Building a Business on Amazon

Episode 890: Building a Business on Amazon, with Mike Canarelli and Marcus Grimm

Building a business on Amazon can provide you with future opportunities. Listen to Mike Canarelli today and start building a business on Amazon.

Do you want to start building a business on Amazon? Then Mike Canarelli is the guy who will help you achieve that goal. Mike Canarelli is the CEO and Co-Founder of Web Talent Marketing and is recognized as one of the top digital marketing agencies in the United States who prides itself on providing unique, scalable long-term solutions for its clients. Mike holds a B.S. from Temple University’s Fox School of Business and Management where he studied Entrepreneurship and Management Information Systems. After six years as a freelance designer and web developer, he founded Axis Creative Group in 2006 and later merged with Web Talent SEO in late 2010.

What you’ll learn in this episode about building a business on Amazon:

• Why the “project management triangle” or “iron triangle” of speed vs. price vs. quality doesn’t exist on Amazon
• Why building a business on Amazon offers potential for business-to-business organizations, and why business leaders need to research Amazon to take advantage of future opportunities
• Why businesses see better results the more they spend on Amazon advertising, and why this is similar to grocery and retail store “slotting fees”
• Why a company losing a sale to Amazon, even if it is for a product the company manufactured, can cost valuable remarketing consumer information
• Why each business must develop a unique and individual strategy to deal with Amazon based on their business needs
• Why Mike chose to add the position of “Chief Growth Officer” to the business, how he defines the role, and why he brought Marcus into the position
• How the work Marcus does in the position of Chief Growth Officer benefits the company, and what support he needs to be able to do his job well
• Why some customers are the wrong fit for a business, and why part of Marcus’s role is to identify those situations
• How marketing automation works, and why moving at the speed a prospect wants to go is the key to a successful campaign
• How do you start building a business on Amazon and it’s not too late to do so

Resources:

• Website: www.webtalentmarketing.com
• The Revenue Stream podcast: www.webtalentmarketing.com/podcasts/
• Start building a business on Amazon by learning about creating an A+ content

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Learn how to create a great brand and start building a business on Amazon

 

 

Building a Business on Amazon: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning, Onward Nation. I’m Stephen Woessner, and before I introduce you to our encore guests today, let me share some additional context about Mike Canarelli and Marcus Grimm and why I was so very excited that they said yes, to come back for another conversation. The reality is, it’s been about 18 months since we had a chance to have Mike as a guest on our show back in episode 617, and Mike and Marcus, the team that they lead, the agency that they are leading and building and scaling.

 

Well, it’s a fast paced business just like you are running Onward Nation. And so they have been working on some really, really interesting things. Them in their entire team over the last 18 months. And, and we thought, okay, we had a chance to connect for a call several months ago. And it’s like, oh my gosh, guys, you have got to come back to Onward Nation and share the story.

 

So I just want to kind of give you some additional context here before we dive into the conversation. They’re working on some really amazing things with respect to Amazon. And so if we want to call it the Amazon agency side of their business, essentially when business owners like, you know what, we need to double down. We need to go all in on Amazon, whether we’re B2B or whether we’re B2C.

 

How do we go about doing that? Well, the team that Mike and Marcus and their entire team that they’ve put together, this is what they do. They’ve built some really solid expertise around that because the reality is Onward Nation, Amazon has become the number three platform for Digital Aspen. Number three is behind Facebook and Google. So we’re going to talk about a lot of that this morning too and then marketing automation is something that their team has really developed some core expertise around.

 

And then Marcus has now been appointed as the chief growth officer within the business, which when we had this conversation I thought, oh no, wait a minute, this is a title I’ve heard a little bit. I’ve certainly heard that title before. And so I thought, you know, that’s going to be an interesting conversation for Onward Nation business owners too.

 

Is this a role that we need to be really intentional about recruiting and hiring and putting on our team to run points on biz dev? So with that said, Mike and Marcus, thank you for saying yes and coming back to Onward Nation. So without further ado, welcome back my friends. 

