Why PPC Is the Secret to Recovering a Failed Product Launch — Carly McMillen | How PPC uncovers new use cases and audiences, How rebranding boosts product performance, What metrics show a launch isn’t working (#360)

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In this episode of the E-Commerce Coffee Break Podcast, Carly McMillen, co-founder of PPC Farm, unpacks the critical strategies for recovering failed product launches. 

She discusses the world of Amazon advertising, exploring how targeted PPC campaigns can transform struggling products and unlock hidden sales potential for online sellers.

Topics discussed in this episode:  

• Why understanding your product's unique selling point is crucial for marketing success 
• How PPC campaigns can reveal unexpected use cases and target audiences 
• What Amazon's AI (Rufus) can tell you about your product listing gaps 
• Why sellers should give their product launch at least 90-120 days before declaring failure 
• How rebranding and repositioning can dramatically improve product performance 
• What metrics to analyze when a product launch isn't working 
• Why comprehensive market research precedes successful product launches 
• How agencies like PPC Farm help sellers diagnose and fix marketing  challenges 
• What Amazon's changing landscape means for new and existing sellers 
• Why omnichannel presence is more important than ever for e-commerce brands 
  
  

Links & Resources

Website: https://www.ppcfarm.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carly-mcmillen/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theppcfarm/

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Transcript

Welcome to the e commerce coffee break podcast. In today's episode, we discuss why PPC is the secret to recovering a failed product launch. Joining me on the show today is Carly McMillen, co-founder at ppcfarm.Com. So let's dive right into it. This is the e commerce coffee break. A top rated podcast that helps you become a smarter online seller.

Each week, your host Claus Lauter and his guests share what's working right now to grow your store, boost your sales and stand out in a crowded market. Stay ahead in this fast changing world of e commerce and get expert advice you won't find on Google. Hello and welcome to another episode of the e commerce coffee break podcast.

So let's welcome her to the show. Hi, Carly. How are you today? Hi Klaus. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Let's talk about product launches. Obviously a bad product launch can be devastating for the seller, not only from the emotional part, but also for the business. So what are common mistakes sellers do when they try to recover from a failed launch?

Sure. So I think one. One big mistake out of the gate is that people don't necessarily give it enough time. I think you need at least 90 days to really determine whether or not something has quote unquote failed. We know now there's been a lot of research recently that there is not actually a honeymoon period from Amazon.

There's a, an article that came out recently. Someone did a really deep dive into actually Amazon's patents for the A9 algorithm and discovered that in fact, you know, from the horse's mouth, there's no honeymoon period. So Amazon is unfortunately not. Going to give you a boost, which kind of makes sense.

Amazon doesn't really show a lot of love to sellers. Um, so you're going to want to give it enough time. That's the first thing. And then the second thing, you know, with that in mind, making sure. Obviously from the beginning that everything's you've done, you've done your market research, you understand the competitive landscape.

You've got high quality images, SEO, and all of that. So those I think would be kind of the things to consider. When you're first launching something, um, and then when it comes to the relaunch, um, don't just do the same thing that you've already done again. That would be another really big mistake. You know, just relaunching it and dumping more spend into PPC, that kind of a thing.

That's not going to be the way to go. Because some people will try to do relaunches if they've received a lot of, you know, negative reviews, that kind of thing, and they'll start a new ASIN, something like that. But you might just end up getting the same, the very same results. So those are some kind of mistakes that I see people making when just out of the gate.

That makes perfect sense. I mean, just relaunching and trying to do the same with expecting different results probably won't work. So what kind of data points or KPIs are you looking at when you've tried to figure out what went wrong? Yeah. And, you know, I think that that's. Really? The first thing that you need to kind of do is a little bit of that soul searching and understanding.

Okay, let's say it's been, you know, it's been 120 days. You've given it enough time, but it's just not working, right? It's you're just not getting the results that you wanted to see. Um, and so that's what the first step is figuring out. Why did this fail? You know, was the was was the listing bad? Is there something in the images or, you know, copyright, copywriting, SEO, all of that?

That was bad. Is the price too high? You know, are you not competitive price wise again? These are things that you should obviously have kind of. Thought through, um, during the first phase, but you know, um, sometimes it's not always obvious. And so that's really the first step is figuring out what happened.

Why did this product launch fail? Um, and then another thing that, and this is kind of where PPC fits in is where you may be bringing in the wrong kind of traffic. Um, so for that's really what, what PPC is kind of, that's the role that it's playing, um, in, in your product launches, bringing those eyeballs to your page.

