Podcast: How The Use of Video Changes The Game for Brands Online with Rick Cesari

February 6, 2020

Rick Cesari

Chief Marketing Officer of Direct Branding

Listen to the podcast

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[01:24] James introduces his guest, Rick Cesari
[02:35] How Rick got started in working with brands & building his credibility
[04:59] What does it take to build a brand when there’s meaningful brand equity behind it?
[07:25] Rick’s advice to brands entering the Amazon channel
[10:35] Rick talks about how videos can be used to build a brand for online selling
[14:43] How brand executives evolved in accepting the value of video marketing
[16:32] How private label brands on Amazon can use video marketing to enhance their brand asset
[18:29] Rick’s view on selling on Amazon versus other retail channels
[20:31] The importance of leadership teams in managing and controlling online marketplaces
[23:34] Rick shares how he realized that he was good at working at selling and branding
[26:50] Creating a good enough brand name to go to market versus creating the perfect brand name
[30:43] Some mistakes Rick did that made a big impact on his career
[32:42] Rick’s mentors in the different stages of his career
[34:39] Rick’s advice to brands who want to build a successful Amazon channel strategy

In this episode…

Are you a company who’s contemplating the use of videos in your marketing strategy? Are you wondering just how effective video marketing can be in propelling your brand forward? For Rick Cesari, author of the book Video Persuasion, you would be missing out on so much marketing mileage if you don’t employ the use of videos in your marketing strategy.

In today’s episode, James speaks with Rick on the value-added that video marketing can give a to a company’s branding strategy and why it’s important to maximize this growing marketing trend to its full potential. They talk about the best practices in video marketing, the importance of doing financial analysis before product launching, and the types of videos that you can use to make your brand stick to your target market. Stay tuned.

Resources Mentioned on this episode

Sponsor for this episode

Buy Box Experts applies decades of e-commerce experience to successfully manage clients’ marketplace accounts. The Buy Box account managers specialize in combining an understanding of clients’ business fundamentals and an in-depth expertise in the Amazon Marketplace.

The team works with marketplace technicians using a system of processes, proprietary software, and extensive channel experience to ensure your Amazon presence captures the opportunity on the marketplace, not only producing greater revenue and profits, but also reducing or eliminating your business’ workload.

Buy Box Experts prides itself on being one of the few agencies with an SMB (small to medium-sized business) division and an Enterprise division. Buy Box does not commingle clients among divisions as each has unique needs and requirements for proper account management.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:17
Welcome to the Buy Box Experts Podcast with your host, Joseph Hansen. We bring to light the unique opportunities brands face and today’s e commerce world. And now here’s your host, Joseph Hansen.

James Thomson 0:33
Hi, I’m James Thompson, one of the hosts of the Buy Box Experts podcast. I’m a partner with Buy Box Experts and formerly the business head for the selling on Amazon team at Amazon, as well as the first account manager for the Fulfillment by Amazon program. I am the co-author of the Amazon Marketplace dilemma and co-founder of the prosper show, one of the largest continuing education conferences for Amazon sellers. Today’s episode is brought to you by Buy Box Experts. Buy Box Experts takes ambitious brands and makes them unbeatable. And you hire Buy Box Experts you receive the strategy optimization and marketing performance to succeed on Amazon. Buy Box Experts is the only agency that combines executive level advisory services with expert performance management and execution of your Amazon channel strategy. Go to BuyBoxExperts.com to learn more. Our guest today is Rick sassari. Rick has helped major brands from GoPro to George Foreman build billion dollar brands through brand response advertising and strategic video marketing. his newly released book video persuasion aims to put big brands proven video marketing techniques into the hands of small business owners, entrepreneurs, inventors, Amazon sellers and others. a best selling author, speaker consultant and marketing and branding strategy guru Rick is bringing his expertise to us today sharing best practices in video marketing, so you can succeed restfully influence your customers and build your brand. So welcome, Rick. And thank you for joining us today on the Buy Box Experts podcast.

