Strategies to Grow Amazon Sales Fast with Jeff Lieber and Jenna Lieber
7 Dec 2025 · 38 min
Jeff and Jenna Lieber share tactics for selling faster on Amazon: split test one variable at a time over seven days, use marketing inserts to generate reviews, run PPC starting with automatic campaigns, and retarget customers on Facebook. Plan inventory for holiday lead times and use FBM or pre-orders as backup.
Questions this episode answers
July 26, 2018.
$0.60 plus the promotion amount (charged only when the customer completes the purchase using the clipped coupon).
Speakers note Prime Day has recently fallen around July 11–12 (used as an approximate planning window).
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Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand. With guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazard. Get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to retail success.
Hey there, product launchers. Welcome back to another Office Hours. This one's with Jeff Lieber and Jenna Lieber of Turnkey Product Solutions, and they are going to talk about all things Amazon. Amazon, are you ready? Do you have what it takes? What do you need to be prepared? So let's hear from Jeff and Jenna.
Cool. Well, hey guys, we're back. Turnkey Product Management, I'm Jeff Lieber and say hello, Jenna.
Hey, guys.
Hey. So, yeah, Today we're going to talk about different strategies that we use for our clients to grow sales quickly on Amazon. So hopefully you can take these. If you're already selling on Amazon yourself, you can take some of these strategies and hopefully it'll grow your sales. And if you're not on Amazon yet, it's good to see the potential of how easy it is to get sales growth on Amazon. And so hopefully this will be helpful for you guys. So, yeah, let's jump right in.
All right, so at Turnkey, we like to test a ton of different sales strategies. In our opinion, sales strategies are what sets all the Amazon sellers apart from one another. Different strategies will work for some different categories, they won't work for others. So it's important to test different ones out and see what works best. And then in our opinion, you find what works best for you and then you expand on it, you grow it. So a few that we like are split testing, marketing inserts, giveaways, tiered promotions, taking advantage of the holidays, and retargeting through Facebook. I guess the thought process you can have when looking at this presentation is how can we take that to the next level?
Cool. So we'll dive deeper on some of those topics. So split testing, you've probably heard of it before. It's not a new concept, but it's something that is easily missed, easily neglected. Maybe you did it once and it was 18 months ago and you haven't tested something different since then. So split testing, for some people over complicated, it's best just to keep it simple. Like literally one of the best and easiest things to split test is price. You know, because it's so simple to do. So let's say you originally price your product at 50 bucks flat. You know, you may want to just do a test at $49.99. You may be surprised how much of a difference that one penny can make. Or maybe $59.99 and give yourself an extra $10 of margin. Maybe the price elasticity is not what you thought that it would be. Or maybe on Amazon there's this feature where you can, you've probably seen it where like it lists the MSRP or the list price and then it slashes through it, right? And then it says sale price, right? Like it looks like, oh my gosh, it's on sale today. And people think that and then they're like, wow, I'm getting a good deal. Well, most customers don't know is that like on Amazon you can have a sale year round, every day it's on sale. Right. That's one of those things that some people miss. So make sure that that's set up. It's a really effective way. You can test different promotions, coupon codes, discounts, see what works. Do people like a buy one, get one offer or do they like 10% off two or more? They're all going to have different levels of effectiveness. And you do have to measure the results for testing your images and sales copy. Those are also good. I think the main image is one of the biggest influence factors on the page. And so that's a great one just to try popping out your main image for something else that you want to test to see what gets click throughs, what gets sales. And yeah, and again like some people ask like, well, how long do I need to do the split test for? There's no like hard and fast rule. You know, there's no perfect way to do it. It's really like depends on how much volume you're doing. If you're already doing thousands of dollars per day, then you'll get a lot of good data within a few days or a week. So we usually like to do a test for about a week period or maybe a two week period so that you get the full every single day of the week. Because keep in mind that like weekends are often much different than weekdays. Like the traffic on Amazon, what we've seen for most markets is that the weekdays are actually bigger than the weekends. Believe it or not, people like shopping on Amazon while they're at work, I think. And so that's why it is a good rule of thumb if you can, to do a full seven day test. So you get that seven days at $49.99 and seven days at 50 bucks. Measure the conversion rate, measure the total revenues and profits. Hopefully there should be a significant difference in answer. And then once you pick the winner, then stick with that and then maybe try testing something else or maybe try raising the price again. Or maybe now it's time to test the image and it is best to test like one variable at a time. Don't change eight things because then you won't be able to identify what caused it. So do keep it simple with just one variable at a time. So hopefully that's helpful.
