Tools to Boost Rankings and Reviews

Troy Johnston is the Co-founder of Seller.Tools, an optimization platform for Amazon sellers. Seller.Tools provides a full suite of cutting-edge tools that leverage Amazon data to boost the success of Amazon businesses. The platform is endorsed by top 1% Amazon earners such as Zhou Nutrition, Nested Naturals, 321 STRONG, and more.

Troy is also the Founder of Zon Spark, a group of Amazon optimization specialists that help Amazon sellers implement proven strategies and formulas for success. Zon Spark has been featured in many esteemed publications, including Forbes, Business Insider, Capitalism.com, and more.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Troy Johnston explains what differentiates Seller.Tools from other Amazon tool providers on the market
• How Troy’s entrepreneurial experience impacts his work at Seller.Tools
• What is ManyChat, and how can you use it to benefit your Amazon store?
• How to understand your customer demographics using Amazon DSP
• Why dramatically increasing your sales to review ratio on Amazon can result in frustrating red flags
• Troy reveals what 2021 holds for Seller.Tools: ManyChat optimization, Amazon PPC, and more

In this episode…

Are you struggling to elevate your Amazon business? Do you need a tried-and-true strategy that will help you rise above your competitors and claim the #1 spot in your niche? If so, you don’t want to miss this episode!

After the chaos that ensued in 2020 as a result of COVID-19, many Amazon sellers are ready to rapidly grow and scale their businesses in 2021. But, with such fierce competition on the platform, how can you effectively expand your store in the new year? According to Troy Johnston, there is one key resource that will set your products apart and help you grow your business today: Amazon seller-focused tools. Utilizing the best tools on the market will help you optimize your products, increase customer satisfaction, and build an abundance of positive reviews.

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with Troy Johnston, the Co-founder of Seller.Tools, to discuss how you can grow and scale your Amazon store today using an Amazon data optimization platform. Listen in as Troy reveals why Seller.Tools is different from other resources on the market, how to utilize ManyChat to transform your Amazon business, and the exciting plans Seller.Tools has in store for 2021. Stay tuned!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Quiet Light
• Joe Valley
• Mark Daoust
• Quiet Light Podcast email: [email protected]
• Troy Johnston on LinkedIn
• Seller.Tools
• Email Seller.Tools: [email protected]
• FBA Kings Facebook Group
• Zon Spark
• Jungle Scout
• Helium 10
• ManyChat
• Amazon DSP
• Click Happy: Your Guide to a Meaningful Life & Career in the Digital Era by Molly Pittman

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Quiet Light Brokerage, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light Brokerage wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. By providing trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations, your Quiet Light advisor isn’t your every-day broker—they’re your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light Brokerage is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light Brokerage offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on their website, quietlight.com. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light Brokerage is offering the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email [email protected], or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:07

Hi, folks, it’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips, and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Joe Valley 0:29

Hey folks, Joe Valley here from the Quiet Light Podcast. Thanks for tuning in again this week. Appreciate it. As you all know, I am an entrepreneur first I’ve built, bought and sold my own online businesses been self employed since 1997. I think. I think it’s six all together if you count the built, bought and sold. And my latest venture of course, is Quiet Light Brokerage, been with the team since 2010. Mark and I and our business partners and Mark is of course, the co host of the Quiet Light Podcast. He’s uh, he’s not here. It’s just me, just me. today’s podcast is sponsored by Quiet Light. It’s not Quiet Light Brokerage anymore. It’s just Quiet Light. Quiet Light advisors, whatever you want to call us. It’s Quiet Light quietlight.com now is the new landing page, you can still go to quietlightbrokerage.com, and it will redirect but give it a shot quietlight.com. It’s, I don’t know, shorter and simpler, easy to spell. So we are a middle market m&a firm, largest deal. In 2020 at 25 million, the smallest just $16,000 in some change that was a pocket listing. But all niches, SaaS content, physical products, you name it, we’ve done it. And we’ve got a team now of 12 advisors all together, and Joe Valley didn’t turn his phone off. You heard that ring, folks. Sorry about that. I always tell our guests to turn theirs off. But I didn’t turn mine off today, my apologies. But generally speaking, we don’t edit. So we’re gonna go live and we’re gonna screw up, we’re gonna have some fun. Speaking of fun, today’s guest is Troy Johnston from Seller.Tools, actually at Seller.Tools, which is kind of cool. And it’s a software program for Amazon sellers. been around for several years, Troy and I talked last fall and I was so impressed. I said, we got to have you on the podcast, because there’s a lot of tools out there. And I’m a tools guy kinda but Troy is really a tool guy, he gets it. He understands what tools before and understands the necessity of all of them. Not just one tool, but you got to have multiple tools. So Troy, you’re going to tell us all about that. Thanks for joining the Quiet Light Podcast.

