Neuromarketing and Behavioral Economics ⎜ Anthony Lee ⎜ EP 108

Ryan Cramer: What's up, everyone? Welcome to my corner of the internet. I'm your host, Ryan Cramer and this is Crossover Commerce, presented by PingPong Payments, the leading global payments provider helping sellers keep more of their hard earned money. What's up, everyone? I'm your host, Ryan Cramer and welcome to another episode of Crossover Commerce, episode 108, neuro- marketing and behavior economics. What are we talking about? Well, we're going to get our thinking caps on today and we're going to dive right into the behavior of the subliminal and below conscious cues on purchase decisions for online buyers. What does that mean you might ask? Well, that's why I brought on my guest today. We're going to get a little nerdy today on Friday, a little low key, but we're going to get to the bottom of why people buy things the way they do. What are the triggers and why does that impact Amazon brands? Of course, we can always get into the debate as well. You should build a brand on Amazon versus you should not worry about branding debate that's typically going on right now amongst the Amazon community. So we'll dive into a little bit of both. But as always, Crossover Commerce is presented by PingPong Payments. PingPong transfers more than$ 150 million a day to e- commerce sellers just like you, helping over one million customers now, we have processed over$ 90 billion. That's billion with a B, in cross- border payments. And to start saving money today, no one likes giving away more money. Just like anything else, you want to keep more of that money to apply it to your inventory, spend it on some advertising, or to pay yourself out a nice little extra money. Go ahead and sign up for a PingPong account today. That link is going to be right there below in the show notes. Check it out a little bit later. Of course, after the show, you want to stay tuned here. But of course, a big welcome to our audience for watching us on Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Or if you're listening to us later on Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple, or Google Podcasts, wherever you might consume a podcast, that's where we're going to be. Just go ahead and search for Crossover Commerce and subscribe on your favorite channel today. Make sure that everyone is following both myself and our guest on social media so you can stay up to date on the latest content both sides of us are producing because this guy is a thought leader. I'm super excited. We just got off a quick chat, talking about the industry, what's going on in this space, our backgrounds. We're going to talk a little bit about that today as well, but all that's going to be in the show notes below, go ahead and check that out and follow myself on social media and our guest as well. But about our guests today, Anthony Lee, he has served in the Amazon committee for over the last six and a half years as COO of SixLeaf, formerly ZonBlast and the content manager of Helium 10 as well as CEO of Signalytics, a consultant to six, seven and eight figure seller brands as well as a thought leader and teacher in the space. His primary focus has been on Amazon ranking algorithm and buyer psychology and as such, he has provided the community with number of references, key insights, experiments and actionable works that have proven to move the needle in growing Amazon centric businesses. Anthony actually recently joined canopy management which is the leading full stack A to Z Amazon agency for over 80 Amazon experts dedicated to helping brands scale their businesses, gain market share and become Kings and Queens of their category. We've had Brian, we had Blake on before and how we have Anthony. He has been amazing to join us today. Welcome to Crossover Commerce, Anthony Lee of Canopy Management. Anthony, what is going on? Let me bring you in here right now. There you go.

Anthony Lee: I'm glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah, no problem, man. And we were just chatting a lot today. You're pumping out so much content on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, all the kind of content. It's funny because I noticed your background. It's always the cool, quick, actionable insights, but for people who might not be following you, which they should be, of course, we put that social handle below. We got a new set up here. My graphics departments coming up with all sorts of cool stuff for me. So I'm a kid in a candy store, but for people who may not be following you or know your background more in depth, I just give them a resume basically. What makes you, you basically, you get into the Amazon space. Let's start with there.

Anthony Lee: Okay. So the quick story, 2014, as of 2014, I worked two jobs. I was a copywriter at a web design firm during the week and on Saturdays, I worked at a fish restaurant as a waiter. And I had an hour commute to the copywriting job. So that was a tough time period. Anyway, obviously I'm in this place in my head where it's like, I really want to be doing better. I work, my wife works. We have a baby who we have to leave with babysitters every day. And it's just not ideal. So somehow I accidentally stumbled upon a video from Ryan Moran and he was promoting the amazing selling machine course. And in this particular video, he was just like," Hey, so you can sell your own brand of stuff. You get it from Alibaba." And I had heard of Alibaba, but I didn't understand really. And then that clicked. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And then you can do it through FBA because they take care of all the customer support and the fulfillment. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. But then he said, and the key to winning and beating out all these brands that sell on Amazon is if you just write, if you have good copy, if you can write a listing, then you'll beat everybody out. And I was just like... So shortly thereafter, I acquired three credit cards. I maxed them all out from that inventory order, my wife almost killed me and yeah, and the rest is history from there.

Ryan Cramer: The rest is history.

Anthony Lee: And that's how I got in.

Ryan Cramer: Would you recommend doing that again ever?

Anthony Lee: Not the way I did it because the landscape has changed, but at the time it's just like, if you have an idea, and it makes so much sense to you that you lose sleep over it and you're willing to dig a hole to make it work and just say, hey, if it doesn't work, I'll dig the hole deeper. If you're at that level, then I don't know if you can ignore that, right? I feel like people who do ignore that lose opportunity, so.

