PPC Management and Scaling (AI or not to AI) with Daniel Lai and Leslie Chong

As an Amazon seller, we all know PPC is a make or break thing. Today we bring on co-founders of Scale Insights, Leslie and Daniel, to give us the thought process and overview of what we – as owners of our businesses – should do about PPC.

Also – we didn’t do screen sharing on this as the GFA podcast is interview style. So we are doing a webinar for this where we will go DEEP and screen share and answer live questions on all things Amazon PPC and scaling.

Thursday, June 15, 8pm Singapore time 

Register here: https://secure.globalfromasia.com/ppc-optimization/

Also – Daniel and Leslie are regular attendees and supporters over the years at our Cross Border Summit – and this year are working closely together for the CBS 2023 in Chiang Mai, Thailand. At the webinar we’ll have a giveaway of tickets! 

√ Daniel’s GFAVIP Page
√ Leslie’s GFAVIP Page
√ Scale Insights
√ Join the PPC Webinar – Register Today!
√ Cross Border Summit
√ Visit our GFA partner – Mercury – for US banking solutons for your ecommerce businesss
√ Visit our GFA partner – Casia Cross Better Logistics – for your logistics needs

Thank you Daniel and Leslie for both our insights and knowledge.

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[00:00:00] Episode four hundred and one four zero one of Global from Asia Podcast, video and audio. We got a fun one today. PPC growth, talking to some experts and it’s, it’s an interesting one cuz we’re thinking about it as a owner, as a business owner, as a manager with a team, with agency. Let’s tune in today.

Let’s do this. Welcome to the Global from Asia podcast, where the daunting process of running an international [00:00:30] business is broken down into straight up actionable advice. And now your host, Michael Michel. Thank you so much. I’m getting great feedback. I, you know, started this show as audio. I was so scared to even be having my voice recorded in October, 2013.

We’re getting close to 10 years, over 400 shows. It’s a little windy outside, but you know, it’s an excuse to get out of the studio home studio. And we usually come here to [00:01:00] feed the fish down here. They’re pretty big fish, you know, I can buy some food over there and feed them. So sometimes take the kids here today we got a fun one as always.

I’m getting, you know, people are enjoying these shows. You know, over 400. I’m trying, actually, we recorded other ones. For the future, just recently, and we’re trying, you know, I’m learning together with you and we’re always learning. Today we have Leslie Chung and Daniel from Scale Insights. They’re a [00:01:30] Singaporean sellers and entrepreneurs that are talking to us about, you know, PPC and ai.

Originally, they were gonna do screen share, but I said, well, the podcast interviews don’t really have screen share, so we’re gonna do a webinar. There’s gonna be a link on the show notes to register for free. We’re gonna have some giveaways for cross-border Summit tickets. Also, some giveaways for what they have.

You can register for that. It’ll be Thursday, June 15th, 8:00 PM Singapore, Hong Kong, Philippines, time GMT plus [00:02:00] eight. Hopefully that works for you, but let’s tune into this show. We talk like high level, like managing your PPC campaign for Amazon KPIs. Working with your own team, with agencies. Really fun insights.

Let’s tune in. All right. We have Tommy, the sales manager at Cross Better Logistics. How are you Tommy? Hi, and hi. We just got to meet here in Shenzhen, China. It’s great. Uh, they support the show at Global from Asia, and uh, we also use them ourself for many of our brands and e-commerce businesses. And Tommy [00:02:30] really cares.

They always are. Uh, Try to help us save money, you know, not, you have some products you keep for us in China, you have some products you keep for us in the US warehouse, and uh, I really appreciate that. And you’ll, you can talk to this seller, right? You can give them your advice. You work with many Chinese sellers a lot, right?

And, uh, you can help, um, help the sellers understand more. Yeah, we are very professional for the treatment to USA and [00:03:00] Canada. Also, we have warehouse in. USA and Canada, we can have our factories, supplies, service for the shipment. Yes. Yeah, yeah. For the eCommerce. Yep. And you even keep stuff, uh, in China too.

So sometimes if you have the limitations about sending too much to Amazon, you can keep it here in China with, with, uh, cross better. Or you can send of course to the US warehouse. They have many different options and they’re always trying their best. To find, [00:03:30] uh, find out what’s the best solution for you.

So definitely talk to Tommy, talk to Cross Better, and thank you for your, uh, support of the community. Yes, we have good pricing and better service. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you all for tuning to our global from asia podcasts. Past the 400 shows, mark. It started in 2013. This is a good one.

It’s been on the list for a long time. I mean, I’ve known Leslie and Daniel for quite some time in the, in the [00:04:00] community from the events and, and different things we’re doing. So, um, today’s we’re in for a treat. We have Leslie and Daniel down in Singapore doing great things with software and selling and, and community building.

So thanks so much for, for being here. How you doing today? Hey, Mike, great to, good to be here. Thanks for inviting us onto your podcast. Right. It’s been, know, you’ve known you for a long time, you know, right. All the events that you’ve been organizing been really great, really enjoyed it. And now kind of like [00:04:30] really glad that I’m able to hop onto your podcast here.

Yeah. And then, yeah, thanks for inviting us. Yeah, it’s our pleasure. Also, we’re gonna be working together closely for this next cross border summit. You know, in, it’s still quite a ways away in November, but we’re already planning it and even here in April and May, it’ll be moving to first time outta China to to Thailand here.

Oh, right. Excited. Yeah, I think it’s a great, it’s the first time right out out of China. Yeah. First time out of China, and the first [00:05:00] won since 2019, so, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. We did four in China up until Coronavirus and now. Mm-hmm. You know, people have been asking for it, but of course it wasn’t so stable last year to really put together an event, in my opinion.

So we are finally getting it together for this. Yeah. Yeah. November, 2023. So I excited. Amazing, amazing. You guys on it? Same pm same year? Yeah. I still remember the two that we attended in, I think [00:05:30] 2017 and 2018. Yeah. There was in center area that, yeah, it’s, it’s really memorable, you know? We have just started out in fba selling on FBA and yeah, that inspire us a lot.