Troy Johnston 2:33

Yeah, thanks, Joe, appreciate you having me on. Definitely a tool guy. Definitely a big fan of utilizing tools as an Amazon seller, which I am myself. Yeah, and I think this year, even more, so it’s going to be 2021. And for the foreseeable future, it’s going to be essential for new brands, and those that are looking to kind of thrive and scale on the platform.

Joe Valley 2:54

You know, back in the day, that’s what guys was great chin on the hair, say I didn’t really have a whole lot of tools when I was a media buyer. But today, today, and I did it on radio, but today, that the amount of data that you need to make the decisions that you have to make in the online digital world is just incredible. And I see p&l is on a regular basis, Troy and I see an entire list of tools. And I have them list them out in the packages so that everybody can see the different tools that they’re using. And sometimes, you know, people have tried some of those tools and they go, Okay, that’s a cost savings, or Oh, that’s a good idea, I should get that as well, and get pretty impressed with all the different tools that some people utilize. And you would think that it’s this one or that one. And more often than not, as we talked about, it’s this one. And that one, even though they’re similar in nature, there are differences between different tools, Seller.Tools is familiar or similar, in some ways to some of the others out there. The most well known ones are Jungle Scout and Helium 10, both of whom have been on the Quiet Light Podcast, to talk to talk to us about the differentiations between Seller.Tools and what you do and who your real audience is and what you provide things like that.

Troy Johnston 4:10

Yeah, I think I think really appreciating the nuances of tools is important for a seller to to really get the most value and utility, you know, if there is a tool that you find that okay, this, this data data really resonates with me the accuracy from which I can make informed decisions for product research and processing. That’s a really important pillar of an Amazon business. And it’s worth investing the relatively nominal fee, you know, we’re talking about $100 a month $50 a month relatively nominal to fill such an important need. And if you sell on Amazon, really businesses at any scale, the whole idea is that the the leverage is baked in. So you have these pillars is really crucial pieces of exceptional product optimization. And then what’s your strategy for ranking and reviews? what’s what’s sort of your way of exploiting that advantage and leverage on Amazon Tools, you know, they do better in certain pillars, you know, there are some that are a little bit better at the optimization. You know, we’re really great on the ranking and review side, when it comes to trying to automate those activities. You know, building an audience, leveraging different tools, tactics, like ManyChat, that that pillar is something we’re really strong. And we may be a little bit lighter on the product resource to product sourcing side. And so I think it’s important for a sort of a business owner having that 1000 foot view of saying, okay, I put buckets in my business, and then I and want to invest strategically in those buckets, what tools and their feature set gives me a more complete competitive advantage. And that’s the other thing too, is I think, a lot of sellers kind of find themselves gravitating towards tools if they see others maybe utilizing them, which there’s nothing wrong, but figure out when you’re on a platform, where can you still exploit a competitive advantage? Where’s your point of difference? I think that parity that potential for commoditization is where a lot of sellers get frustrated, too, because they’re maybe running into the same process and running through the same steps. But yeah, you sort of have to appreciate that nuance across tools. And then once you’re within a tool, what am I doing differently? How am I utilizing this to the greatest effect for an advantage?

Joe Valley 6:15

You know, you said that one of your sweet spots is his rankings and reviews? Did you did you develop that? Because you were a seven figure seller? I think we’ve talked about right. Do you still are you still do you still have your separate brand and seller account?

Troy Johnston 6:34

We Yep. Yep, we do right now. So I’m actively running a brand and an advising a few. But yeah, that’s that’s really where our focus has has been as part of the Seller.Tools team, we’re all still actively selling. Okay.

Joe Valley 6:47

And that helps, I would think, because you’re young, you’re so based upon the fact that it’s rankings and reviews, obviously, most of your clients are pretty well established Amazon sellers.