Yeah, definitely. And I love slit testing. It's amazing. So another thing that we love using is marketing inserts. This is kind of a topic not many people talk about, so we kind of wanted to bring it up today. So marketing inserts are kind of a cool way to just interact with the customers buying your products. Right. This is free real estate for you. This is a great opportunity for you to put this in your packaging. We do recommend making sure you're staying in Amazon terms of service. So making sure it doesn't look gray area, I guess. So what we recommend is adding value to the customer. That can be saying, hey, here's a free ebook. Or, or here's a promo code to use on your next purchase on Amazon. It could also be. Follow us on Pinterest. Follow us on Facebook for more deals on Amazon. Kind of make sure you're including Amazon in those marketing inserts so you're within their terms of service. So, yeah, I mean, this is super easy. This is a cool little surprise for everyone that buys your product. We highly recommend using it. It doesn't make sense to not. So that's kind of our thought process on marketing inserts.
Great. So I'm going to talk about review generation strategies. So Amazon has changed a lot over the years. We've been selling on Amazon for over five years now. And back in the day there was almost no regulations on reviews. People could just buy reviews. There was review groups and all of these strategies to get fake reviews really fast and get big numbers. Amazon has really cracked down on a lot of that stuff. And it's actually a good thing because these people were coming in with products that are not great products, but they would just buy reviews from overseas or whatever, using robots and doing crazy stuff to get a thousand reviews in three months. And then all of a sudden your hundred natural reviews looks like a crappy product relative to these guys that bought their way to the top. And so don't be scared off. It's actually a good thing because it's keeping the integrity of the marketplace. And you have to be a real company to be successful on Amazon. You have to be, have a really great product and give a good customer experience and all of that. So that's what you want to focus on. So one thing that we like to do with all of our clients is like you want to do a self evaluation for what are your greatest assets at your company. Maybe you have 50,000 Facebook or Instagram followers, or maybe you don't, maybe you don't have that at all. But you do have 400 email addresses on your email list. That's a great start. And so look at what your assets are, because you can tap that list to try to get sales because those are your trusted followers and customers and then give them a promotion or something and drive sales through Amazon. And then you get an Amazon verified purchase review. If you can follow up with them through like an autoresponder and say, hey, thanks for buying. Would you mind helping out, leaving a review or trying to gain feedback right now and just having like an authentic message, a great customer experience and helping the customer as much as you can without pestering them. And yeah, so those are some of the basic ways, but like test out different stuff. There's a lot of ways to get creative. And like Jenna said earlier, what we do is once you find something that works, expand on that, do that 100 times more. And yeah, what else? I mean, basically like if you're just concentrating on the customer experience and really creating a great experience for them, delivering great customer service or support if they need it, the reviews will come naturally. Like, focus on building, raving and the reviews will follow. So that's, you know, there's a lot more we could get into on that hour, but for the sake of time we'll just, we'll move on for now.