Ryan Cramer: Well that, and it's entrepreneurship 101 is an idea to make something better in this space. If they did that by taking out a loan and by opening up a retail store and they lost money that way, people don't blink like they do on Amazon or online, right? Because again, we're talking about psychology of why is that different one versus the other, it's the same concept. One's all digital, the other is at a retail mom and pop store. You might feel bad if they go out of business or we feel really sad, but online you're like, ah, I have a failed product. And everyone's like," Okay. Sounds good." But so you sold online, currently selling online still?

Anthony Lee: Yeah, I've been a seller mostly this whole time. There was a couple of year period where I was between brands, that's how I like to put it, just trying to figure out what direction I was going to go. But yeah, I've been selling, I've also experimented with other marketplaces. I'm fascinated by the concept of e- commerce in general. And then other than that, I've also had the great pleasure of consulting some amazing, amazing sellers and brands. And then kind of in between there, I had my stint with all of these... I say all of these, it was primarily ZonBlast SixLeaf for the bulk of my career. And then after that, it was just trying to find a place where I really fit. And that's what brings me here to Canopy.

Ryan Cramer: Absolutely. That's amazing because obviously we had Brian and Blake on and they give us kind of like... Brian might still be on the road for all I know. The last time I checked in with him, he was in an RV in the middle of nowhere driving and maybe I think he was going south at that point. So he might be back by now.

Anthony Lee: This morning he was checking in on a Zoom call with the team from inside a moving vehicle, so I assume-

Ryan Cramer: That's good. Well, that's good. I actually, speaking of Blake, I saw he commented, and if you're watching us live on LinkedIn, YouTube, or Facebook, there he is, the man himself, Blake Hilton, such a wealth of knowledge. Thanks for watching us on LinkedIn Blake. And if anyone has questions along the way, we're going to get into the topic here just shortly. But if you want to say hi, we're always welcome the nice hello on a Friday. It's super low key on Friday, I always feel like. So you, Anthony, you've seen a lot. We actually bonded over this a little bit like you and I have our hand in a very similar concept of lots of different industries, lots of different services. And our journey has seen so many different things. You said, I'm kind of like not excited as much with Amazon as much as I am with like these other marketplace opportunities. And what is exciting you, I guess right now in that aspect of what marketplace is maybe, or is it more of countries or where's the opportunity right now for you do you think?

Anthony Lee: I still think that Amazon's one of the easiest places to kind of break into the space and sell stuff. I like to tell people that it's important to be marketplace agnostic though, because a lot of people seem to not realize that Amazon is just another distribution channel. I think that Walmart is probably going to be a pretty serious contender, believe it or not. I know they've tried and failed a lot of different things, but ultimately-

Ryan Cramer: Spend a lot of money doing it too.

Anthony Lee: But the thing is they haven't stopped and you have crosstalk guys in there, you have to think there's probably a reason for it. And if you think about it, they're kind of poised to give Amazon a little bit of a run for their money, because there are more Walmarts than there are FBA facilities. And they're in places where the last mile for Amazon is very difficult, right? We're talking about rural areas. This is where Walmart thrives. So they're set up to offer something comparable, at least anyways. But ultimately I think the thing that excites me the most is the fact that we've been having this debate forever, but people are starting to finally realize that when you attach and associate emotion and story to a brand, that is what's proving to have longevity. Back in 2015, everybody was just starting on Amazon 2016, just really getting like, it really blew up. And there was no data to back this up, but here we are in 2021 and you can look at some of the biggest players on Amazon who are third party, and they all have pretty strong brands behind them. I mean, not all of them, but most of them do a lot of the ones that don't are typically wholesalers are just big resellers. But if you look at like private label, the guys that have a solid brand behind them typically lead the pack as far as that's concerned, so now that people are realizing that, I think it's awesome to finally have this conversation, tell people, okay, well we've been screaming from the rooftops about branding for years. Now, you want to talk about it, let's talk about it. Let's talk about how you can do that. And that aligns really well with like these geeky topics that I love to cover, talk about behavioral stuff.

Ryan Cramer: Hey man, I've always been about the buyer psychology. And as people know on this show, my background has always been in performance marketing. What that means is having a third party send traffic to your website and what's going to be that thing that drives a conversion. Is it price? Is it going to be a coupon? Is it going to be a quote unquote sale? Is it going to be marketing? Is it going to be a thing such as prime day that is so hyped up that people feel like they miss out, they're losing money by not spending money, right? Like the whole adage, you're losing money by not spending money. And we as both sellers and buyers have to put on different caps all the time of how can I get people to say yes to me? And as buyers of, do I really need this right now? But sometimes it's always subconscious. I want it instead of I need it and that trumps those kinds of conversations. So when you say behavioral marketing and you're talking about neuro economics, what's the definition to you about what people need to know about why that applies to online sellers?