I remember. I remember. Yeah, I remember. You know, it’s an experience. Events are an experience and we, we really try hard to make it where we really get to know people at the event and engaging and, mm-hmm. Interaction and [00:06:00] networking. Right, right, right. It’s, it’s a real pleasure and I can’t wait, you know, to do it again.

And have you involved this, this time? So maybe for those, for those not familiar with what you guys are up to, maybe we have you shared a little bit about, about yourselves. You want start maybe Leslie first? Sure, sure. Introduce yourself first. Yeah. Yeah, sure. I’m Leslie here, so thanks to meet everyone. So, Like what might [00:06:30] mention about cross border?

You know, I started being a seller in 2016 and attended like Mike’s seminar like in 2017, 18. That really inspired me a lot. And inspire me to do bigger in my business, my e-commerce business, and really grind very hard in my e-commerce business and subsequently sort the business, exited the business in 2021 for around seven figures.

So right now, me and Daniel, we are focusing a [00:07:00] a lot on our software skilling sites. Which is PPC software, Ppc automation software for e-commerce sellers. Yeah. Because e-commerce is something that we know a lot about, understand about a lot. So, uh, we felt that this is an audience that we could really, very, very well and solving all the pain points of e-commerce sellers.

Great. Yeah, it’s really, it’s been. It’s been great. You know, while we haven’t seen each other in a while with the [00:07:30] covid and everything, I’ve been following your updates and yeah, again, congrats on the exit and, and the software. We, we didn’t get the pleasure to meet quickly in Singapore when I was there in March and, uh Oh yeah.

Yeah, that was nice. And you know, even people that didn’t know us, knew your software. There was some people at the dinner that knew your software and what you guys were up to, so that’s, that’s really amazing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was quite a good dinner organized by [00:08:00] Amazon, you know?

Yeah. Couldn’t refuse something from Amazon, right. The crab. Yeah, so, so it was a good one. More crab. The crab and stuff. Yeah, the chili crab. Chili crab. That’s it. Eh, eh. Maybe for Daniel to introduce about himself as well, Daniel. Yeah. So my, my journey is pretty much in parallel with leslie right. So we’ve been partner since 2016.

Right. Okay. So I was just kind of like counting down, you know, since preparing for this podcast is like close to seven years by this June. [00:08:30] Amazing. We’ve been, you know, at this for seven years. Really? Right. Okay. Uh, it’s, it’s kind of like, feels like yesterday, but it also, it’s kind of been quite a long time already.

Yeah. But, but we we’re doing, we’re doing well, right? We’re doing well as partners. Really enjoy. You know, Leslie is what can do spirit, right? Everything also can, right? Yeah. I never say die, right? So very positive guy. Yeah, very positive, right? So on that note, right, so I’m now the head of sale engagement over Scale insights.

I do mainly engaging with brand owners, [00:09:00] aggregators, agencies, right? Kind of like, you know, getting them on board on the software. Getting them to understand what are the features that we, that we can do. So just a quick, you know, overview of what the software does, right? So scale insights, it empowers brand owners to not only uncover, but also automate actionable insights.

Along, along that we take their PPC to the next level. So that is kind of our core mission. When it comes to ppc. Right. Okay. So kinda like talking about 2016 to now, it’s been seven years. [00:09:30] Right. A lot of things have changed in the Amazon space. Right. Okay. But the core basics have not really changed.

Right. Okay. The core basics of having a great product, having a great supply chain, and really, really understanding. Okay. And optimizing your PPC, these three things. Have not gone away. Right. Okay. So that’s why we are very bullish. Right. On the entire paid advertising. Okay. Amazon sponsored brands, product, products sponsored display that the [00:10:00] entire space, that’s why, you know, after we exit our brand, we kind of like know when full steam, right?

Okay. We went all in. Okay. On, on this, on this space. And that is where we, we see things are gonna be moving a a lot in this space in the coming years. It’s definitely exciting. I mean, also I think you, you, you know, being in the Singapore community, I think you were very early for Singapore. I rec, you know, I was talking to Amazon Singapore.

I don’t think they had an office there or anybody there when you were, right, right. Yeah. Starting, and now they’re having meetups and everything, [00:10:30] and they have like offices, so Yeah. Yeah. You’re pioneers. Right, right, right. For sure. That’s great. Yeah. I, I guess one thing that. For sure, like the Amazon ecosystem is, is growing.

It’s growing more than ever. So this is one thing that we are very bulliish about. Yeah. Yeah. I mean mm-hmm. It’s just continues to dominate. I don’t, I don’t have the data, but I feel at least in the US half of the market is [00:11:00] Amazon or something like probably more probab. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, My team working on new products right now in the other room.

Action. Good, good. Okay. I guess, I guess like PTC advertising is one thing for sure that we, it seems to be growing the most, especially, you know, since 2016 when we are in the space where Amazon has cut down everything, incentivized reviews. All sorts of things. [00:11:30] Then they become stricter in that sense. Yeah.

And they become even all the more embedded sellers and stuff. But PPC advertising is one thing that we see that would roll continuously. As you can see the space, there’s more and more space being allocated for advertising. Right. So and, and we do see like impacting the ranking even more than ever. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I mean, I think it’s also [00:12:00] any kind of marketplace or platform. As it grows, it’s more pay to play, right? You kind of, whether it’s Google, Amazon, you know, Taobao, a anywhere in the world, any, any platform, Lazada, they, they, you know, that you need to get your skills as people paid ads. You have to, but it’s also scalable.

Just like you, you know, your, your, your name. If you can get good at your PPC and, and. And scale it. There’s like very no limit almost to what you can, can do with that. So it’s, [00:12:30] it’s, it’s measurable, semi predictable. So it’s very important skill and yeah, for for sure to. It’s an important part of being a seller more than ever.

And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today, right? Yeah. We have a little bit of an outline of some kind of, some some, a little bit of a short list, but it’s more like freestyle, just sharing some tips and strategies about PPC automation best practices. So I’m excited for this myself as a seller, and I’m sure listeners will get a lot of value outta [00:13:00] today’s session.

