eCommerce PR – with James Falconer

Arlen
[00:00:57]
Welcome to the e-commerce marketing podcast. Everyone. I am your host Arlen Robinson. And today we have a very special guest James falconer who has been immersed in the publishing industry for over 20 years and brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the SellerRocket team. Listeners will benefit from his perspective on the evolution of e-com from a publisher perspective. Small, medium and large sized Amazon sellers will gain insight on how to best work with publishers to drive sales and maximize ROI.. Welcome to the podcast, James,

James
[00:01:35]
Thank you for having me Arlen. It’s good to

Arlen
[00:01:37]
Be. Yes, no problem. And thank you for joining me. I’m I’m really excited to talk to you today. We’re going to be really focusing on specifically with e-commerce businesses, of course, PR as well as really what are some of you’ve kind of created your own little niche with regards to PR and e-commerce businesses and some of the advantages to do some of doing some of these things in house with regards to dealing with publishing on various marketplaces, doing advertising and you know, that’s kind of your name of the game. So we’re gonna be digging deep into that, but before we do, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about your background and specifically how you got into what you’re doing today?

James
[00:02:18]
Sure, sure. I mean, where do I start? I mean, I’ve, I’ve been in publishing since 2000. Okay. So I’ve been at this for over 20 years. Wow. I mean, I’ve done a lot of different things, right? Like I I’ve been in the, the SEO business then in, you know, early two thousands joined up with some friends and we started a site called crackberry.com, which was a ton of fun. Okay. So we, we founded that site in 2006 and all of us, we were all doing the, the writing, the programming, the, we set up our own store. We had a, this was like early days, right. Of e-comm too. And we, we set up our own warehouse in Florida and, and we had products going out because the site was all about Blackberry phones and the platform and everything. So we were selling cases and screen protectors and all that stuff.

James
[00:03:01]
Gotcha. So anyways, we, we did all of that. We actually turned it into a nice, a nice tech network. You know, we covered everything. Blackberry, Android, iPhone, iPad, windows, you name it. We had this wonderful little network that we called mobile nations. Okay. And in 2019 sold to future and future is just a, a massive publisher. So they run sites like tech radar and Tom’s guide. And the list goes on. They’re getting into all different verticals too. So I, I stuck around with them for a couple years, but I decided early this year, you know, I really wanted to get back to working with smaller scrappier companies, you know, just kind of getting back to my roots again, which is what I did. So I definitely miss the PPL future. They’re awesome. Had a great time, but it’s also a lot of fun to be, to be working with the seller rocket team here, because what they’re doing is, is something special.

Arlen
[00:03:50]
Okay. That’s awesome. And so, yeah, it definitely sounds like you got your feet wet. It’s good that you had a selling with selling in the future. You had a good exit. Well, that’s always good to hear, cause that’s not always the case, especially something that you’ve created and you’ve kind of birthed to be able to have someone kind of take what you’ve done and then kind of go from there and then, and take it to higher levels. So that’s definitely, always good to hear now, you know, where I wanna kind of begin is somewhere, we hadn’t really talked to a lot, talked about a lot on the podcast. We’ve had people as far as promoting e-commerce brands, I’ve had guests on that have talked about link exchanging link swapping. We’ve talked about, you know, general organic SEO, of course, affiliate marketing, referral marketing, influencer marketing, which is really my bread and butter. And then just your traditional PR. But what you’re gonna think come into play is if you don’t mind enlightening us on some alternative promotional options for specifically for eCommerce sellers that you know, would be alternative to some of those more traditional routes of marketing and advertising.

James
[00:04:57]
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, with seller rocket, we call ourselves really e-com PR. So, okay. What we’re doing is we’re advocating for brands and products within the marketplaces where people are doing their research, going through their journey of like finding the products they’re interested in, then digging down to the ones that they wanna find and buy. So, so what we do is we advocate for those products in those marketplaces and Amazon of course is like the biggest one. Okay. Right. So what we do, what we do for our clients is advocate for those products, get editorial recommendations, which you may see for searches you do in Amazon, those recommendations show up right away on the page and articles as well. So it it’s like traditional PR in that, you know, we’re getting the word out, but it’s really all about performance, right? Because we’re putting that, we’re helping leverage that content and that authoritative voice within the marketplace where people are shopping. So it’s kind of a next level solution.