Yeah, so we'll move on to Amazon promos. And with promos, I mean, again, test, test, test. Different promos will work for different products in a different way. Different categories have different regulations. Like supplements, for example. You can't participate in giveaways. So there are different regulations. You need to make sure you're meeting with your product. It's finding the right promotion, finding the right process, finding the right time to have the promotion. It does involve testing. So here are a few of our favorites. So we love giveaways. They're not talked about very often. So it's pretty simple. Basically, you give away a quantity of your products. One to 30 is the maximum, and then it's advertised on The Amazon giveaway page. And what's really cool about it is when there's a winner and there's a loser. So there will be. If you give away 30, there's 30 winners. But everyone else that loses gets a promo code to use on your page. So it helps increase sales. Another cool bonus is you can connect it to your YouTube video. And for a lot of our clients, we'll see a bump in their YouTube video by thousands of views, which is pretty cool for them. And they get to create a new message there. So it's pretty awesome promo. And it's also cool for them to circle back and use the promo and help with sales. So we really love using it. It's not used too often, so it's a cool opportunity. Another promo we like using is tiered promotion. So it's buy one, get 5% off, buy two, get 10% off, buy three, get 15% off. This is pretty cool because it helps with your conversion, helps increase your sales, obviously. Another cool thing is if you have different products, so let's say you have different colors or something like that, if you're doing the tiered promotions, you will actually bump up that frequently bought together and make that a possibility. So that's pretty cool. And like I said, increase your sales. So then the next thing that we like to use, my personal favorite, coupon clippings. So coupon clippings were introduced in November. Pretty cool timing for the holidays. And they're a little different than promotion codes. So promotion codes, they're at the bottom of the page. And a customer has to copy the promo code and then they would paste it at checkout. But the coupon clipping is pretty cool because it's right there next to the price in a bright green box. And a customer just presses, click coupon, and then it goes straight to their cart. So when they buy it, it will immediately be added. They don't have to copy and paste a promotion code, so it's more likely to be used as well. So to run one of these coupon clippings, it costs 60 cents plus the promotion that you're running. So if it's $2, it will cost you $2.60 every single time it's used. But you're also paying for extra visibility. You're giving Amazon that $0.60 to be featured on their coupon clipping page, which gets you more visibility to your listing, gets more people there, and it'll help with your advertising budget, things like that. So it's pretty cool with the coupon Clippings, we definitely recommend using them. We've definitely seen more success with the coupon clippings than we have with promo codes, which is pretty cool. So like I said, you have to test, you have to see. Even with the coupon clippings, is it better to have a dollar amount off or is it better to have a percentage off? Different clients we've seen percentage off actually works better, but with others, only the dollar off makes sense. A lot of times the percentage off won't be used. So it is very interesting to see how you make those differences and how you make those changes from promotion to promotion.
I have a question on that. $0.60 per redemption. We confirmed, I think, that it's not per time someone uses it, but actually only if they go and check out and actually purchase it with it. That's the only time you're charged. They might clip it and then add it to the card and think about it or whatever and go eat a sandwich and come back and then forget about it. I believe you don't pay 60 cents if that happens, right?
Yeah, that's correct. Sorry, yeah. Just to clarify, it's only if they purchase it will you be charged that $2.60 or $1, whatever it is, that's the only time you will be charged.
Yeah. And that's awesome because it's basically like risk free. And. And then for the. Yeah. And then for the $2 or whatever. That's not too bad. I mean, you're not actually being charged it. You're just like it's being deducted from the sales price, I think.
Exactly.
Yeah. Those have been working really well. Not everybody is using those right now. So it's good to jump in on that. Cool.
Definitely.
All right, so PPC optimization. So Amazon has an incredible Amazon advertising network. It's like their own Google Ads. Google AdWords. Right. Or it's like Facebook ads. Amazon has their own platform and it is one of the most powerful, like, most effective advertising medium that I've ever seen. I've used Facebook ads before. I've used YouTube and all that good stuff. Use Google. Just a quick comparison. So a Facebook ad, if you're say, selling a whatever, a dog brush. Right. And if you're trying to sell that on Facebook. Yes. You can have great success with that. And people do, I'm sure. But you're basically putting a distraction ad in front of somebody who's not on Facebook trying to shop for your dog brush. You are trying to interrupt them from what they're trying to enjoy on Facebook, which is family and friends and whatever they're trying to do, watch cat videos or whatever people are doing these days. And so you're trying to interrupt them and give them an offer. And that's great. And it might work and it can. You should still do that. But on Amazon, they're so much more ready to buy. And it's keyword based, it's query based. And so what that means is we can advertise on anything dog brush related or dog related. So someone is going to go to Amazon and you're going to search for, as a customer, oh, dog brush, right, or dog brush cleaner, something like that. And when you type that in, there's going to be 20 listings there to choose from. And if you're not on page one, because maybe you only have five reviews because you just launched, you're going to have a really hard time getting naturally organically ranked on page one. However, you can pay to play, you can pay to get up on the top of the page or on the sidebar or on the bottom bar of page one. And that's by advertising. So you might pay $0.20 per click or $0.60 per click to get up there. And Jenna put some good photos there. You can see, like those ones she's highlighted, those are actually advertisements. And Amazon does a great job of making them look like an every other product listing. You don't actually. Most customers, my mom still doesn't know. I've explained to her a hundred times, like, mom, that's an ad. And she's like, no, Jeff, it was on the page like, no, that's a, that's an advertisement. But customers don't care because it's a relevant product and they're looking to buy a dog brush right now. And if you want to show up in front of them