You know, I think. I guess the most first one, I mean we were already kind of talking about it, but just to, just to kind of put it out there as a seven figure seller, eight figure seller, even this new seller, you know, sh, well, I guess it’s a good point. What like level seller should do PPC themselves versus hiring or automating or outsourcing, you know, is there some kind of stage where maybe even, I met some people at the Canton Fair, I think, you know, they’re new.

Even Singapore seller, brand new seller. I don’t think he should maybe use automation or or [00:13:30] outsourcing yet. Maybe he’s. Maybe you could give us the life cycle about size of the seller and, and what stage they should consider, you know, hiring and automating. Yeah, for sure. Right. Okay. So as part of my day-to-day job, right, I get to speak to, you know, brand owners of different sizes, different skills and, and whatnot.

Right? And I wouldn’t say that it is the size of the business that really, really makes the, the huge decision factor. [00:14:00] But I will say it’s more of the individual brand owner. Okay. What, what does the individual brand owner love to do, right? Mm-hmm. So do, do what you are, do what you’re best at, and things that you’re perhaps not so strong in.

Right? Okay. That’s where you can hire somebody, you know, get an agency, right? Okay. Or get something in-house, right? Okay. So let’s say you are, you are really like a, like a product person. You have very strong product vision. You really know your, your customer about right? That’s where you want to, you know, plow all your energy in.

Then perhaps like something like ppc, which is more analytical, more data, more numbers [00:14:30] driven. Right. Okay. Maybe that’s not your forte. Maybe you want to get, you know, like, like, like help, right? Okay. Be it in-house, be it, you know, agency. Right? And, and of, of course, right. Tap, tap on technology like solutions out there, right?

Uh, to kinda like add on right. To the things that, that you’re not perhaps so strong in. Right. So that’s, that’s kind of my. My intuition when I’m speaking to, you know, a lot of brand owners, right. It really depends on what they want. Cause I, I, I’ve, I’ve spoken to like eight figure brand owners and they kind of tell me, Hey, I, I’ve, I have no [00:15:00] ideas about ppc, I’m just here to make sure that Right.

Okay. The software is robust. Right. Just to hear from the founders and then I’m gonna pass this on to Right. Somebody in-house to take over. I just wanna be sure that I’m talking to real people. Right. That it’s got a good solution. They got a good mind on top of their head.

Right. Okay. To kind of like work the solution with my team. Yeah, so I I I’ve seen all sorts, right? Yeah. Alright. Yeah, I mean, I’ll be honest, I have to admit, I don’t know if I wanna [00:15:30] call myself, I don’t usually do PPC and, and the brands I’ve done. Mm-hmm. I don’t know how much wanna expose myself, but yeah, I’m, I’m not the data, I’m not the data guy on the teams usually, but yeah, I’m the creative or like I got more of the right concept or customer side, but, But on that note, right, there’s a, there’s an important caveat to what I just mentioned, that you may not necessarily be the one crunching the numbers, making the adjustment, making the optimization.

But one thing is a brand [00:16:00] order that you cannot let go. Right. Okay. Is the tracking of the key metrics. Right. Okay. So knowing, okay, on a week, on week basis, month-to-month basis. Right. How the entire account is doing. Right. Okay. So that’s this one level. Yeah. And how individual products are doing. That’s another level and how individual hero keywords within the portfolio products are doing.

So that that, that, that is a piece of the puzzle there. As a brand owner, you must not let go. So that is, that is a feature that we have within scale insights called the sales trend, right? That [00:16:30] allows you to see at the glance, right, okay. Week on week across multiple metrics. Right. A cost top cost. Right.

Okay. Organic sales, right. Okay. PPC cost, profitability. Right. Can all the key metrics Right. Can be tracked. So that, that, that is the caveat that I have. Right. So that’s something that you gotta hold onto. While you then get, okay, perhaps in your, in your context, right? You are, you are more the creative side.

Get the numbers guys to do this. Do do their thing, and then hey, both of you sit down together and say, Hey, no, we, we were supposed to run this, this [00:17:00] optimization for example, you were looking like the reduce your unnecessary ad spend. So if that was the op objective, then you wanna see your PPC cost kind of trend down.

Right. So the sales trend module will allow you to see that Okay, week on week, then we can all agree objectively that the goals have been met. Right. Okay. Then, then, you know, we cannot have a mini celebration, but if, if the goals has not been met, then we can kinda evaluate no. What’s going on. Right. Are there certain keywords that were missed out?

Right. Okay. Are are certain, are there certain, are there certain activities that [00:17:30] were not done to? Right. The ideal state. Right. Okay. So that’s, that’s kind of how. I, I think I, I’ll, I’ll view it directly from that question about, okay, sure. Hire somebody in the house. Right. Okay. Agency. I’ll do it myself.

Right. Okay. So the, the, the trend analysis is, is key, right? That, that, that, that, that cannot be outsourced, right. Per se. Agreed. Yeah. Agreed. Just to add on a bit, we do see people like coming in with, in-house, be it. Or even some [00:18:00] brand owners, like they take, take it upon themselves to kind of manage their bdc.

So that’s different combination. It really depends on like what the grand owners feel like taking on. Yeah. So yeah, they can even work with agency to, to do it. So, so the, we take the position in the market of being, giving a lot of control to the seller. Giving control would mean that, Uh, they would have [00:18:30] more things to do.

It’s not as simple as setting the a cost and that’s it. And you don’t know about like what the software is doing? Yeah. We, we are also a lot about transparency as well. So every single action that the software is doing for the automation, the, the, the one that’s managing it will be able to see each and every single action the software is, is doing.

So, Software is a lot about control and transparency and not so much of letting go and let the soft, [00:19:00] the machine run, run. Well, that’s, that’s not the position we’re, we’re looking taking here. We, we do see a lot of traction coming on, especially after Covid where it seems that margin for a lot of sellers and a lot of accounts, they are tightening and people just want to understand what machine is doing and want to have a lot of control.