Arlen
[00:05:52]
Okay. Yeah. It’s really interesting. I’ve recently seen more and more of those editorial recommendations on Amazon and yeah, I’ve always wondered about it. I don’t know actually how new is that because I’ve, I’ve seen more and more now, is this a, a new feature of Amazon or when did it actually come out?

James
[00:06:08]
It it’s been around for a couple years now. It’s an invite only on the publisher side where I come from, it’s an invite only a program where, you know, they’re only inviting the best publishers to participate. And then as a publisher, yeah. You can publish whatever you want on your own site, but now you also have access to publish within the Amazon ecosystem as well. So, okay. A lot of publishers will have their own editorial calendars. Of course, you know, the best ones do and whatever it is, they, they wanna lend their opinion to, they can go ahead, they can write articles, publish it within Amazon and they can go ahead and write specific product recommendations within Amazon too. So it’s really great.

Arlen
[00:06:44]
Okay. That’s interesting. And so when you say publisher, you’re talking about people that have authoritative blogs and they’re putting out content on a consistent basis about a particular subject. So let’s say for instance, I think I may have recently saw some editorial recommendations on some headphones actually. And so what you’re saying is that since it’s invite only, it’s not like you can’t just throw a blog up and just approach Amazon and say, Hey, I want to get in the, you know, your editorial recommendations, they reach out to you. Is that that’s basically

James
[00:07:15]
It. Yeah. Yeah. Like if, if you were a publisher, you were running a no, I come from the consumer tech world. So let’s say you had a really big, you know, tech focus site and it was all about headphones. You can’t just turn around and publish it in Amazon. You would have to get that invite to kind of get in the door, log into their system. And then you would be submitting content that then gets reviewed on Amazon’s side and approved. And once it’s approved, you know, then it starts showing up. And then even after that, you know, Amazon’s always watching and like, obviously they’re gonna promote the pieces that are converting the best, you know, it’s all about conversion to sales. So even once that content is published, it’s still being watched and only the best stuff survives.

Arlen
[00:07:52]
Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. Very interesting. That whole process and the fact that it’s, you know, invite only. And so, yeah, that’s definitely good to know. So if your regular eCommerce brand, you can’t just approach ’em and just get listed there, you really have to form a relationship with maybe companies like yours or just companies that, you know, are just direct blogs, that you have a relationship where maybe they’re, they’re putting out content and they’re referencing your brand, that type of thing. And you know, of course, I guess you could approach these content publishers that, you know, already have this kind of in, I guess you could say with Amazon and then that’s, that’s kind of your foot in the door already. Now, once you kinda get in the door, cause I guess your company’s in the door lot, or their publishers are in the door with Amazon. Do they consistently call on you? How does it work? How do you get your pieces published across their platform?

James
[00:08:46]
It’s real easy. You know, Amazon provides the, you know, the framework, I guess you could say to publish and, and it’s really on the publisher. They decide what they wanna write about. They submit it to Amazon. And from then it’s, it’s kind of outta their hands, right? It goes through a, a review process internally on the Amazon side. So it’s up to the publisher, what they, what they wanna write about. And even for us, you know, as we’re advocating for products, you know, we’re, we’re doing the advocation, right? We’re not saying, Hey, you publisher, you gotta write about this. Like, no, we can’t do that. So we put good products, good brands in front of them because we’re from the publisher perspective, we’re saving them time in their research. We’re providing them with really good recommendations that they can consider okay. For the content that they’re gonna publish in Amazon and on their own sites too.

Arlen
[00:09:28]
Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. That makes sense. I would imagine they have a pretty kind of rigorous approval process of what you put out cuz you know, they’re, you know, they’re huge and I think anything that gets published across Amazon, they wanna make sure it is topnotch. So that makes a lot of sense. Now, you know, aside from Amazon that allows this, these editorial recommendations, are there any other marketplaces or other platforms that do something similar to this?

