Selling on Giants: The eCommerce Marketplace Podcast
Selling on Giants: The eCommerce Marketplace Show is dedicated to empowering entrepreneurs and businesses with the insights, strategies, and best practices needed to succeed across major eCommerce platforms such as Amazon, Walmart, Shopify, and WooCommerce. Our podcast covers a broad spectrum of eCommerce topics, including product sourcing, inventory management, pricing, advertising, customer service, and fulfillment. We focus on the latest trends and developments within the industry, featuring interviews with experts, successful sellers, and thought leaders who offer valuable insights and actionable tips. Our mission is to be a comprehensive resource for anyone looking to build a successful online business on these leading eCommerce marketplaces.
Selling on Giants: The eCommerce Marketplace Podcast
Amazon Listing Optimization in the AI Era | Working Session with Jon Tilley of ZonGuru
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For years, brands focused on keyword density, search volume, and traditional SEO tactics. But Amazon's product discovery engine is evolving, and AI is changing how listings are understood, ranked, and recommended.
In this episode of Selling on Giants, Will Haire sits down with Jon Tilley of ZonGuru for a live working session exploring the future of Amazon listing optimization. Instead of another theory-heavy discussion, they demonstrate how AI is reshaping product listings and why many brands are still optimizing for an Amazon algorithm that no longer exists.
Using a real client example, they walk through how AI analyzes brand positioning, customer reviews, competitors, and product attributes to build listings that are designed for both human conversion and machine understanding.
What You'll Learn:
- Why keyword-first Amazon listings are becoming outdated
- How AI-driven product discovery is changing Amazon SEO
- The difference between keyword optimization and structured product understanding
- Why listing structure matters more than keyword stuffing
- How AI analyzes reviews, competitors, and brand positioning
- A live demonstration of ZonGuru's Helix AI transformation process
- Practical strategies brands can implement today
Whether you're an Amazon seller, brand owner, agency, or eCommerce marketer, this episode will help you prepare for the next evolution of Amazon search and product discovery.
https://www.zonguru.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/zonguru/
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Welcome back to Selling on Giants, the e-commerce marketplace show. Today's going to be a little different. Instead of a traditional interview, we're going to do a live working session around something that's starting to impact every brand on Amazon right now. Most listings today are still built around keywords. The problem is Amazon isn't ranking products the same way it used to. There's a shift happening towards AI-driven discovery. And a lot of brands are feeling that without fully understanding things. So I've got John Tilley of Zong Guru here with me, and we're going to walk through how he's thinking about listings in this new environment, what's actually changing underneath the hood, and what brands should be doing differently if they want to stay competitive. The goal here is simple: less theory, more practical. If you're running a brand, you should walk away with a clearer way to think about your listings going forward. Let's jump in. Hey John, welcome to the show. I'm excited to have you be here. Thank you for taking the time. I know you did a little pre-work for this, and we're going to be discussing uh your new software rollout, which is the Helix and how it's impacting search. But more importantly, what's been changing in the landscape of Amazon listings and Amazon search? We hear tons of buzzwords around Rufus, Cosmos, even some people claiming A10, which I'm not even sure is really a thing. But I'd like to get to the root of it today. So, John, uh, real quick, do you mind doing a super short introduction? And then let's I have some questions for you, and we'll jump into a working session.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh, well, always uh always good to jump on with you. I appreciate it. And um, yeah, I'm John. Uh, I'm over in uh Los Angeles and I'm the CEO and founder of Zonguru. Um, you know, we have a bunch of different tools you can use to really uh optimize and and manage your your Amazon business, uh, but our core focus has always been around uh Amazon's algorithm and reverse engineering. Uh, how do you can truly create content that maximizes your exposure and exposure and reach uh on Amazon? Um and you know, certainly uh it has had a seismic shift of late uh happen. And so, you know, we're truly uh engineered to help brands meet Amazon's AI moment that is currently happening with uh conversational search.
