the side and have it say, you know, whatever the main search term is there. So those are the hacks for the main image. Now last but not least, action item number three is going to be adding video to your product listing.

Josh Hadley 00:34:16  So it's best if you can create your own UGC video, right. And just have a talking head, displaying the product and talking about the product and explaining the product. You could easily do that on your iPhone or cell phone and then just upload that to Amazon. You do not need to have that, have professional video editing to have that up and for have it to have it perform well. But we also talked about, you know, the lazy man's way is to have your VA just take create a slideshow essentially of all of your, you know, your main image and your secondary images just to fill in that video spot that then will unlock the ability for these content creators that are making money, and Amazon's incentivizing them to post videos about your product on their own dime. You don't have to pay them. And so they will post videos that unlocks it. And if Amazon a b tests showing videos in the main search results, if you don't have a video, you're going to fall behind. So it's always staying one step ahead.

Josh Hadley 00:35:03  I think Amazon sees TikTok shop as a threat because of the video shopping component, and so you best believe if Amazon's going to want to compete with Teemu and Shin and they're opening up a whole other cheap, you know, cheap crap division is what I'm going to call it off Amazon. It's like, here, come buy your cheap crap that you want from overseas. If they're opening that, you best believe that they're going to be opening up something similar to compete with the TikTok shot. So focus on that video content. Ian, is there anything else you think I missed here?

Ian Smith 00:35:29  No, I love the cheap crap division because people do love their cheap crap. I mean, you know, maybe even like scale into that. As far as, like if your product lineup is in the higher price point, you know, 30 to $50, you know, when you're doing your product launch research, maybe get some products lined up for that cheap crap division, so that, you know, you got a $10 product or a $5 product or something that, you can still get some cash coming in because that could be like a, a feeder into cross-selling them.

Ian Smith 00:35:52  Your other products.

Josh Hadley 00:35:53  Love that. Love it. All right, Ian, my favorite part of the podcast, the three questions I ask each guest. So number one, what's been the most influential book that you've read and why?

Ian Smith 00:36:01  Oh man, I love ready, fire aim. I just really love that one. And then secondary to that one. Alex. Hormones $100 million deals. Something that I forget the exact title but.

Josh Hadley 00:36:10  Offers.

Ian Smith 00:36:11  I don't know offers. Love that one. Really good.

Josh Hadley 00:36:14  Yeah. Big fan of Alex Formosa. that's another good one to follow. in second question, what's your favorite AI tool that you think other people should be using?

Ian Smith 00:36:22  So what I mentioned, I mean, cloud AI is by far my favorite and then secondary code that I mean, to that I talked about, once image creation and video creation AI tools get better. I mean, we're gonna for sure be using it, and maybe I just haven't gotten there with the idea of how can I leverage the image creation tools.

Ian Smith 00:36:41  But right now it all just seems so fantasy. It seems so like animated. It doesn't seem realistic enough. You know, AI is kind of struggling with human hands and human faces. They're just I mean, even like human writing, like English writing in an image, it's just really bad at that. Which blows my mind because it's like you got ChatGPT over here that can write copy beautifully, but it doesn't work in images. When you try to put copy an image like it just is, it's like Lauren Ipsum. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:37:06  Great. All right. Last question here. Who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the e-commerce space that other people should be following and why?

Ian Smith 00:37:12  So I had to give it away. But Alex has taught me a lot. I am really digging his free content just on YouTube, like he does longform videos, really valuable information. And he gives as far as team building and training and offers are like way more important and creating that offer. I mean, especially for me running a service business, you know, the offer that I can create just it would take my, you know, average order value from, from 5000 to 10,000 or 20,000, you know, just by creating an irresistible offer, that is, you'd be foolish.

Ian Smith 00:37:40  You'd feel foolish by turning down. That's what he talks about. All in that book is creating this offer where you make people feel stupid for saying no. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 00:37:47  Big fan of Alex. For Mosley. I'm looking at doing one of his workshops coming up. So hopefully, hopefully learn even more nuggets there. And maybe we'll have to do a podcast just focused on that.

Ian Smith 00:37:56  That would be awesome. Yeah. If you can get him on the podcast, that'd be great.

Josh Hadley 00:37:59  Ian, this has been a lot of fun. If people want to follow you more, they want to learn more about what you're doing. Where could they follow you?

Ian Smith 00:38:05  So go to YouTube and just search Evolve Media Agency search Ian Smith, Evolve Media on YouTube. So YouTube is my chosen main platform. And actually I interviewed you, Josh, so thank you for jumping on my YouTube channel so you can type in Evolve Media. Josh Hadley if you want to, to see what we did there. but yeah, YouTube is my go to and then TikTok, you know, you can search Evolve Media agency, but YouTube is definitely.

Ian Smith 00:38:26  And then LinkedIn, go find me on LinkedIn Ian Smith with Evolve Media Agency and connect with me and we can chat it up. And then also sorry, real quick last plug is we have a free Amazon listing checklist as well as a free organic ranking roadmap e-book as well as a product launch guide, all for free. You can get access to that by going to AMS Checklist comm. A lot of free value in that. And then you'll also get a free listing audit consulting call with me when you download that. So AMS checklist.com.

Josh Hadley 00:38:51  Bam packing the punch. There's the value offer. So I love it Ian. There's been a lot of fun. Thanks for joining the show.

Ian Smith 00:38:57  Thank you big time for having me on man.