Right. And so. It's possible that one of the reasons that your product has failed is because you were not really targeting the right audience. You were bringing in the wrong kind of traffic. Yeah, no, that makes absolutely sense. Once you're targeting the wrong audience, you can't expect sales coming from there.

Now let's dive a little bit on what you understand as a relaunch. So is it really starting from scratch or is this adjusting? How do you approach this? Yeah. So when I'm in my mind, there's a few different ways that you could relaunch a skew, right? Um, you could, like you said, completely start from scratch where you have a brand new ascent, you know, brand new listings starting from zero ratings and reviews, that kind of thing.

I think that that is, um, something that you kind of want to avoid. If you can, if you have built up ratings and reviews that are decent, you can recover from, from, from that. Um, and so I would really be looking at. A relaunch as almost a repositioning of your of your product of your marketing. Um, so I have an example that I want to share from a client that we've worked with recently.

Um, they are a ketone ester. So this is a product specifically for those on the keto diet. Um, and they want, um, something that will help sort of replenish those, those ketone salts, essentially, um, while they're, while they're. Kind of like fasting, um, or, or, or utilizing the keto diet. Anyway, that's what the product is.

Um, but they had been marketing it as an energy drink essentially. So a lot of the, uh, keywords that they were targeting, a lot of the copy within their listing was targeted as an energy drink. So then they're going up against really big brands like Red Bull and, um, you know, all of these, Huge names with huge budgets.

And of course, as I'm sure, you know, within the beverage or supplements kind of energy drink category, cost per clicks are also really, really high. So it's just really easy to blow out your budgets really fast for not a lot of return. And particularly in a case like this, where they weren't really drilling down into what is that unique selling point of their product, which is the fact that they're, they're not really an energy drink, they're, they're a ketone ester, that's the category that they should be going after, and so.

That's where PPC can kind of fit in because you are essentially bringing in the wrong kind of traffic. You're bringing in the wrong audience. And this, of course, can be addressed with, you know, quality keyword research and that kind of thing. But that's where things can break down. If that foundation isn't solid, you know, if you haven't really understood what the heck you're selling, or if you're an agency and you don't take the time to understand your client's product on a deeper level, then that's where Product launches can fail, but where you can also see, you know, uh, a relaunch being a lot more successful.

So with this particular client, we, when we went and, you know, audited their account, we noticed, okay, they're there. Are they an energy drink? You know, because that's what they're, that's what they're targeting. Uh, and then after discussing with them and realizing, no, like they, they're not an energy drink and that's not what we should be targeting.

We were able to, uh, we were able to. Help to make them a lot more successful and improve a causes and improve profitability as well, just because they had been spending so, so much trying to compete against those, those big names. I think it was a great example that you just gave there. At PPC Farm, we always helping a lot of clients with that.

Is this the general approach from your side going directly into PPC or do you start basically from the roots and looking at the listings and then you work your way through all the different instances to get like a overview of everything? Yeah, so our primary service offering is PPC but PPC does not exist in a vacuum.

You have, it's really holistic and you have to, uh, make, you can throw as much money as you want on advertising, but if you're not getting conversions, you know, you need to address that. So of course it's in our best interest as well to ensure that we are understanding the product and. Optimizing list to listing and, and, and images and all of that, as much as possible to ensure that we are reaching the right audiences and the right audiences are, um, you know, landing, not only landing on the page, but converting.

Right. Um, and so we will often, you know, Before we start working with a client, we, we go into that, we make recommendations and kind of consult on those things. And sometimes it makes sense for them to not put the resources into advertising right away, and instead put those resources into, you know, listing optimization and image, image.

Improvement and that kind of thing, because they really, they really do go hand in hand. I mean, you know, Hey, we could take your money if you want to, if you want to pay us to run your PPC, but you know, at the end of the day, you're not going to be happy with the results because you're not going to get the kind of conversions that you're looking for.

Was the data that you get from, um, PPC campaigns. Is there a way that you might find also other niche, niche areas where a campaign might work better than what the seller has in mind? Absolutely. So this can come from two places. It can come from your initial keyword research, which we've kind of talked about as really being the foundation and, um, getting, getting creative and kind of going a little bit broader in the application or use cases of a product.