Troy Johnston 6:59

Yeah, yeah. Usually they’ve got that foundation set. And they’re sort of thinking about sort of beyond maintenance, they’re looking at, okay, what’s next? What can I be doing differently? and growing on platform and then kind of removing from competition, they’re, they’re seeing this ecommerce boom, as much as anybody else. And, you know, on Amazon, there’s, you know, certain set of keywords, there’s, there’s not scarcity, but really, you know, there’s there’s only so many competitors that can earn that top spot for all of this search, following this demand this buyer intent that shows up on Amazon,

Joe Valley 7:29

how do you determine what to focus on next? And what to develop next is it is simply what you discover, from your own seven figure seller accounts and the things that you would like to develop for yourself, and therefore they’re good for others? Or is it combination of that and new policies within Amazon and things of that nature?

Troy Johnston 7:49

Yeah, I mean, I think for us, especially at Seller.Tools, it’s followed this journey of, of really scratching some of our own itches, you know, when when we started to build tools, and features and automations, over many chat, we were all using it ourselves. It was it was a core element of our business. And so we were developing API’s and these really technical things in terms of features, they were really sophisticated. But the outcomes they provided the things that they did for us in our business were just so they were so powerful, so effective. It created a unique challenge for us at that time for for Seller.Tools. But now I think with the the evolution, one of the things that we’ve we’ve really learned is, yeah, it’s really great to solve problems at the seven figure eight figure figure level, but we know as a, as a platform as a suite of tools. That’s a smaller piece of the pie. We have so many people coming in starting their brands, and laying that foundation that we have to make it really approachable and easy for for them as well. But at the end of the day, the truth is that brand new seller, as long as they’re bringing a quality product and getting some of the optimization found foundation pieces right? There, their problems and their challenges are the same as that eight figure seller, it’s just ranking and if you’re on Amazon, it’s it’s traffic and conversions, you know, to give it kind of the digital marketing terminology, that really should be your focus

Joe Valley 9:13

on digital marketing. It’s all over my brain right now, by the way, because I’m reading Molly’s book, Click Happy. Great book by the way, folks, Click Happy Molly Pittman good stuff in there in regards to money, ManyChat and outside traffic and rankings and reviews, can you can you tell the folks that are listening listening that maybe are not familiar with ManyChat and we’ve mentioned a couple of times and and and the integration there and what you do in terms of rankings and reviews? And what are the options if they don’t have ManyChat as a tool and use their services?

Troy Johnston 9:52

Yeah, so ManyChat. It’s It’s a tool that allows you to use Facebook Messenger Facebook messengers platform And it’s kind of grown from that recently with a lot of changes where now they’ve added an SMS, they’ve added an email. So it’s it’s sort of a, a multi channel, omni channel communication platform, it’s essentially what it is. And the benefits for an Amazon seller is it helps you to begin building an audience, which is a really powerful asset. And then it allows you to engage and support that audience, but also direct them for different ranking initiatives. So launching a brand new product, relaunching for winning new keywords. And then also just because you can engage with your customers, it makes it far more seamless to request reviews, that’s, that’s the big challenge. We see sellers, maybe not not using many chat at all, is if you’re relying on buyer seller messaging, you know, kind of the older ways in which you could engage customers, many of which have opted out kind of in mass, they’re not even getting your emails, those are sort of the old ways of hoping that you can get a customer to come back and leave some feedback.

Joe Valley 10:58

Let me ask you a dumb question here. And it’s because it’s not an Amazon seller, there may be buyers that are thinking, you know, they want to buy a business, or maybe, you know, people out there that own businesses that are not doing this yet, but how is it that you can reach out to the the ManyChat list and know that there actually is somebody that bought your product through Amazon recently, when you’re asking for reviews? And then we’ll get into the fact whether that’s against the terms of services or not how you get around it?

Troy Johnston 11:27

Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah, well, there’s a there’s a few different ways. So let’s say and product inserts a very popular strategy, a way in which you can follow up with your customers, ask them to sign up for a warranty give them a you know, a resource that helps them you know, better use your product or address a fit FAQs. And what you can add to that insert is a QR code, which if a customer scans that is brought into ManyChat, and then of course, from there, you can deliver that value, you can request that review, you can offer, you know, free product as any type of value add.

