Are “Gray Hat” Amazon Growth Tactics Worth It? - Episode 254
INTERVIEW BY JULIAN GALINDO WITH MATT GALLAGHER
DESCRIPTION
In today’s podcast, Julian Galindo, a Client Project Manager at Bobsled is hosting the new episode. He is joined by Matt Gallagher, a PPC Specialist at Bobsled.
Many brands are trying to get an edge on Amazon and stand out from the competition. To do this, there are all the Amazon programs like Amazon ads, Amazon Posts, and Prime Exclusive discounts. But there is also a vast “gray area” of tactics and tools that some sellers are using to get an advantage. Today we’re going to discuss some of those tactics, and whether we think they are worthwhile pursuing.
Make sure you tune in to find out more!
Matt worked with various Amazon and ecommerce brands in a wide range of fields including Grocery, Personal Defense, and licensed merchandise. Previous experience in those roles has included PPC, Organic SEO, Operations, Project Management, and implementing other ”gray hat” tactics.
“Making your listings bulletproof (optimized) is always going to be a lot better and a lot more profitable to get those conversions.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Matt and Julian overview the 3 hats Amazon sellers can wear; White, Gray, and Black. Matt defines white hats as running social posts and running by the rules. The black hats would be falsely reporting a competitor’s product and the gray hat would be a debatable area where it’s not clearly against the rules but in the gray area and they discuss what kind of results can brands get from those.
In Julian’s experiences, some of the gray hat tactics are falling into two areas: improving ranking and getting reviews. Matt agrees that a lot of organizations’ formula is reviews x ranking = revenue.
To improve ranking, some examples of a white hat would be taking a google ad and driving traffic to Amazon from a Google search ad. Something that would make that more of a gray hat would be taking that link and inserting a keyword into it. They mention a few more examples.
There were a lot of third-party programs which companies use to improve their gray hat tactics, there is software helping with rebates, chatbots talking to the buyers, and API tools that help people identify an order number. There’s still a lot of manual work since Amazon cracked down on the big ones.
One of the throwbacks of these tactics is that overnight the tactic that worked can no longer work.
Bobsled does not recommend these options as tactics to pursue, there’s the risk of losing money, but also listing suppression, or even getting your account shut down. The risk of an account shut down is never worth the reward of more sales!
Instead of doing this, Matt and Julian agree that a better tactic would be to spend the money you would invest in gray tactics, and invest in PPC instead. Matt claims that PPC is much easier and takes less time and fewer resources.
Matt and Julian go through a couple of rapid-fire questions. Matt has changed his mind recently on the gray tactics and he’s a firm believer that you should just play by the rules and get the same benefit and visibility by just simply running ads.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Connect with Julian Galindo
Connect with Matt Gallagher
Learn more about Bobsled Marketing, an Acadia Company
