The PPC Strategies Every Amazon Seller Needs in 2026 with DiscoveryMG
In collaboration with DiscoverMG, we sat down with Gurdeep Sahota to break down the most effective PPC strategies for 2026.
We cover how to find high-intent keywords, where to allocate budget across Meta, Google, Amazon, and Shopify, and how AI is changing creative development. Gurdeep also shares a real-life case study, omni-channel tips, and what brands should focus on as they enter 2026.
Learn more about DiscoverMG at: https://www.discovermg.com/
Follow Gurdeep Sahota on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gurdeep-sahota/
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Transcript:
00:00:04
Hi everyone. This is Joy from the GetReviews team. I'm really excited about today's video because I had the chance to meet Gurdeep from DiscoverMG at the Ecom North conference back in Toronto in late September 2025. Here at GetReviews, our expertise lies primarily in review collection on Amazon and other e-commerce marketplaces. However, Gurdeep has a deep expertise and insights in media buying, PPC, ads, and just building really effective omni-channel strategies. So, I knew I had to bring
00:00:38
him in for a chat. We can start right away. Gurdeep, can you just tell us more about yourself and DiscoverMG? >> Yeah Joy, that was a great intro and I appreciate calling me an expert on some of the things that we've been doing here at DiscoverMG. Pretty much, I'm the co-founder of DiscoverMG. It's an agency that's built around being a holistic fractional e-commerce partner. We've seen a lot of brands and a lot of agencies in the past, kind of focus on
00:01:11
one thing, whether it be Amazon or scaling your Shopify or working with Meta Ads or Google Ads. And the problem that we always ran into was that it's hard to see who's taking accountability for everything. Sometimes Google's performing really well and that's helping Amazon. So your Amazon agency wants to take the credit and vice. So we decided that it's better to work with a select few brands and just take full accountability whether e-com is doing well or if it's not doing so well, you
00:01:36
have one person that you're kind of pointing your finger at. And that kind of birthed the agency and then from there we've been scaling with brands that one we want to consume, particularly in the CPG space and brands that we trust and people that are fun to work with. So that's that's kind of like the quick summary of how we started the agency. >> Awesome. So Gurdeep, do you have any advice or tips regarding identifying keyword opportunities when running these types of PPC ads?
00:02:07
>> Yeah. So depending on what channel you're on, it's going to vary a little bit. Ads is always going to be ads. So there are some commonalities, but speaking or starting with Google, the biggest thing you want to do is look at Google Planner for initial ideas and search volumes. So this is going to give you a good understanding of what's going on in the marketplace. How are people actually spending their time when they're on Google? What are they searching for? And Google tends more to
00:02:32
either be a really, really high top-of-funnel idea. So either people are learning about a subject or a niche where you can then kind of place your product. And if they have really high awareness, this is when blog posts are going to do really well. Just getting people to know what you have, how you kind of impact the problem that they're solving. And if they're at the bottom of the funnel, this is also really good because now they're looking for a solution. They've done their
00:02:55
research and now they're looking for like an actual provider or uh a product for this whatever problem they may be facing. So, if you sell, let's say, uh, cameras, for example, or a camera bag, they've done their research and they know what to look for within a camera bag. So, their searches are going to be a little bit more specific. Camera bag for traveling in warm climates, for example, is going to show different results than just camera bag. A person looking for camera bag is just doing a
00:03:22
lot of research. Someone that's more specific with their search is usually going to have a higher buyer intent if they just find the right product and you put it in front of them. So, I would avoid things in the middle. Uh, but usually like really really top of funnel awareness and then really bottom of funnel for conversions. That's probably the best plan for Google. Uh, whereas meta, you can kind of scale everything, right? You're going to need your consideration ads because that's
00:03:47
when people are going to see comparison stuff work really well, right? You can look at what other people are searching for or what other competitors may be offering and how your product differentiates or is a little bit better. So middle of funnel, top of funnel, and bottom of funnel all going to need uh meta ads. Whereas for awareness and conversion, I'd stick to Google. And you want to use either really, really long terms or connected to blog posts for the problem that people may be solving. I know we're
00:04:16
talking about Google Meta, but this also works really well for Amazon. So the biggest thing is if you're already running ads, you've already done step one to collect all the data. So you can see which searches are actually performing if you download your search term report. And this is one of the places that we find the most value whenever we do an audit. We're always going to look at your search term report just to see one how you've set out your campaigns, but two, how many keywords
00:04:39
are actually working really really well for you and you've ignored putting a budget behind them. A lot of people, they mess up the structure when it comes to creating broad or phrase or exact campaigns. Exact campaigns should be keywords that are really, really specific and really niche down because they're going to get the most amount of traffic that's ready to buy for that specific product with those specific keywords. So, those I like to call like your NBA superstars. This is going to be
00:05:03