Um, At the keyword research phase. And that can kind of capture some of those alternate or unusual uses for a product. Um, but it can also come directly from, uh, your search term reports. So if you're, which you should definitely be regularly reviewing those search term reports to see just basically what the heck is someone typing into that search bar on Amazon, uh, when they're actually, Converting for your product.

Um, and so we have a case. I'll share another, um, case of, of this. So, um, we have one of our products for the parent company is as a disposable bowl or like a pack of disposable bowls. Just like something you would use for. I don't know if you're having a party or a barbecue or something like that. Um, you know, but, uh, yeah.

Originally, we wanted to market it for humans, like, you know, it's a bowl that humans eat out of and great. But we noticed, um, during our keyword research phase that actually a lot of people use these disposable bowls for pets, for dogs, dogs or cats, typically. And so we started marketing it as a pet bowl.

Um, and that actually completely, uh, sales just took off because nobody else was talking about, like, Disposable bowls like this. Like they were, they were targeting what I mentioned, which is probably the first thing that occurs to you. Oh, it's for barbecues, parties, you know, concessions, supplies, that kind of thing, but not for pets.

Um, and so that's where like, again, um, This is a little bit different than my first example, because it's not really about understanding the product, but it's about getting creative with the ways that you're positioning it and marketing it. And so PPC can help you kind of, uh, understand, you know, what customers are searching for.

And sometimes it will really surprise you. That's a very, very good example. I like that. I wanna dive a little bit into ai. I'm a big of AI fan as most listeners know by now, and I wanna find out how Amazon, with all the AI tools that are coming into play now, um, sort of competes against the ads. Is that hand in hand or are you competing against the AI given a bit of an insight there?

Yeah. So we are also big believers in AI. I think it's extremely useful and it's, it's, it's helped us so much. Um, you know, even with, even with like keyword research and that kind of thing, it's great for brainstorming, uh, different use cases for products as well. But so in terms of how ads interact with AI, I think it's really complimentary.

I think it's really symbiotic because for example, um, one thing that you can do to understand as well, how customers are searching for. Your product and what kinds of questions they have is by going to your product page and just start talking to Rufus. That's Amazon's, um, you know, that's Amazon's internal AI solution.

Start talking to Rufus and ask it questions and see what questions it's suggesting. And if it can't find the answers to those questions, because all it's doing is scraping your listing, right? If it can't find the answers to those questions, then that means there's a gap and that's great news because you can go in and fill that gap back to my.

Pet bowl example. Um, let's say you're asking Rufus, like, is this suitable for pets? And Rufus says, I don't know. I can't find any information on that in the listing. Then, you know, okay, I need to go and, you know, make sure that I'm being indexed for pet related keywords by adding them to my listing. Um, and then, uh, you can take it a step further and then say, I'm going to go and add those keywords to my campaigns as well.

PPC. Okay. I want to talk a lot about the timeline of recovering a failed product launch. You said in the beginning, you need to give it some time, 90, 120 days to really see if it picks up or not. If you have done a relaunch, how does it work? Does it go quicker or do you have to wait again? Yeah. So it definitely depends on, you know, every situation is going to be different, but you know, in, in theory, and in most cases, it should go quicker because you do have a little bit of traction.

You already have some data. You're able to make decisions faster, right? Because that's a big part of the waiting period initially is waiting for that data to come in, right? Waiting for that Waiting for people to waiting for those search terms to come through waiting for people to click on your product and understanding, right?

Because, um, now that you have that data, I mean, that's one of your most important resources. Um, we talked about the search term report, but even just high level PPC data can also help you understand again, asking yourself that question, why that product may have failed. If you're getting a lot of impressions and clicks, but no, no conversions, then, you know, you've got more of a conversion issue, right?

Versus, um, if you're not getting enough traffic, maybe you do have a relevancy issue with keywords in your campaigns, that kind of thing. Um, so the relaunch of a product should, you know, in, in most cases, it should go faster because, because you have the data, um, and because you, yeah, you're able to make decisions faster.

You already gave me two good examples of how we turned around a seller account to a campaign. Are there specific industries or niches where this works very well? Yeah. So I think that it works best this kind of approach where you're, um, I mean, every, every niche, you need to understand what your unique selling point is, right.

And your point of differentiation, but I think it works particularly well for, um, cases like, for Disposable bowl, which can have such a huge variety of use cases, right? So it tends to work best with products that are more like consumer goods. Um, and and just have a just a really wide variety of possible ways that someone might not only be using it, but searching for it on Amazon, right?