SPEAKER_00Uh love how you put it to the moment, because it seems like it just like a switch flipped, and then it's what everybody's talking about. Before we jump into a working session and you kind of go over what you guys do and how we look at this, can you tell me what what's changing about like what about the traditional ways is not working anymore in terms of listing structure?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, you know, I think the the most important concept to get across is like at a high level, you know, traditionally the way that Amazon was used as a platform was for intense searches and purchases, right? You knew what you wanted, you came on, you typed in a keyword, and you bought your product, right? Um, and Amazon's very good at that, and and it was optimizing content on your listing for keyword searches, right? And that game has fundamentally changed because the advent of platforms like and LLMs like ChatGBT, right? Where um, you know, they've raised their hand and they've said, hey, we're we're we've created this amazing conversational search agent where I can have a conversation with an agent and uh you know get answers to my research questions very quickly. Um and we all use Chat GBT or Claude or Perplexity, whatever that is, and and it's been fundamentally integrated into our day-to-day lives, right? And uh, you know, uh OpenAI, it's no secrets than ChatGBT that they raised their hand and said, hey, well, if people are searching for products, why don't we uh include links to to buying products on our platform and start to own that area of research and e-commerce purchasing, right? And so uh Amazon has, you know, through through has his hands been forced to a degree saying, hey, there's a new way of e-commerce search that's happening and conversational search. And we can either decide to give up that um you know, that market share to other platforms, or we can decide to own that, right? And they made the decision to own it, and so they launched Rufus, which is a conversational search platform that you can use and help uh find products, right? And and you can now use it in a in a keyword intent by a way of finding products, but you can also use it uh in a conversational way where you're researching and trying to find something that matches your your shopping criteria, right? And so Amazon has decided to own that area. They've created Rufus and the quality level of that has improved massively, which we'll talk about in a second. Um, so that's the one reason is they need to own their market share and they're all in on that. But the other side of it is there's over 270 million customers using Rufus today. They've projected 12 billion dollars in sales, right? Um, and the key stat there is like the you know customers that use Rufus, their propensity to convert is 60% higher than the traditional keyword search method, right? So people are having a conversation with Rufus, they're getting the answers to their questions that they have around buying a certain product, they're trusting the recommendations from Rufus and then they're converting at a higher um percentage and at actually at a higher card value as well because there's other recommendations that are coming in. So it's cool for Amazon, they're all in on this. Um now it's a question of whether uh you know brands uh are in on this as well and they can and they can capitalize on this new discoverability layer that is now available on Amazon. So, you know, um I this is our iShop today as I come on and I I will, you know, I don't even use typical keyword search anymore. I'll use Rufus because I might have specific questions that I want answered. Hey, I'm looking for a um, you know, a baby car seat that has a specific type of strap that I know is important for me that fits this kind of car or a narrow kit or whatever it is, whatever my criteria are, I don't even have to look at PDPs anymore and try and sift through the PDPs and try and find that information. I can just ask Rufus and it's gonna come back with answers and recommendations, and then I can click through and look, right? So it's a much more efficient, high-quality level search experience. Um, and uh, and you know, it's been adopted at a rapid pace. Now the trick is what is driving that, right? Um, and and what is driving that is a new algorithm called Cosmo. So Amazon had to move away from its archaic A9 algorithm that you know was basically looking for keywords in a listing, where it's mathematically where it's placed and what kind of conversion you're getting off of that, to use that as ranking factors, as part of the ranking factors, right? There's reviews and everything else that go in, performance uh indicators. But um in order to ensure that uh number one, the the Rufus-driven conversational search experience was at a level and a quality level of other LLMs, Amazon had to have a new algorithm put in place, which is Cosmo. Now, Cosmo is an intelligent algorithm that will use kind of indicators or signals from your content, from other factors, reviews, you know, performance factors, all that stuff, to then decide, hey, how should we map you to all the different keywords out there, right? There's a universe of keywords, right? And instead of like it's all semantically you use the content in your listing to map you to all the keywords because Amazon's gonna make more money if it matches you to the right keywords, right? So that's the one side. And then the other side is the Rufus QA side, which is you know, what are the types of questions and the types of uh you know use cases that uh that will allow Rufus to connect all the dots to recommend you uh, you know, two different types of questions that are being asked in Rufus or or directives, right? So if there's prompts or questions happening in Rufus, how is it intelligent enough to know, hey, this is what we need to recommend for that? And the quality level needs to be at a high level, and that's why Cosmo uh drives us. And Cosmo is intelligent enough to go, hey, I need to structurally look at your content and then connect all the dots, right? And if I have a product knowledge graph that will tell me, hey, you know, what is it for? Who when is it when should it be used? You know, what are the different use cases, blah, blah, blah. If it if it get if it's getting answers to all of that from your content, it knows how to recommend you, right? And that's what we call structured listing engineering, which is making sure that it's not just content for converting customers, it's actually a signaling graph that will tell Cosmo, hey, this is what my product should be mapped to for all these different questions, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You covered a lot there too. And just to kind of rehash, uh, your the adoption of Rufus and AI technologies for search is exponentially increasing. I read an article that Millennial and Gen Z is adopting it at a pretty fast rate. And you, what was it, 219 million searches on Rufus?