So as to getting back the margin that they were seeing before Covid. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that. I just, [00:19:30] I, that’s definitely something we, I, it’s the way I, well I also structure, I have a few brands where I have like partners or investors and then our, a lot of our team is doing it. That’s kind of how I’ve been structuring the last few years.

Some of these, these brands. And then, like I mentioned before, recording, I think listeners know, but Excalibur Brothers is kind of latest. It’s case study, public brand. It was, it’s really live, which is always scary to talk about publicly. But yeah, I mean everything is always everything. Yeah. You’re doing [00:20:00] a case study, it’s not such a public, you’re doing a case study on there.

I’m not really doing a like case study where I report everything publicly, but of course throughout the shows and the content, we’re sharing some milestones, but it’s also where we have a few different people in the community as sellers. So, We, we use mayor’s system, which is licensing, so there’s other sellers selling the product under our brand, through their account.

So I don’t know if that, if you understand what I [00:20:30] mean, but Yeah. Say you, you. Mm-hmm. So it’s not all one account. It’s like different. And they’re not just, I’m not the account, they’re other people and they take that listing and it’s like a, it’s like a approved hijacking. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. It’s like we create the listing and they sell ’em the listing as a, as their seller account.

Right? Yeah. So very innovative. Yeah. Oh, what was that part? Sorry. That, that’s very innovative as in like it’s a really innovative [00:21:00] system that, that, that like this kind licensing or getting people, you know, creating a listing and kind of official hijacking and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a very interactive one, so we’ve been managing a few of these sellers under it.

But, but yeah. Let’s, kind of following up with what you had just said, Leslie, about automation and automatic, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of different. Tools, whether it’s PPP C or anything, especially AI now that say they, they can do every automatic [00:21:30] stock trading, you know, FX trading, PPC bidding.

What’s your take on, you know, automation or AI versus, you know, human I, the, the best analogy I have for this question would be kind of like, you know, we have all been on a plane before, right? Okay. Would you ever hop onto a plane? And then you hear, you see kind of that the captain waving, Hey guys, have a, have a safe trip.

Right? The plane will autopilot you to the other end. Right? Nobody get, [00:22:00] nobody get on the plane. Right. In fact, every will get off. Right. So that’s kind of like my, my little analogy on. The hybrid nature of how things are. Right. Okay. So I, I don’t know exactly how much of the flight is on, on autopilot. Right.

But from what I understand, it’s like, mainly it’s the take the it is the, it is the takeoff and the landing. Right. Then the rest of it’s kind of on cruise control. So sim similar idea. Right. Okay. So doing like launch. Right. You must be free to be hands on. Right. Okay. And then it is [00:22:30] on cruise control.

That’s when. You know, things are automated. Right. Okay. The rules kick in based on certain conditions, based on certain criteria to adjust your bids, do negation, do day, partying, do, do budgeting, do placements, all these kind of melting whistles. Right? So all the software would, would, would kinda like adjust all these things.

Right? Okay. So the, the, the other analogy that I have was, if, if I, if I remember the story correctly, is that, Okay. If you let the plane go on its own, and if you don’t cost, correct it. [00:23:00] Right. Just like, like a, like a small degree. Yeah. Like, yeah, just a small degree. You, you, you end up right on the other side of the world.

Right. Okay. So, so, so that’s the same idea, right? So everyth, Amazon autopilot, right? You, you kind of like go in, you, you check the parameters, make, make sure things are, are moving in the right direction. And if things are moving in the right, right direction, then, then Don go touch it. Right? Okay. So that’s kinda like, How I would say if people do have a certain conception of how, on what automation is like or what AI is like.

Okay, so just think, think about yourself as [00:23:30] the pilot. You are piloting this huge, powerful 747, right? Okay. Athlete, right. Okay. You, you will want the app, the, the, the AI or the software, the automation take a lot of things, but you still wanna maintain the control, which is kind like what Leslie mentioned. You wanna make meaning control where this plane exactly going.

That’s, that’s really important, right? Knowing where you are right now and what’s the destination, and making sure that the metrics match the destination so that everybody can arrive safely, happily. Right. Okay. And make a ton of money. [00:24:00] Yeah.

I can’t hear you. Sorry. I, I heard you. What were you saying? Oh, yeah. No, no, I was just, it’s just the, that’s all wanted to share, right? In terms of, yeah. Oh, I thought you said mic. Like microphone. Yeah, mic. Sorry. I lost that last part. Right, right, right. Worries. But that’s the point about the autopilot of a plane and autopilot and even, yeah, I mean, and then of course if one little degree off.

Yeah, yeah. That does make, that does make sense. [00:24:30] And you know, just by, and so a lot of people thought, like, Mike, are you gonna fire half your team with AI? You know, maybe. Et cetera. I think we just need, what you need more is more skilled people, less new, you know, beginner people. Right? Like with AI and software, you need somebody that really knows the numbers to like to adjust correctly.

Yeah. Have the highest impact. Correct. The, in fact, I heard a saying, right? This is not my saying, but I heard the saying [00:25:00] is that, okay, you won’t be replaced by AI, but you’ll be replaced by a person who knows how to do AI. Who wants to use AI to do your job much better. So this this’s kinda like the, the, that’s the saying that I heard out there.

Yeah. So it’s not the AI is the problem. Is it the person who’s gonna outcompete you? Mm-hmm. Right. Using the AI. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. I like it. Right. Yeah. So this kind, this, that’s kinda like how, uh, the, the space that we play in as well. Right. Okay. So for, [00:25:30] for us, like look what Leslie mentioned. Okay.

We are, we are not a, a setting, forget full AI software. Okay? We are rule-based software. So you kinda like set up your goals, right. Set up your, your, your rules. Okay. And then you then have somebody to, to make sure that, you know, the metrics are, are form in the right direction. Right. Ative are going up, profitably is going up.

Right. Okay. So that, that is still very much needed when it comes to automation. Got it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So back, you know, to impact what’s some of the [00:26:00] best mm, best practices, you know, is it number of keywords in the ad. Groups and versus campaigns or negative keywords or, yeah. Yeah. Can you give us some?