and you can pay to show up and be the first or second or third result, and those customers are ready to buy. They're not trying to research dog brushes. Most of the time. They want to buy it. Their credit card is already on file with Amazon. They're probably a prime member. If you're prime eligible because you're using FBA's Amazon Fulfillment by Amazon Warehouses, you'll be prime eligible and you have a very good chance of converting that sale at a profitable margin. And that's what we do with most of our clients. We use them for all of our clients. We recommend them. Whether you do it yourself or you hire someone like us or somebody to manage your campaigns, they do need to be watched. But definitely Test out campaigns on the advertising front. It's really good strategy and it would take five hours to really like give you a detailed step by step overview of how to set them up and how to optimize them and do all of that. So maybe we can cover that in a future lesson or we have some free advertising lessons I think on our website. So you can check those out if you're trying to set them up or you can email us and we can try to share some trainings that we have. But definitely at a high level, what you should do is go in and there's two types of campaigns in seller central. One is called an automatic campaign. I would recommend starting with that. It's the easiest. Just select an automatic campaign and set that up and Amazon will actually create the ads for you. And Amazon will choose what keywords to bid on because Amazon can look at your listing and scrape it and they can determine what keywords to bid on based on your keyword optimization and your title and in your bullets and everything. And they'll actually kind of do it for you. And that's the best way to start. It's really simple. You can do that by yourself. Where it gets a little bit more complicated is what's called the manual campaigns. And that's where you have to set them up. You want to organize them in an organized fashion. Maybe dog brush, high dollar terms, like the most directly related terms. Maybe you want another longer tail keyword bucket. Or maybe you're targeting dog fur products or shedding products or words that are not exactly your product but they're related. So there's. We typically will set up hundreds or thousands of keywords for just one product for our clients. And you can do that too through keyword research. And once you set them up, then what you got to do is make sure that you monitor them and optimize the bids, change the bidding amounts and make sure that you're not going deep into the red and losing a ton of money super fast. So make sure that you're watching it every day or every couple days because it can go fast. So just make sure that you're paying attention to it. So make sure you do your research before you really spend lots of money on there. But we've got some clients that literally spend over, I think $130,000 was what we spent last month for one of our clients on advertising. So they spent 130,000 and I think we sold almost half a million that month. So that's the ROI that you can get on the ads front so we can dive more into it at a later time. But hopefully that's at least an overview that you should try it. You should definitely try it. So I'll stop yammering.
Jeff really likes paid per click ads, in case you guys couldn't notice. But yeah, I mean it really is an in depth thing and we can definitely dive more into it at a later date. But that's kind of a cool little overdue but. So, yeah. So next we're going to kind of talk about have a plan for the holidays. So I think a lot of sellers make the mistake where they're like, okay, Amazon's going to get a ton of traffic without me, without me doing anything. So I'm just gonna rely on that. And to us, that is the worst thing you can do. It really is a time to get aggressive. This is the time to spend more money. This is the time to try out new strategies because the traffic is there, the extra traffic is there from Amazon, they're supplying it. And yes, your sales will increase naturally without changes. But to really capitalize on this time, it's important to test different things out. So like I said already, we run promotions during this time. Obviously you need to be running promotions, you need to try to get lightning deals, if that's possible. Those lightning deals are a little bit of a premium price during that time, but try to get them. Do keyword changes, broaden your keywords, see if there's other keywords you could be targeting. Kind of really focus on that and then you know, what ad changes do I need to make? A lot of the times clients will bump up their ad budget during this time because the extra traffic's there. So you need extra money in your budget to make sure you're capturing that traffic. Another thing, this is actually my favorite clients. This last holidays, one of the things we had is we asked for holiday lifestyle images. So for example, one of our yoga mat clients, they had pictures of the yoga mat underneath the Christmas tree. During Thanksgiving we had a beverage company and it featured the turkey with the coffee behind it. So capitalizing on those holiday times is key with images because show the customer how your product fits into the holidays. I mean especially Christmas during those times. Those are key times that people are shopping. Obviously we know that. But you want to show them this product fits to what you want. This is a good time to also push traffic from Facebook. One key thing to think about is people are last minute shoppers. Your site most likely can't fulfill things fast enough to get it there in time for Christmas. Right. So one thing a lot of clients do and a lot of people we've talked to at conferences and stuff, they push a lot of Facebook traffic to Amazon closer to the holidays because people want to do one day shipping. They want to get it there next day because they forgot. So a lot of the times you'll see people pushing traffic to Amazon to catch those last minute shoppers. So that's another thing to consider. And lastly, make sure your inventory is prepared. The last thing you want is to sell out on Black Friday or sell out on Prime Day and lose extra sales. Right. I mean, obviously it would be super cool if like, you know, you're getting so much traffic that you're selling through inventory, but at the same time you're missing out the next day. So really make sure you're looking forward to the future for inventory and sending in extra if possible. So I think that covers it all. We still don't know the day for Prime Day. I'm pretty sure. I don't think they've unveiled it yet, which is kind of funny because it should be like a month away. But Prime Day is a crucial one. They say that more people shop on Amazon on Prime Day than they do on Black Friday, which is crazy. So Prime Day would be the next one where you want to test out some of these things. You want to maybe look into different lifestyle images of some. Someone giving it to someone as a present, something like that. It's pretty cool to test these little strategies out.