Anthony Lee: Okay. So I'll answer that first by not necessarily countering what you just said, but clarifying. I don't think that sometimes it's a subconscious decision. It's 80 to 90% of the time a subconscious decision. We do things consciously, yes, but what causes us to click the buy button? Or what causes us to walk away from the cart or what causes us to swipe or do whatever action we do 80 to 90% of it is below consciousness. And it's just the way human brains work. And so first off understanding that. I know it's a kind of a... it almost feels like kind of a woo topic sometimes. People are like, oh yeah, that's cool. Neuro whatever, that's a buzz word and that doesn't really apply, but almost all of the focus, everything that we do when we train on this topic, when we teach people, the coursework, it's all on the conscious level and that scratches the surface only. We're talking about numbers, you're getting lost in mathematics. I'm actually reading a book right now called Alchemy and it's all about the magic and that's what the author refers to the subconscious stuff. He calls it the magic. And one of the points that he makes is that in physics and subjects like that, math is math, right? One times 10 and 10 times a one are the same thing, right? inaudible in psychology and that's where we get it wrong. So to kind of illustrate my example, let's say you have a con artist, he's really good and he can fool 10 people one time each in a row. That's pretty impressive. Will he be able to do one person 10 times fold? No. So 10 times, that's just an example. We can come up with a million. One times 10 and 10 times one are not the same in psychology. Context matters. And all of our focus in this industry is always about the math, it's always about, but none of it touches the psychology, the psychological mathematics, which have different answers. So I think it's really important for people to A, understand that most decisions are made under the conscious level, and B understand that it's important to know that and to be purposeful when you're creating your marketing materials and when you're creating your brand, because if you ignore it, the people who don't ignore it, I mean, they're going to win.

Ryan Cramer: Right. So when I hear that you were saying, if I can not fool somebody, but if I can get someone to purchase one time, that's a win for Amazon seller. But if I can get a repeat buyer to, one person to buy that 10 times, in that context, which one's more valuable to you, do you think?

Anthony Lee: I think, okay. So that's a really interesting way to kind of spin what I just said into a different topic. Thank you very much for that. First off-

Ryan Cramer: Host of a podcast show, you got to keep it rolling, man.

Anthony Lee: First off, I do want to point out that what's important to realize here is that there's a different strategy for both, right? What you do for one is not going to be the same as the other. How you get repeat customers is not by continuing to hit them with the brand new launch marketing that you're doing to get the first customer in the first place, right? Which one is more valuable? Both of them play an important role. That's the other thing, too, is a lot of what we talk about in this space is always divided in such a dichotomy, so black and white. It's all integrated. Every business needs repeat customers, every business needs new customers. It's all integrated. In order for you to have a successful business, you really need to be able to tackle those.

Ryan Cramer: When I think about that as a seller, these are the things I instantly think about, how to make something as enticing as first time buyers and repeat buyers. And this is something that I maybe have heard recently on either clubhouse or along the space. I always have to use loyalty, when people say loyalty, I'm brand loyal, but there's ways to actually physically show brand loyalty and it feels like that you're getting something in return from a buyer. So from a buyer's perspective, there's different ways like I will only wear Patagonia gear. I like how they feel. I like what they stand for. They give back, so on and so forth. I'm a Patagonian person. Or I shop at REI or a retail store and the more I spend with them, even though I don't have to just buy that brand of product, I can get rewarded still by shopping at a retail store. It can be in terms of cash back, it can be discounts on products. It can be all sorts of things. When we're talking about on Amazon and people are finding ways to like, how can I continue to get more people back and continue to repurchase with me? Do you think that people don't take it that step further in saying there's a loyalty program or some sort of physical nature of rewarding loyalty instead of like," Hey, my product's good and you know that, but it may not be necessary for a repeat purchases all the time." Is there that disconnect for a lot of people with brands?

Anthony Lee: I think just as consumers, we can see that this connect does exist, but in all fairness, the reason why is because Amazon is not a platform that's conducive for one person to come back and show brand loyalty. It's almost, I feel like it's intentional the way they set it up, but they're very, very good about setting it up so where a thousand people can come and get one thing, but they're not very good about making it seamless for one person to come back and get a thousand things, at least from the same vendor. That's just the way the platform is. So it's understandable why a lot of people don't focus on that in our space because it's difficult, right? The easiest and the best way would be to get that person into your own ecosystem. But we all know how hard Amazon makes that. Getting their contact details is impossible. So you either have to bring them from a separate, from a different platform in the first place, like bringing your own customer to Amazon, or you have to play kind of skirt some of the lines that Amazon puts out there and do things with inserts and just be super creative about it and hope that all works out. With that said, though, I think that it's probably very important for people to, for that disconnect to be eliminated. I think that Amazon is a great platform for creating cashflow, but that process can... It's like this. If you go on Amazon, you're just selling stuff, right? There's a number of different things that can stand in your way of that continuing to be successful, listing suppression, outright suspension out of nowhere, price to the bottom because competitors jump on it. There's so many things that go in there and then make that a difficult process. And right now we're in the age of aggregators, everybody's talking about wanting to flip their business. And it's like, how you do that is by not just growing your business to a million plus EBITDA and all that stuff that they care about, but building something that's sustainable. So that by the time the signature is inked on the contract, everything still looks good. They haven't had a reason to turn around and decide that this was a bad idea. And I think it's important for that to happen successfully to do these branding actions. And one of them is definitely cultivating an environment where people want to come back to you. You explained your process as a consumer. And I just want to kind of lay out what that looks like from a psychological perspective. So when you first needed that all weather jacket or whatever, likely you went into it in a very conscious place where you're like, well, I need this. This is something I need. And that's how a lot of people start their shopping that way, not everybody. And there's plenty of items that get added to the cart that's not the motivation, but we'll start with one of the easier ones to map out. You need it, you're looking and comparing features and Patagonia has a wonderful one. And once you're in their ecosystem, they explain to you the brand story, how they have a mission. And at that point now maybe, the needing of the jacket was what got you in the door, but now anytime you need anything that Patagonia sells, you'll do your best to make sure that it's a Patagonia product because, and that's what gets you coming back is now there's that emotional connection. There's that reason for you to do it. So hard, a little bit harder to do on Amazon, still prime example of something that you should aspire to because ultimately that keeps you growing. And the more you grow, who knows how long it would take you to flip your business if that's what you're trying to go for, right? A lot of people are talking about that right now so I assume that's what a lot of people are trying to go for. If you're growing the whole time though, then all that means is when you finally sign that contract, you get more money as opposed to what it looks like when all of a sudden the bottom drops out of it because of some dumb stuff. And what do you have to recover on that, right? You haven't built anything.