SPEAKER_02Uh 370 million customers, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, it's it's insane. And it's true because if uh I'm searching for something very specific to my use case, I'm going to Rufus and I'm telling them, here's the parameters, here's what I'm looking for, and it's making those recommendations. And kind of what we're going to dive in today, what the a lot of sellers are missing that's behind the curve is they don't understand that Cosmos is taking like contextual signals of use cases and everything else, and they're applying it to these random searches that are happening. And it's only a matter of time before advertising is deeply integrated in this and everything else, which is pretty exciting. But on that note, I know that you you looked at actually one of our brands. We recently took over extra wide stocks and you did kind of a review. I'd love to kind of do a working session. So any of our listeners who are tuning in and are saying, boy, that's a lot of data science for me. I'm just trying to sell dog food. I would love to kind of dive in on like how this is applicable to current listings and anybody who's considering how they're going to optimize for the future, what that might look like. John, you ready to jump in?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'm ready to jump in. I think I want to make one more comment, which is which is really cool for brands, right? It and you know, the the key thing to understand is the archaic A9 algorithm was like looking for like the more keywords you stuffed into that listing and the more ingredient focused you made that listing, and the more nonsensical you made your bullets and your titles, right? We all went through this era of keyword stuffing, you know, the better the algorithm got signals for and the more you rank for, right? But ultimately you had like this really crappy listing that didn't make as much sense, but it was really geared towards trying to signal the keywords, right? That those days are gone, and in fact, if you do that, you get dinged. But the reverse of that is not true, which is like now we can create listings that actually can breathe and can talk about the beautifulness of your product and why it's you know uniquely uh positioned to be a better product for the customers and connect with them emotionally and talk about the brand, right? So all the things that we should be doing on your Amazon listing, this heartbeat of your Amazon business. Now you have the the opportunity to talk about your brand in the best way and connect with customers and and convert them, right? Sell them on your product in a great way. So it's a really cool place actually for brands to be, and you can now transition your listings into um you know something that aligns with your brand, which is which is part of our process. So I just wanted to mention that because like people are like, oh no, there's this whole technical thing. Well, there's like there's a there's a bright side to it as well, which is like, okay, now now we can now we can actually be who we want to be on Amazon, which is great, right?
SPEAKER_00So um more branding too. Uh get rid of those generics, and also too, like you don't want to index for everything under the sun, you want to index for what you actually sell for and the problems you solve. So this is gonna make it easier. And um, I can't wait to dive in to see some of the technology you built out to support that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, 100%. Uh, is it better for me to leave this here or move it to the other? Uh, if you can click that off, that's good. Hide it. Okay, I'll put it here so I can see you anyway. Um, cool, you know. So um, you know, you're gonna come onto Amazon, right? There's obviously different ways for you to uh search, right? Extra white socks, right? You type that in, uh, and you're gonna start to see your typical organic results. Now, obviously, I've clicked on this before, so you know, it's smart enough to start to surface things that I've behaviorally clicked on. So that's one way you can find products. The other way is obviously with Rufus, right? Um, and you know, so that everyone understands, you can go into Rufus and you can ask whatever questions you want. It's gonna, it's gonna give you some of these initial prompts. Now, these are pretty generic, but like it's like, hey, how can I help you? What socks are best for swollen feet, you know, men's versus, you know, etc. Right. So I can ask any questions I want here, um, and it's gonna come back with recommendations. So for example, I can go uh you know recommendations for socks uh for socks that help with wide feet, white feet and heavy set bodies. I don't know, you know, who knows? You know, I'm just making it up, but um, you know, it I've I've kind of shorthanded this, but you can you can obviously have a a decent conversation. But like if I'm looking for extra wide socks, what you know, what is driving my search criteria and shopping criteria? Is it hey, you know, I'm I'm heavy set and I need something that's more supportive, or you know, do I want things that are mid-calf or that really, you know, also support, you know, I don't know if these socks do that, but like support um circulation or whatever it is, right? So hey, I understand these, you know, I can, you know, it's coming back with some recommendations, right? At the moment, right? Interestingly, it's not even it's it's not uh actually even it comes down with with uh extra wide down the bottom, right? Now, I can get I can get into this and and we don't want to get sidetracked too much, but you know, I can start to have a conversation here and say, hey, you know, great, like what are some other things that I should be looking at when I'm looking for socks, right? And it it'll come back and give me some some