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: Mike and Marcus’ Introduction

 

Hey Stephen and Onward Nation, great to be here again.

 

Thanks so much for having us. And, this is Marcus Grim, and, I am thrilled also, to be here with everyone on the Onward Nation. Well, I’m thrilled that you guys said yes. So, let’s dive into some of these really, really big, in my opinion, learning opportunities for Onward Nation business owners. Let’s first tackle Amazon.

 

And you know, we’re seeing the headlines. Number three big place to to really put our brands forward. You know if you guys were just to kind of take a 30,000ft view first what do you see that opportunity as for for business owners and then what kind of slice it down as to why you think that way. But take is kind of 30,000ft view.

 

First, what do you see as the overall opportunity here? Well, the overall opportunity is quite frankly, I only, I don’t even know that we could even put a number on how big it is. But what we see from our customers is first off, a lot of our new business opportunities are people coming to us and saying, we want to talk to you about Amazon.

 

Secondly, customers that have been with us for years, they may have been with us for Google or for Facebook or for SEO. They’re like, we want to be on Amazon. Everybody is talking about it. And the numbers are absolutely accurate that a lot of spending is moving share wise. Google continues to grow. Facebook continues to grow.

 

But share wise, people are talking about Amazon pretty much on a near-daily basis. And the percentage of incoming lead increases that we got are overwhelmingly for Amazon right now. Wow. Okay. So you said something really or you guys said something really compelling to me in the green room in the pre-interview chat when you said, look, here’s reality.

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: An Introduction to Doing Your Business in Amazon

 

Amazon’s rewriting the rules of business. I mean, that’s a pretty bold statement. So why do you guys feel that way? Well, the reality is they’re here’s one of the things that I think about years ago, somebody drew a triangle for me and they said, hey, listen, here’s the way business works. You can have quality products, you can have stick delivery, or you can have or you can have low prices.

 

And then you say to the prospect, pick two of the three, pick two of the three, that doesn’t. And we call that the project management triangle. Or some people call it the iron triangle. It does not exist on Amazon. You will know the quality of the product because of the reviews you’re in a bidding war for the customers.

 

So you’re fighting for price and everything’s on prime. So it’s like, how quickly can I get it? That project management triangle has been written for 50 years, and by and large, businesses all believed and picked two points. The triangle Amazon is just totally crushed saying you got hit all three. Well, I don’t remember if it was Mike or Marcus.

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: The Commercial Construction Process of Amazon

 

One of you guys said, you know, talking about Amazon’s building, you know, investing so much of the infrastructure, building, warehousing and distribution centers and offices and all of that. And the whole mantra is just how can we do it faster? How can we do it faster? Right? Yeah, there’s a great story I heard. I’ve got some friends who are in commercial construction and the way the story goes is that there is a man that Amazon calls the general who is a retired four star general, okay.

 

And his job is to fly around the country going in and visiting the Amazon warehouses that are under construction. And the law is that the general does not have an email address. He doesn’t have a cell phone. The general can show up for a job conference meeting, and he’s going to come in the room and all the contractors know whatever they ask him, he’s going to look at them in the eye and he’s going to say which options fast or which options faster, don’t care what it cost, which option is faster.

 

And it’s really important. If you’re a retailer, you gotta realize that’s what Amazon is doing. When has that ever occurred? When have you ever done a commercial construction project that your only question was, what do I gotta do to do it faster? It’s amazing. Yeah. And you know, I have some family who live in Minneapolis and there’s some experimentation there.

 

And I think it’s in larger metros as well. And I don’t know the exact name of the kind of the offering, I’m sure you guys do. But essentially same day delivery or within like a two hour window of pressing, you know, submit the order. I’m like, oh my gosh. Seriously. It is where we’re going.

