Liz Saunders knows the Amazon game well. She was the Chief of Staff for Jungle Scout as it grew from under 40 employees to a few hundred. And the founder of Fluencer Fruit. Through software, coaching, and services, she helps brands and influencers maximize their results with Amazon’s Influencer program.

The Influencer game is still early at Amazon, but right now, it’s free for brands to participate in and driving some compelling results.

Take This Case Study:

An Amazon product with no change in ads, no improvement in organic rankings, and no change in ratings saw a 45% MoM increase and a 3x YoY increase in sales - ALL From Influencer content.

Do I have your attention now?

Check out what Liz and I discuss in this interview:

• How you as a brand can qualify for the Influencer Program (good news - it’s pretty simple).
• How to attract and recruit the right influencers for your brand.
• Where does influencer content show up, and how do you influence the best placements?
• The difference between the Inspire and Discover Feed on Amazon.
• How to use Influencer and Amazon Lives.
• Plus more!

Transcript

Liz :

To make your listing organically interesting to influencers. It's that upper carousel, make sure you have traffic. All the things that as sellers we know, like that listing quality score, going back to making sure you're listing is optimized. That's what you want in place for influencers to just basically find you, so to speak, right? But then there is the other direction of, well first, a lot of sellers that I work with, they'll go to their listings and be like, oh my gosh, I have influencers on my listing. I wondered how those people got there. It says, earns commission next morning,

Brett:

Amazon Influencer program. Why should you consider it? What are the benefits? What's in it for you? Well, the Amazon Influencer program is relatively new and it is making an impact for sellers. I just completed an interview with Liz Saunders of Flu Fruit. She's an early pioneer in the space. Also spent six years at Jungle Scout. She's a legend. And so we talk about what's going on with influencers on Amazon. And I think the reason why Amazon has this program is they're trying to solve the problem of discoverability. Still, the vast majority of the products that are discovered and sold on Amazon are done through search, but Amazon wants you to engage in social shopping, and Amazon wants you to find products in a variety of ways. And so they've got a few tools to do that, right? They've got Amazon posts, they've got what's called the Inspire feed, and they've got what's called the Discover Feed, but then they've also got Amazon influencers.

And so in this episode, Liz talks about one particular client of hers where they optimize a listing for Amazon Influencer. They got six influencers to create videos for one of the products. Amazon rather put those six videos on a product detail page. And over the course of about 30 days, they grew sales on that product, 45% month over month. So 45% increase over the previous month, and that translated to a three x increase year over year. The only thing they did different was these influencer videos. No change in ads, no change in ranking, no real change in reviews. It was driven by influencer. So if you want the full scoop, check out the full interview with Liz Saunders on how to leverage Amazon Influencers.

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, c e o of o m G Commerce. And today we're talking about Amazon influencers. How do you work with them? How do you leverage them? What does it all mean? How do you grow your business with influencers? And my guest is Liz Saunders, and in case you don't know who she is, you should know and you're about to know, but she was with Jungle Scout for six years as the chief of staff helped see the growth there from 38 employees to a couple hundred employees. We met at Seller Summit in Miami, Steve Chu and Tony Beck. Shout out to the gang there. And as Liz and I were chatting, we chatted over dinner. There's a group of us, and Liz somehow left my phone behind. Liz started taking pictures of herself with my phone, which is great. And so then we started chatting. We're like, Hey, we should do a podcast. And so Amazon influencers, here we go. But with that, Liz, welcome to the show and how's it going?

Liz :

Hey Brett, I'm doing good. I think that the fact that you invited me after I took a selfie on your phone when you left it unattended is a true testament to your love, our shared love for sophomore humor because I literally sometimes have the sense of humor of a 12 year old. So I appreciate that. You

Brett:

Appreciate that. Me too. My inner junior high student comes out a lot. My wife likes to call that out, and I'm like, I don't think I want that to die yet. I want that to keep going. And so no, when I saw the selfie, I was like, this is gold. Thanks, Liz. Made my day for sure.