Joe Valley 11:59

It’s give me a five star review, and I will give you this product for free. And that’s good.

Troy Johnston 12:04

No, no, not exactly.

Joe Valley 12:07

All right. Okay, the way

Troy Johnston 12:08

that I the way I term it, and sometimes when when people hear words like ManyChat and using, you know, chat marketing and that type of thing for Amazon sellers is I kind of i, i term it the way of like, describing it just as cars. And there’s there’s totally different cars out there, right? A Ford Fiesta is totally different than like a Tesla, right. And so you sort of have to view it as the the details matter, the way you execute, it matters. And there are instances of more, let’s say blackhat, less to us friendly executions of using chat marketing and ManyChat, then there’s a very careful, very cautious, very customer centric ways to do it, which is a great way to start. And that’s where if we take our insert example, somebody scans a QR code, and maybe you give them a an E book that says, Here’s common questions that customers have about our products, here’s how to best use it. Here’s a video that shows you in depth, how to make sure you have the best absolute best experience with our product. Maybe you leave it there, and that’s an insert that’s in the package that goes out from the FBA.

Joe Valley 13:09

Well, correct. Why is it that Amazon doesn’t just disallow that? allowing inserts so that people can reach out to the customers directly when Amazon says that they’re their customers? I know that yeah, it’s I know, that’s not the general topic of this conversation, but I’m here. Yeah. And don’t Don’t you think they’ll do that at some point?

Troy Johnston 13:29

I think it’s I think it’s really tricky. The precedent that’s been set. I mean, yeah, you have to almost think of it like, you know, when you buy a pair of Sony headphones, or you buy an Apple product, you know, should they be allowed to reference their website or add it make mentioning any promotions, any discounts, any loyalty, any warranties, any way that they’re directing you to complete an action or get back in touch or engage with that brand in any way, is sort of the same outcome, right, we’re sort of getting to that same place. So it’s a really murky precedent that’s already been set, that would have to be the subjectivity of it would have to be clarified from Amazon. And there would have to be fair play, right? We can’t let Sony do something. But then just because you’re a new brand, you’re a mom and pop shop, well, you you get preferential harsher treatment, it’s really sort of a it’s it’s nuanced, for sure. But this is this is sort of a good, it’s a good backing for new sellers to sort of say, Hey, you got to play fair here. And there can’t be preferential treatment where I’ve got to discern vague language, to execute strategies in which maybe I’m just trying to give a great

Joe Valley 14:30

customer experience. Now ultimately, that’s what you want to do. You’re gonna wind up with that great review, if you get that great customer experience. And exactly. And then

Troy Johnston 14:40

go ahead, and I would just reinforce that point is if you want to use chat marketing, you could just simply think, what is just going to make sure that the buying experience is exceptional. I’m not thinking about creative ways of asking for reviews. I’m not thinking of incentivizing for reviews. I’m just simply saying, hey, we’ve analyzed our reviews, we’ve seen what kind of feedback we got, maybe Before you even launch your product, let’s address it at that point of contact to where every single customer who buys our product will see our insert will have the opportunity to engage with that value. And that’s your starting place. And what’s really cool is then you also have that customer in your ManyChat list that can be reengaged can lead to potential look alike audience so you know what that customer avatar looks like. And then you can serve up additional offers promotions to a similar audience, and then that snowball starts rolling. So that’s where it gets really fun and cool, because in contrast to that, you’ve got maybe sellers that are focusing purely on Amazon PPC, it’s pay to play you have no idea, you know, who you’re offering products to, you’re just putting billboards on Amazon, which is great for maybe short term ROI. But there’s no longevity. There’s no asset building, there’s no no defining of your customer avatar.

Joe Valley 15:49

Do you spend any money and as sponsored ads in your own inside your own account?

Troy Johnston 15:54

I do. You do? I do. But this is where DSP really comes into play where Amazon has sort of put

Joe Valley 16:00

an end to end DSP stands for display. Oh, what’s that stand for?

Troy Johnston 16:03

Oh, man, no, put me on the spot. I’m good.

Joe Valley 16:06

I’m glad I did. And I don’t know the answer. Neither do DSP. Okay,

Troy Johnston 16:10

I know, I’ve literally literally logged into the, the dashboard today.