further questions or things I need to look at. I can ask for recommendations, right? And it'll be interesting to see, like, hey, is it gonna recommend extra wide socks or or a different brand, right? And I've seen this time and time again where where brands that are that are well known and might come up organically in a keyword search um search, uh, when I'm actually you know getting down to the the point of saying, hey, Rufus, recommend to me what's the best one for a premium level extra wide stock. You know, it might not come back and actually recommend your specific brand, it will recommend a different product, right? Because it might not be getting the exact signals. And so it's really an interesting area to play with Rufus because there's the general recommendations, but if you think about people who are actively using Rufus, they might have some longer tail search criteria, right? They might or shopping criteria, right? So, like, you know, I really want a black, you know, uh organic cotton, etc. Like so some of those longer tail use cases, you know, Rufus is gonna come back and recommend. So you've got to make sure that, you know, for the universe that's out there, it's almost like a longer tail keyword. You have to have those recommendations in place as well, right? And that's the kind of stuff that we do um with with uh with Rufus, right? So I'm gonna show you how we do this, right? And so uh we can look at um and feel free to ask questions that we go. Well, but like no, I'm looking at this brand.
SPEAKER_00It sounds like like you really need to understand your customer, who you serve and your product, right? Because if you're gonna be updating this to my point, you don't want to be everything to everyone, but people with diabetes, heavier set people, people with just big feet. Obviously, you want to make sure that you understand how they shop and the questions they might ask, which is how you're gonna index better, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. And so I it's it's an important point, and maybe just one last piece of theory on on this is there's two this Cosmo is looking for two kind of categories uh for signaling, right? One is uh something that Amazon gave us, which is it's a product knowledge graph, it's actually like a technical graphical mapping that you will have within your listing, which in a simple way of explaining it's it's it's a whole bunch of uh questions that Cosmo needs answers to. What is the product for? Who's it for? What are the different use cases? Is it seasonal? You know, so all of those typical questions, it's intelligent enough to say, hey, give me the answers to this because then I'll know how to serve you, right? What are the best keywords that you should be recommended for? So Cosmo needs that mapping, and then the other side is the customer rufous style questions that that it needs to understand. Like, what are the different types of questions that your product should be recommended for? And so we do a lot of engineering also on the question side on two factors, which is like, well, there's a number of different factors, but one is like what are the common, most common questions that customers will be asking when they're researching this type of product? So research is important, right? Because you want to service for the the the common research questions. But the other side is what are the most common questions that people have around the questions for shopping criteria to make conversions, right? And it's really important to understand the difference between the two. There's research questions and then there's conversion questions. Like if I get the answers on these ones, I know I'm gonna get a higher conversion, right? So we reverse engineer and we look across the spectrum of like what are the the most important questions, um, and then and then make sure we answer that on two factors. And we we score listings based on that. So I'm gonna show you how we score that and then obviously how we optimize uh in a second. But you know, high level just looking at this listing.
SPEAKER_00Um pretty interesting to make a comment on that. So, like what you really you're taking almost a funnel approach where it's like discovery happens here, intents here, and then these are kind of the lines of questions around it, which is a really interesting way to kind of discover how customers might initially discover and find in market versus somebody who is that customer and they're a little more dialed into exactly what they're looking for.
SPEAKER_02That's right. Yeah, 100%. Um, so yeah, I mean, obviously this listing needs uh help, right? Um, I mean, it does pretty well right now, but you guys are brought in to to help this listing. I mean, one of the first things I'd say is like, you know, for Cosmo and obviously conversion, images are critical, not only what the images are, but what are the copy overlays that go on this, right? And the narrative that you're telling to help obviously mainly with conversion with with humans, but on the other side, AI also reads your images, right? So, you know, this this certainly needs help with like what is the actual overlay and the content that goes into that, right? And we we help on that front, and then obviously on the the title, um, and then the bullets, right? Uh, you know, there's a whole bunch of stuff here that is being used to signal the strength of the listing, right? So uh it has EBC content, fine, but it's gonna need some help. So let's look at what this listing looks like, and so just uh chime in.
SPEAKER_00So that's a really interesting point. So Rufus slash Cosmos, they're actually so like those images that had no words, they were just lifestyle shots. It pays to put some text, the text overlay over that because it's going to get indexed one way or another. That's that's true, John.