Liz :

I think the best part is too, it's not like we like our besties going into that version of our relationship, I just was like, here's your phone use. You get help going for it,

Brett:

Going for it. So got to be bold. That's a good lesson, good takeaway there. And so that is awesome. Well, let's dive into this topic and if you would talk a little bit about flu fruit. So your company is flu fruit launched this year, and you tools, software coaching to help brands and influencers really maximize this game of Amazon influencers. And so kind of why did you start this and give us the quick rundown on what you do and then we'll get into some tips and how toss.

Liz :

Yeah. So I started as an Amazon seller in 2016, move to Jungle Scout, have done K D P and merch and retail arbitrage and was a F B A, all the things. So I am deeply invested in all the ways that you can make money on Amazon. And a friend of mine a year and a half ago was like, you should really look at this influencer program on Amazon. It's really fascinating because you can make commission off of traffic that's already on Amazon. And I was like, well, that's wild. So I got approved in December of 21 and coming from the Amazon world anyways, and of course my background being yours at Jungle Scout, it was immediately obvious that there was a tool that needed to be built for this world. There are things that we know on the product listing page that you can pretty quickly prove impact how well an influencer's videos do. So create a score, weight it based on how those factors help your videos be seen. And it was easy to automate. So after a year in the program, I was like, we need to make this tool. And I initially thought, oh, this is going to be a side hustle thing. Really cool. And it very quickly became obvious when I was onboarding people at seven o'clock in the morning and 10 30 at night around my full-time job that it was probably time to go invest more time into this.

Brett:

You're onto something when you start to see that demand. And I'm sure that was rewarding and exciting and scary and all of those things rolled into, but yeah, you realize, hey, I've got something here. I got to give this a go.

Liz :

Yeah, exactly. I love Jungle Scout and I'll always be grateful for my time there, but truly one of the hardest conversations I've ever had in my life was going to sit down with Greg Mercer and tell him that shout

Brett:

Out to Greg Mercer. What a great dude, what an awesome tool shape the industry. Just, yeah, awesome guy

Liz :

Having to sit down with him and be like, I think I need to go do this other thing. And it's not because I don't love being here, but so yeah, it just all happened really quickly. Launched in May and here we are in August, but to your earlier question, it is a software tool. So that part and then coaching, we've got a class now for people who have an audience to get up and running with influencer and making money and then also having so many relationships in the world of sellers, it was like, oh, I need to go help sellers understand the world of influencers as well. And so that kind of spawned this other portion of the business.

Brett:

That's awesome. I will make one comment. I know Greg's a good dude and so I'm sure that conversation went well. I've been on the other end of that conversation a number of times. So we've got an agency of 70 some employees and we've had a few instances where someone who's trusted team member, core team member, they approach me and say, man, I've got this itch to do my own thing. And we had that happen with our very first Amazon director, so the dude that started the Amazon portion of our business and ran it and he's a brilliant guy and his name's Chris, and he came to me and he is like, I got to do something and I've got this idea and I want to pursue it. And so I was both bummed but also really excited. The entrepreneur in me is like, of course if you've got that burning inside, you got to do it. You'll always regret it if you don't give it a try. And so kudos to you for making the leap and really, really exciting. So let's dive into this. So let's speak to brand owners first. So I'm a brand owner. I sell on Amazon. Why should I consider the influencer program? Is it worth it? And what are the benefits? Get us excited about the opportunity a little bit.

