text: TAS 328: (Special) Ask Scott Session #100 – Should I Still Start? – Review Strategy – Protecting NEW Products – FREE 30 Minute Coaching Call – The Amazing Seller
  Scott Voelker | March 3, 2017 | Podcast | No Comments
  This episode of The Amazing Seller is a special one! Scott is celebrating his 100th episode of the Ask Scott Session. Make sure to carve out the time for today's episode. Scott will announce a very special opportunity for TAS followers like you to enter into a drawing for a FREE 30-minute coaching call with himself or Chris. This doesn't happen very often and it's an opportunity with great value so pay attention on how to enter! Scott also covers celebrating wins, the future of eCommerce, getting Amazon reviews, and protecting your product from getting hijacked. This is an episode that you don't want to miss!
  [25:30] Question #3: I'm working with a manufacturer in China and I want to know, how would you talk to the provider in China to make sure that they don't recycle the design that you invested in and sell it to other customers?
  [00:08:00] Scott: Definitely go over there and still let us know, you don't have to go in there just to win the prize. Go over there to connect with other people and also share and also read what other people are saying because that's inspiring. That's motivating, that will also push you through any sticking points that you might have. Alright guys, like I said it's okay to celebrate. I'm going to celebrate right now and I'm not going to feel bad about it. I think we should so give yourself permission to celebrate. Alright guys, let's go ahead and let's dive into today's first question, I will give you my answer and it's going to be awesome as usual. Let's do it.
  [00:20:00] Scott: Now, right alongside that you are going to want to run pay-per-click on auto campaign and maybe a manual campaign depending if you've already done some research on your competitors and if you were able to get a list of keywords. If you weren't, then you're just going to run an auto campaign. That auto campaign is going to then take your listing, this is why it's important to get the listing optimization right. Amazon is going to look your listing, they are going to more or less scrape your listing and they are going to see what your listing is about, what keywords are in there. Then it's going to target these keywords for people in your market and then you are going to show up for that. Now, if you've done your product research properly, you don't need to have hundreds of reviews.
  You might not need any. If you've turned on pay-per-click and you get one or two sales on day one, you know you're onto something. Now, the other part of this whole thing is right away, like day, I would say that you want a follow up sequence in place. Now, again, some people say, "Well you're not really supposed to do…" Now that's not true. You can follow up with your customers as long as you're not saying, "Hey, you just bought from me, give me a review." What it's more of is, it's the customer service. Give them a reason to notice you. Give them a reason to say, "Wow, this business really reached out and made sure that I was happy." Then, maybe on the second email you say, "Hey, can you do me a favor, Amazon wants to make sure that we are taking care of you and we want to make sure that we are taking care of you. Can you go let them how we did? Can you give us some feedback?"
  Like that's it. Like you don't have to say, "Go leave me a five star review." None of that stuff. Actually, I don't want you to that. I want you to just get sales on day one, however that is and then from here follow up with those customers. Now, if you've discounted the… And there's a little bit of debate here, if you've discounted that product like really heavily like 50% or more, they are saying that they don't… I say they. People in this space, in our community are saying, "Do not send those people a follow up email." But me, I'm not saying give me a review. I'm saying like just give feedback on how we did for you.
  [00:22:00] Scott: Then sometimes it will naturally just turn into a review as well. I don't think there's anything wrong with that but again you do what you want to do or anyone listening but personally I don't think there's an issue with that. That's just me. I think as long as you do it gently and you do it in the way that you are actually honestly helping them or giving them an additional value or a resource and I would always lead the email with something that I'm giving them. "Hey, we just created three YouTube videos on how to play your new guitar. Head over there and check them out.
  They are there for you for free." Then on the back side of that it's like, "And oh, can you do me a quick favor, could you head over to Amazon and let them know how we did for you? Could you leave us feedback to let them how we did? That would be awesome." Thanks so much and have fun playing your new guitar. And oh by the way, here's the link again to the YouTube channel." Something as simple as that.
  Like you're giving a resource or if you don't want to link out because some people say well you shouldn't really link out inside that email which again that's another debate. I've heard people saying that they do it and they do it successfully and there's been no problems but if you're at all nervous about that, then just create a pdf with those YouTube videos that are basically referenced to inside of there, maybe give like a little download guide of maybe some guitar scales or maybe parts of the lesson that are transcribed in there or something like that. Then you can go ahead and say, if you want to watch this video, click here inside the PDF. That way you're not linking directly out inside the email. I personally don't think that would be a problem.