Some? Sure, sure. Okay. So one very interesting thing that I found, again, based on, you know, my day-to-day activities, speaking to brand owners, right? Okay. Agencies, aggregators, right? Is that the first thing that I hop on call there’s, say, Hey Daniel, can you tell me right? What, what I should do [00:26:30] to get the most impact using your software?

I said, Hey, wait, wait, wait, wait a second. Over here. Wait a second. Over here. Right? We, we we’re not, we are not like a, a magic, magic pill, right? You’re not a silver bullet for everything, right? We, we kind of need to know what the goals that you have right now, or what, what are the problems that you have right now when it comes to your businesses?

There’s no way for me to be knowing your business, the details inside out, okay? The minute we hop on the call, this is just, that’s just impossible. So we first, I, [00:27:00] I’ll say the number one best practice. Okay. In, in, in fact, that surprises me as well, when, when I talk to so, so many brand owners that you, you want to know what are the problems that you’re facing right now, right?

Only when there’s a problem, only when you’re clear there’s a problem, then we can I implement effective solutions to tackle that. Right? So, so lemme give you like, like, like broad ideas on what I would classify as a problem. So, you know, you will wanna know, okay, at the individual [00:27:30] product level, Okay. I would say there are two main phases, and the first phase is, do you have a ton of what I call unnecessary ad spend?

So this, that’s the first question, right? Are you having a lot of, are you have a lot of keywords that is costing you a lot of clicks and don’t give you any orders, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. And surprisingly enough, many people don’t re know the answer. Okay, so, so it, it’s, it’s a question that you need to ask, right?

Are there certain hours of the day that you’re spending a lot at spend, but perhaps you’re not getting that much sales, right? So [00:28:00] are there Right. Certain key bits that are you overbidding, right? Are you overbidding on certain keywords that aren’t converting well, but you’re still continuing to be really, really aggressive on those keywords, right?

Just by answering these three questions, right? Okay. You would then be able to. Reduce a lot of unnecessary ad spend in your account. Okay. And that is really important, right? That’s really important because I, I always say that nobody has unlimited budget, [00:28:30] right? Okay. Nobody has an unlimited war chest when it comes to advertising.

And everybody will feel the pain, okay. Of rising PPC cost, right? So it’s gonna be very tough to scale things if you are kind of like beating every single day. Okay. So to to, to address the issue. Okay. You first need to address the unnecessary advance problem first, and that will allow you to reduce your PPC cost.

We should then give you Right, okay. Budget, [00:29:00] right. Okay. More wall, chest to scale up. Okay. All those high performing keywords so that there we tell on my, my process. Right? Okay. Identify. Okay. In your portfolio products, right? Okay. The 80 20, 80 20 rule. Right? Okay. What is that 20% of your products that’s giving you the most problem when it comes to unnecessary spend?

Go deal with that first. Then you should start to see your, you know, your PPC costs start to moderate down. Mm-hmm. Okay. Which also would imply that your a cost starts to moderate down. So a cost is like, [00:29:30] kind of like the quote unquote holy grail number, right? That everybody cares about. Although, like I mentioned earlier on.

Looking at one metric, it’s not enough, right? But that, that’s kind of like what’s gonna happen, right? PPC costs go down, it costs has to go down, and then again, you feel a little bit more relaxed, right? Yes. Okay. As, as, as a business, you feel more relaxed and say, Hey, you know, I’m now ready, okay? To identify those keywords that are performing well.

What, like what? Like they call the low hanging fruit keywords, right? The high, the multiple orders. High conversion, low a cost, right? Again, 80 [00:30:00] 20 80. 2020 rule, right? Target this 20% of, okay, low. Low hanging fruit keywords. Right. Take that budget that you saved and then push it to these high company keywords, which would then, right.

Okay. The end result should be Okay. An increased in your organic sales as you’re pushing high velocity, high company keywords, your organic rankings will go up, organic sales will go up. Right. Okay. Which would then Right. Also potentially mean that you over profitability quo. Right. So that’s kinda like the.[00:30:30]

The, the framework that I use Right. To discuss with, with the people that engage with, right. Reduce, reduce unnecessary ad spend. Take the, the savings in the budget. Right. Okay. Channel them to your high performing keywords and then Right. Okay. Track the organic sales, track the increase in profitability to make sure that everything’s moving in the right direction so that, that will be right.

I would say my number one best practice suggestion. When, when, when, when people are looking at to, to optimize fppc. [00:31:00] That’s great. I mean, I have one I love your feedback on, so we have these internal calls with, with, so I have a person on a team internal helping with the ppc. Yeah. And sometimes we have another, like one of our brands will have a call with the, the partner there and hey, you know, there’s this argument about us versus tacos.

Mm-hmm. The. One side, usually PPC guy says, look, look at the taco. It’s not the outcomes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Because he’s saying [00:31:30] organic rink is tied to PPC, so if you do good PPC, your organic will increase and those sales from organic should also be compensated back to the PPC of the campaign. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Sure. You’re kind of agreeing with that because he’s always defending that cuz a cost sometimes is higher, but then he’s going back to point out tacos. I, I would, I would pretty much agree with that, right? Because a, a cost, to me, a cost is just a way for you to, [00:32:00] as a proxy to say how aggressive you wanna be on that keyboard, right?

Because, because bit, bit is not so obvious, right? Because bit you could, you could have, you could have a high bit, but low, low a cost, right? So it’s not so obvious, but a cost directly tells you how aggressive you wanna be on that keyboard Bit. Because a cost will also impact a cost. You can, you can kind of like proxy against your profit margin.

So let’s say the profit margin of your product is like 30%. If your a cost is 40%, that will mean that [00:32:30] you are pretty aggressive on the keyword. Yeah. Right. So a cost is like, like, like, like a good way to, to, to say how, how much you wanna push on on that. Right. Okay. So, so I, I, I would say that that is a sound way to look at it right?

As, as long as. The, the stats does show that this activity that you guys are running Okay. Despite the fact that a course is going up, right, okay. The organic sales is also going up. Then things are moving the right direct. That, that, that’s why we had to fall [00:33:00] back onto the sales trend, right? The, the sales trend then objectively ends this debate, right?