Um, and so I think that that's when you're going to see the most Come out of this. Whereas, you know, I mean, even with the ketone Esther, there's, there's a lot of different ways that people might search for that or, um, you know, understand how to use it, that kind of thing. Um, but it tends, I think it would work less well for products where, you know, like there's really just kind of a few main ways that people call this thing or search for this thing.

You can really only use it one way. Right. Um, and, and in those cases. Then it would likely not be as viable a solution to kind of expand your traffic sources. In that case, it might be an issue where the market is just highly competitive. You know, your pricing isn't competitive, that kind of thing. Walk me a little bit through the onboarding process.

If a new client approaches you and things haven't gone well, and you're about to turn this around. What kind of steps are involved there? Yeah. So I think that pretty much all of our clients come to us because they have some kind of a problem, right? Anytime a client is reaching out to an agency, it's never like, Oh, my, my PPC is going perfect.

I'm just looking for someone to take it off my hands. You know, that's, that's almost never the case. Clients always have some sort of problems, but that's okay. I mean, that's, that's what we're here for is to solve those kinds of things. So, um, whenever we're onboarding new clients. Our whole process is really centered around understanding their goals and on the ACE and level.

Um, so, you know, we, we run into a lot of sellers and sometimes it takes a little bit of, uh, work to get it out of them, what their true goals are, because, you know, it's like, well, uh, we want to grow. We want to grow our revenue. Well, okay. That's great. I think we all want to grow your revenue, but tell me a little bit more, you know, like what, what challenges have you faced with your products?

Um, you know, why. Has it worked in the past and now it's not working or is it, has it just never worked, you know, understanding kind of the history of everything. And like I said, it's so important to do this on the ASIN level. Um, getting those high level KPIs are, is important too, but if you don't understand again, why every single ASIN is important and sort of the history of every single ASIN, I think that you're almost, you're kind of setting yourself up for failure in a way.

Um, and. Really utilizing the client's knowledge of their own products, because while we might be experts in PPC, we're not an expert in the client's products. So having that conversation about why this product is important to the world, why it's important to them, what it does, what's so special about it, um, is going to really benefit us with our, our keyword research.

And because without that understanding, I think it's very difficult to, um, you know, just have a copy. I think it's quite important, um, if you hire an agency that they ask the questions that you don't ask yourself, because you can get blind being in your own business and a fresh set of eyes and somebody asking the right questions might actually help you more than pay PCC campaigns in your business.

That might be, I don't know, you might be just communicating the wrong way. And um, again, having someone asking the right questions, very, very helpful. Yeah. Cool. Is there any kind of homework that immersion needs to do before they approach you? I think, you know, I think having the, like you said, your understanding of your products and understanding why you're, you know, why that product is, is, is the best, uh, what's the, what are your points of differentiation?

I think those are just kind of good general business practices that you understand, you know, why you're, uh, why you're doing that. But as I said, they're, they're just kind of standard business sort of Questions. And if you're, if you're coming up with a business plan and that kind of thing, you should have absolutely already gone through that.

But, um, you'd be surprised how many people, I think, especially with Amazon, you know, they're just like, I'm just gonna, you know, throw a product up there or they're doing drop shipping or whatever. Right. And it's just like, kind of, um, Oh, I saw that there were a lot of people buying that. So I decided that was going to be a good product, you know?

So I think, I think, um, I think it's important to, to make sure that you have a product that is sellable before and that people want it. And you've really done that good market research and competitor research. Um, because engaging an agency, we're not magicians, right? We're not going to be able to just completely.

Sell something that that isn't competitive, right? So, but I, I know that that can be a little bit of a hard pill to swallow for folks, especially, um, especially now, you know, I think back in the day, it was a lot easier for newcomers to let the barrier to entry was just a lot lower to start selling on Amazon and to be successful.

But I think now, you know, you really need to, you know, That moat around a brand, basically, um, especially for sellers in the U S I think that there's just so much competition from overseas, Amazon's own kind of answer to Temu, the whole Amazon hall thing. I think that makes it really just the barrier to entry is a lot more difficult.

And I think for, for anybody thinking like this is going to be a get rich quick side hustle kind of a thing that they might want to, um, reconsider that. But yeah. No, very wise words. I think the good times, the golden times, I don't know, eight, nine years ago, when a lot of things started like Shopify, these are long over.