Rick Cesari 2:07
Hey, thanks, James. It’s great to be here. And thank you for having me on your podcast.

James Thomson 2:10
You may be rethinking that once I started asking some of the challenging questions. And then

Rick Cesari 2:16
also that was a heck of an introduction you gave there. So thank you. Thank you.

James Thomson 2:21
So you’ve been instrumental in launching several brands that have become household names and huge business successes. How did you get started in working with brands? And how did you build up the initial credibility to be able to work on more brands?

Rick Cesari 2:35
That’s a great question. You know, it’s really interesting. I always like to mention this for your listeners or any listeners during the podcast, and that is, I didn’t start working with these companies when they were big brands and had big budgets and could afford, you know, afford to hire us. Almost every one of the ones you mentioned was either a startup or they were doing very low amounts of sales. And so we had to use Different types of marketing in order to create a lot of awareness. And so I have one kind of fundamental principle that I use when I’m helping to build a brand. And that is, I believe in in branding by selling. So the more that we can sell and get the product out into people’s hands accomplishes two things. It gives us a feedback loop because people have the product in their hands. They give us feedback, what they like what they don’t like. Secondly, it generates revenue, and any small company or startup could use that revenue. And normally we use that revenue and put it right back into some type of advertising. And then I’ve always Third, the third part of that is I’ve always tried to leverage as much as possible, some form of direct response marketing, whether that’s TV radio, print, or online and you know, Facebook or Instagram ads, but some way where if I’m spending $1 on advertising, I’m getting $2 back and that enables small companies to really generate an ad budget where they might not really have access to one, just through the marketing that they do.

James Thomson 4:06
So the expectation might be that early on, you just continue to put all of your margin back into future growth. And there may not be actual margin to take off the table anytime soon.

Rick Cesari 4:17
Yes, that’s that’s the technique. And, you know, you have to sit down with the owners of the company, find out what their goals are, what their, you know, two, or three or four or five year plan is, and most people that I work with, and companies with, with direct to consumer products that want to do direct to consumer marketing, most of them want to grow their businesses, so they don’t mind taking their money and putting it back into the business as long as they’re getting a good return. And they’re seeing some growth.

James Thomson 4:48
So for our audience of brand executives, please share with us your perspective on what does it take to actually build and maintain a brand where there’s meaningful brand equity behind it.

Rick Cesari 4:59
Well, you No, that’s a that’s a great question. And, you know, I I just believe in a lot and doing a lot of the simple basic things right. And you know, I know your background James and your is in marketing. And so this, this isn’t going to be new information to you. But I’m surprised that a lot of brand executives, people that are trying to build brand, sometimes lose sight and they overcomplicate things. And I always feel like I like to start out with really identifying for a product or service, you know, number one, what’s the unique selling proposition, what makes your product or service different than everybody else out there. And then once you identify that, then that’s something good that you can start advertising to people and giving them a reason why they should buy your product or service. The second and again, this is for newer brands, more so than bigger established brands. And that’s position You know where where’s the niche in the marketplace that we can dominate? You know, I always recommend the book to blue ocean strategy which is basically the basic message of the book is look for the blue ocean, the place where other people aren’t. And a simpler way of saying that is find a find a niche in the marketplace you can dominate a good a great example of that is the GoPro camera. They came out here’s a guy who invented a camera in his garage he was up against Panasonic Sony Kodak which is no longer in business and but he’s his little niche that he could dominate versus all these other big camera companies was extreme athletes that that were using the camera for that. And so once he developed that niche and dominated that niche, he was able to expand beyond that and and grow the company into a billion dollar business.

James Thomson 6:56
So as we see on the Amazon channel today, brand are being copied quickly by me to brands looking to steal, share with many of the brands that you’ve launched, those brands were defining completely new categories of products aimed to solve problems that customers may not even realize they had. What advice do you have for national brands today, looking to enter the Amazon channel, given these hyper competitive pressures present in the marketplace?