  If Amazon ever looked that they know that you're driving you to YouTube video, you're not driving them to your ecommerce store where they are going to buy that product at a discount and not on Amazon. That's where the problem comes in. Now, I know I went on a little bit on a tangent there in a good way, I hope for you guys because I want to give you guys the whole picture. It's not about me saying like yes do this, do this and do this. It's like these are all the things to me that make it easier for you to get ranked, to start getting reviews naturally and you're not relying on friends and family, and any of that stuff.
  [00:24:07] Scott: You don't have to do that. Now, if you want to go down that route I don't' think that's going to be a problem just understand that if you do reach out to friends and family and if you've ever done business with your friends and family meaning if you've ever shipped something to them or they've shipped something to you you're automatically connected. Your accounts are connected. Amazon knows this. Amazon I don't believe would penalized you other than they are not going to count that review and it won't even show. So I wouldn't even go down that route at this stage of the game. I would just do what I just said.
  I would go out there and find places where you can give a discount on your product to people that want to get product at a discount and then be really, really awesome to those people and everything else will flow. If you guys do want to automate that I recommend Sales Backer. That's the one I currently use. Again, I'll link that up here. If you guys want the resources of the other parts of this, even like finding the deal sites and stuff I have all that stuff linked up on the resources page. Again, which I'll link inside of the show notes but that is very easy to find as well.
  It's theamazingseller.com/resources and everything is there and I'm always adding and updating that as we kind of evolve here. Alight guys, let's go ahead and listen to one more quick question and I'll give you my answer. We'll wrap this up. You guys can go on with your weekend and we will get out of here. Let's do this.
  [00:25:29] Arie: Hi Scott. This is Arie calling all the way from Barcelona. I know you like to hear from people from far away. So I have a question. I am now designing a product with a manufacturer in China and investing quite a bit of energy and iterating through to the designs. I want to know what would you do, how would you talk to the provider in China to make sure that they don't recycle the design that you invested in and sell it to other customers? Is there any way to do that much? Not sure if you covered it. Thank you very much. Great job, love the podcast.
  [00:26:07] Scott: Hi Arie. What's up man? Thank you so much all the way from Barcelona. Yes, I do love to hear that. That is amazing and awesome that in today's world we are able to do this which is just crazy. Every time I get on a workshop, too and we go like a live Q&A at the end and we're able to talk back and forth to people in different parts of the world or just even different states is pretty cool. But when you're able to reach people in Germany, in China and in Japan and… I mean just all over the globe it's just really awesome. UK, Canada, you name it. I think we've had everyone or we've had someone on in all of different parts of the world just about which is pretty awesome. So, thank you for reminding me of that Arie.
  This is actually a great question and I don't think I've ever been asked this one this way. I love it because it's actually something that I'm going through right this second and we are in the process of this. Honestly I don't know exactly what the right or what the best way to do it but I can tell you what I think you'll have to do and the steps that we're kind of taking. The first thing is you have to know, like and trust your supplier. It sounds like you do. But still they are from another country and we're just talking through Skype or whatever.
  We don't really know them. But you start to work with them, you start to know them. Now, I would say the very first thing that we're doing is we're having them write or actually sign, we're having it written an agreement. That agreement states that once they create this thing, this mold, let's say it will belong to us, our company. Now, we would have them sign that, you would probably want to have, we are anyway we have an attorney write this document up, have them sign it and now you have something that is official.
  [00:28:10] Scott: But now you are probably saying to yourself like I do too, "What's going to stop them from doing that?" I mean they can do that in two seconds, what are we doing to do? We're going to hire a team of attorneys to go to China and to fight this thing? Probably not. I don't know about you but me it's like, no I'm probably not going to do that but here's another thing that you can do. It's you can have your brand name embedded inside of that product somewhere. If it's a mold that you're having created it's going to be a part of that mold.
  That was actually something that was reminded to me by my good friend Dom Sugar because that's what he's done in the past and we were going through this process and I thought to myself like, I'm wondering if that's common or not but I'm going to do it. I'm going to ask him to do it anyway. They've already agreed to do it. They've already agreed to sign this document, they've also agreed to put our stamp inside of the mold and why this is important too guys is because if someone does end up using that product that we've created with this mold well guess what?
  Our brand is going to be stamped inside of there and it's going to be very hard to alter that unless some way they go in there and they can mask over top of that somehow which would be probably a lot of work and it would mess up the mold. So it's probably not going to happen but it's another thing now that we have stamped in our brand and if someone comes on and starts to sell or hijack our listing with our own product well we know that we are the only ones that are able to sell and now we can show Amazon, "Hey look it. This is ours, this is theirs, they can't sell it." So now we have something to go even deeper that just saying like, "Well, we've got special markings on our box." They can do that too. If they find out that we have something inside our box they can buy our product and see what it is and then create that.