Ryan Cramer: Right, that's the whole debate going on right now. I know we're both in the same club house of had multiple conversations on this. And I think there's even another one today at the top of the hour. With that being said, people are saying," Do I invest my time and effort into building something as important as a brand where I maybe tie myself or a feeling or a thought behind it? At the end of the day, is that important when I exit an Amazon business?" I've heard from various different aggregators. Again, I can't tell you which ones they are, but all they're interested in is the acquisition of the brand, not just the brand name or the feeling, they're interested in what customer retention looks like. So if I know brand XYZ has an email list of 10, 000 people, that instantly is 10, 000 people that can potentially tap into to get repeat customers. So we're going back to the whole adage of repeat customers is a very important thing for your brand. But that's not the definition of a brand. It's not repeat customers. It's a thought, a feeling of what stands for, it's the marketing, it's all this stuff. So that being said, when we're getting all these points coming across as what is going to be building a brand on Amazon, what are the core functionalities that are the safest functionalities that we should start thinking about from here on now implementing, do you think?

Anthony Lee: See, here's the thing, is there's not a one size fits all answer to that. One thing I want to dispel though, so many people look at brand actions and they think this is a separate thing I have to put extra time and money into. Do I want to do that? Emma Schirmer said it best and definitely want to shout her out for this because she said," Look, branding, that brand association, that's happening whether you participated in it or not."

Ryan Cramer: I remember she was saying that. That was an excellent point.

Anthony Lee: That's so great because she's 100% correct in that. It's happening regardless of whether or not you are purposefully putting any time and effort into it. So with that said, every business that has to spend money somewhere makes the decision is be purposeful on what brand actions you're putting effort into or money into and just included in the overall. Integrate it. It's all business decisions, right? So as far as what the core stuff is, a lot of people say it's imagery. Maybe that is the most important thing. Maybe the packaging is the most important thing, maybe not, but as long as you're purposeful in thinking about the associations that people will connect with your listing and then ideally with the product itself, and then ideally with your brand itself, you can make more intelligent, better decisions. And it doesn't all have to be like money and graphic designers. Just think about where it makes sense to put your logo on your imagery, for example. What associations do you want people to have? Think about the color scheme, right? And you don't have to hire a designer for that, just look at it from the perspective of a consumer, if you can. And if you can't, employ the people around you to help you with that decision. Just be thoughtful where you can't spend money and pay an expert, be thoughtful. That's what I think. I think the core is you just have to put the extra effort into thinking about what everything represents and everything, meaning the store name that you choose, the product listing the brand, ultimately. Everything. Just what does it represent? If you just throw a listing up there and you put the product in a polybag and you don't put thought into that stuff, then you can't be surprised when you perform at a level that's below what you had hoped, because you got to look at your competitors that are crushing it. A lot of times it's because they put thought into those things, those little things, even where money wasn't spent, effort and thought were. And I think that's ultimately the core. Just think about the actions.

Ryan Cramer: Well, that's the thing is marketing. Doesn't always translate to dollars and cents, right? It's a feeling, it's a instant, actionable thing of something that you can't quantify, but you know it's valuable because it can be the decision from somebody going back to that same product or moving on saying," Well, this feels like this packaging, the material, this doesn't feel like a quality product. I might try something different this next time." So like Emma said, whether you make that decision subconsciously or not, it's all going into what you, as a brand and that listing product, it's all going to tie together. One of the favorite conversations I've had, Anthony is it was with a professor at St. Louis University, he talks about localization. And when I asked him the question, localization is talking to a subset of either customer or a religion or a culture on a very local level in terms of how my brand can associate with them. So I said, okay, what's a company or product that does really good at that. And he said, Ikea. And I kind of laughed to myself, I go, Ikea the Swedish? Everyone knows it initially thinks like, oh, maybe it's cheap furniture, things like that. And we actually did a real live screen share of that. And he said, Ikea localizes on the aspect of culture, as well as language. And every person who speaks a different language, just like Yana from Wild Tea Translation says," Each word means something different in each language. It can translate completely, make you feel completely different if you read that in one culture or another." For your thought, subconsciously, is word or written language, just as important as visual cues? Or maybe when you're reading something, is that just as important as an image on a listing?