Rick Cesari 7:25
Yeah, that’s another great question. And, you know, I, you’re probably experiencing the same thing with many of the brands you work with, that they’ve developed their brand off of Amazon, and now they’re bringing it on to Amazon. And I feel that and I work with a lot of brands that are actually going the opposite direction that have developed their for their brand on Amazon and and trying to grow it and differentiate themselves from the others. And I think a lot of that differentiation has to happen. The company website and things that they can do in addition to anything that they’re doing on Amazon, and that they need to maintain their brand, uniqueness brand strategy off of Amazon. And I think that it translates well, I’m there because it’s almost like the same advice I give to two large Amazon sellers that are trying to grow their brand is develop the great content on their website off of Amazon. Use video marketing. I’ll give you an example one of the clients that I consult with as a company I think they’re a top 200 amazon seller in computer peripherals and night you might be familiar with the company plugable. And one thing that they do every time they launch a product is they make a YouTube video to launch the product and they introduce it to their mailing list that they’ve they’ve developed over time. Through their customer relations. And so every time that they launch the product, a new product on Amazon, they’re also launching it in their off Amazon channels and creating great educational videos. And they separate themselves. Computer peripherals are a commodity, but they separate themselves by creating great products and having great service and great education. And I know that that’s a simple sounds like a simple differentiator. But a lot of people don’t don’t take those extra steps. And I think that they’re important.

James Thomson 9:32
Certainly on Amazon, we see a lot of brands that truly are Me, too. There’s no unique selling point. There’s no they’re basically spending their money to try to grab eyeballs just saying Look at me, look at me, not look at me for a particular reason to look at me because I paid enough money to get that ad space right here at the beginning of organic search. It’s in some ways it’s very frustrating as a consumer because you don’t understand What makes this product different from the other 50 identical computer peripherals or nutritional vitamins? or what have you that that might be on Amazon? So we’ll talk about we’ll talk more about the video component here. In our subsequent questions. Let me ask you in your recently published book, video persuasion, you have leveraged your direct response experience to look at the use of videos for selling online. Tell us more about your perspective on where videos fit in. In terms of all the other assets that a brand might build, in order to sell online.

Rick Cesari 10:35
What let me just share a few video statistics with you because I think they’re a little bit mind blowing. On every second, almost 17,000 hours of new video will be produced. Forbes reports that more videos been produced in the last 30 days than all the TV networks have produced in the last 30 years. This year, nearly 80% And of all internet traffic will be made up of videos. So the point I’m trying to make there? And an answer to your question is, if you aren’t using video and you aren’t involved in video marketing, you better start because that’s the way that people are starting. And to get their information online. We’re becoming I like to say a video first society. So if you haven’t incorporated video into your, your, your marketing, your branding, you really start to need to start doing so just because of consumer behaviors. That’s maybe it’s because of the social platforms like Facebook and Instagram. But that’s the way people are consuming information. Not Unfortunately, this isn’t a good statistic, but people just aren’t reading as much as they used to. So one of the things that I tell all of my companies that I consult with and work with is to start incorporating video and there’s some simple ways that they can do it you know, on their website, I believe above the fold. One of the first things and best things that a company can do is have a one or two minute overview video that basically says, here’s who we are, here’s what we sell. And here’s why we’re different. So very quickly people can understand what it is that your company does and why you’re different from the competition. The other types of videos that I recommend that people use our tutorial videos which are how to videos and demonstration videos, and these are important for Amazon sellers, your your you’re obviously neck deep and working with Amazon people like on a daily basis. But I’m always amazed at how bad some of the Amazon listings are some of the, you know, video presentation that people basically I see listings all the time that are just a picture of a product with a blank background, and there’s nothing else there. And so I I steal some things from video and incorporate them into listings. I like to look at every little listing as its own little Magazine Ad. And so how can that one picture of the product? What can it be doing to sell that product better, and incorporating infographics and that’s something that I learned in the video that we always got better sales results when we had info graphics over a picture than just showing the picture alone. And that’s something that can translate right right into Amazon. And in the last area of video that I always recommend people incorporate on their websites. And I believe this is one of the most powerful marketing tools are video testimonials and reach out to your database and see if you can get people I tell them in the book I have an email sequence that basically shows them how they can line up a video testimonials of people that are using their product or service and deployed Some of these video testimonials on your website. And I believe that’s one of the strongest marketing tools that a company or brand can use. Because you’re getting that third party credibility, the third party social proof from actual customers.