Liz :

So the opportunity for brands to work directly with Amazon influencers is pretty wide open right now, and there's a couple things that are really compelling for me when I look at the data now, I will go ahead and call out that we are very siloed. So the data for sellers that's available is not the data that's available for influencers. So one of the things I'm trying to do is put some of that together so that we can have data backed conversations around

Brett:

Stitch that together between the two sides with influencer

Liz :

Fruit because it's a win-win, right? And win. We'll add Amazon into that. When influencers make commission, it's because sellers are making sales and then Amazon makes their piece too. So it's like a win across the ecosystem. But the things that we're seeing, and this is early data, so I'll call that out, is when we drop influencer content onto a product listing that has some page views or traffic on it already, that it moves that conversion rate up, which if you think about makes a lot of sense. We know that video converts better than text. We know that U G C video, which is what Amazon influencers are, we're basically incentivized U G C sitting at the top of your product listing. So U G C converts better than brand. And then we also know that Amazon continuously places influencer content at the top of your page and they are not stupid.

They're not going to do that if it's not doing positive things for sales. So one of the brands that we've been working with, they had a product compared to the others, it had a lot of traffic on it, but the conversion rate wasn't amazing. We dropped six influencers worth of content on it in a week, and they did 45% month over month and they did three x year over year with no other changes to the listing, no changes in P P C and acknowledging that Amazon ecosystem, it's really hard to eliminate all external factors totally. But as close as we could control that, that's what we came back with.

Brett:

So six influencers in a week for a particular brand, it was 45% month over month growth and you said six x year over

Liz :

Year three x? Yes,

Brett:

Three x. Okay, okay. Still, I mean three X is still insane when that's the only thing you did differently. So you get six influencers all to put content in a week. Then where all does that content show up? So you mentioned that it's on the P D P and you're 100% right? Amazon, if they test something, if it doesn't work, they're getting rid of it. But if that content's showing up at the top of a P D P, rest assured Amazon's doing that because it is making them more money and it'll make you more money as well. So where do those six influencers, where do their content show up?

Liz :

So actually there's two steps. You can be in the influencer program, but then that next step is getting approved for what's called additional onsite placement. And as an influencer, that's where my money is, right, is because I'm showing up at the top of your listing. So one of the places is if you are brand registered, you have a product video uploaded that creates that pop-up video carousel at the top of the page. There are six spaces there available only to the seller and to the influencer. So it shows up there. The other places below the fold, there's that middle or lower carousel influencers show up there. Those are the two places specifically on product listings if you get into fashion and some of that, there are a couple other places that they can show up. But generally speaking, the other places that we're seeing Amazon test, and this is kind of like a day by day, but is search results pages. You'll see influencer stuff pop up there.

Brett:

It's almost like sponsor brand video or what used to be called video and search where those video ads appear in the search results.

Liz :

But the wild thing is if I create a video for one of your products and Amazon puts me in one of these places, it's not something you're paying for. I probably convert better than you do. And it has this kind of infinite number of testing places that Amazon plays with from time to time

Brett:

Super interesting and especially this is early Amazon's just testing it and trying all types of things. Probably eventually they're going to monetize it more from the brands. I would assume, and we may get into this in just a second, but so the influencer makes a commission on this. The brand is paying that commission or Amazon's paying that commission or how does that work?

Liz :

So kind of both. It comes out of that referral fee that you pay to Amazon regardless.

Brett:

Okay, so Amazon's not tacking on an additional influencer fee, they're just charging you the 10, 15%, whatever. It's for your category 8%. And so they're paying the influencer out of that.

Liz :

There's no additional cost if you have a listing that's attracting influencers, it doesn't cost you anything.

Brett:

That's wild. I wonder if that is ever going to change. That's super interesting. I mean I'm always watching how Amazon is monetizing things and I kind of nerd out a little bit and looking at the Q two earnings report this year for Amazon, it's becoming pretty clear that everybody has always said that a w s was the cash cow for Amazon, that that's where most of the profits came from. With Amazon, they're generating plenty of free cash flow and profit from the retail business, but now it looks pretty clear that the most profitable part of their business is ads. So ads is like a 40 billion a year part of their business and 75% margins or something wild like that. And so you got to think maybe, so right now they're eating this cost, but eventually they're probably going to monetize it and charge brands. We'll see, I mean if they do that, I'm sure it'll probably pencil out for the brand owner either way, but right now it's free. So do it. What's the risk? You got to try it. I

Liz :

Think of it as the way they're monetizing right now is because it's only available to brand registered brands. So well, the upper carousel, you can have influencers on your listing regardless, but that upper carousel, which my videos and upper carousels do eight times better. So I know that the listings are

Brett:

Doing better eight times better in terms of

Liz :

What in my commissions.