Hey, right, okay. We’re on this call on, let’s say the 1st of May, you know, and then we have, we are gonna have another call on the 1st of June. To say, okay. Right. You did this, you did this stuff. Right. Okay. Yeah, for sure. It costs maybe on, up on, on on upper trend, but my taco has gone down, my organization has gone up.

Right. Okay. My property bill has gone up. Who’s, who’s gonna send that? Yeah. I’m gonna take that every single day and [00:33:30] twice on Sunday. Right. Yeah. I mean, that’s kind of, that’s kind of the, the main discussions on the course. Correct, correct. Yep. Okay. I really believe that we, we can see this on a, on a display or screen share something because what Daniel shared about still strain, right?

The software really kind of like display graphically in terms of like week by week or even kind of like three days by three days even, how the trend of certain metrics really [00:34:00] changes. On a kind of week, week basis and all those things. And, and the best thing is that when you have a tech, we are able to do this tech, for example, or maybe increase the price by $2 and after increasing the price by $2, you know, typically people forget when they increase the price or make certain changes.

And that’s where the tech gets very useful in, in the sales trend to kind of like, Remember going [00:34:30] back, we call back like, Hey, I did this kind of like a month back, and right now, a month later, I’m seeing this result because most of the time I, I’m a seller. I, I don’t do, I don’t make a notepad offer the changes I made to, to the product itself.

So yeah, seller tend to forget about that, but the software allows us to do the tagging, and that’s very helpful for me, the seller as well. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, Just for listeners, uh, [00:35:00] I’ll probably put in an intro of this recording of the date, but we’re Daniel, we’ll, I, we’ll do a, a webinar. So today’s show is, is, is no screen sharing for Leslie.

I was watching because, you know, I talked to like Peter in Shanghai, I’m pretty sure he is listening to this. Uh, you know, and Cameron. I, I, I mean, I know some of the listeners by name. I, I don’t think they, they watch the podcast, so, so what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna have a, a webinar where we can show the software, we can show the data, show the dashboards.

We’ll also have some, [00:35:30] we’ll also have some, uh, giveaways. Uh, I, we can maybe give away one or two tickets Cross Border Summit, maybe probably have some promotions for your software. So I think today’s show is more just, you know, hacks and. Strategies, but the webinar, so everybody interested in that webinar will definitely check the show notes and I’ll, I’ll say it in my intro, but we will have that where people can really see some cool, cool things with the, the software and trends and things like that, so.

Right. Sounds great. Stay tuned for that, everybody for those. Okay. [00:36:00] Listening, so best practices, I feel like you kind of covered it, but you know the 80%, I feel like you kind of just covered that within the best practices or is there something you wanna add for the ad types? I think that’s good. Yeah. Yeah.

I think we covered that. Yeah. And so benefits of software versus what I can’t do on my own as a, as a human, as a person. Yeah. So the best way to give you an idea of [00:36:30] how a software. Right. Really, really surpasses what the human can do. Okay. So I do have a user. Right. Okay. So again, again, within our dashboard there, there’s kind of like a automations dashboard that allows you to see how many operations Okay.

And account does, right. Okay. So we have one of our users who does over 2 million operations every single month. Right. 2 million. Right. Okay. So if, [00:37:00] if one operation took you one, one second, 2 million operations with two millisecond. Right. So that’s kind of like, there’s somebody sitting there day in, day out doing nothing but just clicking a button.

Yeah. And they’re probably taking the entire month. Right. Okay. And, and that’s not, that’s excluding all the decision making, huh? So that, that is the scale in which software can operate at. And another thing that I like to add on is this right? Okay. I think we cannot agree that in the Amazon space, It’s a player versus player game, [00:37:30] right?

Okay. So it’s quote winner. Winner takes a lot. I wouldn’t say winner takes all because it is a huge marketplace, but the winner takes a lot. So I wouldn’t imagine that if, let’s say today, okay, you are a brand owner, okay? And you are doing things manually, and you have another player out there who was doing like 2 million bit adjustments every single month.

Yeah. Right. Just really re dialing it down. Right. Okay. Adjusting it. The keywords that are converting, well, just scaling them. Those are keywords are not converting well, just bringing [00:38:00] down the Taos. Right. Getting keywords are not performing Right. Turning on, on and off ads. Right. Okay. When it’s, when, when it’s not happening.

Right. Adjusting the, the top of search. Right. Making sure that I’m, I’m grabbing the most out of Right. My sales at the top of search. Right. Imagine somebody doing that. And imagine now imagine your yourself, right? Okay. You, you can, you can probably only spend an hour a day, two hours a day max. Right? Was that something that’s operating right?

24/ 7. Okay. So that’s kind of like how I would [00:38:30] think about this, right? Okay. When I’m asking myself this question, can I do this manually For sure. Right? But versus, okay, the other player out there who has this quote unquote, unfair advantage. Got it. Right? Think, think, think thing about where, where you could be okay if you are able to know, get, get, get this solution, be implemented your business.

That makes sense. So what, of course we can’t see [00:39:00] the software right now, we’ll say for a webinar, but you know, for, for those. You know, I, I don’t know if you wanna bring up com, so other solution, other competitors by name, but maybe what will be some of the differences, scale insights from, from others? Sure, sure.

I think, I think this is an important to important point to tackle, right? Because when it comes to PPC automation, right, there are two spectrums that you wanna be really, really aware about. Okay? On one spectrum is the full AI setting, forget solution, right? So you [00:39:30] give it like, A broad goal, like an a cost target.

Okay. And the software basically take care everything for you. And it’s not to say that that isn’t a good solution. I, I’ve spoken to, to, to brand owners as well on the call. They, they do, they do kind of like that because it’s a very fast ramp up, which means that I could, you know, quickly get the AI to do a lot of stuff for me with very little kind of setup, right.