James
[00:09:53]
Yeah. Yeah. I mean it’s becoming more and more common, right? Like you’re gonna see the, all the big marketplaces really take hold of this over the next year or two, we believe. So you got all the big players, Amazon, Walmart, I think of places like best buy new egg and others. This is gonna kind of become the new normal as we go. So it’s is definitely an opportunity now to jump in while things are still evolving and okay. As I’ve seen, even in, in the mobile space, I think back in the day when we had iPhone and then Android comes along and windows phone and all these different platforms, eventually it kind of gets paired down to like two or three, maybe key players. And I really think that the same thing is gonna happen here. Right? Like Amazon’s kind of hard to ignore, but there’s probably gonna be a few others that enter and stick around for the long haul too.

Arlen
[01:10:38]
Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. So it makes sense. And yeah, like you said, it’s, this is really a good time to really get in it. If you’re an e-commerce business form relationships with these publishers, with these bloggers that kind of already have the end, because I would imagine it’s a little bit easier to get the content out there now, but you know, over time, over the next few years, it’s gonna be a lot more difficult as this picks up. And as we see more marketplaces participating in these types of things and offering these types of editorial content pieces outside of the e-commerce tech space, I think I may have seen it. I may, I maybe I ain’t mistaken, but I believe we’re starting to even see this type of editorial content on some of the larger news portals. And if I’m not mistaken, I believe CNN website, cnn.com, they do something similar. Is that correct? Do you fam are you familiar with that?

James
[01:11:30]
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this kind of thing is gonna be popping up all over the place. So all the big publishers with that big audience, I, I think you’re gonna start seeing that on our side too. Of course we, Amazon is a big focus, but we’re also developing a lot of other products to take advantage of placements like that too. And the beauty of what we’re doing is, you know, just for everyone out there, I recommend you go ahead and do everything you’re already doing. You know, what we’re doing is kind of additive to, to your marketing strategy where we’re just, you know, we’re really just leveraging all of our publisher relationships. So whether it’s CNN or someone else that we may already have a relationship with, we’ve got that inside track already, where if they’re launching that new product and they need content or they need recommendations, you know, we’re right there and we can get in front of them. So we’re just getting that foot in the door. We have those relationships and we can really leverage them.

Arlen
[01:12:19]
Okay, great. With this whole e-com PR to, of course talked about these marketplaces, the editorial recommendations, how does this really work with the social media channels and getting content published that way? Is it just a matter of just doing the traditional publishing or like what’s your experience with this, the different social channels?

James
[01:12:39]
Yeah. Well, I mean, for the core, you know, the Amazon editorials and the articles that we’re able to procure for our clients and get those placements for, you know, that’s really the heart of it. And that that happens. We do encourage people though, if, if they want offsite placements, you know, such as social and articles that live on publisher sites to get in touch with us too, because obviously we have those relationships and we can help make that happen. So there’s not a, a one size fits all. We find there are some clients that, yes, there’re a hundred percent laser focused on Amazon and we can definitely help them there, but maybe there’s some smaller or mid-size businesses that are, they have their own D to C website. Maybe they don’t want to pass all the traffic through to Amazon. Or maybe they’re just not interested in doing business with Amazon. Well, we can help there too. And we can help get placements on. You mentioned some big sites like CNN and others. We can help you with that too. So the more traditional PR thing too definitely can help with that.

Arlen
[01:13:32]
Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. That’s some good stuff. You know, one of the things that I’m also thinking about with respect to these platforms, Amazons is the editorial recommendations. How exactly does it cuz like I said, I’ve recently come across more and more of these. How does it really work as far as being displayed, like with respect to their algorithm? Cause you know, this is apart from their other types of ads platforms that they have and you know, paying for sponsored listings and things like that. How does it work as far as, when do they know to display it to a particular person? Is it like a fixed area? How does that

James
[01:14:09]
Work? I don’t wanna speak too much to the algorithm and the specifics. I, I would love to pull one of the TECA wizards on the team to talk about that more specifically. Cause I don’t wanna say anything wrong about how that is, but in general, these placements are appearing more and more and okay. You know, Amazon has tested them versus other things in the past and the recommendations keep coming back. So I see whether it’s a high volume search or something, maybe a little more niche. It doesn’t really matter. I think you’re gonna start seeing those placements, those recommendations amplified more and more because it’s just providing that outside kind of layer of trust and validation for the shopper that, yeah, this, this publication recommended this product. It’s gotta be good if they recommend it and then they go ahead and they make their purchase.