Brett:

Oh, got it. Okay. So you're speaking now as an influencer. This what's cool. So you're on both sides. You work with brands, but you're also an influencer, which kudos to you on that. So when you're creating an influencer piece of content for luggage or something, when your video shows in that upper carousel, you're doing eight x the commission, if it was showing it somewhere else. Interesting. Which

Liz :

For the seller translates the same way because their sales are reflected in my commission, kind of one-to-one almost there. So if you have brand registry and you're, if you haven't uploaded a product video to unlock that carousel, if I can ask you to do anything today, please go find a video that you can utilize in that placement. It is a real opportunity for you

Brett:

Unlock that video carousel. That's one clear action item and takeaway you got to do that unlocks influencer content at the top of the p d p. So cool. So then if I'm a brand, so you kind of convinced me there's opportunity here. There's really no risk here either. So why not get in early and start testing this as a brand? So then how as a brand, do I find the right influencer or is that not really the game? Here is the game really just make myself available and then influencers will find me. What does that look like?

Liz :

So there's kind of two sides of that coin. So to make your listing organically interesting to influencers, it's that upper carousel, make sure you have traffic. All the things that as sellers, we know that listing quality score, going back to making sure your listing is optimized, that's what you want in place for influencers to just basically find you so to speak. But then there is the other direction of like, well first a lot of sellers that I work with, they'll go to their listings and be like, oh my gosh, I have influencers on my listing. I wondered how those people got there. It says earns commission next time.

Brett:

So to participate in that, that could just happen automatically if your brand registered. You don't have to as a seller go in and click a button or sign something saying I'm willing to do the influencer program.

Liz :

Amazon controls placement for influencer content. So that is a really important point to bring up. If I create content for your listing, usually the way it goes is 24 hours and my video is published and another 24 hours and I get placement. I can tell you that as a rule or as a usually I guess not a rule, I show up if there's an empty spot on that carousel, I'll show up there, but at the end of the day, Amazon controls that placement. And so if they decide not to put me there, it's outside of my direct control. But you also then on the seller side, don't have control as to whether or not influencers show up on your listing.

Brett:

So one, there has to be influencers that create content and then Amazon's, you have to have the video carousel unlocked, which means you have to upload a product video and then I'm sure Amazon's just got to decide is it worth it to put this here and is this going to help conversions? That's one thing, and this is a little bit of a parallel, but on the Google side, and I spent a lot of time on the Google side, people always want their product ratings to show up in the sponsored, almost said sponsored products, that's Amazon. But Google shopping ads, and that's something that Google just decides. They decide when to show it, when not to show it. If they think it's a little bit different than Amazon, but they decide, Hey, I'm going to show the product listing here. I'm not on this one. Do I think it's going to increase the click or the conversion? If I do, then I'm going to put it there. And I know Amazon works in a similar way. They're testing everything. And so if I believe this video is going to help, I'll put it there. But that's up to Amazon. Totally makes sense.

Liz :

And we think they do it based on conversion rate. We think it's last touch attribution, we think it's conversion rate. So one of my videos has been in an upper carousel for the better part of 18 months now they test me off and then they rotate me back on usually. But I've been there for a long time and I think that they do a test to see if other people convert better than I do. And so far I've been put back on basically every time. Well, basically I've been put back on every time, but I believe it's because I convert better than the ones they're testing against me. They don't tell me that, but just empirically I believe

Brett:

It to me makes sense. You're observing it, you drop off for a little while, it means they're price split, testing it, you get put back on means you're the control or the winner. So go Liz.