Nice. Yeah, I think Prime Day the last couple years has fallen around July 12th or July 11th, so you could probably at least assume it's gonna be around that timeframe. So make sure that you have inventory ready to go. One other inventory strategy that I just thought of, as you mentioned that Jenna, was if you do ever run out of stock in fba, like say you only had a thousand units and you sold through all of it on Prime Day by 2 o' clock and you're like, oh crap, we're out of stock. Well, what you can do is set up another listing. See, you set up basically a duplicate listing of the same product, but it's called Merchant Fulfilled. So that's what we call FBM Fulfilled by Merchant. And that's where you fulfill it out of, not Amazon's warehouse. So wherever you have inventory that's not in Amazon, maybe you have another warehouse in Los Angeles that you use, a third party warehouse, or maybe it's in your garage, I don't know where it is. But if you have other extra inventory that's available to sell, that's what we do for most of our clients is we set up a backup listing that's called fulfilled by merchants that you can still take those orders. And then the warehouse just has to fulfill those orders by using normal shipping labels like USPS or UPS or FedEx. So that's another just backup option if you're using multiple warehouses. And then another little bit more advanced one if you run completely out of stock, even in Los Angeles, because let's say you ordered from China or wherever and the inventory is not going to arrive. It's estimated to arrive say next Tuesday on, say it was June 16th is when you're estimating that the inventory should arrive. You can take pre orders on Amazon. A lot of people don't know this, but you can take pre orders up to 30 days in advance using FBM fulfilled by merchants. So let's say today's the 8th of June and then we know that June 16th we're estimated to get our 1000 units in stock. So what I would do is put an in stock date, I think it's called a restock date in Amazon, but put it like at least 10 days after your estimated in stock date to account for possible delays and shipment times. So just make sure you have a buffer. So I would maybe say tell Amazon, hey, I'm going to be in stock June 26th. And then that way people can, when they go to your page, they're going to say, oh, I really want this product. But it says it's not in stock until June 26. But some people will order it. I mean it happens to us all the time. Then you can continue taking orders, selling through your container of goods before it even arrives in the country. So that's just another possible thing to look into. And if you have to do that and you can't figure it out, just send us an email and we'll point you to where that setting is in Amazon. Yeah, okay, so now I'll talk about Facebook. So obviously a lot of people's concerns are always oh well, I don't want Amazon to own my customers because technically they do. But there are ways to pull them off of Amazon and that is what you want to do because you do want to try to actually own the customer yourself, have their email or have their Facebook or be able to retarget them or reconnect with them outside of Amazon. That helps you build assets in your business that you can then remarket to. We recommend that for all of our clients, and we help our clients to do that because that helps them in the long run. So if you didn't know already, some people don't know this, but you can upload your Amazon customer list to Facebook to the Facebook advertising portal. So you go to the Facebook advertising, you say, upload customer list or I forget the exact terminology, but when you upload it, Facebook can take the data from Amazon. So Amazon gives you things like name, first and last name, address, zip code, stuff like that. Amazon or, sorry, Facebook will match up that list with their database of Facebook users, because almost everybody's on Facebook. And Facebook can usually match, I think around 50 to 70% of the Amazon customers, limited data that you have. They can match it and estimate, hey, that's John Tucker from South Dakota. And then they say, we have a John Tucker from South Dakota. And they say, boom. And then they add them to your Facebook list so that you can now retarget them with an ad. So maybe around half of your Amazon customers, just by uploading it to Facebook, you can have a list. So some of our clients, they have 50,000 customers from Amazon, and then so that's 25,000 people that they can now retarget directly with ads on Facebook, which they do, and they do very well, especially if you have like a recurring product or anything to resell them at a later date. So that's, number one, is directly retargeting them the second, and which I think is almost even cooler if let's say you upload your list of, for example, you have now 25,000 people, or it doesn't matter how big it is, even if there's a thousand people. But let's say you upload 25,000 people that Facebook matches, and that's your audience. And