like your LeBron back in the day. Uh Steph Curry, KD, uh Anthony Edwards, if you put them on the court, if you put money behind them, they're going to go out there and get you some points. In our case, that's going to be sales. So figuring out who your best players are and putting a stronger budget behind them is always going to be the best tactic, especially when everyone is considering running ads. You'd be surprised how many people don't run ads throughout the year and then decide I
00:05:26
sell we'll use camera bags as example again. I sell camera bags, so I'm going to put a really big budget behind the word camera bag as an exact keyword. This is going to raise the cost for everyone that's running a campaign with that keyword. But if you specify into keywords that have historically worked for you throughout the year and maybe add things like camera bags for traveling or as a gift, that keyword is so specific that it might not get a ton of volume, but the volume that it does
00:05:51
get is going to be the highest converting. So if your product's the first, you're going to get the all the sales possible. >> Yeah. And I know you kind of mentioned using tools like Google keyword planner, right? Are there any other like tools or resources that you like to use when you are trying to identify these keywords for clients? >> Yeah, so one of the benefits of being holistic as an agency is we can cross reference words that are working on one platform and then target them on another
00:06:18
platform as well. So one of the the tools that I love using is always going to be Helium 10. Uh no affiliation. Uh I'm not paid by them, but I just love using their tools and I've used it for I think the last seven or eight years. And then if you want to take it one step further, you can get a plugin for Helium10 called Data Dive, which can just break down every single keyword. So you can look at how many sales a product is generating, what keywords are they ranking for, where are they ranking for
00:06:41
them, are they in the top 50, which means they're going to be on page one, uh are they in the top eight, which means they're in the top two rows. All of those key points are going to be really useful when building out your campaigns, specifically for like high volume sales days, whether it be uh on Amazon for your Prime Day sales, uh going into Black Friday, going into Cyber Monday, going into even just December in general as people do like the last minute Christmas shopping. So cross referencing data that's working
00:07:06
on one platform and then kind of extrapolating it and putting it onto Amazon or Google or Meta is going to work really well for a lot of brands. >> Yeah. And I know what's great about Google keyword planner is that it's completely free and it's actually relatively easy to use which is nice. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. We love free. >> Yeah. And I guess you know my next question would be yes a lot of brands are running their PPC campaigns or their ad campaigns but how do you tend
00:07:35
to evaluate I would say the effectiveness of these Meta or Google Amazon ads that ultimately influence a brand sales. >> Yeah, so there's a lot of tools out there like Amazon has their own attribution tool that you can use. Whether it's going to tag like Meta or Google links that attributed those sales that's going to help you with your ROAS calculations and then also new to brand purchases. You can even kind of tailor some of the tools that reach a certain ROAS on your return
00:08:04
Otherwise the keywords turn off. So, putting in automations like that to focus on, let's say you want a 3x return because that makes the most sense for your margins. it can figure out keywords that are actually going to perform within those metrics and then shut off the ones that aren't, which makes it a lot easier when you're running a ton of different campaigns specifically on like Amazon that are going to help understand where your sales are actually coming from and how effective your ad
00:08:27
spend is. So tools even even tools like Google Analytics, right? If you there's tools that can get like plugins for analytics. There's another tool called Pixamp for like multi-tool attribution. All of these things like the hard part about tracking all these sales is you're going to need a good tech stack and figuring that over the years. We've kind of figured out which ones we like and which ones we don't. And there's a lot out there that we probably don't use ourselves. It's
00:08:54
just one, we've come accustomed to them, and we're always giving these guys feedback like Hey if this is broken, what do we do? So, one of the best things is to try these different tools, but make sure you have one that actually responds to any support cases that you have. Those are going to be key to setting things up and then having like prolonged stability with those programs or those tools that are available. Another good thing or another simple thing, and you may need a developer or you may need to do
00:09:20
your free YouTube studies and just take a course on them, is make sure you're using UTM links. It's one of the easiest, simplest things, but just put a link or UTM uh parameter that says if it comes from Google, give it this tag. If it comes from Meta, give it this tag. And that way, when you're looking at your reports, let's say post-sales season, you can understand where most of your audience is searching for, what they're searching for, and where they end up. So there are a lot of different things
00:09:43
that you can try, but I'd say the biggest would be to integrate all the free tools on each different platform, whether that be Amazon's attribution tool, Google Analytics, uh, add your UTMs. And that's going to be like the best way to kind of understand where the sales and the audience is actually at and how it can perform. You'd be surprised, some brands like we don't even need Google ads just cuz they don't perform well. We stick to Meta, we stick to Amazon, and that's all you really
00:10:08
need to grow certain brands. >> Yeah, that's great. And I guess, you know, the 2025 is coming to an end, but and I know a lot of brands are already thinking about their strategy and I guess long-term plan for 2026. Are there any patterns you would look for in the ad performance, the present ad performance that's helping you kind of shape the sellers or the client's ad strategy for the next few years or the next year specifically? >> Yeah. There's going to be always like
00:10:42