 

And it must be. But it’s like, how are they going to like how and when will that be at scale. But I mean to think of same day delivery is incredible. It’s amazing. And I mean, what we’re not going to be talking about today is, you know, what they call last mile logistics. But that’s just going to be a huge other way.

 

That business just gets transformed over the next couple of years. 

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: The B2B Space in Amazon

 

Wow. Okay. So if I’m a business owner, let’s say that I am in the B2B space and I’m a service firm in the B2B space. So, I mean, certainly on the B, to C side, you know, consumer space and that kind of thing.

 

But let’s say that I’m on the B2B side. So what opportunity is for me as a B2B business owner as opposed to I’ve got a thing that I need to sell in a store on Amazon. So, you know, I think there’s a couple, the first is Amazon is experimenting with the services models. It’s very, very new.

 

And I think we’re going to be paying a lot of attention to it as quickly as Amazon develops. I would say it’s been a year and a half since Mike was on the program. Probably if you bring us back in a year and a half, we’ll be talking more about services. However, that being said, we’ve got a slew of B2B customers right now that we work with, and they’re saying things like, well, you know what?

 

Maybe I can’t sell my highly customized products on Amazon, but I’ve got a parts catalog or I’ve got a consumables catalog. How do we get those on? We have some other B2B customers that are saying, well, you know what? I maybe don’t want to have my primary line on Amazon, but this could be an outstanding way for me to put a different private label line on or a different branded line, because the reality is that the money is there for the taking on Amazon.

 

That’s where the buyers are. So even if you’re in a B2B space, everybody’s kind of looking at the platform. Wow, wow. So going back to one of the things that we talked about a few minutes ago, completely rewriting the rules, right? So I think that obviously I have very little depth of expertise around Amazon, which is why I’m so excited that you guys said yes, because obviously you guys do have very significant depth around Amazon.

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: The Importance of Advertising

 

But I think what I’m taking out of this is if I own a B2C business, I need to really get up to speed quickly if I’m not already. I really need to understand how Amazon is rewriting the rules of my business, either today or they will be shortly, if they haven’t already. But then if I own a B2B business, service business, capital, equipment manufacturer, whatever, I really need to be understanding what’s going on today.

 

And certainly paying attention to what’s going on. 18 months are now 24 months now, because if it’s not a distribution channel for me today or a lead gen source for me today, it might be in the not too distant future, so those are a couple of my big takeaways. Would you agree with those abs? Absolutely. I mean, it’s what we’re seeing on a day in day out basis.

 

And what’s interesting is you can talk about Google PPC and a lot of a lot of customers understand that model. But, you know, some things are similar on Amazon but some things are different. So, you know, one of the things that we always tell people on Amazon, if you’re launching, your chances are there. There is a competitive product that’s already on Amazon that already has tens of dozens or hundreds of reviews, you know, lifted off on Amazon’s part.

 

And it really requires patience. But in the end, it’s going to be worth it. And then of course, the other thing that we’ve talked about as well is the whole idea that, you know, Amazon makes no bones about it. If you want to get to the top of the search results, you’re going to advertise. And you know, it’s kind of nice.

 

We talked about that old line that John Wanamaker had that he said, you know, I have my money. I have to have the money I spent on advertising wasted. I just don’t know which half. Well, on Amazon. The more you spend, the better your results will be. And that’s just how the platform’s built. 

 

And that’s what the three of us were talking about again, in the green room before we started recording that. On the surface, some people might rail against that and think, oh, I mean, that’s really disingenuous. That’s I can’t believe we pay to play like that and, and whatever. But really and I don’t remember if it was Mike or if it was Marcus who said this.

 

But essentially what they’re doing is kind of, you know, taking that old slotting fee, which has been around for decades in the grocery business or in the retail business, and just saying, yeah, you know what? I think that’s a pretty good strategy. 

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: Incorporating Amazon into Your Marketing Mix

 

So this is a new spin on slotting fees. Right. And it’s exactly what it is.