SPEAKER_02That's true, yeah. So, you know, you can drop any image into you know, it's no secret that that that uh Rufus is driven by you know LLMs, right? They have Amazon Nivo, but they use anthropic as well, you know. So it's similar to other LLMs, right? If you take you you can't see the black box of what um you know Cosmo is, but if you take you know any image and drop it into Chat GBT and say, hey, what does this image tell you? It's gonna come back and tell you a story, right? And that's due to the content of the image, but the metadata behind it, right? And it's the same way with so the alt tags and everything else that you're adding in Amazon matter as well, right? Um and that that space will get progressively better. Um, you know, Amazon needs to take a couple steps there, but yeah, it does read your images. So um this is Helix, right? You can jump in, uh, we'll we'll give you a link. You can sign up and you know, it'll explain to you exactly how to go about transforming a listing. So there's really three steps, right? There's uh create your brand, right? Add your products, transform your listing. Now, I want to talk about this for a second because we've taken the approach of saying, hey, if you're gonna if if there's an uh a need right now to transform your listing to make sure that you are now discoverable across keyword search and conversational search, right? And get maximizing your discoverability, if we're gonna redo the content because it needs to be done, we might as well take the time right now to improve those other areas that I talked about, which is like, you know, let's start with your brand. Like what's your brand strategy, what's your brand um, you know, voice, uh, what's your brand style, right? Who are you as a brand? What's your mission? What's your, you know, what what's your what's your values of what you bring to the space, right? And so we spent some time making sure that we have in this agency system, we have agents that will go and research online, discover your brand, reflect back to you what the brand is, and do all that research. And and and then give you an opportunity to input into that, right? Because it's trying to learn exactly if I'm going to write your content, it needs to come from you know what is your brand about, right? So we do a lot of learning on that side, and then we we we do a lot of learning on the product side. So when you do the product side, we do deep research on your Amazon niche, but like at the end of the day, it's a positioning exercise, right? And so as marketers, as brand owners or as agencies, we we understand the idea of positioning, which is like, okay, on Amazon, you know, we need to position your unique selling proposition around what do customers want. So what are they saying reviews? What do customers truly want in extra wide socks? Not what we think, what do they want? Yeah, what are your competitors all talking about? And how what's what's our strengths as a as a product and as a brand? And how can we uniquely position that, right? So that's the the idea of the product side, which is like how do we uniquely position your your brand, but also talk about all the product attributes and the the disclaimers and the um the credentials or whatever it is around this product, how do we talk about that in the right way that matters to customers, right? So we we do a deep exercise on that, and then we finally transform the listings for obviously content that sells the customer, right? Um on the images and the content side, but is also mapped for for the AI readability. So that's like in a nutshell, the process that you go through here, and we make sure that we we allow you to go along with that process and input into that process because you know our agents are going to take the best shot at this, but you guys are the subject matter experts, brand owners or agencies. So get get the opportunity for you to give that input along the way, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and John, what I'm hearing, I love is like how much how important branding is now for the brands that are competing on Amazon or in marketplaces in general, and even from like the super basic level, it's messaging and positioning. And you need to understand the brand if you're gonna get the correct messaging, and then obviously the positioning and the unique selling proposition can all fold into that. So I really think it's smart how you guys have designed the system to put the brand first, dive deeper into products, and then actually optimize these listings. So I'm excited to see what you guys came up with with uh extra wide sock.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, um, uh, you know, may maybe not the maybe maybe not the most uh flamboyant brand out there, but you know, it's a brand. Um and you know, so so I've I've done this step, right? Because um, for sake of time, you know, just jumping and do it. But this whole process can take minutes, right? So you've got to go in and and and go through the process. But at the end of the day, um, you know, uh as you as it creates this content, right, you can you can kind of you'll get um you'll get a um kind of a guide that the an agents on the right hand side that might come back with specific answers that it's confident on, but where it's not confident, it might stop and say, hey, can you verify this information? So for the sake of time, I just clicked through and verified everything. But at the end of the day, right, you you have your brand story, right? Where you know, founded in the mid-1990s by Karen and Bruce, after recognizing a significant gap in the markets, you know, it talks about the brand origin. This is this is all pulling from content, you know, third-party content across the web, right? Vision statement to deliver unparalleled comfort and joy. You know, is that correct? Is this the vision vision statement that they have? Audience and position, target audience, right? Who is it? People with wider feet, ankles, and calves who struggle to find socks that fit, right? Um, uh without constriction, right? That kind of stuff. Unique value proposition, family-owned, American-made brand. American is obviously important here, right? Very profound. Uh built around with and medical fit, three specialized sub brands, right? So it comes back with all of this and says this is what our uniqueness is. Like, you know, how do we position ourselves in the market? Is it niche medical, comfort specialist, American-made, mid-market, inclusive fits, you know, ad market positions? You can add more, right? Or delete. Voice and messaging, friendly, playful, conversational with a genuine, empathetic core, uses rhetorical questions and humor to connect. Feeling trapped by tight socks, had to cut the tops just to fit, right? So, like, you know, like this is obviously his brand, right? Messaging preference, lead with the customer's pain point, right? Topics to avoid, stating in specific founded year, uh, all materials, USA source, right? So it kind of comes back with things that you might want to avoid and then proof, like submission and values, achievements, and social proof. You know, it had questions around this, like, hey, we found 5,265 Amazon reviews with a five-star rating. Is that true, right? So, whatever it is, right? It came back and you can you can delete these or you know, you can accept them. For the purpose of this, I don't know the brand, I just accepted it, right?