spikes that you're seeing during Q4. So even though we're near the tail end, I'd say this is just the beginning. Especially for like most people's sales season, Q4, there was a crazy stat that I read the other day that said 50% of all your sales are actually be done over Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend. So depending on how that weekend actually goes for a lot of brands is how you can kind of understand where you're going to be within your Q4 sales quotas. The interesting part is it always
00:11:09
depends on your niche as well. Like right now, gifts are going to do amazing. And a lot of fitness stuff might actually slow down. No one's really thinking about cutting carbs when we're going into Christmas dinner. Uh, everyone's be hoping to get those potatoes or the sourdough or whatever it may be. But that changes as soon as like January 10th usually is. January 11th. People's credit cards are going to be in the red for the first two weeks of January. So, don't expect any sales
00:11:34
velocity there. But as soon as that second week of January comes around and people get their paycheck, that's usually when you can see like a boost in sales. U and specifically in fitness and better for you categories, that's always kind of like a game plan that we have for those specific niches. But a good thing to do is always just evaluate what's going on from your current sales season, what's happened historically throughout. Like on Amazon, you can always see what's happened or what
00:11:59
worked really well during Prime Day one. And it's cool that some they started doing two of them throughout the year. Now you just have more data. A lot of people they kind of get hyped up or caught in the mix of saying, "Well, Prime Day is not really good for us. It's it's just costing us more every year." But the cool thing to do is use those days as just data days. Just create a long list of keywords that are performing well, which ones are getting you traffic, which ones are actually
00:12:23
converting at a good velocity and create profitable sales for you during peak seasons when Prime Day 2 comes around, Black Friday comes around, December comes around. Use the data that you collected throughout the year and just double down on what's worked for you and forget what everyone else is doing when it comes to broad keywords on Amazon specifically. With Meta, you're going to have an ad library that's worked throughout the year. Find the best ads, turn them into a holiday ad or a Black
00:12:48
Friday or Cyber Monday ad because you know those creatives work really well. All you have to do is tweak the messaging slightly and now you've taken eight to 10 months worth of ads and created an ultimate library for the last sales push of this year and then you just re-evaluate what's happened create ad variations for the next year and just kind of run the same playbook. Things are going to change though. Like this year has been like the biggest takeover when it comes to AI. And anyone that's
00:13:15
ignoring AI or thinks it's just a fad, you're already kind of behind and you're going to get left behind. Thus even more indexier if you're not utilizing it. Take the creatives that are working, put them into Grock, get the or ChatGPT, whichever one you prefer, and find the ones that are performing really well for you and have Grock or ChatGPT make variations. Now, the images aren't going to be the best, but they're going to give you good creative ideas of what you should actually be
00:13:40
putting out there. So, using a mixture of historical data, AI, and then just creativeness that you may have on your team, you can kind of build upon what you've already have to create the best amount of ads, keywords, campaign structures that are just going to push forward going into the new year. >> Yeah. And I guess specifically regarding AI, right? I've been seeing a lot of AI companies for example that are able to autogenerate a lot of for example like product images for you AI generated
00:14:10
product images right for your brand. Have you been noticing a lot of CPG brands or even your clients also use tools like this or are they kind of going more with the traditional route of you know going through going to a photo studio having their photo or their product photos be taken by you know a photographer for example. Yeah, I think both need to be utilized. Putting up, let's say, a clear background image into AI, it's going to force AI to generate everything in the background.
00:14:40
And sometimes that quality isn't the best. So, there are two routes that you kind of take is if you have the budget and usually brands that are in this kind of bucket of sitting between the mid five-figure mark on a monthly basis, pay the studios. Find a good professional person that you like that's done product photos in your niche, and you like the brands that they're working with. Right? As an agency, as anyone who's kind of like a creative, we're more than happy to show off the biggest
00:15:06
customers that we have. So find ones that you can kind of relate to in your niche. Find a photographer that's really good and let them take really high-quality product photos. Now you can take those product photos and put them into something like Nano Banana or put them into Sora. I'm not a big fan of the video AI stuff just yet. I still think there's a lot of room for improvement. So, I'd still prefer the human interaction there, but static creatives, comparison charts, all that fun
00:15:31
stuff where it's just a quick little image. I think you'd be wasting time and money and effort if you're not using AI for those. Video ads are still going to be the best with influencers that you can partner up with. I just think Sora, too, is getting really, really, really good. Like, it's fooled me a couple of times. But I think AI is going to be heavily influenced or influential in the CPG game or just product in general. The one thing I'd say to be cautious of is typically when
00:16:01
you're working with an influencer, and that influencer's audience is usually built on trust and authority within that niche. So just because there's somebody on a phone talking about something, it doesn't automatically mean I'm going to relate. But if I have, let's say, someone I'm following. So let's say there's we'll use an easy example like Kylie Jenner. She's known to be in the fitness space. She keeps herself fit. She has her own cosmetic line.
