In this episode, host Josh interviews Vincenzo Toscano, CEO of an Amazon consultancy, about influencer marketing strategies for Amazon sellers. Vincenzo shares practical tips on finding and negotiating with influencers, building long-term ambassador relationships, and tracking campaign results. He emphasizes the importance of authentic partnerships and outlines team roles needed for effective influencer outreach. The discussion also covers expanding Amazon brands internationally, with advice on operational compliance and market selection. Listeners gain actionable insights on leveraging influencers and scaling brands globally, highlighting the need for proactive marketing and community-building to succeed on Amazon.
Chapters:
Introduction & Guest Background (00:00:00)
Josh introduces Vincenzo Toscano, his expertise, and the focus of the episode on Amazon influencer marketing.
Finding and Filtering Influencers (00:01:29)
Vincenzo explains manual YouTube search strategies to find relevant Amazon-focused influencers and bloggers.
Negotiating Payment Structures (00:02:50)
Discussion of different influencer payment models: matching Amazon commissions, flat fees, and ambassador/commission-based arrangements.
Ambassador Relationships & Revenue Sharing (00:03:46)
How to turn influencers into brand ambassadors and structure revenue-sharing based on sales uplift.
Tracking Influencer Performance (00:05:48)
Debate on using brand referral bonus links versus influencer affiliate links for tracking and compensation.
Combining Affiliate and Brand Referral Links (00:06:36)
Clarification on whether influencers can use both their affiliate link and the brand referral bonus link.
Influencer Link Preferences & Negotiation (00:07:17)
How agreements determine whether influencers use their own affiliate links or the brand’s referral links.
Tools for Evaluating Influencers (00:08:25)
Recommended tools and methods for analyzing influencer engagement and performance metrics.
Team Structure for Influencer Campaigns (00:09:50)
Roles and team setup needed to manage influencer outreach, relationship building, and campaign execution.
Manual vs. Platform-Based Influencer Outreach (00:12:34)
Comparison between manual outreach and using platforms like Refersion for influencer management.
Outreach Conversion Rates (00:13:50)
Typical response and conversion rates from influencer outreach to actual partnerships.
The Future of Amazon Marketing (00:14:42)
Why brands must proactively drive traffic to Amazon and build communities to succeed in the evolving marketplace.
International Expansion & Agency Services (00:16:37)
How Vincenzo’s agency supports brands with compliance, localization, and launch strategies for international Amazon marketplaces.
Top European Marketplaces & Revenue Expectations (00:17:32)
Advice on which European Amazon marketplaces to enter first and expected sales percentages compared to the US.
Links and Mentions:
Tools and Websites
"YouTube": "00:01:29"
"Perception": "00:08:52"
Affiliate and Referral Links
"Brand Referral Bonus Link": "00:06:01"
"Influencer Affiliate Link": "00:06:46"
Services and Partners
"Ask (Partner for compliance and services)": "00:16:37"
Transcript:
Josh 00:00:00 I am super excited to introduce you all to Vincenzo Toscano. Vincenzo is an expert in optimizing and scaling brands on Amazon. He is the CEO of e-commerce, where they have helped more than 1000 local, national and international brands. Sell more on Amazon globally. E-commerce is a full service Amazon consultancy providing tactical execution support and strategic consulting services for Amazon sellers and vendors focused on mid to large size brands. E-commerce uses a specialist consulting framework, deep analytical ability and powerful technology to grow their customers revenue on Amazon. So with that introduction, welcome to the show Vincenzo.
Vincenzo 00:00:46 Thank you. Josh, it's a pleasure and thank you for having me on Vincenzo.
Josh 00:00:49 I'm super curious to dive into like the influencer marketing in the blogs, like how are you reaching out to these influencers and how are you Negotiating, you know, payment for these because a lot of influencers, it's like you have to pay me a thousand bucks just for me to post it, and then it will be on my story for 24 hours, and then it's gone.
Josh 00:01:12 Right? And you're like, wow, I've got to make a lot of money. I've got to make a lot of sales. Yeah, in those 24 hours to make it worth it. So tell me about, you know, a how you're finding these influencers and bloggers, and then B, what type of payment structure are you coming up with.
Vincenzo 00:01:29 Sure. So the first tip and this would be for YouTube. One thing that my team does, and of course the only downside of this is that it's very manual work. So it's going to be time consuming if you don't want to use a platform, but still it's an option to do it. So what you will do is you go to YouTube and let's say you want to do vitamin C, right? So you're gonna put all is the name of the product. And then then you put Amazon. So it could be vitamin C, Amazon or top vitamin C Amazon. And the reason why you put Amazon is because at the end of the day, YouTube is a search engine.
Vincenzo 00:01:59 And that is gonna matches most of the time with videos that say top ten vitamin C on Amazon, or even if it's not title, it's gonna match it with the link of the influencer. Because if these guys do influence, they have an Amazon influencer account. The links that they put in the description have the Amazon world on it. Therefore, the search engine is going to match me with those videos. And that's the first filtering. I already know. Which ones are the guys that have been working with Amazon brands in the past. They know how the whole ecosystem works, and it's easier than working with a person that, you know, they just do blogs and they don't even have an idea about what is selling on Amazon. So I want to make sure they speak the same language. That's the first thing. The second thing is when it comes to payment terms. So these are different ways you can do it. So the first way of doing it is a matching the Amazon Commission as I mentioned.
Vincenzo 00:02:50 So for example if they do 3% or 5% for Amazon with double, so we give 610% to them. Another option that we do is to write them matching the the commission. We might do just a flat fee, right? Maybe initially, when you know that relationship still doesn't exist with influence, it would do a flat fee, which I know sometimes it can be heavy, as you mentioned. But again, there there are many ways for you to, you know, analyze the, the actual YouTube channel. There are tools that you put the, the hashtag and it gives you like the history, the views, engagement and so on. And that can give you like a good idea about how good this influencer is. And based on that, if this guy asks you for 1000, but then you see that the average likes for videos like two likes, you see that that traffic is fake. So that's a red flag. And the third option, which is this is the most difficult to get. But if you get this, I would say this one is the best way.
Vincenzo 00:03:46 It's basically you you transform this person into an ambassador, right. So an ambassador means that basically they become like the face of your product, and they basically talk about your product and pretty much every single video. Like it could be a banner at the beginning or you start sponsoring ...