Arlen
[01:14:57]
I see. So it kind of sounds like they really have their own really internal algorithm as to when it’s displaying. And since it’s really kind of early on, I would imagine they’re doing a lot of testing, a lot of AB testing, figuring out the clickthroughs that they’re getting on this. How long are people actually staying at those recommendation points and are they reading the full things? So imagine, yeah, there’s a ton of metrics going on behind the scenes that they’re analyzing to determine the proper placement, how long are people watching it and, and all of that. So that makes sense. So basically sounds like the, you guys, the publishers and any publisher, you really don’t have control over where it’s displayed, how it’s displayed or anything like that.

James
[01:15:38]
That’s right. What we’re doing is advocating for just publishers to write about great products and the, the owners of those products. That’s what they want us to do. So where that shows up, there’s a lot of factors, but what we can tell people is, you know, over time and we like to say, you know, give us a good four to six weeks to properly ramp up this. Isn’t a, a switch that we turn on and it works, but give us a little bit of time, right. To do the advocation and they’re gonna start showing up and it’s gonna have an effect on everything you’re doing. Okay. It is just, there’s a big halo effect in what we’re doing here. You’re gonna, your brand is showing up in line with results. It’s gonna help your PPC. It’s gonna help your internal rankings. And of course that’s very dynamic. Like you said, there’s a lot of factors at play.

Arlen
[01:16:19]
Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. Some good stuff, you know, as we get ready to, to wrap things up, if you can share maybe some specific examples of either businesses that you’ve worked with or that you’re just familiar with in general that have launched some econ PR campaigns, whether it’s through the, through Amazon or, or through some of the other platforms and you know, what specifically did they, did they do that really kind of stood out and that really gave them a good bang for their buck?

James
[01:16:45]
Sure, sure. I mean, I think there’s a lot of different things. I don’t wanna speak to any specific brands, but if you go to seller.io, you’ll see a lot of the partners that we’re working with there. Sure. I mean, I think there’s a healthy mix of affiliate publisher de to D TOC platforms of traditional PR. The bigger companies are utilizing all those things. They have reps at all those companies working on their behalf to get things done. And then on the small to midsize brands, you see a lot more gorilla marketing where they’re doing a lot of it themselves, just getting out there and doing it, making, getting in touch with the publishers, trying to get in their inbox and convince them to do that earned piece on the publication, wherever it may be. So I see a big mix of all those different things and, and coming from the publisher’s side, I’ve been pitched for years on, you know, Hey, write about this, write about that.

James
[01:17:33]
So I do generally recommend for everyone listening, it’s a healthy mix of all those things, you know, doing it in a smart thought way. And then on, on our side, you can just add us into the mix because it’s very low risk, low touch. We’re working with over 2000 brands now and we’re repping 50,000 products. We’re doing a lot of really good stuff. And whether you want to get more awareness within Amazon or you’re looking for, you know, placements, maybe ramp up the PR and placements outside of Amazon and publications, like just, just get in touch with us and we’d love to help you out.

Arlen
[01:18:03]
Okay. That sounds great. One last thing that I wanted to ask that just kind of came up in my mind, is that with these editorial recommendations, what type of credit or source information do they display for the publishers? Like, do they show who published this? Do they give you a link back? Or what type of credit do the publishers get when they are getting posted? Yeah.

James
[01:18:25]
Yeah. Everything shows up under the publisher name within Amazon. So it’s all tracked back to the publisher. And then for the brands on our side, like we track everything as well so that they would get a, a login to our dashboard where they can clearly see, okay. You know, we started on this date and then four weeks later we saw our first placement pop up and then in our dashboard you’d be able to see, oh, that’s where it is. You click the link, you can go see it, you can see the performance, you can see the revenue generated, all that stuff. So there’s a, a really great dashboard where people can see exactly what it is, where the results are coming, what the results are and the fee structure as well forward is like super straightforward too.

