😱 When Polar Bears Attack…

What you’ll find in this week’s newsletter:

• 🔥 Big Announcement For Brands Under $1M!

• 😱 When Polar Bears Attack… [True Story]

• 🚨 Rank High on Keywords Without Breaking the Bank [How To]

• 🤫 Secrets to Scale - Map Your Value Engines

• 🗞️ Latest Amazon News and Updates

Don’t forget to catch up on this week’s Marketing Misfits here

🚨 BIG ANNOUNCEMENT🚨 

Are you a brand selling under $1 million on Amazon?

Apply to Kevin King and I’s Exclusive Concierge Brand Management Beta Program! Limited spots available.

Sign up here 

😱 When Polar Bears Attack… [True Story] 

In 1976, my family moved back up to Montreal.

I I was a teenager, about 13 at the time.

There was a guy a grade older than me who stood out.

He had only one arm but was still a star athlete.

Back in those days, having a car was a big deal, and he had one.

He was just one of the guys that everybody loved.

But there was more to his story than I realized.

When I told my mom about him, she was surprised and said, “Oh my God, that's our old neighbor!”

It turned out, years ago, this guy had lived next door to my mom.

She told me what had happened to him.

When he was around six years old, he went to the Granby Zoo in Sherbrooke, Quebec.

There was just a small fence that you could easily climb over.

He decided to hop over the safety gate in the polar bear section.

Before he could pull his arm back, the polar bear grabbed him with its claw, yanked him towards the cage, and ripped off his arm—and even damaged a lung.

Zoos back then weren’t like they are today.

What’s incredible is how this guy took such a devastating experience and turned it around.

Despite losing an arm and a lung, he became not only the popular kid at school but also an incredible athlete.

It's a powerful reminder that even the toughest challenges can be turned into something positive.

Enjoy the rest of the newsletter.

— Norm

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HOW TO RANK HIGH ON KEYWORDS WITHOUT BREAKING THE BANK

Brought to you by AZ Rank

It’s Q4 — the best time of the year for sellers. We all want to rank higher and sell more, right?

Here’s a smart, budget-friendly way to choose the right keywords, rank higher, and spend less:

1. Start with a shortlist – Pick 3-5 core keywords (short-tails)

2. Head to Product Opportunity Explorer – Explore the niches.

3. Find the perfect niche – Once you’re there, check out the search terms.

4. Grab the  keywords – Amazon shows you the most relevant ones for your product. Repeat this for all your main keywords from step 1.

5. Refine your list – Manually clean up the keywords. Drop anything that’s irrelevant, branded, or not a good fit for your product.

6. Run a competitor check with Cerebro (Helium10) – Validate your keywords. The more  top competitors rank on a keyword, the better.

Group your keywords – Organize them into lists. Each list should have one main keyword and 6-10 long-tail keywords.

This is how the end result should look like 👇

Instead of pouring money into ranking for broad terms like “dog harness,” focus on ranking for relevant long-tail keywords. 

This saves money and gives you a better chance of ranking for the main keyword. Think of it as a snowball effect!

Pro Tip: This strategy works best when your long-tail keywords are super relevant to your product, ideally pulled from the Product Opportunity Explorer.

PS. Want fresh tips hacks for launches and ranking - subscribe to The Ranking Pill! https://azrank.beehiiv.com/subscribe

🗞️ AMAZON NEWS & UPDATES 🗞️

HOW TO SCALE - MAP YOUR VALUE ENGINES

The following is an excerpt from Ryan Deiss’ Scalable Case Study. Thanks Ryan!

This is the most important, most foundational asset in any operating system, and yet this is the one that everybody forgets about. 

What is a value engine? 

A value engine is a visual representation of how a company creates and captures marketplace value through the acquisition of new customers, through the fulfillment of existing customers and through the creation and/or improvement of a company's product and service offerings. 

At their core, all companies do the same two things:

1. We sell the stuff we make/do 

2. We fulfill the stuff we sold

That’s it.

So the first thing every business owner must do is visualize how these two things happen because it’s impossible to optimize and systemize a process until you have first visualized that process. 

To do that, we deploy a technique known as “Business Process Mapping” (a.k.a. Value Flow or Value Engine Mapping).

It sounds complicated, but the process is fairly simple.