Liz :

Exactly.

Brett:

Teaching those other people how to do it. I love it. That's very cool. So what are some other tips here? So as a seller, I want to get my listing optimized. I want to have the video there to unlock that upper carousel. What else am I doing as a brand to try to make influencer, to maximize influencer for me?

Liz :

So there are ways you can actually reach out to us. So if you find somebody that you're like, oh, I like this person's content, you see them either on your page or on a competitor's page, an unrelated page doesn't matter, right? Because influencers are not necessarily driving traffic that's affiliate stuff. So it's a totally other ballgame. But if you find somebody that you think does a quality job of talking about a product type or whatever, you can actually click on their profile and it will take you to what's called their storefront. And then it is the one place that Amazon lets us direct people offsite because just like sellers, Amazon does not want you to send them anywhere other than Amazon. They don't want us to do that either, but they gave us an ability to link to our other socials. So if you go to my storefront, you'll find my Instagram, you can message me on my Instagram account even though you can't message me directly on Amazon. So if you find somebody, go to their storefront, go to their other socials and message them there if you want to work with them. The thing I'll call out for you is as influencers, we get a lot of outreach from agents who are repping lots and lots of ACEs. So if you can find a way to distinguish yourself as I own the brand, please do that because it helps immediately the influencer know what kind of conversation they're having.

Brett:

Influencers would much rather talk to brands, right, than agents for the most part.

Liz :

Absolutely.

Brett:

So identify that you're a brand, preferably a brand that's already got some traction conversions, good things are happening and you're reaching out to someone that you believe has an affinity towards your category or your type of product. They've done it before, which means it'd be pretty likely to review you. Now one thing that's interesting here, and I've not consumed a lot of the Amazon influencer content, so just put that caveat out there, but I mean sometimes our influencers like, man, I tried this product. Okay, one of my favorite. I mean obviously they're not really incentivized to do that, then they won't earn a commission. Amazon probably doesn't want that there because then it's not going to increase sales. But what does that look like?

Liz :

Most influencers that I work with don't leave bad shoppable video reviews.

Brett:

Yeah, okay.

Liz :

You do get a one click reach for related product. So hypothetically, if I was like, I don't like this product, I would definitely pick a different one and somebody clicked on a different one and bought it, I do then make a percentage off of that one click distance basically.

Brett:

Interesting. So as an influencer, I've got a video for one product, but someone clicks on that and buys another product. You still get a commission on that.

Liz :

So my Shade Tent, which is the one that I've been in the upper carousel for the better part of 18 months, I've made over $5,000 on that one video. Wow. Yeah, it's wild. But not all of that money is from that Shade tent specifically. And I only had one shade tent video for over a year. So I can tell if it's related to the Shade Tent video, if they click through and buy weights for the Shade tent, I make that if it's a related product, it's one click. But as opposed to affiliates who get the 24 hour cookie of your entire cart, it's just a one click related product.

Brett:

Very interesting on the, that's just got me thinking and maybe there's, I think this podcast mostly appeals to brand owners and on the seller side, but just in case someone's out there and I want to be an affiliate or an influencer, that sounds fun. Do you offer training and stuff for how to be more influential as an influencer? Or how do I create content?

Liz :

Yeah, so I actually, the wildest thing for me, and I think that we know this living in this world is the number of sellers who actually also have like, oh, I have this Instagram account that I'm side hustling, right? It's like everybody in this world is some sort of side hustler. And so what I do is help you if you have an audience, because to get into the Amazon influencer program, you have to have an audience on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or YouTube. So that has to exist to get approved for the program. I take people who have even a medium size but highly engaged audience from that point to monetizing as an Amazon influencer. And I have a course for that. It's a low cost course, but it just basically walks you through so you're not having to Google and join every Facebook group and ask questions and all of that. It just walks you straight through.