Anthony Lee: I believe that context matters. So in general, yes. And then anybody that's run advertising will also agree the texts in the media are probably equally important. However, on an Amazon listing, the context is that the attention is different because it's a structured format. So as much as I do believe the wording is important, I think on Amazon, there's a significant skew towards the imagery being more important because of that structure and the way it's set up to put so much emphasis on the visual media. That doesn't mean you should skirt the responsibility of putting some effort and thought into the wording. It's just because of the structure of Amazon, the imagery is going to be probably 10 times more important. And so if that impacts your decisions on where to put your dollars with regard to how to get your listing optimized, just remember I said that because that is important.

Ryan Cramer: Right. I mean, we're all visual creatures, right? That's why we like short consumable content. We like looking at things and we like being able to see how it can maybe fit into our life, right? Lifestyle imagery is super important. In that case, you can also switch it out depending on seasonality, time of year, and make it feel like it applies to that nature. What are some of the hidden ways do you think that sellers just don't take advantage of enough when it talks about the underlying aspects of neuro- marketing? Is it imagery or is it something else that they might not be taking advantage of?

Anthony Lee: Well, it's definitely imagery, but there are ways to tackle imagery that I think a lot of people don't realize that they have the ability to impact things. So first off, I think it's important to help everybody understand the reason why imagery is so powerful. And the reason is because it requires less cognitive effort. This is also the reason why simple language is more powerful than using complex language in your text. The more cognitive effort that is required, the more the attention is on the wording or the thing and less on the message it's translating to you. So basically it's not that people are stupid, it's that our brains are wired in almost a lazy way where they've hardwired all of these understandings. Most of the time we call those biases, but either way biases can be used for good or bad. Those biases exist and anything that there's not a hard wire understanding for already, it has to pull in the system two, which is the logical rational thinking. And it's sitting there decoding. And while it's decoding, it's going to come up with a translation, but then the messages doesn't sink in. Then you're like, yeah I understand the words now. Okay, moving on. You don't want that to happen as a marketer. So imagery is important because it's so much less cognitive use. If there's so much more cognitive use, if you try to explain with words, the difference between product A and product B, you will be wildly less successful than if you just demonstrate. If you show a picture of the Bounty, a paper towel soaking up everything versus the competitor where falls all off the counter. One of the most effective marketing pieces that has ever existed. And that's why they rolled with it for so long, because it works. Talking about Bounty, specifically. So in your imagery, things that you should be thoughtful of. If you can show a demonstration, awesome. If you can avoid, I love this about, so the guy, Steve Patterson runs the Amazon creative services of Canopy, and he understands all these. And that's why we get along so well, but we also have to avoid getting on Zoom calls because we will nerd out about this for way too long than our schedule can allow. But there are high level people in this space that teach about using the right text in your imagery. And I'm like, ah, that makes me cringe a little because when you hear Steve talk, he's like," Yeah, so the number one goal is let's try to avoid using any texts if we can. It reduces the cognitive load if you can convey the message in an image." So I would go with that, right? Try to show demonstration of superiority as much as you possibly can, try not to use words. If you have a backpack that has a little pouch on the side, you don't need an infographic that says, look, storage pouch. You can put all this stuff in it. Show a picture of somebody pulling the insulated cup out of the daggum pouch. That's going to be so much more powerful. And so that's one way. Another way that people can really utilize little imagery tricks, strategically place your brand logo where it matters, where it might fit naturally in an image. And the reason why that's so important is association. So you want people to constantly associate your brand and your logo, your brand imagery with what you have to offer. Think about the color schemes. Think about the other images in your images. Do you think about the other items in your image too, right? You want to be really careful about what kinds of things, prime example, in a grocery store one time, somebody did not think this through and they ended up placing their chocolate display right next to feminine hygiene products. And then they wondered why the chocolate display, where they had this awesome promotion was not doing as well. And it's because there's a big disconnect in people's brains between feminine hygiene products and luxury food items. So that's an example that kind of illustrates what I mean, when I say, think about the objects in your imagery. You want associations to be built with the things that evoke the emotions that you want people to feel, right? Another small tip, it's weird we're like this though. Children and babies faces are very powerful motivator for evoking emotion and building a connection with brands. If you can work a child's face into your imagery, it will help. Showing happy faces has, I mean, this has been tested, happy faces versus neutral or sad faces lead to conversions. We're talking about sales pages. And a lot of them is common sense. I mean, really is. Show images of things that make your customers or your potential customers happy, try to simulate that. Try to show them the image of what you want them to feel, place your logo where it makes sense so people associate those happy feelings with your brand and those little things. Probably none of that costs any more money than you were already going to spend when you're putting your listing together.