First, our goal is two map two critical processes:

1. How we acquire new customers/clients (a.k.a. Growth Engine), and…

2. How we service our customers/clients once we have them (a.k.a. a Fulfillment Engine)

For example, here’s a screenshot of a Growth Engine and its associated Fulfillment Engine for The Scalable Company (the company that published this case study report)...

But whatever we’re mapping the process is the same.

First, we start with a clean whiteboard and a fresh stack of sticky notes. Then, it’s time to map…

• Step 1: Identify the starting point with one or more sticky notes. For example, for Growth Engines this is usually when a prospect sees an advertisement, and for Fulfillment Engines this is when a new sale is closed. (NOTE: Fulfillment Engines begin where Growth Engines end.)

• Step 2: Identify the ending point with one or more stick notes. For example, the last step of a Growth Engine is when a sale is made, and the last step of a Fulfillment Engine is typically when we ask for a testimonial and/or referral.
  

  

• Step 3: Use sticky notes to fill in the “gap” between the beginning and the end by asking, “Then what?” For example, for a Growth Engine, we might say, “Ok, so a prospect sees our ad on Instagram, but then what happens? At that point, someone on the team might say, “They would click the ad and go to our landing page,” at which point you would add a sticky note with the words “Landing Page” on it and continue on.
  

  

• Step 4: Connect the dots! Once all the steps and stages are represented on the whiteboard with sticky notes, the final step is to use arrows to connect all the squares to show the flow a prospect will move through a particular Value Engine.
  

  

When we’re done, the whiteboard looks something like this…

Not only will it give your team almost instant clarity on what your business does and how it does it, these simple “maps” will also form the foundation of your operating system.

Once your Value Engines are documented, you can then move on to the next step…

I’ll share that with you next week.

This is just the first step of Ryan Deiss’ Scalable Case Study.

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS THE BEARD GUY?

Can you find Norm in the picture below? Scroll to the bottom of this newsletter to see the answer!

WHAT YOU MISSED LAST WEEK

The Latest AI Updates in the World of Amazon | Max Sinclair

Here’s 5 Takeaways From This Episode:

1. Personalized Listings on Amazon:

   • Amazon is moving towards personalizing product listings for customers based on their browsing history and profile. This change means sellers will need to think more about how their listings appeal to different customer types.

2. Stay Informed on AI Shopping Guides:

   • Monitor how AI shopping guides evolve in your product category and consider updating your listings to align with the features highlighted in these guides.

3. The Role of Agentic AI in E-Commerce:

   • Agentic AI, which can reason through multi-step problems, is starting to emerge as a tool for solving complex issues, potentially improving seller support or customer service interactions.

4. Prepare for Voice Commerce:

   • Start using conversational language in your listings to make them more compatible with voice search and Alexa-driven queries.

5. Adjust Listings for Different Customer Scenarios:

   • Update your product descriptions to include various use cases or scenarios that might appeal to different customer profiles.

Watch the full episode here

🚨 Get 15% off with code NORM15 at Ecomtent → Here

 THIS WEEK’S EPISODE!

You can watch all episodes on YouTube or on my Facebook page at 12 pm ET on Wednesday!

Wednesday - HOT or NOT - What’s Working for Amazon Sellers in 2024 | Jon Derkits

Our guest is a former Amazon marketplace executive, current 8-figure Amazon seller, and Chief Commercial Officer at Color More Lines.

In addition, Jon authors the widely popular Best@Amazon newsletter, a weekly newsletter for the Top 1% of Amazon Sellers. Jon started his career in M&A advisory with KPMG, spending 9 years serving Fortune 1000 companies, before joining Amazon, where he served as Head of 3P Marketplace for Consumer Electronics on Amazon Canada and worked directly with the top 1% of third-party Consumer Electronics sellers. 

Watch LIVE at 12 pm ET on Wednesday!👉 Sign up here

DON’T MISS THIS WEEK’S MARKETING MISFITS!

🚨 Watch the full episode here

  🌎 UPCOMING EVENTS

MARK DOWN THESE EVENTS! 

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Nov 3 - Chiang Mai - $595

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→ FULL CALENDAR ←

And that’s it, Beardos!

Let me know what you’d like me to feature in the newsletter by replying back to this email.

P.S. Make sure you don’t miss any updates by joining our community here.

See you next Monday!

- Norm

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