 

Go ahead Mike. Yeah. And the other thing that we’ve been having a lot of fun doing is helping our clients with the strategy of where does Amazon fit into their total marketing mix. So, you know, you talk about first party data, second party third party data. And you know, if your client, your customer is buying on Amazon, it’s not really your first party data versus, attracting that consumer to your website and then being able to use marketing automation or whatever to market back to them.

 

And obviously Amazon charges a fee on top of their advertising. So, it’s been a tremendous amount of strategic fun. Just sort of figuring out what is that recipe for some of our, some of the clients that we work with. Okay. So let’s go a little bit deeper there because, I think I’m tracking you with first, second and third party data, but I want to make sure that I’m not making an assumption.

 

So take us through the different tiers there and a little bit of the strategy piece, because it sounds like there’s some significant trade offs to, if a business owner doesn’t get that right. Yeah. 

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: Letting Amazon Fulfill an Order

 

So one example, we had a client that, they were doing a great job using, you know, search to attract buyers to their own website.

 

So organic search, not paid search, both for that. Better. Okay. So paid search. Organic search. You know, a consumer lands on your website and buys a microphone. You now have all that order data. You have their, their, name, address, phone number, you have their email, you’re signing an order updates. What happens is if you lose that sale to Amazon, but they still buy the exact same microphone that you manufacture.

 

You still sell a unit, but now you pay Amazon their fee and you don’t have the right necessarily to remarket to them in the future so that they buy headphones from you or they buy cables or whatever it might be. Yeah. And so would you do that, does that fit into the category of okay, so first party data I totally get because they bought that from Broadcom.

 

So when they buy it from Amazon does that fit in a second or third party? I guess it would be more third party than anything. You know it’s anybody but you. So you don’t technically own that data or the relationship for that matter. Yeah. Yeah. Because, all you know is that you shipped a unit off to Amazon because Amazon did the fulfillment there, unless it was some other sort of drop ship arrangement.

 

But Amazon, it was fulfilled by Amazon. What is the FBA right in that scenario? That’s right. Yeah. There’s a couple different ways to do it. But in many cases you don’t necessarily know other than a unit is sold okay. So that’s the strategy piece right. It’s strategy based. And I think it also goes back to you know, neither one of them is inherently good or bad.

 

So for instance if you use your microphone scenario, you know, I’m sitting here at a microphone, we’ve got a pretty good microphone and I don’t think we’re power buyers of microphones. So, you know, it doesn’t matter that we don’t have a relationship yet. However, if you’ve got the opportunity to upsell, cross-sell, build a relationship subscription model with your clients, that’s where you really got to step back and say, do I really want this relationship to happen on Amazon or what?

 

I prefer to happen on my own website where I’ve got control of that data? Okay, so in your experience, guys working this through with a bunch of different clients, is there ever any sort of like coexisting strategy? And maybe that’s the whole white labeling thing or a different product line or do you know, but I mean, is there ever any sort of like, coexistence strategy where somebody says, yeah, I’m going to sell microphones on Mi.com, and I’m also going to sell the same microphone on Amazon, like, does like strategically, does that even work, or does Amazon just consume the com business? 

 

You know, I think the answer is yeah. Everybody does have a slightly different strategy. And it’s interesting working with them because in some cases, in some cases somebody will say, you know what? I know the shoppers are on Amazon, so I don’t want to have to find shoppers. So even if I don’t own that relationship or here’s another one, if I’ve got a product that I really, really believe in, I think people are going to come back to that product.

 

Amazon might be the best place to do it. By the same token, if I believe in the power of a brand and I believe in what I’m doing, and I believe that I’ve got the ability to really nurture that relationship, then maybe the website is the proper place to do it. And it’s interesting too, because we also see some clients that, you know, it’s going to depend on their business strategy.

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: The Cost of Sales in Amazon

 

So I’ll give you a great example. We have a client who, predominantly he resells his projects into products, into the Walmarts of the world. And it’s a highly seasonal product. So in his factory, what he does is he makes a few huge sales a year, which obviously creates some cash flow issues. Well, the way he manages cash flow is the rest of the year he’s selling these products 1 to 510 at a time on Amazon.