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She's known to be someone that's interested in how cosmetics blend. And I don't know all the sophistication behind makeup, but she's an authority figure. So therefore, if she's kind of like the person that you're getting to influence her audience, there's already a connection that she's built and therefore there's more trust with the products that she's promoting. Whereas, if you just have someone that's AI-generated, speaking about a product, you're banking on the fact that this is
00:16:53
going to catch the right person's attention at the right time and it's not really going to use the power of an influencer, which is that they've already established an audience that trusts them and their word. So, that's my hesitation with going full AI or full time influencer AI marketing just yet. Whereas statics are usually just images right, it's just we we find the images we find the numbers really attractive we find the callouts really attractive and that can get our
00:17:23
attention so I do have a little bit of hesitation but I do think AI is going to be something that can definitely take over >> absolutely yeah and I agree I've been hearing kind of a lot of mixed opinions on it but I agree in the sense that a lot of people are kind of pro using AI tools for example for specifically like static images I would say But when it comes to let's say videos or any sort of like testimonials, things like that, that is where there is quite a bit of hesitation on it. Yeah. Awesome. And I
00:17:53
guess you know regarding budgeting, which is always going to be something that's very important to a lot of CPG brands and forecasting for the new year. Do you have like any tips or advice on how brands can allocate their budget between, you know, whether it's like Meta, Google, Amazon, PPC ads just because a lot of these brands are usually running ads on more than one channel, right? >> Yeah. I think the easiest way to understand what budgets to play with it depends on your size, right? I always
00:18:26
tell brands if if you're not comfortable spending 5 to 10K per channel, get to 5K to 10K on one channel first. Just go all the way on one channel that's performing the best for you. And typically, it's going to be Amazon because there's less investment on the creative side that you need. Whereas for meta, you're 60 70% of the effort is your creative. So, if your creative suck, you can have the best ads possible, but it's just not going to convert because things don't look good, right?
00:18:56
It's a really visual platform. You're targeting, let's say, Instagram, Instagram reels, Instagram stories, Facebook, Facebook has its own stories now. So, if the quality of imagery is not there, your messaging is just going to get lost in the noise, right? If we, for example, if we put up this video and we're all pixelated and everything looks bad, people aren't going to be interested and they don't really care what you have to say if what you have doesn't visually look appealing. And
00:19:23
that's why you can see some of these ads on Instagram where within the first 3 seconds is it that's considered like the hook. The hook has to be so strong because I did a a test myself of just putting out a bunch of different content and most people skip within the first second if they're not visually entertained. So even when you're out there on Instagram or just scrolling throughout your day, look at the things that caught your attention and made you watch. That's the type of creative
00:19:48
depending on what you're trying to sell and who your audience is, you have to understand and recreate that for people to catch. There was a big trend in the beginning I think it was either this year or late last year where every video on every single platform you saw have either someone splashing water on them or someone getting kicked through a window or something really really exciting. and everyone was copying it because we wanted to see what was going to happen next. Obviously, that trend
00:20:13
had a really good phase and I think it's starting to die down. But look at these things that are going on. What is the attention capturing thing going on? And the best place to look, depending on what platform you're on, is a lot of the trends, let's say your target is people in the ages between 18 to 25. What is capturing or what is getting the most views on TikTok? because that trend is eventually going to follow onto Instagram which is then going to go on to Facebook. So each platform has like
00:20:41
its core age demographic but the the niches are all going to be on every single platform. So if you can get ahead of the niche on your particular platform, find what's working on TikTok, start creating a replica ad for Instagram, put a larger budget behind it because that trend that's happening on TikTok is going to end up on Instagram which is going to end up on Facebook. So I think for most brands, if you just follow where the attention is and put money behind that attention, you
00:21:07
can then definitely create a big opportunity for yourself in any market or any niche that you're in. >> Yeah. And I'm assuming you would recommend brands to at least be able to dedicate around 5 to 10K in ad spend on a monthly basis. Is that correct? >> Yeah, minimum. I think for us under 5K, the reason that it gets really difficult is you need it. It's like playing a basketball game. If we're playing five on five and we only have five players, as soon as they get tired, we can't
00:21:39
score any points. It's a 40-minute game. Whereas Amazon is open 24 hours. There are always people on there. There are always people looking for something. If you have, let's say, we'll use round numbers because I can't do math this way, but let's say you have a $1,000 budget and each click is going to cost you $2. That means after 500 clicks for that day, your product is no longer going to be shown. 500 clicks a day when your competitors might be doing 10,000 clicks a day means they're going to have way
00:22:05
more data than you can. So, it makes sense to kind of focus on where you can collect the most data efficiently and then use the best performing data on let's say a more expensive platform or a new platform that you want to try. There's a lot of people that just start out with Meta and Shopify and they don't like Amazon because it takes a lot of your margin. Well, what you've essentially done is let's say you created demand, and I'm guilty of this, too, because I believe it's something
00:22:30
like north of 85% of all people on Amazon have Amazon Prime because we need the free shipping. Whereas, if I go to your website and let's say I'm just buying one of your products for the first time, that might not meet your Shopify threshold of free shipping. So, I might go I might click one of your ads, then I'm going to go on face or I'm going to go on your Shopify website, add it to my cart, and now there's a $12 shipping fee for a product that I was only going to be paying $30 for. I might
00:22:56
go check on Amazon to see if that product is available. And if your product is in there, essentially, you ran an ad and created a customer for one of your competitors because their product is available. So, we always say keep your top hero products on Amazon. create bundles to increase the value that you have on Amazon. Therefore, no spend is being wasted or going to your competitor and then within that packaging you can always put something that leads p people back to your Shopify because at the end of the day on Shopify
00:23:24
you get all the customer data. You can get their emails, you can even get their SMS and then whenever you have a Black Friday sale just send them a text. SMS converts at an insane rate compared to everything else that we've seen and I never thought it would have worked. I thought it'd be the most annoying thing in the world for a brand to be texting me, but I've signed up for things like Psycho Bunny or some other clothing companies and I will always click the link just to see what's going on because
00:23:51
you sent it so directly to me. So, I'll always jump on the website if there's ever a sale. Even if I have no intention of buying anything, it's you've texted me, which is a little bit more personal than email, a little bit more personal than just being on my Facebook feed. I would just take a look and that look can then turn into a sale eventually. >> Wow. So you're seeing SMS perform channel-wise over for example like email would you say? >> Yeah, definitely. It's I feel like
00:24:17
there's a higher barrier of entry. So what we like to do is when we're collecting emails is we'll take the email up front and if that's all you're comfortable giving giving to us that's awesome. But right after you submit your email, we'll then include a text opt-in. And maybe the text optin gives you another 10% on your first purchase or whatever it may be just to entice that text to actually come through. And now there was a brand that we launched, I think it was a brand new product launch.
