Cameron Yoder, Senior Manager of Content and Community at Teikametrics, sat down with Mina Elias, Founder of the Trivium Group, for an interview at The Prosper Show 2022. Mina is well known for his supplement brand MMA Nutrition. They discussed the journey and his experience launching a brand on Amazon. Stay tuned for his top tips and tricks for Amazon PPC. 

In this interview, Mina provides some great insights into Amazon’s PPC strategy to help your business succeed on Amazon.

Prefer to watch the video version? Check out the full interview below.

The Beginning of MMA Nutrition 

MMA Nutrition was developed from a hole in the market. While training MMA and following the Keto diet, no one in the market was creating the exact supplement that fit his needs, an electrolyte powder low in sugar and affordable. Thus, he began the journey of building a supplement that he would use and fit his needs. 

The product Mina created was not only cheaper than many of the competitors; it contained more sodium, more potassium, more magnesium, and no sugar. Additionally, at the time, no one was serving the Keto market except for MMA Nutrition, so the supplement was highly aligned with the consumer’s needs. This allowed the product to stand out in an incredibly competitive market.

After creating and testing the first batch of supplements amongst himself and his teammates, he officially launched MMA Nutrition. The brand began gaining traction when someone reached out to MMA Nutrition, asking them to exhibit at a local event. Mina accepted but realized he had no way of selling his product. 

Scaling the Company 

As it turns out, this was a product many other people were looking for in the market. Following the initial success of the supplements in 2018, it was time to scale the operation. The first step was getting his products on an ecommerce platform where they could be sold. After going down the rabbit hole of Amazon and combing through groups and YouTube, Mina launched his Amazon storefront precisely 20 days later.  

Once the presence on Amazon was established for MMA Nutrition, Mina saw two main aspects of Amazon that brought major success, reviews, and PPC. 

The more outreach the company did to request reviews, the more reviews they received. As sellers on Amazon know, positive reviews surrounding a product are imperative to the organic rank of said product. Online shoppers rely on reviews, which provide a precise measure of buyer satisfaction as the consumer cannot touch or test out the product. Ultimately, reviews provide the social proof that you cannot offer yourself.

The more he spent on PPC, the more money he brought in through sales. In the beginning, it was haphazard spending, allowing auto campaigns and broad campaigns to run and do their thing before he nailed down his current strategy. 

He shares his current strategy with this analogy. Throw a bunch of bait (keywords) into the water. You keep the bait that works and slowly phase out the ones that don’t. Continue this process until you build up the successful bait or keywords in the water. You are constantly investing each week to build your keywords. When you are choosing your Amazon keywords, in addition to the direct keywords you are testing, try targeting indirect and alternative keywords as well.

The Biggest PPC Mistakes

The first common mistake Mina sees in the industry is low budgets. Changing your current daily budget from $50 to $500 can increase your sales by 100%. 

Another mistake is multiple ad groups. Sellers cannot control how Amazon splits the budget between ad groups. Sellers may see more success by having individual ad groups within individual campaigns. 

The last mistake is too many keywords per campaign. The amount of keywords depends on the product and vertical, but Mina has seen five top keywords for others. Try taking the keywords that are not converting out and putting them into their campaign.

However, it is essential to note that Amazon does not run on logic. If something is bringing in revenue, don’t pause it. If what you are currently doing is working, don’t change it. Even if it does not align with these tips, it may be detrimental to your sales to change what you are currently doing.

The Best Way to Understand PPC

During this interview, Cameron asked Mina if someone wanted to understand PPC better, what is the best way to do it? 

According to Mina, because advice does not always work across all verticals, conduct a controlled experiment by changing one aspect of your account and watching for the results. 

Learn more about Mina’s story in our recent interview with him live from the floor at The Prosper Show 2022.