So that, that’s one, one spectrum of, of the solution. [00:40:00] Whereas we sit on the other end of the spectrum. Okay. So we are rule based. Okay. We are user driven. Right? Okay. So the, the user has to tell the software what are the, what are the rules they wanna set up? What are the goals that they, they wanna meet? So what, what is the difference between the, the two spectrum is one.

Okay. Because it is more hands free, hence you have a lot less control. And on the other hand, because it’s very hands on, hence you have a lot, a lot, lot of control. And [00:40:30] my, my take on this is my take on, on, on it is, right. Okay. I would say that the reason why people want to be a business owner, right? The reason why people want to be an entrepreneur many a times is that you wanna take control of your own future, right?

You wanna take control over your own destiny. You wanna take over control over, right? The profitability of the business, right? That’s, that’s kinda like, that’s kinda like my take. On Yeah. Where I form the spectrum. [00:41:00] Right. Okay. I, I wanna say that. Okay. Win or lose, right? I was the one who made that decision.

Right? Okay. If, if, if I won, okay, I celebrate my team. Right? If I lose right, then let me go figure out, iterated it and make it work, right? So I kind of like want to have that, that ability to, to take control over my my PPC course, my PPC optimization, right? Okay. And just really, really scale it from there.

Makes Makes sense. That makes sense. I, I would like to [00:41:30] add on something to Daniel as well. That being said, right, we do see people, you know, after setting up the matrixes or criteria of what they want every week, at most they are logging in kind of like, Uh, four to five hours per week to see how is their PPC doing?

And that’s a lot lesser than what they have been doing. Much lesser compared to what they have been doing before, which they can be logging in, maybe optimizing that four to five hours, but they, and, and [00:42:00] stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I important point, right? The, the important point over here is that with, with automation, You automate away all the boring stuff, automate away, away all the Okay.

Does, is this key? Should it go up bit or lower bit? Right. Okay. Does, does she be needed or noted? So all, all these boring stuff, right? All these routine stuff are automated away so that we can then focused right on the more value adding work, right? All all the more value I decision. Right? Okay. So I can kind of like, you know, be, be aware that [00:42:30] hey is, has, has the market shifted against my brand?

Okay. Is it, is it like, is the season over right or or are competitors are flooding in, right, or, or is that like a sudden drop in priced and then I need to make an adjustment? Right? So these are really, really core brand brand decisions, business owner decisions, or the flip side, Hey, I just noticed that there’s this, there’s this search in a particular keyword that is my untapped.

I can then kind of like quickly pivot Okay. And launch more campaigns towards those keywords, or I noticed that [00:43:00] my competitors out stock. Right. Okay. Or I noticed that my competitors ratings have dropped. Right. So you can focus your attention on, on these, all these decision making. Right. Okay. And then let the, the AI software take care of the, the more computational Right.

Okay. Routine stuff. And then maybe I’ll say it. There’s another saying, working on your business, not in your business. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Correct, correct. Simple way, but be more strategic. There’s a really elegant way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:43:30] Add point previously, right? Like 2 million operations.

Right. I guess if it’s human word to do it right, it’s not decision to make, and I think. Like what a lot of business owners want to do, a lot of entrepreneurs want to do is to minimize their decision for thick. Yep. Right? Even like wearing the same day, same shirt every day. You know, just minimize that, that decision for thick and you can leave that mental space for a lot more things in [00:44:00] life.

Yeah. Agree. You know, I, I, yeah. I don’t, I have kind of my uniform now, I don’t know. But you know, they, they say like, I think it was Tim Ferris says, decision fatigue. Like your, your brain can’t make so many decisions all day, right? Correct. So choosing Correct, correct. Even choosing what to wear in the morning is it takes that, that creative energy so you can focus, take that energy and focuses something very challenging or impactful.

Right. [00:44:30] Which is awesome. Getting towards the end. You know what, I really appreciate your time. I think, you know, I think we’re getting to the wrap up and then we’ll also mention we’ll pick a date and we’ll, I’ll put the date for the webinar after, after this for people to join.

But as far as, well, some choices for Scale insights, does it have to do entire account or can you just do a couple of ASINs for test and, and or what are some of your options when using it? Yeah. In fact, I do get this question a lot, right? Because, you know, many a times I, [00:45:00] I’ll say at least a good half of the people coming on the skill insights are moving out from some existing solution, right?

Okay, so here’s where I’ll, I’ll tell them, right? The good thing about Scale Insights is that it’s campaign agnostic, right? So there’s, there’s some solutions out there which should require you to have a certain campaign structure before. The software can work. So for us it’s a can agnostic. Right. Okay. So which means that we will be able from day one Okay.

To go in and see all your existing data up to the last 60 days. [00:45:30] Right. Cause that’s, that’s, that’s the limit. Right. Okay. When you first onboard, I can only, I can only pull the last 60 days and then from there I can accumulate the rest. Right. But from day one. Okay. I’ll download, I’ll download the data on your account.

Right. Okay. We able to process the historical performance. Right. And, and cut start to plot all the charts for you. Right. Okay. And then from there, okay, you can then decide, okay, which is that 20% of the ASINs that I really, really wanna do work on. And you can just take and Right, okay. Run the automation for just that.

Let’s say five [00:46:00] ASINs, that’s totally fine. Okay. So we are, we are price not based on how big your account is, right? Okay. Or how many, how many ASINs that you have, right? We’re price based on how many ASINs that you actually want to automate. And in fact, this pricing model is very, very well, well received by our users.

They, they love the fact that I’m not priced based on the size of Compass. Sometimes that’s, that’s kind of like, like under three texts, right? So suddenly if let’s say I, I, I grow and then my [00:46:30] software costs balloons, right? People don’t, people don’t let the uncertainty, right? Again, control. People wanna control.

So you wanna say, okay, hey, if I’m gonna use the software for five ASINs, I pay for five ASINs, I can live with it. Okay. And then if I’m go 10 cents, I pay tens. I can live with that. Right. So that’s kind of like, uh, the pricing model that we have. And it’s kind of a long-winded way to say that. Yes. Right. You, you can just test it for Right.