then you can tell Facebook and say, hey, Facebook, I want to make what they call a lookalike audience off of that. So what they do, and if you need help, again, we can help point you to that area. But you just tell Facebook to make the lookalike audience. And what they're going to do is they're going to look at all the demographics and info and attributes of those 25,000 people. And then you tell Facebook, I want you to make a list, Facebook, of a million people that look and have similar attributes and similar ages and whatever, what they're interested in on Facebook. They'll make a list of a million people that are actually very similar to those people as far as, like, who they are and their buying habits and whatnot. Like Maybe they're dog lovers. Right. And so they're going to match to other dog lovers out there, but they'll come up with a list of a million dog lovers that you can run ads to. And those are brand new prospects that you have not ever sold to, have probably never heard of you before, and you can get in front of them. It really is an incredible thing that Facebook has. That's why they're one of the most powerful advertisers in the world, because they have more data than anybody, I think. And then just to take it one level further is if you take your repeat customers on Amazon, let's say you had 2,000 repeat customers that have bought from you at least two times. Well, those are like your golden gooses. Those are your ideal customers that really love you. So you tell Amazon or Facebook to make a look alike off of those people because those will be like even more laser targeted. That's it. I mean, if you can do those things or if you want to hire somebody that is a Facebook expert, they can help you do all of this stuff if you just tell them what you want or show them this slide here and they'll know, they should know what to do. So it really is a really powerful strategy or multitude of strategies if you can do that. So hopefully that is helpful. Nice. Okay. That's it. Yeah. So that's it. If you want the slides, I don't know if it's going to be uploaded to the website or not. So you feel free to email us if you want to. We can email you the slides. If you have any questions about anything we talked about, feel free to shoot us questions. We're happy to help out.
Hey, Jeff and Jenna, it's Tracy.
Oh, hey, Tracy.
Hey, Tracy.
How are you?
Good.
How are you?
Good. I am so glad you guys did that holiday section right there because next week is our holiday recordings and we have a lot of office hours. We're going over holiday design and color trends and we're going to do a little bit on seasonal product strategies from inventory management and other things. And we're going to be recording with both Brenda and Tim Bush. So Tim Bush is going to give us the sort of retail view of what Black Friday really looks like. So I'm so glad you guys suggested some of those things and they are so important. So I'm going to make sure to highlight that again on our when we put all those holiday episodes up together. So I might just break out that little section for you and put it as a separate video because it's so good. But tell me, how much time do you guys spend or how far in advance when you're planning a fourth quarter holiday promotion program and the whole ads and all the things that you're going to do and the inventory levels you think you need, how far in advance do you guys plan with your clients?
I could take this one. It depends on one. It's always good to know your lead times for product. So some of our clients have literally five month lead times. They just have products that take a long time to make and so obviously for that client we have to do it at least six, seven, eight months in advance. They're constantly ordering in advance. But for some clients that just have a two week lead time, if they have a US supplier or something like that, then that really change it. So that's number one is know your delivery times and your lead times and account for errors and account for Chinese New Year. If you're ordering from China, that's the whole month of February. China just takes a nap and doesn't work at all.
We got a whole article on that one.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, I'll do that one. I'll do one as we get closer to that. But a big issue that we have is most people don't plan far enough. So we place all of our orders for Chinese New Year in October. And if you're not doing that, and it doesn't even matter your lead time, if your lead times extended, you should be earlier than that. But that's for pretty much standard lead time of like four to six week lead times. We plan in October with our clients. So yeah, no, I didn't really realize and I'm so glad you guys pointed that out that lead time is actually harder for it than what you guys have to do on your end and so. Oh, so, so critical. I love that. So my second question on that is when you're going to launch a product, really how far in advance do you guys like to plan for that?