 

So Amazon is giving him more level cash flow for his business. And then he allows Walmart to back up the money trucks a couple times a year for the big orders. So yeah, that’s super, super smart. And going back to the strategy piece that you said before is that’s where it’s not just, you know, in an afternoon, hey, I’m going to go all in on Amazon really thinking about that strategically about about the impacts today, about the impacts tomorrow, about balancing out cash flow, about thinking about margins.

 

Right. And then thinking like, well, geez, if my business explodes on Amazon and I’m doing that at a lesser margin where? And then it potentially damages The.com business, which may have been higher margins. It’s like you got to think through all of those trade offs, right? You do it. And it’s one of the reasons that, you know, I can get kind of feisty when I see a blog online where somebody is like, hey, your cost should be 11% or your recall should be 20%.

 

The reality is your cost, which is your Amazon cost of sales. It depends on your business. And we’ve got some customers that are like, absolutely keep that, keep that cost, as low as possible. And we’ve got other clients who say, I don’t care if I lose money on that sale, because once I’ve got that customer, I know they’re going to order it again.

 

So, I mean, your mileage will totally vary depending on your business. Interesting. Okay. So let’s since we’re kind of on the topic of strategy here, let me throw this over to Mike. 

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: The Decision to Add a Position

 

Mike, as you’re thinking about the strategy for your business and both short term growth, long term growth, you know, walk us through the decision to add a position.

 

Chief Growth Officer first kind of defines what that position is. And then why you felt it was so important to add that position to your team. Yeah, absolutely. So, Chief Growth Officer is you know, it’s a role that I believe straddles three different areas. One is sales, one is marketing and strategy.

 

You know, it is a good friend of both of ours. Drew McLellan says business development is the key to any successful agency. So, you know, if we look at just your business and, you know, we treat it as primarily just a sales function, go out and secure new business. What we’re kind of forgetting about is the marketing that has to be done ultimately to drive interested parties to want to talk to you.

 

So that opportunity to say, hey, does it make sense for us to work together and can we fit, you know, your strategic goals, Mister prospect. And then ultimately, you know, you’re an agency. So a lot of what you do, a lot of what you sell depends on the strategy that you’re deploying or that you’re talking about with the prospect.

 

So, you know, kind of piggybacking on the Amazon example, you know, how does Amazon fit into your mix? Are you doing exceptionally well with paid search right now? And are you looking for Amazon just to secure any additional shares that might be out there? Are you looking for just some kind of short term cash flow?

 

You know, where does it fit in? So, marketing ultimately drives the opportunity for sales or business development to happen. And then strategy is really where it all comes together. And, you know, that’s sort of the make or break, and I’ll kind of take it a step further, you know, where I got really excited about that role, was honestly, when I began conversations with Marcus and I said, you know, he’s more than a strategist.

 

He’s more than a marketer. He’s more than a big stuff guy. He really, truly encompasses, all three of those. Which leads us to that holistic role of chief growth officer. So how did you do so, Mike, how did you know that your agency, that your business was ready for like that? 

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: A Next Level Decision

 

So I envision that as really like a leveling up decision or a doubling down decision or whatever sort of, you know, adjective that you want to put on it.

 

Like, how did you know that? It’s like, okay, that in 2019 we’re going to do this. How did you know that you guys were ready for that? Yeah, that’s a good question. You know, I think at the end of the day, you never, you never know definitively. But, it was absolutely the direction that I wanted to go.

 

It was leveling up. It was the next level. It was, hey, how can we use what we’ve learned in the past that has worked well. And in parts, you know, it hasn’t worked well. Like what? What have you learned from that? So I think, you know, you take a chance. You believe in your business, you believe in your team, and you march forward.