Joe Valley 16:17

general description, not what the letters stand for. But what is the SP

Troy Johnston 16:21

it’s it’s essentially more elevated Amazon PPC, it gives you a wider variety of ad types that you can deliver. And the data is is exceptional, it gives you It gives you Audience Insights, so you can really know your demographic data. And that’s the type of stuff we dive into. Because then we know who we’re talking to, who is responding to our ads, what’s performing, it’s, it’s far less as much data is there for sponsored ads and sponsored products.

Joe Valley 16:48

It’s just not as insightful. And when you start knowing, okay, this demographic, it’s smart that they’re doing that they’re sharing that, right, because you can then improve your ads and the conversion rate and drive more revenue. And that’s going to help Amazon it’s very smart. They just have to do it in a way where they’re still protecting themselves and that they own the customer. But they’ve got to evolve, because otherwise everybody’s going to spend all their money on Facebook, where they get all the information about the customer. And really, right, you get a lot of targeted information on the customer through other platforms compared to Amazon, right? Yep. Yeah. Okay. So you’ve mentioned ManyChat plenty of times. is is that the sole integration with Seller.Tools? Or is it just a? Is that a Jacuzzi term that you’re using now? Where it’s everybody, you know, everybody means hot tub, but they’re saying jacuzzi? You know,

Troy Johnston 17:39

I’m saying right? Yeah, it’s it’s sort of the it’s it’s the tool from which our because really, our feature set is focused on our API. And what our API allows sellers to do is kind of open up their data allows them to do more with the data that they have at their fingertips. And so ManyChat is really just the, the the tool to be able to utilize that now you can use it with landing pages, we do things with Zapier, you know, our API can kind of be integrated with a wide variety of tools. But ManyChat for us is kind of like the, it checks off so many boxes, it allows us to do all, you know, ranking reviews, audience, you know, audience building, or Audience Insights. Because again, when somebody comes in from Facebook Messenger, you know, that that’s, that’s pretty illuminating, because you see their picture, their name, their location, you know, you start really painting that picture on an individual basis. And then on a more macro scale as you’re as you’re utilizing it more completely. So it’s really just the tool, where we’re taking things and where the evolution where we see sellers kind of going and ManyChat is kind of showing their hand on this as well is being able to do more omni channel marketing. So bringing in SMS, email to a degree, you know, it’s it’s sort of a tried and tried and true method. But for us, things like SMS, the open rates, the click through rates, assuming a compelling offer, and an exceptional product is really powerful, really powerful.

Joe Valley 19:04

You know, I was poking around on on your, your website, and it looks like you share some advice and ideas on marketing and some of the experiences that you have beyond just saying, hey, use our software. Can you address that? In terms of Do you have any case studies and things that you’ve shown that have helped people with the different tools and the different methodologies in terms of reaching customers in omni channel way?

Troy Johnston 19:30

Yeah, I would say on the case that this is this is where we, we have a few things that are kind of that are kind of cooking, but in this in this vein, where we should have more sort of data, I would say, to reflect, reflect some of the changes that we’ve got really compelling graphs of review, review capture going up quite quite considerably once you deploy something like a ManyChat strategy.

Joe Valley 19:54

How, what are we talking about? Because what you know if I’ve got, I think I’ve got a listing that’s gonna launch Next week, all right, so by the time this airs, it’s already launched, hopefully already under letter of intent. And they’ve got, I don’t know, 5000 reviews. It’s just I mean, it’s, it’s a lot. How do we, how big of a dramatic jump Do you see in reviews? And? And is it? You know, what’s a good review count ratio? I guess it’s a percentage. So if you’ve had 1000 sales in a month, how many reviews? would you expect to get with your service versus without your service?

