Diversifying Your Amazon Business with Rory Stern

“We Deliver the results you hoped your last agency would”
Rory F. Stern has been a best-kept secret working behind the scenes to help build, grow, and scale many successful online companies for the last 14 years.  Today, he manages a small boutique media buying team that specializes in multi-channel traffic.  He is best known for creating ads that convert and being able to get a lot of policy challenged offers approved and running on Facebook.
Core business is growing a business with paid traffic.
That includes FaceBook, Instagram, google search, google display, Youtube, Google Shopping

Ecomm, supplements, info product
Specialise in compliance and policy

Ten years ago, traffic was this “black box” - only a handful of people knew what they were doing.
You can ‘control” the flow of traffic - so you can predictably scale your business.
Whereas scaling based on organic traffic and partnerships can be under less control.

What are the different experiences of your clients?
Not done a lot of work for solely FBA businesses.
Typically a brand that is on Amazon comes to them to control more of the customer journey.
Anybody who happens to watch this in the future - there is a very unique challenge in our world. But that is going to be what any business faces in any recession.
Rory tries to build a business from a strong foundation, they are a 3-legged stool
Right now, the majority of his clients are seeing “normal” volatility.
In the USA, they are just breaking into things that are really bad.
Lost client last night from Australia - do live events.
“We need to focus on getting you online”!
What they offer physically is able to go online.
Some clients are thriving -from 2X ROAS to 6x ROAS
They happened to be in the right place.
Other agencies have lost ⅓ of clients!
Amazon businesses typically have traffic within the Amazon eco-system.
So you don’t have a lot of ROAS.

What are the characteristics of the physical goods businesses that are weathering the storm?
Importing from China did lead to shut down for a while.
Now there is the issue with FBA side - Amazon has shut off inbound shipping.
Several distribution centres in the USA have had Covid19 cases confirmed.
Is there anything you can do?
One client with 6X ROAS is a physical product company, based out of Western USA, only essential employees can report; they are selling the right kind of product.

In light of what’s going on right now - how do you diversify?
How do you pivot into digital products?
There are multiple steps to this.

Risks of Amazon businesses
The main issue is Amazon owns the customer!
What happens when I can’t rely on Amazon?

They label your own product
They kick you off amazon etc.

How do I get control of my customers?
Getting people on email list is really hard.
Your inserts are limited.

So how do I develop my own Customer list?
Start to build an audience via some moderate-budget paid ads.
Then choose an Email platform and build a list eg aWeber, ActiveCampaign,

How do we start doing lead generation? - building a list?
So that when supply chains open up, we are outside Amazon and Alibaba
How do you get ready?
With ecomm brands, they like to do contests.
Built an essential oil accessory business on back of contests

FaceBook ads
Opt in to email lists
Ran Kickstarter campaigns for product development.

They can take 30-60 days

If you’ve listed a pillow on Amazon, there’s a decent chance you have someone in the family with sleep issues
Can you put together a lead magnet - down pillow vs. x type of pillow

Get your mind in the right place
If you’re bleeding cash and you have no marketing budget, it may not be the time to build lists.
What can you do to build a future strong business?
Consumers are looking for guidance and information.
In US, they’ve lost all professional sports.
Rory can read a book, spend time with family, build business.