00:24:43
And I think on emails we did something like 7K and with text and we had fewer numbers collected than email, we generated 15K. So almost double the amount of emails and a lot of people are getting a lot of emails. Not a lot of people get a lot of texts and we're more inclined to take check out our texts because, realistically, I have my Gmail notifications turned off. So any brands that we work with, I always give out my number. I always give out my WhatsApp message me there. Email I check
00:25:12
maybe three or four times a day. My phone is always going to be in my hand. Someone's always going to be texting me in case my mom calls or whoever may call. I know my phone is going to be there. So text messages get more views than email. >> Yeah, I remember I saw a stat that, for SMS marketing, typically your users will open up the text message probably within five minutes of receiving it, which is relatively quick compared to email, where I completely agree with you in the sense that an email might land in
00:25:41
my inbox. I might just delete it without ever even opening it. Right? So I can understand that kind of SMS cuts through that clutter and that you know compared to for example email which can easily be ignored by any users. So yeah. >> Yeah. And then even going back to the AI stuff, like if if you're able to reach directly to your customers as soon as they need you, that's one of the best things because if you can set up an AI bot to answer text messages back and forth or just have a
00:26:11
conversation with the customer that may have clicked on a SMS message that then went to your website and now there's a cookie of them going from a text to your cart. Maybe they added to car. You can now build campaigns to actually help out with abandoned carts. You can send them a text saying, "Hey, look, you added XYZ. Were there any questions?" And now that person can have a text conversation, which is way easier than having an email back and forth. Just asking any questions that you may have.
00:26:37
Maybe at the end of four or five questions, it's been a day or two. You can even have an automated message that goes, "Hey, look, these are still in your cart. Seems like you're having a little hesitation. Would you be interested in the 10% off?" Now, you've personalized their cart with the discount and answered any questions that they may have had for your product. and therefore there should be no hesitation. >> Yep. Completely agree with you. And I guess I know we kind of just mentioned
00:27:03
in terms of SFS marketing, right? And hopefully that's going to be even a bigger trend maybe for the next few years. But I guess you know are there any other like noticeable trends that you foresee for the upcoming year or any opportunities that you're really excited to kind of explore maybe in 2026? Yeah, I think and maybe this has already been said by a lot of other people, but I think brands becoming a personality is going to be a big thing. Whereas having a conversation with a brand is
00:27:36
going to be like being friends with them, right? We're more inclined to trust people that we have a day-to-day conversation with. So, and obviously, you don't have to text a brand when you're when you need a therapy session or whatever it may be, but being able to quickly connect with them and understand what they're doing. If you look at there's a company on TikTok that I'd love cuz they'll just do skits about some of the customers that they're dealing with. And I forget,
00:28:01
They sell jets or they sell private flights. Colin, I believe, is the CEO. And they're just talking about their day and it's almost like we're not me and Colon will never be friends or one day maybe if we need a private jet but just seeing what's going on his day-to-day life it's more so if I ever needed a jet I wouldn't hesitate to give him a ring first because there's a relationship that we've built through a screen of just him letting us know what's going on with his day how he
00:28:26
deals with some of his employees what he likes to eat whatever it is but there's a level of transparency that you can't reach with any other way of communication So having a personality is going to be the key. And I think one thing I'd love to see, and I'm seeing it a lot more with CPG brands, is collaborations. Maybe things that would never even make sense, right? Even as like gags, as jokes, as taking a brand that, let's say, sells protein shakes and a brand that sells something that's
00:28:58
completely sugary or not even related to fitness life, but now creating a flavor that matches the two, for example, right? like a grape flavored protein powder. Even if it's just a gag for April Fools, you can create so much attention by cross-referencing the two brands. If the CEO of one company loves to play paddle, for example, then partnering up with, let's say, a paddle company and having your logo on there and having, you know, a game with the person that owns paddles versus
00:29:27
the guy who likes protein. Like that would be fun. It's fun for everyone to watch. You can build up fake beefs you as we like to call them. And we saw how much attention that can bring, regardless of what niche you're in, right? Some of my favorite people are entertainers like 50 Cent who's always just going to have some sort of controversy behind it. But that brings enough notoriety to both brands, where they can both grow if they play it smart. S,o even creating situations like
00:29:56
that, it it's going to be more heavily involved in entertaining your potential customers than just trying to sell them all the time, right? If you can keep my attention, whatever it may be, whatever attention level or attention span they can get from me, if we build a relationship through that time together, then I'm more likely to do business with you. >> Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned regarding brand personality, are you noticing that a lot of for example even the CPG brands that you're working with
00:30:25
or that you're just seeing in general, do you notice how are they kind of building out this brand personality? Are you noticing a lot of them are doing it through for example Tik Tok? Focusing on Tik Tok whether it's like maybe their own YouTube channel or Instagram just because I'm slowly starting to notice that Tik Tok is a way that a lot of brands are doing this but I'm just curious if you're seeing something else. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, I I definitely agree. I
00:30:49