James Thomson 14:15
Tell me a little bit more about how brand executives or just executives in general that you’ve worked with over the over the many years you’ve been involved working with brands? How have you seen them evolve their acceptance of video into the way they communicate to consumers the way they communicate about their product? Has there been a successful evolution? Or do you continue to run into far too many brands that just don’t seem to understand where video fits up?

Rick Cesari 14:43
Yeah, I it’s pretty much the latter part that that they’re, they’re being slow to adopt. And I think a lot of that has to do with how expensive video used to be to produce that you would have to hire crews and expertise To create videos but one of the benefits of the evolution of the social platforms and and video technology itself is you can go online at Well, first of all your iPhone is more powerful now and has a better camera than a camera that five or six or seven years ago would cost 50 or $60,000. So the technology has improved so much that it’s easier to incorporate video. And the other thing that happened coming the other direction is, I believe that almost like video standards have become a little bit less. And that’s, I think, because of social media that everybody just pulls their iPhone out of their pocket and makes a quick video and if they don’t care about the lighting or the sound, but people are used to seeing that type of video. So I believe that there’s been a slow adoption to the video because a lot of brand executives or marketing executives are used to the old expensive way of doing video. And if you know if they can discover the technology that’s out there, it’s really easy to produce good high quality video.

James Thomson 16:11
So let’s say I’m a private label brand on Amazon. I don’t, I don’t sell even a million dollars a year. But I’m trying to improve my game online significantly. Without that Hollywood size budget, how can I better use video to enhance my brand? What would be the keys to making my brand assets really, really outstanding?

Rick Cesari 16:32
No, I think you you and again, there’s, you know, certain places on Amazon, that you can deploy video, but you’re going to have much more leeway and can deploy a lot more on your website. And I think that that’s the place where you have to look at a lot of differentiation between your product and other products. And again, let’s go back to the the simple things that I mentioned before, you know, if you go online now and you Google Video Production apps, for less than $100, you can get apps that gives you the ability to make videos very quickly and very easily. And, and it’s really just a matter of deploying the right types of videos that we mentioned earlier. And you and I think the best number one place to start, for me anyway for most brands is is to reach out to their customer base, and create those video testimonials. Because not only will you get good testimonials about your product and your brand, you’re going to be surprised at the feedback you get from these customers, telling you what they like, what they don’t like, and how you can improve the product, how they heard about your product, where they bought it, where they like to purchase product, and I have a list of 20 questions in my book my video swaging book that I recommend that everyone uses when they interview testimonials. And part of it is they’re designed to create good sound bites for marketing, but also great information to help you get great feedback for your brand and grow your business.

James Thomson 18:16
So, some of your clients today already sell on Amazon as an advisor, how do you look at the Amazon channel differently from other retail channels or brands might be selling?

Rick Cesari 18:29
Well, first of all, I’d like to look at it as almost like a three legged stool and Amazon if they aren’t on Amazon. I highly recommend that they are on Amazon. It’s just too big of a channel distribution channel for people not to be there. And, and if they aren’t, they’re there. They’re losing out on a huge amount of sales if they if they handle the channel correctly. And I’m just I I’ve been a big believer over the course of my marketing to let the consumer purchase the product where they’re comfortable buying it. And you know, if they want to buy your product in a big brick and mortar store, you should be in a brick and mortar store. And but you know, the reality of the facts are people like to purchase from Amazon. So I believe that you have to have that Amazon presence. The second leg of the stool, to me is that is your website, we talked about that. And that you should be creating equal amount of content as much as possible on your website that you can also deploy on Amazon. And then the third part of that school is really all your online digital marketing our way of driving traffic to both Amazon and your website.