1 cent 20 cents or 5 cents right. In your account. Yeah. I like that model. You know, cuz something might have a product I like to focus on [00:47:00] more or it’s more valuable to them. Correct. Correct. That’s a approach that we take. Take initially in the, in the market. Cause in the mainstream, a lot of automation software, they go by maybe a percentage of, and that didn’t allow for a lot of flexibility.

We wanted to have that flexibility, you know, kind of being available to, especially like people getting on new sellers or [00:47:30] even, or even experienced seller, right? Eight figure sellers. They, where they want to try the software, where they want to have the few ASINs we automated and maybe not all is automated and our pricing model kind of allow for that.

Yeah. Okay. I like it. I like it. So I think we’re wrapping up. Well, well mention the webinar where we can share screens and, and give, give some more value already. This has been already very helpful. Thank you [00:48:00] both for your insights and, and knowledge. Of course, the scaleinsights.com, is there other links or, or places to send people.

I guess, I think that’s the best pitch to send. I, that’s the best, right? Yeah. Yeah. Right. And then we’ll also link to the webinar registration to do it. Yeah. And there’ll be some fun, some fun interactive Right. Giveaways and, and things we can do live. So anything else you’d like to add? I guess also the Cross Border Summit we’re gonna do together, which will [00:48:30] be amazing in November 16th and 17th here in Chiang Mai.

Crossbordersummit.com. Yeah, actually we have people wanting to, we haven’t opened up tickets yet. We got people asking like some of the regulators and, and listeners. But, but, but yeah, we are super excited for that and super excited to have you, have you evolved? Its time even more. I can’t wait to. To, to join.

It has been so long. Yeah. Like the pandemic has been three years and, and all this physical [00:49:00] were were being pause and stopped. Yeah. I’m dying to get back. Yeah. Physical. I know. It’s really, yeah. I think everybody’s just, Yeah. We just gotta make up, it’s gonna be even more impactful, even more powerful, you know?

So we we’re gonna have a Yeah, yeah. After, go ahead. Yeah. We just came from Vegas, like, uh, conference and the prosper. Great. [00:49:30] And coming back from that. I felt that that was something kind of like missing in Asia especially, you know, where people can magical stuff happen, right? When, when people meet together, especially entrepreneurs meet together.

That, that’s just happened. You know, I felt that this is something that we need more of in, in this, in this region here. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Agree. Yeah. If you, and if you, you, you feel a great gap, right? Because otherwise, you know, we had flowered [00:50:00] away to, to the us. Right. Okay. So having in Asia really feels that gap, right?

Because there, there are a ton of people, like in, in, I know, I know of users in Bali, there’s this whole e-commerce community in Bali, Singapore is a ton of people, right? Yeah. Agree. As kind of people as well, right? Yeah. They’re, they’re all over, I mean, It seems like the US opened up a little bit more, especially compared to China, but even Southeast Asia I think was a little bit slower than the US to open up.

I think that’s maybe one [00:50:30] reason that the u the US has had more events sooner, in my opinion, I guess. Sure. But I think like Asia is, you know, I, I was just a Canton Fair finally. The border reopened in March and the fair happened and I think it’s starting to warm up cause we also wanna invite the Chinese sellers, you know?

Mm-hmm. We, I was talking to some of the, Seller community in China to come to Thailand. They’re excited to come, so. Right, right. We also kind of delayed doing the summit because we wanted to, we thought it would be nice to always [00:51:00] try to invite and welcome and have some Chinese seller community involved as well with the event.

So there will be some great sellers there coming. Alright. Which will be awesome. Yeah. It’s, it’s a great thing. I mean, especially, you know, we are in this part of a world where we can get to learn stuff from, from, from us side of things and, and, and the Asia side of things and where, where things meet in between.

Right. I think that’s where idea [00:51:30] sparks and all this innovation comes happening. Yeah, exactly. That’s my favorite too, to put the different, the bridge in the gap and find that. Find those value. Yeah, that’s fun. And I guess like the name suggests, Cross Border Summit aims to become that bridge. It does the value.

Yeah. I mean we have a lot of business friends and, and even marriages have happened from the Cross Border Summit [00:52:00] that, yeah. So I’m sure everybody’s excited. All right. I guess that’s a wrap for today. I really had fun. Thank you both for coming on. Same sharing and again. Right. Thanks for having me. Yes.

Appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for having us. The webinar. And thank you to our sponsor, our returning sponsor, mercury.com online bank. Well, it’s a real bank, but you can turn totally online for us. Our Blimp program participants are going through this as well. Thank you, mercury. Travis is great there.

It’s been on our show, it’s been in our [00:52:30] events. We’re gonna have another event where we will have them attending as well. And if you wanna get a little bonus for you and us, if you sign up and do some special circumstances, you can go to globalinformation.com/mercury. I also have a video tutorial that we use even for the Blimp people.

The same exact video to learn how to use it. I hope you can check it out totally free. Why not see you there? I don’t know if you can see those fish, but they’re waiting. They’re waiting for me to feed them anyway. I’m gonna go take my walk back. But [00:53:00] thank you so much, Leslie and Daniel. They’ve been really supportive of the community over the years, pre Covid with Cross Border Summit coming out to China.

Also workshops and other things. So I’m really excited they’re gonna be working closer with us at the Cross Border Summit. This year happened in November 16th and 17th, 2023, crossbordersummit.com. It’s gonna be amazing. You know, honestly, it’s overwhelming response. So birds and fish over here. But the [00:53:30] next step for you is join our free webinar.

We’re gonna have some giveaways too. Cross Border Summit general entry tickets for some lucky people that come, as well as some other fun stuff. And giveaways. Find the show notes on globalpremier.com/ppc-growth and we’d love to have you there. Find the register link on the show notes for this podcast and you can ask us questions live.

Yeah. Yeah. We’ll probably have a recording for a while, but live is more fun, [00:54:00] you know. Anyways, thanks for watching. Have a great day, episode 401 over and out. See you later. Bye-bye. To get more info about running an international business, please visit our website www.globalfromasia.com. That’s www.globalfromasia.com.

Also, be sure to subscribe to our iTunes feed. Thanks for tuning in.