think Tik Tok is an amazing platform because it has, in my opinion, the best reach. Like anything can go viral on Tik Tok any given day for any given reason. Whether it's good or bad, that that is completely up to you. But it's also the most authentic in my opinion where being polit like being politically correct like is is a trend that we have to see die because if every brand looks the same or acts the same or has the same sort of opinions on things, there's nothing differentiating you from the
00:31:20
world, right? you're you're all going after one audience where it's better to pick a side, be who you are, be find customers that are like you and they will support you, right? Depending on whether you like the color blue and you hate the color red, help people that. Let them know exactly who you are. You may shut down an audience on one half of the page, but the other half are way more likely to support you and go with you. And we've seen this with companies like like dude wipes will do it. Well,
00:31:49
They're just not going to say anything politically correct. Any opportunity to talk about, you know, taking a, they're going to talk about it. Companies like Black Rifle Coffee Company are completely on one side. If you don't like guns or you're not really for that, you're you've shut off an audience. But the audience that's comfortable with that, that likes those personalities, they're they're heavily attracted to you, and they've both built major brands, right? So I think I
00:32:18
think being yourself, not being afraid to be cancelled, I think that's going to be a big wave for the next year. There was a time when everyone was kind of scared to say anything that might lean left or right. And I'm kind of happy that, you know, people can just be themselves a little bit more, and that's going to build a lot of brand character. If you're a funny person, if you like telling jokes, do that with your advertising. I convince founders all the time, just pick up the
00:32:44
camera and just tell us who you are because we're going to buy from you. Your company is not Wonderbread. It's not PepsiCo. We're not just buying it because of the flavor. We're buying the audience is going to try it because they like you as a person first. And they want to see what you have to offer to the world. So, I think personality, especially in CPG, is going to be a major factor. People want to know why you do things and why they should support you. And you being
00:33:08
yourself is the easiest way to gain that support, I think. >> Yeah. Awesome. And I guess Gurdeep, you know, I'd really love to see if you'd be interested in sharing, like a real case study of maybe a brand that you've worked with. Maybe their PPC strategy or like an omnichannel strategy that they did. Any insights, results, or key learnings that you may want to be able to share? Yeah. I got to bring up Flourish. Flourish Pancakes is one of the best brands that we have had
00:33:39
opportunity to work with. We met Andrew 2022, I want to say. And we started working with them at the end of 23 across all their platforms. So, Amazon and Amazon was a huge mess for them. So they would run into a lot of pricing issues because they would sell to things like Healthy Planet or they would sell to a shop or Shoppers Drug Mart or whatever it may be. And once all these online platforms like Amazon have a metric where they have to be the most cost-effective or the cheapest price out there, especially
00:34:11
online. So if Healthy Planet sells it for, let's say $10.99, and on Amazon, we're selling it for $11, we would lose the buy box. That was one of the biggest issues that we faced and we couldn't get aggressive with ads at that price point. So the first thing that we did on Amazon was we created two packs. One that increased our margin but it also made a unique price point on Amazon. With a higher average order value, you can get way more aggressive with ads. And now I think we're the number one best seller for
00:34:40
protein pancakes on Amazon Canada with with their buttermilk flavor. So Amazon like I'm telling a lot of people in CPG especially are just regardless of what industry create bundles, right? They're more likely to sell and it's not that big of a a barrier of entry. Like if people like your product the first time they try it and Amazon being the best return policy in the world where you can return anything whether it's open almost sometimes where whether it's broken even, Amazon will take it back.
00:35:07
So people are a little bit more happy to spend a little bit more. They also get the free shipping. combining that with pushing their meta ads and finding things that work on meta was a fun place to be as well. Like when we started with them, I don't want to give out the exact numbers, but they were in let's say the low five figure month, which is still pretty good. Like they were a pretty established company when it came to online. But we started doing things where we wanted to create more hype with
00:35:36
every product launch or with any sales season coming. So, one of the greatest things that we we did is we would actually run early access sales. So, we create a landing page for them, run ads where people can sign up for early access and get, let's say, a certain discount. And this is where split testing is one of the best things in the world because you can split test two different offers when you're running these landing pages. So, let's say the entire thing was going to run for about
00:36:02
two weeks as a pre-sale. Week one, we're just going to split test two offers. Does buy 1 get one work better, or does 25% of your entire order work better? And surprisingly, the buy-one-get-one was the best offer that we could come up with. I think three times as many people were signing up for that offer. So all the ads turned into buy one, get one free. And we've been running that whenever we launch a new product. We'll have anticipation ads for a week prior. Then we'll have the
00:36:27
early access, and then we'll have the product launch and product launch days with that campaign. We might get 5,000 new signups within those two weeks, which doesn't sound like a lot, but your sales will skyrocket. And now what you do is every single time that you launch a new product, you email these guys that signed up for the previous one to sign up for the next one. That way, you can have a longer email list, more people signing up, but you're also running ads to get new customers to try
00:36:52
this offer as well. So, it's it's a snowball effect where once you do one thing, you just use that and you milk it as much as possible, testing new offers. And don't be afraid to test. Testing is going to be the one thing that's going to help your business grow. Losing money in the short term to figure out what works and what doesn't work, sometimes it's a hard pill to swallow, but it's the thing that'll give you the most confidence with all the offers that you want to run in the future.