Brett:

Awesome. What kind of following does somebody need? So how big does their Instagram or YouTube or TikTok following you to be?

Liz :

So I'm going to wait for your shocked face, but Amazon doesn't actually give us a number. Oh, got it. But what they tell us is that you need to have an engaged audience that they're looking at your follower account and the engagement numbers. So just anecdotally, I got in with an Instagram account of 2,700 followers. It's basically my food journal. So people are like, do you have to show your face? The answer is no. I did whole 30 a couple years ago and just messed around with this account for a while, had 2,700 people on it, and when I applied, I got in right away. So TikTok is the easiest platform at the moment to get approved with, but really wherever you have an audience on those four platforms, it's worth applying because you can apply to the program an unlimited number of times, and then once you're in that onsite placement, you only have three chances for, so there's kind of like two steps, but if you can

Brett:

Wait, explain that. So I can apply as many times as I want to, so I can just keep building my TikTok following and then apply and eventually I'll be approved, hopefully. But then once you get the onsite placement, there's only three tries. Explain what that means.

Liz :

So you can be in the program and not approved for additional onsite placement. So not approved to show up on product listings, not approved to show up in search results, which is where the money is for influencer. But once you're in, then you have to submit three shoppable videos that puts you into that application process or that approval process for the onsite. And that is the time when Amazon is going to be fine tooth comb looking at your video content, but you only have to upload three. And right now at the time of this recording, it takes between three and five days to hear back on that piece of the process.

Brett:

Super, super interesting. So we talked about it. I'm just again trying to visualize, so as a brand owner, the influencer content can show up on that top carousel. I've got at least one video there can be show up in the middle of the page sometimes in the search results page. Where else are people finding and consuming influencer content?

Liz :

Absolutely. So the Inspire Feed and the Discover feed. So if you haven't seen those yet, Amazon has started rolling out basically social shopping. It's their way to compete with TikTok and Instagram. So Inspire should be on at this point, everybody's shopping app. It was the little light bulb down at the bottom menu, but now it reminds me of a YouTube icon at the moment. But it's like you can scroll through and they'll see influencer content, brand content, and also customer review videos. But basically you can scroll it, influencers can tag a bunch of products in it, including yours, and that shows up there. The Discover Feed is specifically for fashion and beauty, and it's a little bit more of a mystery in my mind, but I have found, I have pictures, they're called Shoppable photos of me in an outfit that I tagged. I bought the clothes on Amazon and I have found myself on the listing in that photo or in the feed for Discover in that photo.

So Amazon has all these different placements that they're testing and starting to get up and populate, but that's actually something as a brand, if you're not doing posts, that's an opportunity for you as a brand to show up in those feeds. So my Inspire Feed, for example, is approximately 40% brands, 40% influencers, and about 20% customers. Just anecdotally scrolling. So if you're a brand, now I'm with you at some point, I think Amazon is going to monetize and make brands pay to show up there. But at the moment, if you're doing posts Amazon, there's a chance they'll put you in that Inspire Feed.

Brett:

Very, very interesting. Now, it is very clear, Amazon still is larger driven by search. That's how people find products on Amazon. But they are trying very hard and being very creative and doing all these things to try to improve product discovery. What are other ways that users and shoppers can find new products? And so the Inspire feed, the Discovery feed, love it. Do those appear to be growing? And I know you've got insights on both sides, sellers and as an influencer, are you getting more commissions? Can you tell if it's coming from an Inspire Feed versus Discover versus on the page?

Liz :

Yeah, so there is one report that you can run that you can see if it came through Inspire. I would say Amazon is putting a lot of money into it. So they're asking basically every time you turn around, Hey, we really want vertical shorts for, they're not saying for the Inspire feed, but that's what it's for. So my guess looking at it is that the amount of content that they're putting in there is getting more and more. It's hard to tell at the moment who's having success on the Inspire feed.