Ryan Cramer: The thing that I heard from you too, and maybe this is something that we can all talk about is when you write copy in an image, you're instantly pigeonholing yourself into making someone think that that product can only do that one thing. Now, I might not, I thought that was super fascinating, I forget where I heard this and I can't give credit because I want to give the credit the right way. Maybe this was Steven Pope. He was talking about a creme brulee torch, and he was like, it didn't sell well with home buyers. It was pretty good seller, but once you instantly showed that same product as a cigar lighter, instantly, you had male, more older audience members purchasing this quote, unquote... It was only list as a creme brulee torch, but the imagery itself shows someone using as lighting a cigar, didn't say, also can do this, but when you start to pigeonhole yourself in it can only be used this way, you don't allow that imagination to, like you said, run wild and apply that for whatever you needed to use it for. So that's why I think that resonates with me a lot when you say less is more, let the customer decide what the product is used for. You're there to fill that need if they have that need.

Anthony Lee: Yeah. There's a lot of other psychological triggers that play into that too. People don't like to be condescended to. So they don't like it when you explain something that they feel is obvious. So actually when you write on your images sometimes, and you're basically telling people what they're looking at, subconsciously that creates in them almost a distaste, because they're like," Why are you telling me this? I know this." So you want to let people draw their own conclusions. And then yeah, what you just described is actually a conversation that I literally had with Steve a week ago because he was talking about how oftentimes we get stuck on this whole niche down and people really get stuck on only marketing to who they think their target demographic is. And you don't realize this whole concept of places in the funnel and niching down, a lot of it is us getting stuck on the math. And you don't realize that there's psychological math that you're not doing. People in the middle of the funnel appreciate top of the funnel information. People that are not in your demographic will appreciate a product that solves a need for them that's outside of the realm of their normal thinking. You have to give all of that opportunity to flourish and you do that, I think, best by really in your imagery. But also just understanding that that's what's going on in your potential customer's minds and giving as many people as humanly possible something that they can connect with your brand on.

Ryan Cramer: Isn't it also where people tried to inaudible with keyword stuffing, which is also not an ideal situation to put that in. Can be Christmas gift, can be all these gifts and stuff like that but we use it in a way of not thinking from a buyer's perspective, because I don't think about, again, these conversations and people say these words, they're like, we don't... I think it was Amy where she's like," We don't shop for things like best cookie cutter or something like that in Amazon. We're talking about just cookie cutter. We don't shop about it in these terms like we would be on Google." There's a whole disconnect of whatever people are putting into Amazon. You have to think about it from buyers, perspective of cookie cutter for a chocolate chip cookie or something. I don't know, or for sugar cookies or something like that. Think about it from what an actual person might be searching for instead of best this or... No one searches like that. I think that's where the whole disconnect of we don't always see. We take the data and it's like follow the data to a point you need to, but we don't think about it from what's the experience like from a customer to eventually get to your product. What's that going to look like? So I don't know if there's anything else in that regards. I know Amazon kind of clamps down to what you can do as a brand. What are you guys at Canopy, what are you guys doing to help people understand there's more to it than just what Amazon kind of allows you to do? Are you telling people build outside of Amazon in terms of your own storefronts, like Shopify stores or marketing? What's that kind of translating to outside of the Amazon world?

Anthony Lee: So for right now, Canopy is still very focused on Amazon. Obviously there's always going to be stuff in the works for seeing how that best translates to outside of Amazon stuff. But for now there's just still so much more to do in Amazon. That's one of the reasons why I really enjoy what Canopy does and what ACS specifically services do for people, because they're so purposeful in thinking about the imagery and the associations. So for prime example, we had a client who was very, very, very sure that their product was only marketable to a segment. And Steve came in there and said," I think we should broaden that a little bit. We need to give more people than just them the opportunity to connect with this." And it worked like gangbusters. It was incredible. So it's just very purposeful in thinking about how do we create something that both stands out, but also seems like it belongs there and you found this product on your own and you were the genius for figuring out that you bought the right product. And there's an art to conveying that. But that's definitely one way to do it. But regardless of whether or not you have it in your budget to hire somebody else to do this for you, you can be purposeful in that, too. Your ultimate goal is through imagery and through wording, through the structure that you're given on Amazon, on Shopify, on any platform that has a product detail page. Essentially your goal is obviously you want to do the math. You want to do the keyword research. You want to see what the ranking and the spider indexing is for. But then ultimately the most important thing is how does this translate when a human being finds it? How do you show them not only that your product is the answer, but make them feel like they stumbled upon it naturally with no manipulation and it was their genius that made them come to the conclusion that this is the right product. If you can make the buyer the hero in this story, that's how you win and that's how you ultimately get to a place where you're ready to move off Amazon. I mean that's the goal, right? Regardless of who you work with, the goal is I want to get big enough to where I'm like, dang, I should be on other places.

Ryan Cramer: Exactly.

Anthony Lee: That's how you get there.