SPEAKER_00So it's just uh for for our listeners, I gave John no information. We met the week before just to kind of prep for this inner uh this workshop together. And he asked, Do you have a brand we can run this on? It would be fun. And I just said, extra wide stocks, they're new to us. And I just shared, I didn't even share the website link. I was just like, here's the top seller. And today we're seeing what the software actually came up with. So as I'm listening in and somebody who's working with Karen and Bruce, uh, a lot of this lines up. I mean, a lot of it. So it's really impressive that John, your software was able to kind of scour the internet, pull a lot of these in, but also get to the intricacies of the value proposition, the social proof, messaging. So, from the outsider looking in, this is pretty impressive. How long did it take to generate this page?
SPEAKER_02Is this like three days or no, no, two minutes? Yeah, it'll do two minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00That is impressive. Wow.
SPEAKER_02It'll do it'll do it in under two minutes. Um, and you know, you can you can you can also choose to like, hey, go ahead and pull from my website or you enter a URL and start there. But you know, you can also skip that if you had like a brand strategy document and you wanted to upload it and teach it that way, you can do it as well, right? But but to your point, like it's it's pretty cool to see this reflection back, and there'll be some things that maybe brand owners or agencies haven't thought about yet. So it's a kind of it's a good reflection from the forest from the trees, right? Like, oh, what is it? You know, we've had we've had brands come back to us and say, yo, this is you know, my website is not doing a good job of telling us what our brand is about, right? So I'm gonna go and fix that first, right? So um it's kind of interesting, and you can export, right? So there's value in this, obviously for Amazon, but you can literally have this export of this this brand strategy document that you can use on on other platforms, right? So once you've done that, like now you've you we've ultimately kind of factored in like some kind of knowledge around the brand, right? And as much information as you add to that, the more intelligent uh the agent is, right? And then we would go into the product side. So uh, you know, I I I did one of the products because I did a transformation, but I want to show you kind of what it looks like, right? So um I just took the the extra wide comfort socks here, right? Um, you know, it'll importantly, it comes back with a readiness score, right? So if I click on this, this is showing you on the current listing how well is this brand actually optimized for um for Cosmo and Rufus, right? On the mapping side, which I talked about, right? This left side, and then on the Rufus QA side, it's got a score of 61 out of 100, which to be honest is not actually that bad, right? Typically anything over 70, 75% is starting to get into a decent range, right? But there is some you know mapping that's already in place, but there's significant gaps, like it's showing you here, like uh used for, like how do you use it compared to alternatives? Uh, you know, develop skill used in, used on, used with. This is the one that's usually missing, the used with complementary, which is like that's a coby behavior, right? Saying, like, hey, if I'm buying thrombosis leggings, leggings for thrombosis, if I'm a customer buying that, I might also want to buy extra wide great socks, right? And so if you're not signaling to Cosmo the the coby coefficients and how those products can go for, it's not gonna recommend you in these other situations. And you want to be recommended when people might not be thinking about extra wide socks. I'm looking for these type of pants. Hey, Rufus will come back and say, Hey, now that you find the pants, what about socks? You know, and so if you can get recommended like that, you're just gonna increase your your revenue and selling, right? So it's saying you're there's areas to improve here, and then on the Rufus QA, there's things missing. What shoe size is for small men? What is the actual foot width measurement? Will they shrink after washing? Are they cushioned for athletic use? Do they have arch support? You know, these are all common questions people have that um that's an interesting one. Like if I'm buying these socks, like you know, is it gonna support my arch, right? Do these socks have that built in or not? Like, and if it doesn't, is that part of my shopping criterion? I'm gonna buy another sock, right? So it's kind of interesting to see some of the this is just a high level. It's not all the questions, it's just giving you a snapshot. Um but it's giving you a lot of.