So you need to really treat it as a professional business and that. Takes a lot of know how and experience to get there. Who's your perfect customer? What kind of brands do you work with? Yeah. So our perfect customer is going to be someone who is, who has answered those questions for themselves. And they are, I mean, if someone is already seeing.

Some success on Amazon, then obviously it's going to be easier for us to grow that success. It's obviously not impossible to launch a brand new product on, on Amazon. Um, but a brand really an established brand that has, um, that is also doing off Amazon things as well. I mean, that's not something that we help with, but the reason that I say that you might, that might sound a little bit weird, but the reason that I say that is kind of goes hand in hand with what we were just talking about, which is.

In order to be successful, you need to have that, that brand presence. And I think you're not going to just be, you're not going to really be able to do that on Amazon because Amazon doesn't really allow you to tell your story. Right. I think a lot of brands, what makes them so strong is their story, whether that's the story of the founders or, you know, the product and why it's special.

I mean, you get. Only so many characters on Amazon to really tell that. And I don't, I think that for a lot of brands, that's more easily communicated with things like video and, um, social media and that kind of thing. And so Amazon, I think if it is, if you're trying to just be an Amazon first brand or even Amazon only brand, um, it tends to just be, you know, more difficult.

Not saying that we can't work with clients like that, but our ideal client is someone who does have a bit more of a brand presence. And when it makes perfect sense in the most serious sellers nowadays are selling on omnichannel anyway. But I think it's important to have someone with the expertise in Amazon because Amazon is a beast in its own.

It's a universe in its own. And if you're on a different platform and you do your other marketing strategies and activities, then you can't do everything. So it's always good to have an expert there. How does your pricing structure work? Yeah. So the way that our pricing works is based on a percentage of PPC revenue.

So only the money that you're making from advertising, uh, is what we would. Take a percentage of we, we prefer to do that because we feel that that kind of helps us have aligned goals. I mean, you want to make more money. And if you make more money, then so do we. Right? Uh, so that's why we, we charge based on a percentage of PPC revenue.

Um, we've had folks be like, well, then aren't you just going to Spend a bunch and you can increase PPC revenue that way, right? I mean, we all know Amazon is pay to play and to that. I always just say, well, if we do that, then you'll just fire us. So that's really not, um, in our best interest. Really. We want to have that that alignment where, you know, we're growing and you're growing at the same time.

And of course, as PPC grows, you're organic. Sales are going to grow as well, and we don't touch that. That's, that's yours. You've done all that work, for example, in building your brand. Um, and so those organic sales are, are yours. We don't take a piece of that. Yeah, that sounds like a good deal. Before our coffee break comes to an end today, is there anything that you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet?

Yeah, so I think, you know, really the takeaway from when it comes to launching or relaunching a product and, and utilizing, um, PPC to help you in that, um, is understanding that, PPC is going to be one tool in your toolkit for understanding why a product failed or didn't fail. Um, but there's a lot of other soul searching that you need to do and understanding, you know, everything holistically.

So understanding your listing and understanding really what, what, The heck you're selling and what is different and special about your product. Um, and then I guess for as far as PPC farm goes and the agency, um, yeah, we do offer a 60 day free trial to all new clients, um, which I think is kind of unique.

And, uh, uh, I wanted to just share that with your listeners as well. Um, and the reason we do that is because we know how hard it can be to find an agency that works for you. And, um, we want to have an opportunity to prove to you that we. That we can help you, um, and kind of give you that ability to test us out, um, because particularly if you're switching from, if you've, if you've worked with agencies before, I know sometimes people can, um, have bad experiences and get burned.

And so, um, it can be hard to, you know, start dating again. And so, uh, we, we, we believe that the free trial kind of, um, helps us both, you know, see, see success through. Totally. Yeah. Where can people go and find out more about you guys? Yeah, so you can find us at PPC farm dot com. Um, and if you want to connect with me directly, I'd be happy to connect with you on LinkedIn.

Um, on my personal page, Carly McMillan. Cool. I will put the links in the show notes as always, and you just want to click away. Connie, thanks so much for giving us an overview on how you can save your campaigns and your listings and hopefully a lot of people will reach out to you and get the advantage of working with you for 60 days to see if that's a good fit.

Thanks so much for your time today. Thank you. Hey, Klaus here. Thank you for joining me on another episode of the e commerce coffee break podcast. Before you go, I'd like to ask two things from you. First, please help me with the algorithm so I can bring more impactful guests on the show. It will make it also easier for others to discover the podcast.

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