I'm thinking like just like launching a product. Are you talking about getting inventory in or more of like the sales strategy side of it?
The sales strategy side of it. Because I mean, I know you can't do much till you're like got your listing up, but really how much is necessary minimum to really have a good sales plan?
I mean, I think a month is like the good idea about it coming up with the strategy you're going to do. Because I mean with certain clients, they have really good assets with email marketing, with their Facebook So coming up with that strategy and then implementing that strategy, I'd say around a month, three weeks, two weeks around there, I'd say. Jeff, do you agree with launching the product and getting those sales strategies in place?
Yeah. At a minimum, if you can try to plan that out and even have the listings built on Amazon and on your website at least a few weeks in advance. But like, we've got some clients and some of our most successful clients, especially ones that do like Kickstarters, if you can do it five months in advance and start building that audience and building that list and promoting that, hey, this product's coming in October. And building that list and the waiting list or the early bird list. And the earlier you can do it, the more proactive. It's obviously advantageous to do that.
Great, great. Well, I have one question that was submitted in that I really want to make sure we get to here, and that is because a lot of people on here are product launching.
Right.
So their products not even done yet. So the question was, what are examples of extra value you can add to a marketing insert? And I love that question because, I mean, this is something we ought to think about. And if we don't even know our sales plan, it's gonna be a little hard to plan what we put on that insert. And once you print it, you're done until you burn through all that inventory.
Right, right. Yeah. I mean, a couple of my favorite values that people add is ebooks. I think they are so cool. Like recipe books. If you're a supplement company, a recipe book would be cool. Or YouTube videos. Just lead them to a YouTube link and have them check out different products you have or have them see how the product is used. I think those are great values to add. Jeff, can you think of any others?
Yeah, it just totally depends. Those are all really great. It just depends on who your customer is so what market you're in. So some people like got a client that has like a. For back pain and stuff like that, and they have one of their complimentary products is a guided meditation because that helps them as they're using the product. That's a complimentary thing. So it's like finding who is your customer, why are they buying your product? So what else could they use? What are their pain points? If they're a. There's someone that has back pain. What other things could help them with back pain? Maybe it's a stretching exercises thing from a chiropractor. Or it just depends on what would be of value to your customer.
Thank you for that. That is so important. And I think that anything where you can drive people off of, off of Amazon. Right. So that's the goal there. So drive them to enter their email address into you, whatever that might be that you think is going to appeal to them the most. That's obviously the most important thing to get on that marketing insert. So I think we have a coffee related company and they have some fantastic information on like toxins in your coffee beans and stuff like that. And I mean they don't make coffee beans per se, but they have all that information on their site. And I can imagine that someone who cares about that, is passionate about that, drives to it, which then drives them to their best client profile. So it's it. Even if only half 5% or something of the Amazon customers come to it, it's the 5% that are most passionate about what they care about, building a community around. So I think that that's an interesting strategy. It's sort of like you're narrowing it at the same time.
Yeah, I mean that's how Bulletproof blew up, right? I mean they talked about all that stuff and had the science behind it and they went after a micro niche of coffee lovers and health lovers and, and he had a blog and an audience before launching coffee. He had a following before. So he launched his product six years before launching it, right? Yeah, exactly. When he came out with it, he was already an influencer and obviously he's had a great success.
Well, thank you guys so much for today. We appreciate it. And I just want to remind everyone that we will put the slides into the blog post. The blog posts are going up, we usually within a week or so of the video. But I think this one's going to be a little delayed because we have our big holiday week. So it's like bumping everything. So it'll probably be after the fourth of July, but we've got also lots of really great links and other things. Of all the things that you talk about, we've been putting into the blog post. So we really want people to go there and check that out. And then also don't forget to hit Jeff and Jenna's profile because you can find out all kinds of information. If you can't remember you didn't write this email address down, you can just go straight there and find them instantly. Yeah. So thanks, guys.
Thanks, Tracy.
Thank you. It was fun.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Product Launch Hazards. If you'd like to access our product launch experts, strategies, trend reports, and ongoing support as you build your big brand. Please go to productlaunchhazards.com and become a member today.
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