James Thomson 19:54
So one of the biggest challenges we had Buy Box Experts have had with prospective brands Clients is the lack of willingness of the senior executives to evolve the way they go to market. Now that online marketplaces add unique branding control pressures for brands, that is to say, some random seller may be creating your content and putting it on Amazon. And the brands may or may not be aware of it, or if they are worried they don’t know what to do about it or whether they should do something about it. How do you see leadership teams of brands coming to grips that online marketplaces need to be managed more certainly, in order to control the brand?

Rick Cesari 20:31
Well, I believe that if you don’t do that, you’re going to see your brand start to erode. That’s just what I’m seeing in the marketplace. It’s my personal opinion. And I believe that the reason that maybe senior brand executives are afraid to do this and I don’t know if afraid is the right word. There’s a fear of the unknown. You know, you James come from an Amazon background you know it like the back of your hand, you’re very comfortable in my dealings with companies and I’m sure you’ve run into the same thing in the marketplace is that there’s a very low knowledge level sometimes about how Amazon works. And there’s also the lack of control, which I think brand executives aren’t used to. So if you combine those two things, I think it creates a little bit of fear of people being on Amazon and and being able to, you know, have the same level of control they used to for their brand. But that being said, is it goes back to the previous statement that you have to be there because it’s such a big channel and that you have to do it the right way. And when I say the right way, you and you and I have known each other for several years now, and working with a company like by box that has that expertise is To me, the best way that a bigger brand should approach the marketplace when it comes to Amazon. It’s what I found. I’ve been marketing all my life. I really started to get immersed in Amazon, maybe three years ago, which is really late to the game. And I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about marketing. And I don’t understand all the ins and outs of Amazon. And so when I work with a bigger brand, I refer them to an agency like by box that has the expertise and can deliver that knowledge and knows exactly what they should do and shouldn’t do based on experience working working with other companies.

James Thomson 22:43
Certainly, it’s a foreign language for brands. For the first year,

Rick Cesari 22:48
it was some way of simplifying things that was that’s but that’s true. And I think that just like foreign languages. I don’t know I didn’t I took eight years of Spanish and I don’t really know how Speak Spanish very well, and and it is a foreign eminent sign is a foreign language. And if you can’t learn to speak it, you should hire an interpreter.

James Thomson 23:09
Yes, yes. But let’s shift gears a little bit. I’m curious to think back to some of the turning points in your early days working with brands. What happened? And when did you realize you were good at what you were doing working with brands?

Rick Cesari 23:24
You know, it’s it’s an interesting question, because

in the early in my early days of marketing, direct response, marketing and branding, were two separate universes. And I always disliked and I still dislike conventional brand advertising, just because of my background. And, and so I was never I when someone mentioned the word brand, I would always run the opposite way. But it wasn’t until that we started having success with director response television direct response and creating big sales and then seem like wow, with these sales comes brand recognition and you are creating a brand I almost came into the branding arena the backwards than most people do. In other words, I was always focused 100% on sales. And if you did enough sales, almost the brand would build itself now you can shortcut that obviously by doing all the things you need to do initially to to create a great foundation for your brand. But I didn’t learn that stuff in the early days until after I had a few successful campaigns. Like with the juice man, juice extractor way back in the early 90s and the sonic care toothbrush and realized how important the brand was. But But I have to be honest with you and answering your question. I wasn’t didn’t have a brand mentality. Initially it was more about how We could create sales and I you know, what I’ve learned more recently is combine the two combine good branding with the sales and then you have a formula that’s tough to be.