00:37:18
>> Yeah. And I guess when it comes to are there any like specific product categories that you see do really well when you're offering, for example, like a coupon code? Just because this specific brand, you know, you mentioned that you were doing some A/B testing and offering buy one get one free performed really well, but on the other side, have you seen other brands do this or other brand product categories do the same test, but coupon codes performed really well? Yeah. So, we
00:37:45
always like to pair it with some sort of action that we want the customer to take. Like whether it be a quiz, for example, and the quizzes work really well because what you can do is create a quiz at the end of it, you can have like certain parameters depending on people's answers, that certain products will be shown to them, and now offer a specific discount on those products. So, let's say like AG1 does a great job of this, where they'll ask you about what nutrition you're actually taking. So,
00:38:11
which one of their products would best complement your lifestyle? And for your first subscription, because they are subscription based, is you can get 20% off. Typically items that you're going to replenish on depending on the timeline, like there are some items where you might buy and you don't have to buy for 30 days, having a bigger bundle or a larger order value up front with a higher discount would work better. Buy 1 get one free is I I have no idea because when I did the math, a lot of people would actually
00:38:40
save more money with a 20% off coupon if they have a bigger cart. But that free that word free is just it's uncomparable when it comes to anything. So having a bundle, if you sell, let's say, basketball for example, coming with a free pump would be a way better offer than 20% off a second basketball. So, anything that you can kind of add to your offer that really doesn't cost you much, but it can help you kind of create more conversions and then maybe be profitable on the second order, the
00:39:10
third order, the fourth order. The two main numbers to always remember are going to be your CAC or your cost of acquisition. And then your lifetime value or your LTV. So, as long as your CAC is going to be lower and profitable than your LTV in the long run, you can create any sort of offer that you can possibly think of. And the more unique offers that you're making, tailor them to what your brand is, right? So, if your brand does a lot of funny stuff, create a funny offer. If your brand is more
00:39:35
serious or whatever it may be, create a more serious offer. Do whatever you can to kind of split the attention of someone to get them interested to figure out what you sell or end up buying what you sell. That's the offer that's going to work. And the buy one get one free has just worked so well, or meet certain cart values. This is a really cool trick to increase your average order value while having the customer assume they're winning or gaming the system. Anytime the customer
00:40:05
feels like they're beating you at something or getting a better deal than just buying a product, if they can feel like they're winning, that's the best offer possible. So, I believe for one of the brands we do, spend 50, you get free shipping, which most people were only spending around $36, and now our average order value has gone up to $52, which is more than enough to cover shipping. And just put more money in the pocket. Yeah, I realized, especially for whether it's the remainder of this year or just
00:40:35
for any brand moving forward, it's really important to do as much A/B testing as possible, especially when it comes to whether you're offering any incentives, just because you really never know what works with your customers. You never know what's going to intrigue them and what's going to get them to make that purchase or make them click on the ad, right? So, it's really interesting that you were able to kind of run that test. Mathematically, it might be smarter for the brand to have the customer do the
00:41:02
25% off coupon, right? But from a customer's perspective, they still like the buy one get one free offer more. >> Yeah. Yeah. And it's always testing, but always keep track of the data as well. And obviously, like as you're A/B testing, don't A/B test everything at once. Like, sometimes people will AB test their ads, their creative, the messaging, the landing page, the offer, that's too many variables happening at one time. So start with one when you see, let's say, you A/B test with an
00:41:32
ad and you find that ad one gets a lot more traffic, that's going to be the ad that you're running. And now figure out if the traffic is converting at a high level? Are you getting a lot of signups? Are you getting a lot of sales? If not, then it might be a problem with your landing page. Figure out what you can A/B test on your landing page. Once you have a decent or an industry average conversion rate, now look at why it's stopping them from, you know, checking out eventually or what kind
00:41:56
of offer can you change at the end to kind of improve? So, as you do like the A/B test in steps, make sure you're tracking what works, and then when you let's say a season later, you have a new product launch, you know, test A worked really well. So, use test A again, but then have a new test B, try something different, and just repeat that as you go on. Yeah, that's great. But Gurdeep, I'd love I know we're almost at time, but I would love for you to share any closing remarks if you want to share or
00:42:26
where people can find you and DiscoverMG. >> Yeah. So if you want to find us, DiscoverMG.com. I'm on LinkedIn. It should just be Gurdeep Sahota. Hopefully, I'm the first one you guys see. Instagram, I like to post a lot of free content ideas and free tips. And I believe @DiscoverMG. What we love to do is just speak to brands, see if we think we can work together. There are a lot of brands, and I hate to say this, but they have a great business, they're just not a good
00:43:00
business person. So, we need to make sure that, you know, if you're a good business person, we can help build a great brand, but sometimes it doesn't work the other way around. What we can do is just have a conversation about you know why you're running a brand, what is the purpose, and if our purpose aligns with that then obviously we'd be excited to work with people. But yeah that's that's pretty much it. Like we've been in the game for seven years, worked