 

But really, where did the idea come from? In a more literal sense, we sat around with our leadership team, and we started drawing out sort of an org chart for 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 to 2022. So we did kind of a five year, strategic plan staffing plan. And, you know, all signs sort of pointed to, you know, you need marketing strategy and business development to be wrapped under the right person to then have each of those disciplines truly function the way that they need to.

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: Building The Business

 

Got it. Okay. So, big nugget there. The fact that you and your leadership team are sitting down to not only like conceptualize or you know, whimsically think about what we’re going to do over the next five years, but getting really intentional about it, that you’re not aimlessly wandering through the wilderness, you know, during those five years, like, you’re building the business with intentionality.

 

At least that’s what I’m taking away from what you just said. Yeah. No, I mean, some days it definitely feels like we’re, you know, wandering through the forest, but, you know, those are the fun days, I think sometimes. But now we’re absolutely trying to be as intentional as we can, understanding that every day is a little bit different.

 

And, you know, you can have the best laid plan. But, you’ve got to be agile, you’ve got to be willing to pivot and, you know, react to what’s around. So, Marcus, let me get your take on this as well. You know, this might seem a little bit, you know, weird on the surface because you’re the chief growth officer.

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: The Daily Life of Doing The Sales Marketing Strategy

 

But give our listeners, our Onward Nation business owners some perspective here, some context. So if you were to kind of describe your day to day across the sales marketing strategy kind of function,give us a view of what your day to day looks like, because I think that’d be valuable context for our business owner listeners to think, yeah, okay.

 

I do need a person like that. Yeah. Well, so I think I’ll end by talking about what a day looks like now, but. Okay. But I do want to spend a moment on on days that don’t don’t look good prior to me being in this role at other organizations that I was in, because, okay, I think a lot of business owners can see some of the natural things that happen if you don’t have somebody looking at the business holistically.

 

The first is the very, very common conflict that happens between marketing and sales. I’m one of those people who spent roughly half my career in sales, one of and about half of my career in marketing, which is interesting because in marketing, it’s all about generating more and more and more and more leads.

 

And then the sales department goes, these leads stink. And then when I was in sales, it was all about the marketing departments not giving me enough leads and the leads that they get me stink. And then there’s another conflict that happens as well, which is when sales is responsible just for sales. Often what happens is you’re closing these deals that maybe are not the right fit for the organization.

 

And so that now creates a conflict between sales and operations. And one of the things that I have come to believe through the years is, if you have a role that’s dedicated to the holistic growth of the agency, you can make a lot of those conflicts just go away. And so, what that means to me is now, I’m not complaining about the leads, the marketing departments are giving me because I’m responsible for the quality and the quantity of the leads they’re giving me.

 

And I also know that when I’m bringing on a customer, I really hope they fit the agency profile. Otherwise they’re just going to leave in three months, which, if you’re the chief growth officer, does not help the growth of the agency. So, on a daily basis, what it really looks like is working with the marketing department, just the quantity and quality leads makes sense.

 

If not, how should we tweak this? And then certainly closing the business. And then also from a strategic standpoint. And that’s the other part that Mike was talking about, really being able to step back and say, we are getting a lot of Amazon agency leads right now. So does that mean we double down and do more Amazon lead generation, or does that mean some of our other channels are not getting as much attention.

 

So that’s what it looks like on an ongoing basis. But honestly it comes from eliminating tensions that I’ve seen exist in other organizations that I work for. Yeah. And it’s just so, I don’t know what the right word is, not stereotypical, but we’ve all experienced that before. Right? And it doesn’t matter if it’s right.

 

It could be a five person operation. It could be a 500 person operation. There’s just that inherent conflict and sort of finger pointing. And so when you kind of walk through that scenario that makes total sense, but then also how to alleviate it. But the strategic piece of this is what is really striking to me, especially when you mentioned the Amazon leads and so forth.

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: The Function of a Chief Growth Officer

 

And so then it’s like the agency has a decision to make. Do we go all in on Amazon or do we look at that is or wait a minute, that can be one pillar of growth. And we also need to have a diversified business. And so do we need to adjust that on the lead gen side and so forth.