Ryan Cramer: I know you guys do PPC. I'm curious to hear your thoughts. We're talking about psychology before the top of the hour and we have to hop off. I'm with Anthony Lee of Canopy Management everyone. If you have questions about this while we're talking, I know there's lots of people watching on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube, go ahead and submit your questions if you have them real quickly. But I'm curious, Amazon has shifted its focus on product pages from most of it was organic, now almost all of it besides one space and that's frequently bought by section is all ads. And I love getting to the bottom of are ads now mistrusted, or they don't have as much punch now as they used to? I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Anthony Lee: I mean, and that's a very good and valid question. I can't speak from an informed place because I don't see where people have collected data on that just yet. Right now with a lot of speculation and it'd be really hard to get to the bottom of Amazon because Amazon doesn't want to share that kind of data. But if I had to guess, one of the things that has made Amazon's ads so successful to the point where, I mean the ad platform is growing at a faster rate than new Prime members and new sellers. It's huge. And one of the reasons isn't just because everybody's jumping on board, but it's because they're so effective and I think the reason they're so effective is because I'm not convinced that buyers realize that these are sponsored, right? crosstalk

Ryan Cramer: You don't think that that's coming across?

Anthony Lee: It integrates so well with their layout though. Right? So I really feel like that tiny little word sponsor is probably missed a lot. I mean, eventually, now especially, that will change. It took a while for it to change on Google too, though.

Ryan Cramer: True.

Anthony Lee: It took a while before people started realizing man, these top results are not organic, people paid for that.

Ryan Cramer: They're all highlighted yellow.

Anthony Lee: I don't think we're at a place yet where people are there yet. And that's the reason why ads are working so well because first of all, Amazon makes it less obvious than Google does. And it just integrates so well with their format with the way they have everything laid out. I would venture to guess a lot of people might not now. For the people that do, yeah of course, every time, there's always skeptics when it comes to, oh, you paid for that spot, I'll scroll past it. But what they don't realize, the thing that everybody ignores is yeah, they might've scrolled past your ad, but they still saw your title and your image. And when they see it again in organic results, they're not even going to remember that they saw it as an ad. This is why when you turn ads off, you'll notice your... sometimes I've run this test myself and I know many others who have. Turn ads off and then they notice the organic sales drop. Why does that happen?" Oh, but I had to turn them off because my ad cost sucked." But you're forgetting the fact that when you showed up in your ads in those top spots, people scroll right past it and then they found you again, there's an association. Did you know repetition in the human brain actually makes people more fond of whatever that... if something's repeated, people recall it, they're fond of it. Totally subconsciously. You won't recognize that and have any idea why that's the case. And to be honest, I don't know why that's how it is, but that's how it is.

Ryan Cramer: Exactly. And in case in point, we had Cara Sayer of SnoozeShade on earlier this week and she said, believe it or not, a lot of her, she looks at, well tacos is what she calls them obviously. You can say tacos or tacos or whatever you want to call it, up for debate really. She looks at that, but she says," I like to circle the wagons." What does she mean by that is be so brand forward for all those keywords to the point where people are like," Oh my gosh, you're everywhere." But then they would eventually be funneled down to your organic placement because they're like," Well, if it's still the number one thing, I'm going to click on that." Your ads did their job. They basically circled you and your search functionality. And they're like," Well, if it's the organic one too." Subconsciously are like, I guess it's the best one. They're just everywhere. So it's almost like working in conjunction with each other to push you down that funnel even more so. So that's fascinating that you said that too. So I think a lot of people are saying... I laugh too because my wife, anytime she clicks, she goes," Look at this product." And I jokingly say," You clicked on the sponsored ad listing." And she goes," Dang it, every time." And I swear to God, more often than not, she's always clicking on sponsored ad. So subconsciously, even though I'm looking for it, she's not. So that's a good point by you. Hey Anthony, before we have to go, out to the top of head, you're a busy guy, what are the exciting things for the rest of this year? Prime Day's coming up, there's always logistic nightmares going on. What are you guys working on? And then maybe what are you looking forward to the rest of the year?

Anthony Lee: So I know that most people's focus is on the nuts and bolts of running their e- commerce store and making some money. What I'm working on though that kind of helps with that is anybody that follows me, knows that I put out a lot of content. Just marketing in general and things that I'm trying to help people understand to elevate them. I'm building out the system where I'll be lending that to Canopy. So now Canopy will also be creating a ton of content, but it won't just be me. I'm recruiting other thought leaders that exist under the same canopy, as it were. And we are collectively going to put out a lot more information, teaching people how to better run their ads, better optimize their listings, better do their marketing in general, help with people both on and off Amazon in a free education capacity, because that's my favorite thing. I just, I want to put it out there, I want to encourage others to put it out there. So I'm really excited about that specifically.

Ryan Cramer: Awesome. Yeah. I mean, you're constantly on TikTok. How's TikTok by the way? I'm curious, I was asking you this earlier. How's TikTok driving content for you?