Brett:

And it's just interesting because you talk about how you're making most of your money as an influencer with that carousel at the top of the page. Well, and you already talked about it, but that that's a conversion rate play, right? That's not getting more traffic to a listing, even more internal traffic that's already on Amazon. It's just closing more of the traffic that you've already got. And so that's still a search play. You're still leaning into Amazon ads or whatever to get someone there and then the influencer helping close deals, which is still great. But yeah, I'm just curious. I would love to see the Discover Feed and the Inspire feed really take off, but as an Amazon shopper and the Target demo for the Discover Inspire Feed necessarily, but I'm always just searching for stuff.

Liz :

I do think that the discoverability problem is part of what they're trying to solve for here, and they're going up against TikTok as an example because they want it to be quick and shoppable and trendy, but they also have a lot more rules around what you can do in the videos. So when you think about TikTok, part of the reason you buy half that stuff is because the influencer made you laugh or connected with you or where is this stuff on Amazon? And I still love it. I think it's going to do good things, but it's like 10 things that you must have from Amazon for your car or for my baby or for my dog or so it is, I see it being more home shopping network than TikTok eventually,

Brett:

Which is just interesting to me because that's not the mode most people go to Amazon for. I go to Amazon for something specific, researching a couple products, just going to buy, I'm going to buy stuff, not necessarily consume content. Whereas if I was a TikTok user, which I'm really not, but TikTok or Instagram or Facebook or whatever, I'm going there to just consume content, hang out, and then I'm open to discovering something new. So yeah, it'd be really interesting to see how Amazon continues to iterate and improve that experience and hopefully they'll get traction because that's an issue for a lot of brands. I know an issue for Amazon is that discoverability of new products. And so I hope they keep improving. I hope that they crack that code.

Liz :

It would be really cool if it would help when you first launch your product on Amazon and you're like, if you build it, it turns out they are not coming, right? You're like, wait, I did all this work and it's great, but I can't even find myself when I type in my brand name and product name. So if they can help people clear that gap, I feel like that would be an amazing use of it. We'll see.

Brett:

Yeah, and I think there's also something to be said about if you sell a premium product and you're not really well known on Amazon or even that well-known off Amazon, selling a premium is a okay. And I think that's actually a great strategy in a lot of cases, but you got to tell the story and you got to show someone why are you more expensive? Otherwise we default the price without clear understanding as to why you should pay more. And maybe some of these influencer videos and some of the content in the Discover in Inspire Feed could show someone why you're worth a premium price. So I think there's got to be some branding elements there as well. I want to go back to something you mentioned a minute ago, which is important and we help a lot of companies with their posts. How do I create posts as a brand? But talk about why that's important. And you mentioned that that shows up also in the Inspire feed. Is that right?

Liz :

Yeah. So my best example of this is somebody that we both know from Seller Summit actually, Amanda Creations. And when Inspire launched, I happened to be in one of the first rollouts. So it was like when there was not a lot of content at all in there, and I would be scrolling. I was like, Amanda, I didn't know that you were doing this. And she's like, what are you talking about? And I was like, you're in the Inspire feed. And so then this is at the beginning, we're starting to put it all together and her words to me were basically, I didn't know what Amazon was going to do with it or why it was important, but I just knew that we should do it. Yeah,

Brett:

Test it.