 

But without sort of that oversight, strategic oversight, maybe that’s the way to say it. Then an opportunity might be missed. Right? No, that’s absolutely right. We have those discussions all the time about, you know, and you’re operating those questions in the bigger context of, well, how much does a lead cost me for Amazon compared to how much does a lead cost me for Google PPC?

 

So you’re looking at that. You’re looking at, you know, what the average retainer looks like in each of those? And you’re looking at the competition. You know what. What’s our closing rate in each of these channels and really trying to see, you know, what does the market want? But I also think as an agency, it’s learning what type of clients we’re really good with and which type of clients we are not necessarily good with.

 

Yeah, really smart, because as we’ve all experienced before. But, sometimes it takes time for us to, you know, time in our business to really acknowledge it. There are customers you should not be serving. Right, guys? It’s so true. And here’s what’s really fascinating. Just to bring this full circle on the chief growth officer thing is, if you have a pure sales department, 99% of them won’t even consider that.

 

They will take anyone with their hand out with a dollar. Yeah, yeah. And then depending upon what type of business you’re running, most of our listeners are running service type firms, B2B service type firms. You know, taking that wrong fit customer. They may have walked in the door with a bag of money or whatever. And taking that wrong fit customer can cost your business.

 

You know a lot more than that customer. A client is worth it and it’s staggering. And I’ve had to learn this lesson many, many times. We all have. But it’s amazing how hard it is. It seems like we are learning that lesson but it is really valuable what we do. Well it definitely becomes very bad from a business perspective.

 

But the other thing is, you know, given the size of our agency here, we run about 30 strong and that’s not a huge agency. So, the blow to morale when you bring in, bad fitting customer is huge. And so that’s where we wanted to really switch things up from the sales department that just brought in any dollar to really trying to be mindful about it and say, are we bringing in the right dollars?

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: Approaching Marketing Automation

 

So, let’s shift gears, go back to marketing automation. Not sure which one of you wants to kind of take this first, but so why did you decide to go even deeper into marketing automation? Like why do you see that as an opportunity, not just today but going forward. So it’s interesting. I’ve, I’ve actually been in the marketing automation space for a very, very, long time for a relatively young industry.

 

And when I came here and saw what web talent was doing, I said, it really, really fits. Well, now, the thing that was really interesting was when we first came here, we weren’t deploying marketing automation for our own marketing needs. But if you go holistically and talk about this position.

 

Chief growth officer very quickly realized that if we wanted to strategically look at our inbound marketing business, the best way to do that is marketing automation. It’s basically taking the creativity that most marketing departments have. But now you’re layering on that statistical side of it and the medical side of it. So the very first thing that we did was we deployed it for ourselves.

 

And as soon as we deployed it for ourselves, we had some members of our team get really, really excited about it. And they said, hey, let’s be reselling this. Let’s be talking to other people about it as well. And, you know, I just firmly believe in space. I believe in content marketing. But content marketing is really one of those esoteric things, you know, what does that mean?

 

You know, I can be like your Stephen and say, I’ve got, you know, 800 episodes of my podcast here, but I don’t understand how they’re contributing to my overall business. Yeah. You at some point you say, what’s the point? And that’s where marketing automation comes in to really help you see what is the return on all of these pieces.

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: Creating Content With a Purpose

 

Okay. So let’s, I very much agree with you, that it’s not about creating more stuff or more episodes or more blog posts or more whatevers. It’s about creating that with a purpose so that it fits within a strategy and a system to either generate leads or nurture relationships, whatever. So, take us a little bit deeper there because I think you’re really onto something there.

 

Big learning opportunity for business owners. So whether that’s defining marketing automation, but just take that deeper as to why you feel so strongly about that. But one of the reasons I feel so strongly about it is understanding the, typically speaking, average marketing. The department deploys email campaigns and they do it on their own time table.