00:43:26
with 400 different brands and we manage over 50 million in ad spend. So there is a little bit of understanding of what's going on in the marketplace with the team. But I think the key in something like this is when the playground is always changing, you have to stay adaptable. So, it's never getting stuck in our ways. There might be something that happens, like Meta just launched Andromeda, which is an amazing thing, but I run into somebody who's doing 10 million a month on Meta. And he created something
00:43:58
called the anti-adjamba effect, where he's completely going against what Meta is putting out, and it's working really well for him. So, depending on your niche, there are actually strategies that you need to use to counteract some of the updates that Meta may be doing to perform better. Now, some brands, most of the brands that we work with, we love the Andromeda update. Some brands, it won't work for them. So depending on how much data you have and what data you collect, you can actually
00:44:21
leverage both sides. Use Andromeda and then go against it as well with other ads, and just see what works out well for you. >> Yeah, that's really interesting. I know this is kind of a crazy time for I think any e-commerce marketplace, you know, even with Amazon, they have Amazon Rufus now, right? And now you also have ChatGPT with its integration with Shopify, if I'm not mistaken. Just a few other days ago, I think I was looking for products that I was specifically looking for, I think it was
00:44:48
related to pickleball paddles. And I was shocked. I was actually given recommendations of specific products on ChatGPT in my, I guess, search prompt. So, I was extreme I was really surprised and I can only see that this is going to be advancing like crazy and it's going to be a very I think 2026 is going to be a very exciting and interesting time for e-commerce. Yeah. >> Yeah. I think one of the best things to do, especially with you bringing up ChatGPT and using that search feature, is to ask
00:45:16
ChatGPT, how can you be on ChatGPT search, right? And they'll tell you things like we find most of our data from Reddit, which is a really undervalued platform in my opinion, where they're scanning all these Reddit threads to see what communities are talking about. I think Grock, Chat, JBT, Perplexity, they're all sort of like a community base. And I was reading this thing on why Twitter is always going to be better than Facebook in terms of the volume of people using it. It's
00:45:45
Twitter is the most up-to-date or X, I should say is the most up-to-date conversations happening in real time. So, using things like posting on X and posting on Reddit, where people are engaging and having conversations, those get picked up by all these different AI platforms as more relevant information than any other place. So focus on, you know, answering Reddit questions, building a Reddit thread for your brand, doing all these things where you can engage with your community, and that will just bring you to AI, which will then create a
00:46:12
bigger community for yourself. Yeah, you really you make a really good point. I completely agree with you in the sense that X is at least a community where it's real lifetime. It's based everything is real lifetime. Reddit. I think for example other platforms like Facebook is just a lot more slower to adopt and Instagram is yes you can comment on stuff but it's not really I think something that any search engines whether it be like ChatGPT is actually scanning for information
00:46:38
compared to for example you know Reddit where it is actively scanning and I do notice that ChatGPT tends to give a lot of answers or responses based on these, like community forums. Yeah, I think I think it has to do with not being, and I know this for Grock more than anything because Elon and them are really heavy on the free speech. I think it's more so having both sides of the conversation, whereas I think on Meta it's more so I think Meta might be a little bit more politically correct so
00:47:08
the answers are always going to be skewed in one direction or the other whereas on Reddit and you know this is Reddit is a a not for not safe for work environment I would kind of say where the conversations get reallya chaotic so you can hear full-on opinions about a product from one end to the other end and I think using that as like a baseline will really help AI and just help the consumer make a better informed decision of how people's experience are with things. >> Yeah. And I guess what's really
00:47:36
important is that it's honest conversations, right? Luckily with Reddit, you are kind of a lot more anonymous, I would say. So people are actually sharing their honest feedback, whether it's about a specific brand or product, which I think is very useful information for any potential shopper that's looking to make a purchase. >> Definitely. >> Yeah. Awesome. Well, Gurdeep, I know it is really late for you, so I do just want to thank you so much for taking your time to speak with me and sharing
00:48:05
all of your really great insights. This has not just been helpful for me, but I'm sure really all of our viewers as well. We'll have more information on where you can find Gurdeep and DiscoverMG in the description box below. I think that's pretty much it, right? I don't know, Gurdeep, if you just wanted to say any final words. No, I appreciate you giving us the opportunity, Joy, to jump on this call and share what we know. Hopefully, there's something valuable
00:48:31
for someone out there. If there's nothing else that you take away from this, GetReviews.ai. They're a really, really good platform. They've helped us with a lot of brands. So definitely show them some love and then show, Joy some love as well. This has been a great opportunity for us and, hopefully people like what we do and, we get to do more of these. >> Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Gurdeep, and thank you so much for watching. And just make sure you
00:48:57
check out the description box below. >> Sounds good. >> See you soon.
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