Liz :

And it's like, yes. So when I scroll now I follow her also. So I know it's an algorithm, so it's not random totally that I find her. But you can see when you're scrolling, Amazon is still surfacing brand content in Inspire and discover for free. The brands don't even know it's happening half the time. They don't send you a report that says, we showed 15 people this post that you did today. You just know like, oh, I had a bump in this product. I wonder why. So if you are a brand and you aren't doing posts, it is kind of like a wild play to be like, I'm creating content that Amazon is placing for me that I'm not paying for. It's a pretty good, I don't want to say risk, but gamble to take because posts are pretty easy to put

Brett:

Together. Posts are easy to put together. And yeah, I talk about this a lot on the pod, but the companies that are going to do the best long-term on Amazon and those that are going to be sellable, if your goal is to exit your brand one day is to actually build a brand, not just playing. So we talked about how Amazon is mostly search and it is, but if that's all you're doing is just playing the search game and trying to manipulate price or get a few more reviews here and there and things like that, that's okay, but you really need to build a brand and get repeat purchases if your product is conducive to that. And so some of these additional things are what's going to help you build a brand and protect margins and scale and then eventually sell. So really cool. Any kind of final tips or suggestions? What should I be thinking about as a brand if I want to make influencer work? Anything we left out?

Liz :

Absolutely. So there's one tip that I'll give you. The other thing that you can be doing as a brand that is available to influencers is lives. So if you want to, you have multiple skews, you have one skew, whatever you feel like you can add, go ahead and do a couple lives, you can repurpose that. We never know where Amazon might test that content. And that is available to brands as well.

Brett:

You can repurpose it. So you do a live, you can now take clips of that and share in other places, is that right?

Liz :

Yeah, so any content that you upload to Amazon you own fully and they allow you to post in other places. So if you're doing a live on Amazon, then you could also clip it and utilize, repurpose the content.

Brett:

I think that makes sense. Then that kind of, again, just you're able to leverage a little bit more, right? You took the time to do a live, maybe it did something for you on Amazon, maybe it didn't, but now you can repurpose that content, chop it up, put it on TikTok and ads or Instagram or Facebook or something like that.

Liz :

Yeah, I mean, LifePro is one of the brands that I've worked with through Creator Connections, which is an invite only for brands and influencers. So if you have that in your backend, but they do lives all the time and they're like a fitness thing. So they're like, we have these products and then they do q and a with trainers. There's a lot that you can do and build that audience. And of course, like Amazon, it lets you repurpose it because hoping that you'll repurpose it and drive traffic back to Amazon. So it's a good little flywheel there. But to your question about working with influencers and kind of final tips, I do offer a white glove service. So if you're like, Liz, I have more money than time right now in way of, I don't have the time to go find these people, find them for me, I will find them for you. And I have over a hundred influencers that are using the tool that are available for working with, and they cover everything from dogs and pets and kids and any outdoors, anything that you could possibly need for your brand. So that is also available.

Brett:

Love it. So flu, it's like influencer without the N, whether the i influencer fruit.com. And so yeah, talk about that. So you've got the white glove service, so you can help brands find influencers, but then you also got some training and some software, some tools. So yeah, give us the rundown.

Liz :

Yeah, so I will also put together influencer fruit.com/omg so that everybody can find all of this in one place. But yep, starts with the tool for influencers to help them find your product listings that are optimized for them. So it tells them from the search results page, if you have that upper carousel and how many other influencers are on there, and then goes through the course. So if somebody has that audience is looking to monetize with that. And then on the brand side, if you're just looking for, listen, I need six influencers to fill out that upper carousel for me, can you help me? The answer is yes. So there's a link on there that goes to book a call. Happy to hop on and chat with you about where your brand is at and how we can help.

Brett:

Awesome. So flu fruit.com/omg. Check it out. Liz Saunders, ladies and gentlemen, Liz, this was very fun, very enlightening. I'm so glad we did this. And yeah, we'll have to do it again sometime. That

Liz :

Sounds great. Thanks Brett.

Brett:

Awesome. Thanks Liz. And as always, thank you. Could would not do the show without you, and so would love your feedback. Love that review on iTunes if you've not done. And hey, hit us up on the socials. I'm actually very active right now on LinkedIn, so hit me up. Let me know what you'd like to hear more of on the show or let's continue the conversation on LinkedIn. I'm also on a few other places, YouTube shorts and stuff, so check me out there. But with that, until next time, thank you for listening.

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