  [00:30:05] Scott: Now, these are all different things that a hijacker would look at and go, "Ah, it's too much work. I'm probably not going to do it, but if you are concerned that someone is going to copy your product and rip it off, especially something that you've put in a lot of time and energy into then I would say if you are making a mold or making some type or some part of it, that is branded then I would have that stamped right inside of it. I'm talking not just like lettering, I'm talking like it's embossed inside of that thing. If you are selling a garlic press and you were XYZ kitchens, you would have XYZ Kitchens embossed right into the handle somewhere whether it's underneath it or on the side, however you wanted to do that.
  Very easy for them to do it when they are creating your mold and if you are spending money on a mold that could be $2,500, probably all the way up to $15,000/$30,000 depending on how many different components. So that's something I would definitely do. But the very first thing is have them sign a document. It's also going to let them that you have a document signed and it's also going to probably remind them that they shouldn't do that even if they were thinking of doing it in the future. So that's what I would do. Definitely go and make sure that you have an attorney, write something up. Probably not going to be that expensive and then from there at least you feel as though you've covered all the basis that you can.
  Now, the third part of this would be a patent. That's the other thing we are working on right now is we are looking to see what it will cost us to just file for the patent. Then at least have a patent pending. So now if we have patent pending it's another measure that we have there in place that will also make someone, they will not think twice about it. They will be like, "Oh my gosh. Okay, well they've got their thing embossed in there, they've got paperwork and there's a patent pending." We don't have to finalize that patent until we've been approved technically but we still have to file it. I don't know the cost on that right now. I'm actually in the process of figuring that out. But that's something that you'd want to contact a patent attorney. I'm actually working with one right now.
  [00:32:03] Scott: If everything works out with that one, I will be more than happy to recommend him or her or their company but I don't know that yet so I can't do that. All I can say is I'm working on it but that's what I would do. Those are the three different things that you're going to need to do to make sure that you can cover yourself here. Definitely, definitely do that. Hopefully, this has been helpful to anyone out there that's thinking about creating their own unique product or making a very, very major change to something that requires a mold or some other type of adjustment making sure that you get this thing protected so they don't just go out there to your manufacturer and start stamping it out for a bunch of other different sellers and all of a sudden you've got all this competition with a product that you technically created or differentiated.
  You definitely want to make sure that you do all that stuff. So, let's go ahead and wrap this baby up. I want to say again thank you so much for allowing me to get to session 100 of Ask Scott because you guys have been submitting your questions and if you have any other questions or if you haven't asked one yet and you want to head over to theamazingseller.com/ask and yeah, we can go ahead and potentially air it here on an upcoming show.
  I want to remind you though, we're going to do something really cool and that is we are going to give away one session or a half hour session to one individual and I say we, it's going to be myself and Chris Shaffer. We're going to hop on a call, we can strategize, we can do a hot seat, whatever you want to do for those 30 minutes, we are going to do. All you have to do to enter is head over to theamazingseller.com/tell and tell us, number one how long have you been a TAS podcast listener. That's number one. Really easy. Just how long have you been a listener, about? Doesn't have to be exact. Then number two, what is one thing that you've learned or had a takeaway or an aha moment since listening to the podcast.
  [00:34:05] Scott: That's all you have to do. Just those two things and then what we're going to do is we are going to enter everyone into a virtual hat, we're going to calculate one number, one number is going to be spit out of this randomizer tool and then we're going to select then one in order that they were submitted so by number and then we'll pick one winner. I'm also going to pick like three or four other winners for some t-shirt prizes. I have some limited runs on some t-shirts. I've a take action t-shirt, I have the original the amazing seller with a garlic press t-shirt, I have a couple other ones from our other events that we did in, we did one in Denver and we did one in Arizona and that's TAS Breakthrough Live. So we have those. So I'm going to a few other ones in there as well just to have a little bit of fun to celebrate this 100th session of Ask Scott. So if you want to participate head over there.
  There is a deadline. We are going to be cutting it off at March 24th, again because well, we want to give it a few weeks from the time that this airs and if it's after the fact and you are listening to this, that's okay. You can still go over there and tell me those two things and who knows, maybe randomly I'm going to go over there and just start giving away some t-shirts or something or maybe another session at some point in time. So just go over there, have fun and just let us know a little bit about you and how you heard of the podcast and maybe one thing that the podcast has helped you with so far.
  All right, so guys that's pretty much going to wrap up this episode. Remember everything can be found on the show notes at theamazingseller.com/328. You can find all the goodies over there, transcripts, show notes, everything will be there for you to grab. Guys, remember. I'm here for you, I believe in you and I am rooting for you. But you have to, you have to… Come on say it with me, say it loud, say it proud, "Take action." Have an awesome, amazing day and I'll see you right back here on the next episode.