SPEAKER_00I do like the Cosmo and the QA too. Something we always do on our side, which is a little more manual, scrape reviews, look at competitor QA's. It's interesting to get the Rufus perspective, and I'm sure it's based on uh the algorithm and how you guys are connected to the back end. So that's pretty interesting. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So we're using primary data to get at that as well. Um, so it's gonna come back and say, um, hey, what's your main main niche, which is basically your main buyer keyword, right? So uh extra wide stocks for men, you can change it, of course, if you want. Um, you know, you can you can um change it. It's got your top competitors. Uh, you know, I just selected these, but you can change them. So, like, you know, if we all know on Amazon, if we can help seed this with the most relevant competitors, it's gonna do a better job of of understanding your niche. Um, and then um you know, now we get into key features and benefits. So this is the important stuff, right? That is really critical to uniquely positioning your brand. But it's a summary of like what this is and what matters to customers. So extra wide uh fit up to you know 60 width, uh whatever that means, right? Designed specifically for wide feet, fits overcast and Uno boots, superior stretch, allows the socks to go on easily, soft ring spun, cotton construction. Uh, I clicked through some of these, but you know, these might be met if I made in the USA, unisex, medium cushioning, medium weight, right? So there's a bunch of key features and benefits. Now there's differentiators, right? And it's it knows some of these, right? But actually, it's saying here, hey, can you confirm these are the widest quarter socks available on the market?
SPEAKER_00Interesting.
SPEAKER_02Um, and and I can say, sure, you know, I can confirm that, or I can request a change, right? So I can confirm. Then it's gonna come back and say, Hey, uh, you know, your listing mentions four size available. What are the exact size names and corresponding shoe ranges? And actually, it's gonna give you its best answer, and you if you hit tab, it'll actually put that in, right? So what's cool about that is like it it'll have its best answer, but it's not quite sure. So you can select the answer or not, right? So we'll just do continue for now, right? So this is the process of how you go through um and you verify um, you know, questions, sizes, and then it gets into certifications, right? Um, you know, so it's gonna ask you like, hey, are these socks O E KO Tech standard 100 certified yes, no, you know, whatever these are, but these are important certifications for the things and sometimes it's gonna lean a lot more on like some of the certifications that could be in place. Yeah, and it's important to you, you know, as a subject matter expert, you might be like, hey, like we don't worry about this. So we'll just we'll just get remove it, right?
SPEAKER_00See, not sure about SOX, but I could see supplement brands being GMP manufactured, for example. That would be something that yeah, uh you probably want to put on your listings. Um, so it's pretty interesting. It's looking at uh that aspect, and I see compliance too.
SPEAKER_02So that's uh yeah, so compliance disclaimers, like you know, those are important, and then do not mentions, which we all know is so critical, right? Like, especially like this. If you're gonna say anti-mike anti-bacterial socks, you might get nailed, right? So, you know, and if I start saying, hey, it's gonna be medical grade, right? You might get flagged on Amazon and and your listing might not go live, right? So it's kind of come back with like, hey, some of the do not mentions, and you can click yes, verify, or remove, or add your own ones, right? So if you know specific things will help that shouldn't be mentioned, put a chair because then the system will know uh and and then obviously avoid that in the content writing, right?
SPEAKER_00Make sure and then it does its own first pass, John. So like it, like we have our own prohibited keyword list. I'll take it, it's pretty much baked in, so it'll flag it if it's potential and we'll just verify it or add to it. Very good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, just looking at the niche and it understands like um you know at first pass what are the main things that you shouldn't mention, but you can add to that as well.
SPEAKER_00Beautiful, and then you go seven. That's a huge improvement.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so you know, this is a transformation I did now. Um, I want to I want to show you. Uh maybe we can just take a second on this one. Let's see if I can just click through this real quick. Hold on. Uh, we're just gonna accept these, right? Let me just do this.