James Thomson 25:13
Did you did you find there was a point in time where you said, I’m good at helping brands sell stuff? I’m good at figuring out which brands I’m good at helping

Rick Cesari 25:25
I, I, I yes, I did that statement, but take out the word brand. I’m good at selling stuff. And, and, and that that was really my mindset. And really the thinking part about the brands came later. In other words, I would look at a product or a service and say, and I would learn to identify the market and get feedback and say, I think this product can be successful. We would make a TV commercial direct response TV commercial testing. We would let the market validate whether it would be successful. And then basically, as the sales started to increase, that’s how the brand got built. So I

James Thomson 26:13
went to market though Rick, there was already a brand name on it. x, y, z, whatever you put on it, you you call it the George Foreman grill, you call it Sonicare. You call it the juice man. It had a it had a designation, which will call a brand. Right? What were those conversations like early on when you said, What is that designation we’re going to put on this product so that when we do do our first TV ad, and we do try to get people excited in the product, it doesn’t have some horrible name, but how do you create a good enough brand name to go to market versus you know, the perfect brand name?

Rick Cesari 26:50
Yeah, that’s a that’s a great question. And, you know, I don’t I don’t I don’t have a real great answer for that. Because if you if you take juice man Sonicare oxy clean all of these products were in existence, but people didn’t know what they were so somebody else the founders of the company with the juice man, we were the founders of the company. And but the net we the name had already been in existence. And so we didn’t spend a lot of time on coming up with what great names were. But it was more these these nicknames were already in place, but nobody knew about them. And it was more a function of the marketing that created the brand than any name because I believe, you know, GoPro is a great name for a camera, but I believe if it was a different name, and they did the same type of marketing x would be you know, that would be the brand today. So it is important, I believe to create a Good, a good brand. And I and I urge my clients now to have a great brand story or origin story as a way of setting yourself apart. But I think that you can just do a little bit of research. And again, here, here’s the thing that, again, if people are responding to a product, and what it’s called, and they’re responding by purchasing that product, that that was always enough for me to say that this this is a good a good name for the product. I know it’s very unscientific, you can do focus groups. But I was let the market Give me the feedback. And that, you know, that might not be the best or fastest way to do it. But that’s just the way I’ve always done it in my career.

James Thomson 28:50
But what’s fascinating is, when I when I think about brands that exist today, only on Amazon, there’s some pretty bizarre brand names being used for some of these products. And yet some of these products are doing quite well because they figured out how to play the Amazon game. And if I take the parallel, you took brand names that had, or you took products that had whatever existing brand name and it wasn’t so much about the brand name that drove the success but more about the process of putting the product in front of people in the right way and getting people excited to try it out. And obviously, once you try it, you’ve got incredibly rich data for figuring out whether you want to buy it again. So it’s, it’s fascinating to me that we think about direct response to something that may not be as relevant to all brands today, and yet it’s it’s reincarnated itself in some of the mechanics of what’s going on today on the Amazon channel.

Rick Cesari 29:43
And both in both instances, if it was the sales that created the brand, and and in the in the one case, Amazon and the ability to know how to do Amazon correctly today. The keywords to do advertising created enough sales, that it made the brand out of XYZ product, right? Just and again, that was it’s basically the same mentality that I was using with direct response and we ended up in the same same place.

James Thomson 30:22
But let me shift gears a little bit. Rick, I love to hear from you. You’ve you’ve had all sorts of ups and downs as you figured out how this business was going to work. I’d love to hear a story from you about a big pitfall or mistake you made at some point where you said there is so much that I’ve learned from this mistake that makes me better at what I do.