Troy Johnston 20:29

You talk about? Yeah, yeah, it’s actually it’s a unique challenge, too, because you also want to make sure you’re not on Amazon’s radar as a sales to review ratio. This is something we were seeing in terms of flags being raised by Amazon and them saying, Wait, you’re all of a sudden, getting way too many reviews relative to your sales. And we tied that into specific categories. But to be honest, there were times where it almost had no rhyme or reason, it was literally something triggered to Amazon, whether it was the age of the account, the type of product and category. And so our working hypothesis was sales to reviews is a ratio in a specific category. What that’s translated to in terms of how we orient ourselves and kind of recommend is, is not pushing for anything over 15 20% of your review is being captured on a per order basis. Once you start getting past that, you do run the risk of potentially getting flagged seeing review wipes. Seems like a,

Joe Valley 21:27

that seems like a really high number for me. And I’m not as a seller. So you know, that’s probably just my inexperience. But you know, when I know somebody’s selling 1000 units a month of something, and I see those quite often, that means 150 new reviews every single month. I guess it may be you know, if I’m seeing 20, if I’m seeing 5000 reviews, I guess maybe it’s not all that much. But what so that’s so that what what are you seeing in terms of a review, kind of as a percentage, right? So you’re saying 15%, you really don’t, you may trigger some bots to punish you. If you get above that. What are you seeing before people use your service versus after they use your service in terms of a jump?

Troy Johnston 22:11

Yeah, I mean, I think I think the some of the some of the more anecdotal, I would say, feedback is hovering closer to about a third of that round four to 5%, where they could they could see that from mostly what we see, again, is buyer seller messaging, Amazon has added that review requests, and that’s helped that sort of raise things a little bit. It’s a feature that we have, but we know it’s it’s more of a backstop, it’s kind of like a safety net, as opposed to being more proactive and realizing with with something like an insert, you have literally every transaction is an opportunity to re engage or direct that

Joe Valley 22:46

customer to leave a review. So what is that going to do? If you can jump your review count by four or 5%? What is that going to do for your conversion rates and your revenues?

Troy Johnston 22:56

Yeah, it’s exceptional. I mean, it’s it’s the then the review count itself, where the star rating becomes a very crucial. I mean, this is where from four and a half to four stars, you know, you’re talking about 20% reduction in, in traffic and sales. I mean, it’s it’s quite considerable. Why would that reduce traffic?

Joe Valley 23:13

Is it an algorithm within Amazon?

Troy Johnston 23:15

Well, you’ve got to think of it from when you when you run or complete a search on Amazon, there’s, there’s really three things that you look at, on any one product, you have the main image, you have the you have, or four things, excuse me, the the image, the title, the price, and then the review count. And so you’ve got these four variables that really equate to whether you earn that click on and so yeah, it really does boil down to you know, and when you run things like DSP, where you have an opportunity to more actively display reviews, it can fall flat, when you are the four star option, relative to four and a half, you know, five star, you know, again, that that can outperform

Joe Valley 23:54

four and a half stars practice, well, you’ve got four and a half, four, five stars, you’re going to get clicked on more, and therefore Amazon’s gonna reward you more and put you at the top of organic rankings more.

Troy Johnston 24:06

Yeah, we don’t, we don’t. So we don’t see ranking being impacted directly, or let’s say review rating being a ranking factor. But in terms of the the customer, how the customer interacts or potentially interacts with the listing can be impacted.

Joe Valley 24:22

Okay, so we’re gonna see a higher conversion rate, simple as that. So right four or 5% lift is going to give you a much higher conversion rate, because you’re going to have more reviews you can have, and then you’ve got to deal with how do you get from four stars to four and a half do Is there a service within what you do to help people with that? You reach out and beg for that extra extra half star? You know, dealing with negative reviews? What what what can people really do in that regard without breaking terms of services?

Troy Johnston 24:52

Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna not surprise you here and say ManyChat’s a great way to do this too. And there’s there’s ways in which I alluded to a seller to it today is creating an MCF order through a ManyChat flow.

Joe Valley 25:05

And what it says stands for

Troy Johnston 25:07

Multi channel fulfillment.

Joe Valley 25:09

Could you got that one, you know? And now, multi channel fulfillment, okay?