Anthony Lee: I still love the platform, probably more than others there. Just like every platform, I get aggravated with the way they make changes to the algorithm and things happen that don't seem fair or as effective as they used to be, but it's still probably the most effective place for, the reason why I love it so much is because unlike other platforms, total strangers will see you. And so if you have a message, it's easier than having to go out there and win the follower, which is what you have to do with platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. Win the follower first and then they'll hear you, but on TikTok, I could shout through the bullhorn and then anybody that happens to be standing around will hear it. And that's awesome. So it's been great. I'm this close to 100,000 followers on my profile.

Ryan Cramer: Dang man, that's awesome. That's really cool. Well then, yeah I've been trying to figure out the whole the reels, because YouTube, short bite- size content, YouTube just came out with shorts, Instagram reels. Everyone's coming in with bite- size content, 30 seconds or less. So it's interesting to think how people in this space can point that and make it actionable, but also insightful information and point it to a destination, because I think it's cool for sellers to utilize these TikTok ads. Super cool. Influencers in general is my jam. Yeah.

Anthony Lee: And organic. Think about the products on Amazon alone that have gone viral on TikTok. Legitimately sold out all of their inventory because somebody shared their product and then the whole community was just like," Wow, that's cool." I love that. The mood octopus is my favorite example of this.

Ryan Cramer: I remember seeing that. I think I saw that from you. I remember Scott Needham had, if you know him from Smart Scout, he also posted a product and influencers wiped it out, wiped out their inventories, right before Prime Day too, just nuts. I can't believe it. So the psychology going off of that aspect of having other people influence your decision to purchase something even though they may not say buy this, it's just a 30 second little blip of, I need to find it. And that's why, or this organic traffic is now becoming branded terms of TikTok leggings, or TikTok this or Instagram this. It's so fascinating to me to see how social media is now integrated in a keyword searching now.

Anthony Lee: That in and of itself is a... so that's a phenomenon. So the reason why that's happening is psychological because it releases cognitive load. Because if I see somebody that I respect endorsing a product, I don't have to think about whether or not it's good. However, the identification, the filing it away under the branded social media platform term, that's a phenomenon and I haven't dug into why that might be happening, but it is very-

Ryan Cramer: I'm starting to do a little research on that too. So we'll have to collaborate on that in the feature, but for more, if they have questions about you, where can they find you? I know we had your Instagram handle up the whole time, but can they reach out to you directly? Or where should they follow you as well?

Anthony Lee: Sure, yeah. TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, it's all @ anthonylee991, but you can reach out directly too at anthonyleeatcanopymanagement. com. That's my personal email. Feel free.

Ryan Cramer: Use it wisely. Yeah. And also we put Canopy's website down here. Obviously we've had them on before, but love to promote and love to see what you guys are doing. So great stuff as always. Thanks for hopping on today. It was fun as always. I say always, always, we got to talk before this. It feels like we've been talking for a long time now, but our stories are so similar. Yeah. Clubhouse will be... are you hopping on that here in five minutes?

Anthony Lee: I might, I might.

Ryan Cramer: About time. Yeah, I was going to say I can't have promise this on Friday, but it seems like there's so much going on now with so much traveling, people are going to conferences again.

Anthony Lee: Yes, Prosper.

Ryan Cramer: You're on Prosper. Okay. Gotcha. It seems like everyone is. That's the hot Oscar of Amazon e- commerce, so we'll have to see, we're going to have a booth there. I know you guys are speaking or have a booth there.

Anthony Lee: We have a booth.

Ryan Cramer: Cool, awesome, good stuff as always. Make sure you follow Anthony as Anthony Lee on Canopy Management. Either way, it was nice talking to you, man. Friend of the show now.

Anthony Lee: Man, thank you very much for having me. It was fun.

Ryan Cramer: Yeah, no problem, man. All right. Thanks everyone for hopping on. Again on Friday, we keep things nice and loose. We like to learn things outside of the realm of just keyword research, saving money as always with things with PingPong or other partners that we have on the space. Just kind of getting to the nuts and bolts of maybe elevating your business to the next level too. So that's what the show is all about. As always make sure you follow us on social media, any of these areas. If you have questions, go ahead and put those in and we'll see those through YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn as well, just tag Anthony or myself, and we'll make sure that we get those questions answered. Re- watch this later on YouTube, just subscribe to PingPong Payments on YouTube as well. Give the bell a nice little click there because you want to be notified when we go live. Next week, I actually have a quick little lineup going through episode 109 through 111. Exciting group of people going on. We have Vitali from Profitables. We're going to talk about how to prepare your PPC for Amazon Prime Day. We're going to talk with Keith O'Brien from Page One, Inside the Mind of a Full Service Agency. And then of course, rounding out the week, we're going to talk to Joshua Porter from Elite Seller, making the most efficient product launch possible as well. Those guys have lots of different experience in different ways. I love kind of sharing their insights. Keith will be back for the second time. He's been on the show before. I'm excited to talk with both Josh and Vitali for the first time on the show. Just go ahead and subscribe on social media to be notified when those go live. And as always, this is Crossover Commerce. I'm Ryan Cramer with PingPong Payments. Go ahead and subscribe to PingPong Payments for free or if you have questions, go ahead and reach out too. But we'll catch you guys next week on Crossover Commerce. Thanks for joining in and take care.