 

We want to send an email about Amazon Agency Services on the 15th of this month, and then a week later we want to send another one, and a week later we want to send another one. And that’s traditional marketing. That’s a campaign. The reality is it really should be prospect based. Meaning if I come to the area, if I come to your website today and I download a whitepaper about your Amazon agency services today, then a day after you’re on my website, then I want to start talking to you about Amazon.

 

And all along the way, I’m measuring how you’re engaging with my contents and developing what we call lead scores. And as that lead score goes up, now we know at what point should the salesperson reach out and say, hey, it looks like you’ve been enjoying some of this content. So it’s really moving. You know, everything today needs to be about moving at the speed that the prospect wants to move.

 

And marketing automation very much can tell us when a given prospect is raising their hand saying, tell me more or you know what, don’t tell me more. A lot of the automation plans right now, programs have what’s called a decay score, which means if I stop interacting with you with your content, my lead score goes down and you know what?

 

That’s okay. Because I want to give my attention to somebody who’s lead scores. So would you agree with this, that it’s even more important for a business owner to be up to speed on this, given GDPR, eventually when GDPR or something like that comes to the United States. I mean, obviously GDPR dips into the US anyway if we’re marketing to EU customers and whatnot.

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: Choosing The Right Marketing Automation Platform

 

But I mean, being really good and being knowledgeable about decay scores and taking people out of our list, like, and having clean lists like that’s really, really important today. It’s super important. And the marketing automation industry has gotten so much more sophisticated. You know, it’s interesting. I was, you know, 15 years ago, I was one of the first customers.

 

And now Pardot is one of, you know, so many players out there. And we love and we’ve always referred to ourselves as being a platform agnostic company here. And so, you know, we’re we, we are a sharp screen partner. But again, we kind of chose that because it is a mid mid-market player. So a sharp spring can handle a lot of the market.

 

But you know, if you’re in an enterprise situation you’re probably going to want to deploy a market over. And we’ve got the expertise here to help out with that as well. But the reality is there are so many different varieties of marketing automation right now. And they come from being incredibly inexpensive to incredibly complex.

 

So there’s a real great choice out there for anybody in this space. Really smart guys. I so appreciate you saying yes and coming back for this conversation. So we had a chance to dig into some big strategic topics like Amazon, like Chief Growth Officer, and how they can, having the right person in that role, on the bus can help lead to growth as well as more seamlessness, across the operator.

 

Sean’s talking about marketing automation and how that gets knitted, together as well. This was just awesome. So I know we covered a lot, but before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, any final advice you want to share? Anything you think we might have missed? And then please tell us the best way to reach you.

 

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Building a Business on Amazon: Final Advice from Mike and Marcus

 

Well, I know I’ll go first on this one. I very much appreciate the opportunity to be on the program. We would be remiss if we’re since we’re speaking to a podcast audience, if we did not talk about, the podcast that we launched a few months ago and would love for the entire nation to join us over at the Revenue stream from Web Talent Marketing, obviously, wherever you get your podcast, we’re huge fans of the space, we’re huge fans of what Onward Nation is doing, and we would certainly love, for some of you to come over and join us on the revenue stream.

 

Awesome. And so the revenue stream available iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, wherever podcasts are available. That is awesome. So, Mike, is there anything else to add? No, I really appreciate being Onward Nation. I love what you’re doing, Stephen. And, you know, it’s always a pleasure to connect. Okay, Onward Nation. No matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and re-listen to the words of wisdom from Mike and Marcus.

 

The key is you have to take these lessons. You have to take the lessons that they so generously shared with you, take them and apply them into your business right away and accelerate your results. And Mike Marcus, again, thanks for saying yes. We all have the same 86,400 seconds today. I greatly appreciate you coming on to the show to be our mentors, and our guys help us move our businesses onward to that next level.

 

Thank you so much, guys. Thank you. Likewise. Thank you. This episode is complete. So head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

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