Arlen
[01:19:04]
Okay. That sounds good. Yeah, definitely interesting stuff. Yeah. And I can see, like I said earlier, this is definitely really kind of at the ground level of this, but I can see this really, really becoming bigger and bigger because I think where Amazon is coming from is they’re seeing that consumers on their site are looking for more and more validation when it comes to making a decision to make the purchase. So I, you know, for a long time, of course it’s all about the reviews and the reviews are still a huge thing with products on Amazon. But I think these days people are maybe they’re kind of little waning. I, I think you can say about on the reviews, because for the most part, I think people, there’s still a lack of trust in some of those reviews and who’s posting them even though, you know, Amazon does a great job of making sure they’re legit and you know, they go through a lot of trouble. I think people are still like, you know, ah, you know, do I, can I trust these? Is it really? Do they really have that many, five star reviews or whatever? So I think that that’s where these editorial recommendations come through because you’re, you, you, you’re getting a third party to speak to that particular product and that brand, and it’s giving you another level of validation. So I think that’s where, we’re where we’re at now.

James
[02:20:14]
Yeah, totally. I mean, you nailed it, right. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of stuff that’s happened over the last year, probably longer. And this just provides that, like you said, that extra layer of trust from trusted publications and yeah. The publishers love this because we’re saving them time, resources from discovering new products that they may have never discovered before. Yeah. And then the brands love us because we’re just making that connection. Right. We’re putting them in front of those publishers for consideration. So it’s a really great fit,

Arlen
[02:20:41]
Great stuff. Well, it’s been awesome talking to you, James I’ve, I’ve definitely learned a lot. This is definitely a hot area. I definitely recommend. And I encourage all of our listeners to look more into this, to see how they can be a part of this and see how they can link up with publishers like yourself or really any publishers that have this capability where they’re able to post editorial recommendations on these, on these huge marketplaces. So really good stuff. But yeah, I always like to switch gears here with my, my last final question. Just so our audience can get to know you a little bit better. If you don’t mind sharing one closing fun fact that you think our listeners and viewers would be interested in, in knowing about yourself,

James
[02:21:17]
Maybe something, something odd and different. I’ve bowled, a perfect game. How about that?

Arlen
[02:21:22]
Okay. Okay. Wow. You bowl a perfect game. That’s that’s tough to do. Was this recent?

James
[02:21:29]
No, it was, was it 1997? So it was, it was a while ago. Oh, wow.

Arlen
[02:21:34]
Okay. So I guess for people that aren’t definitely with bowl, so perfect game, meaning that you got all strikes basically. Is that correct? Is that a perfect game? Okay.

James
[02:21:42]
Yeah. 12 in row. I, I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous in my life. That was the most nervous I’d ever been on that last shot.

Arlen
[02:21:49]
Okay. Yeah, I could imagine. Wow. Well, yeah, that’s, that’s impressive. I know that’s definitely one for the books. I I’ve bowled a little bit in my past, but I can’t, I, I can’t say I’ve come anywhere near a perfect game. I’ve had, you know, maybe at my top I maybe had like three or four strikes, but that’s probably about it. Yeah. Well, that’s impressive. Well, thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. And you know, lastly, before we let you go, if any of our listeners or viewers wanna reach out to you and pick your brain anymore about how all of this works, the econ PR and their editorial recommendations, what is the best way for them to reach you?

James
[02:22:23]
Yeah, totally go to seller rocket.io, or you can reach me direct James seller, rocket.io. You know, just mentioned the podcast here. We are happy to extend enterprise rates, which are a lot, you know, a lot more favorable than regular rates. So I encourage you to do that, get in touch, whatever it is you’d like to talk about. I’d be happy to hear from everyone.

Arlen
[02:22:43]
All right. That’s awesome. Well, thank you for that offer and extending that, you know, those enterprise rates to all of our listeners and viewers, we definitely appreciate that here. And yeah, it was awesome talking to you, James, and, and, you know, thank you for joining us today on the e-commerce marketing podcast.

James
[02:22:56]
Yeah. Thanks for having me. It was a blast.

Speaker 1
[02:22:59]
Thank you for listening to the e-commerce marketing podcast. 

Podcast Guest Info

James Falconer
SellerRocket