Troy Johnston 25:13

Yes, and that and that’s, it’s essentially just a glorified way of saying if you go into your FBA inventory and send a product to a to a customer, you incur a fee, but you can send them a free product. What’s really cool about how you could use that with ManyChat is, let’s say you have a sensor, you know, a customer’s having a bad experience, well, you can send them through this ManyChat flow, they can populate everything that they that you need, or FBA needs to fulfill that CFO order, and a customer supporting themselves, they’re doing it immediately. There’s no human error, human delays, because they’re doing it themselves. And then they can get sent a product and it mitigates that negative review. So instead of you dealing with the one two star review, you have now happy customer who supported themselves, and you also know who they are, because you’re there in messenger, you see their name, face location, all that pertinent information. It’s it’s, yeah, it’s really powerful, it’s really powerful to be able to do that

Joe Valley 26:04

is it is it one click, and they can update their review and that kind of thing, because I bought a product recently. And I think they physically sent me something in the mail. So somehow they got the address, I don’t know how they got it. And within that, it was a free, you know, I could get a another free product. But I had to go on and just give us you know, complete a survey and then they you know, it was they were making me work too hard for it. And I’m like, you know, I’d love the product for nothing. But now I don’t want to log on I don’t know my password is I changed it last week. And I stopped. It wasn’t SMS it was paper it with SMS and messenger and the things that you’re doing there? Is it simple, fairly automated, to make it easy for me, the dumb guy, the customer that can’t remember his password,

Troy Johnston 26:51

it is a little bit easier for sure. If you want to direct link a customer through through SMS. With the Amazon app, it’s it’s going to be a little bit easier to update reviews. And I’ve seen those types of funnels to where you’re sort of being asked to do quite a few things they’re trying to get a sense of, you know, your experience, sort of warming you up to the idea of Okay, then what what is your eventual feedback or even asking your feedback there and within that process, before directing you to the review, again, that’s something you’ve got to be very careful with to Amazon FTC guidelines, all those types of things have kind of preventing a customer for you, you capture their feedback and send them to leave a review. But yeah, through through SMS, and other it’s just a lot more convenient, at the end of the day for customers to then leave their initial review, then get back in if they want to, you know, go back to their regular page where they can look at any products that they’ve left to review for. And update from there.

Joe Valley 27:47

Gotcha, gotcha, start to get so technical on you, folks. But that piece of paper was cool, but I just it’s too much work. lesson for you. Sellers out there a buyers that are going to buy an Amazon business want to go old school, go the tech way instead, we’re lazy these days. So what’s going on for 2021? What what’s what’s going to change at Amazon? And what are you guys working on to help your clients improve during those changes?

Troy Johnston 28:12

Yeah, I mean, and of course, I’ve got to drink, drink our Kool Aid too, in terms of you know, the the things that we’re doing things that we’re doing in our business, and having that show up in some of the features and what we want to see in Seller.Tools ourselves. So we’re spending in our businesses a disproportionate amount of time on ManyChat and DSP, almost exclusively. and rightfully so, I mean, really the focus on the ranking and reviews, it really helps on both of those objectives as we build our audience and then we do you know, more unique things with Amazon PPC and and and and the audience information that we can pull out of that, and not moving off Amazon until we get that right. I think that’s an important piece for this year. And it’s kind of an evergreen as I think so many sellers are looking at brand building and multi channel and moving into you know, at Walmart has been a big point of conversation. I think it’s doubling and tripling down on Amazon, being that the huge focus and spilling over making sure that demand is pulling you into those marketplaces versus you pushing and saying, oh, I’ve got a footprint, but I don’t have the you know, platform know how I don’t know how to, you know what levers to pull to make sure that I have all the leverage. Yeah, and then we’re doubling down on on things like you know, what, what is Amazon continuing to reward for ranking factors? And how we can you know, how we can build solutions around things that we’re talking about with like review blocks, they’re looking at customer quality, how does that translate into features? How do we, you know, really continue to leverage omni channel different ways we can engage customers, because when you own that process, that control is really enticing for big brands. And we want to make it easy for for smaller brands to like, you know, when you have that control, it’s very intimidating. It tends to be the challenge. We have to you know, we have to overcome it. How do we educate and empower sellers at every level? To where, you know, it’s it seems very complex, but really, you’re still rewarding Amazon, you’re still leveraging FBA. Yeah. And that’s where there are features are, are going,

Joe Valley 30:14

and you’re gonna stick to Amazon for the foreseeable future. But someday, a year two, three down the road, you’ll be on the other platforms as well You think

Troy Johnston 30:21

I think we have a few things that we are working on with some of the other other big platforms. Kind of kind of interesting stuff, our team, we have no shortage of ideas, credit to my team of all entrepreneurs, no shortage of brainstorming long list of ideas. So there may be some cool things that we do with other really big channels. But it’s I think it won’t be what people would expect, which I know is very cryptic, but