Rick Cesari 30:43
Yeah, and I think it goes first of all, I’ve made many mistakes like that but but one of the ones that had a big impact on my career moving forward was way back when we were doing the juice man and and really didn’t Man, the parent company was called Trillium Health products and our passion and our mission was really teaching people to eat a healthier diet. And, you know, eating more fruits and vegetables, seeds, grains and legumes, and so we would provide the devices to do that. One of them was a juice extractor. So what I learned a very hard lesson and it was really a financial lesson is that we created a bread machine. And this was when bread machines were first getting very popular, and the product cost on the bread machine. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was too high. There wasn’t enough margin dollars between the manufacturing cost and what we could sell it for in order for us to do the marketing. And I didn’t know about doing a financial analysis and having enough margin dollars and we spend a lot of money creating A 30 minute infomercial and launching it. And it was a really, really great commercial and the numbers, we could just never get it to work. And really, the lesson that you learned that I learned is that I do a financial analysis almost before launching any product. And I always, you know, look at it and you can’t overcome if there’s not enough margin. It’s very, very hard to make a product successful in the marketplace. And I guess that’s the that was an expensive lesson I learned and helped me then when I worked with other products.

James Thomson 32:37
Did you have any mentors that were particularly helpful in guiding you through your career?

Rick Cesari 32:42
I had different mentors at different stages, and most of them were more experienced business people. I you know, go back to the juice man example a lot because that was the first business where I was involved in that we were able to grow it from zero to 75 million in about four years. And there was an older advisor. His name was jack Lee, and he was just a successful businessman that really had made his money I know it’s a weird fit to the juicer business. He had made his money as a Wendy’s franchise or, but was just a serial entrepreneur and really taught me a lot about business and and, and operations and customer service and, and marketing, from things that he had done in growing up his chain of Wendy’s franchises in the Portland area and the San Diego area. And he was one of my first mentors that helped me a lot from a business perspective and I’m a I’m a big believer in learning from other people’s experience if you don’t know something. I’m a big believer. I know I’m talking about video but I’m a big believer in reading books and and learning If you don’t know something from someone that does either going to seminars, going to trade shows, going to shows, or reading books and learning about it from from other people that have already gone through the hard times and can share their experiences.

James Thomson 34:19
That thank you for sharing that, Rick. We’re going to we’re going to wrap the discussion today with one last question. A lot of brands are listening today. And I’d love your single piece of advice gathered from your experience in direct response that you would give to brands looking to build a successful Amazon channel strategy?

Unknown Speaker 34:39
That’s a great question.

Unknown Speaker 34:42
So I would,

Rick Cesari 34:46
I would say, if you don’t have, I’m going to take the shortcut. Because I can go through you need to do X, Y, Z and all the different specific things, but I’m going to go back to kind of what we just shared about that. learning from other people’s experience. Just in the time I’ve been working with Amazon, which again goes back three to four years, I’ve seen so many changes on Amazon and it’s big and it almost changes on a daily basis. And if I was sharing with a brand, what they could do best to be successful on Amazon is find someone with the expertise that understands the channel and can help your business market correctly. You know, that’s what people used to do, they would come to me because they knew how to do TV marketing. So if I’m looking or time or telling a brand, a big brand, how to be successful on Amazon, I would say find someone with a great track record or a company with a great track record of helping brands on Amazon and and get them to help you be successful.

James Thomson 35:55
I didn’t mean for this question to turn into a plug. But but wasn’t

Rick Cesari 35:58
I wasn’t plugging you But honestly, I mean, maybe I ended up coming across. But I could share like, oh, if you do this one tactic, it’ll help you out, you know what I mean? If so much information, there’s not one thing you can do to be successful on Amazon. And that’s why I’m saying, and I didn’t say, the higher buy box that has a lot of exam, a lot of expertise. And, and I do that so. So companies come to me, and, you know, they want to help in in marketing, in direct to consumer marketing. And as part of their Amazon. I refer them to companies that can help them sell correctly on Amazon. Yes, yes.

James Thomson 36:42
Well, Rick, I very much appreciate you joining us today. For those of you interested in learning more about Rick’s organization, you can visit Rick sassari.com that’s r IC K. Si Si ri calm or direct branding calm. Rick, thank you very much for having having us today or being on our show today very much appreciate your time.

Rick Cesari 37:03
Thank you, James. I appreciate it.

Outro 37:06
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