Joe Valley 30:49

it is you’ve got it, you’ve got it like a secretive little smile on your face. If you turn the camera around, it would all be there on the whiteboard. Over there to your right. One last sort of question actually have two but the first one is, if you were to, I know. I know, I’m not looking for a complete differentiation between Seller.Tools, Helium 10, and Jungle Scout because in many cases, you and other clients have all three defined for me again, or for the audience the the key differentiation of Seller.Tools versus those other two. And do you subscribe to And personally, you know, on other side, do you subscribe to Helium? 10? Or Jungle Scout? Do you have to tell me which one?

Troy Johnston 31:37

Yeah, no, I do

Joe Valley 31:38

I do. I probably research for you too. Well, yeah.

Troy Johnston 31:40

Probably not in the same way that most people, most you’re subscribed to other platforms, but it’s good. But it’s good. Key differentiation,

Joe Valley 31:47

our tools versus the other.

Troy Johnston 31:49

I would say from it from a top down. In terms of our vision, our tools are geared towards growth. So it’s how do you scale an Amazon business? And that really gets us where our strengths lie is a little bit less at the clicking around and finding finding new products isn’t really more once you’re once you’re on Amazon? What are you doing differently? How are you breaking from the herd? How you exploiting a competitive advantage. And that tends to lead us to ranking and reviews. And that’s, you hear me say it all the time. And I say it with the team all the time to is this is really where our focus is. And if we get these things, right, these outcomes are so crucial. Like I said, I think sellers often forget why they’re on Amazon and the first they’re so interested in brand building, which Amazon doesn’t really love. So you’re sort of like you have this conflict where you’re like, I want to I want to really build a brand, but Amazon really just wants you to serve their customers. So you have this constant conflict, this cognitive dissonance, where it’s just like give Amazon what it wants and win the 800 pound gorilla in the room then figure everything else out you know, it’s kind of the ultimate 8020 of e commerce in my opinion.

Joe Valley 32:55

Awesome. Okay, so I’m gonna I’m gonna ask one more question. I’m gonna give you a second shot at telling you what DSP stands for go oh

Troy Johnston 33:03

that’s gonna bother me all day. I’m gonna literally

Joe Valley 33:07

you said the word platform. Okay. demand side platforms. My God Yeah, right there right demand platform.

Troy Johnston 33:15

I’m not gonna let my team listen to this

Joe Valley 33:19

tricky DSP you think display cuz Yeah. Anyway, I just had some fun with Yeah. How do people learn more about Seller.Tools? Where do they go? What do they do that kind of thing?

Troy Johnston 33:30

Yeah, so you can find us at Seller.Tools and reach out to our support with any questions that you have at [email protected]. We’ve got an awesome Facebook group too called FBA Kings. Just a great place to to connect chat with other sellers. A really awesome community there as well.

Joe Valley 33:46

Awesome FBA Kings and Seller.Tools. Troy, thanks for joining us on the Quiet Light Podcast sharing your experience. Let’s stay in touch. I want to talk in a couple of years when you’re blowing this thing up completely. Like some giant private equity firm. Yep.

Troy Johnston 34:01

All right. Sounds great. That’s on the board too.

Joe Valley 34:04

the board that you’re not showing us. Yeah. I appreciate your time.

Troy Johnston 34:08

Thanks, Joe.

Joe Valley 34:11

And that is a wrap. Thanks, folks. I appreciate you listening once again this week to the Quiet Light Podcast joining in helping us out by adding more and more reviews, please, we’re now pitching reviews in 2021, as you know, so if you could go to your favorite app, whether it’s Stitcher, iTunes, whatever it might be, and pop in and give us a review on a rating. We appreciate each and every one we read each and every one. And it helps us rank and helps others learn about the value of their businesses. The value of the tools and services like Seller.Tools who come on and talk about their business and how it’s different when you should probably also subscribe to either Jungle Scout or Helium 10 or both. But also Seller.Tools because it does something just a little bit different, and it’s worth the investment. So thanks again. We will see See you again next week.

Outro 35:03

today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 and the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast subject or guest, email us at [email protected]. Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.