SPEAKER_00Let's do it. It's an example anyway.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Given you made this positioning, okay. So now what's cool about that, which I don't know if you saw that, but like based on the answer I gave before, it rethinks and it might say, Oh, because now you've verified it as this. Let me ask you some other questions, right? So it's a it's kind of a you know, it's a brain, right? It's thinking, and based on your answer, it might have some other things that it wants to verify, right? So uh now once you're done with this, let's see if we're done. It might have one more. Let's see. Um let's say we do not mention diabetic, whatever. Okay. Um so now you can run a transformation. So I just I'll run it on this white one, but what's cool when when you run the transformation, this is the this might take like five to ten minutes to really do this, right? Because we're got we this brain, you can start to see it's it's it's starting to think, right? And it's thinking about your brand, it's thinking about the the niche, the answers we're getting around the product attributes, and now it's strategically writing your content to make sure that you're positioned uniquely, to make sure you connect with customers. And what's cool, you can do this for the first time, and you can actually follow along and just kind of see how it's thinking, right? So, you know, I noticed the listing is doing exactly what it should for a medical focused product, it nails target audience, problem solving, etc. Um, you know, um, so it's saying, hey, we we noticed that, right? But it now it's saying, hey, this is interesting. The weakest dimensions are skills development, time, season, huge season, location, none of which are actually relevant to how someone with them for demo or a class buys socks. The listing isn't failing to communicate those things, those dimensions just don't matter for this product category and audience. So you know, so you can see it's in the research phase right now, but it's finding these like points, right? And it's kind of highlighting them. Like I'm seeing a potential mismatch between the brand, what the brand wants to emphasize, American-made, etc., and what the listing is optimizing for. The UVP, you know, or USP leans heavily into the only family-owned American-made story, but that narrative isn't showing up strongly in the current listing copy. It's mentioned once in the bullet, not woven into the positioning. So I want to change that, right? So it's finding all these things, and then it's going to start doing the strategy and crafting, etc. So it's really cool as like the agency or the brand to follow along first and say, hey, like what are the gaps and like how should we strategically change this content, right? So that's what it does as it goes through and does this process. And then obviously you get to the transformation, which is this, right? Um, now we're solving for two things here. One is we're we're we're solving the copy side and then the the image side, and there's a different approach to each, right? So I want to show you um what this looks like. So at a high level, right? Great, you scored well, you you mapped, right? Uh on the on the on this side, you know, it it's not always, it's never gonna be 100%, right? But as long as we're answering the most important stuff in the you know, best way possible, it's gonna connect you uh and and and link on that. And then on the Rufus Q ⁇ A, you know, it's gonna um so now we've we've answered 12 of the 14 main categories. Um, most importantly, like the most important research and and um and and questions are being answered in the content, right? And then we have the solution, right? So you can click on this to see the the copy solution, and it's given you to you in a in a report uh showing you before and after, like what was the before content, what is the actual optimized content. So you can kind of compare and contrast, and then the reasons why. Like, so hey, this is why it's now done in the best way possible. And I'll show you kind of what that looks through. So it helps to build confidence in your strategy and what you're actually putting forward to meet those two goals, which is maximizing human conversion and AI readability, right? So it'll summarize up top up top, like you know, okay. So, what is the overview? What's the key achievement? What's the primary focus, right? So, for example, we executed a fundamental strategic shift from feature-sparse, clinically neutral product mechanics to an empathy-first, condition-specific value proposition that converts every product attribute, non-binding band, uh 91% cotton blend, five-inch width accommodation, true to size guidance, and a tangible relief outcome for the medically underserved customer. The mainstream sock industry has historically ignored. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, that's awesome. Um, okay, so it's done, it's like, okay, so how is it done that, right? Current title, optimized content, current bullets, right? Uh, optimized bullets, non-binding extra wide design. If title elastic leaves painful marks or pulling socks on has become a daily struggle, these were made for you. So if that is if that's identified as one of the most key things that the customers really want, and you reading that first step, right? You know that uh, oh, this might be the thing for me. You'll continue to read, you know, and and and when you are reading content at this level, you know, it's it's saying what needs to be done. But importantly, it's also mapping uh you to be recommended, recommended for these things, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, what I like too is uh the natural language. And if anybody's ever done copywriting, it has romance. So if I look at the current bullets, they leave a lot to be desired. And and that first one you just read, non-binding extra wide, if tight elastic, like it does a really good job of describing the uh the challenge in a very human conversational way. So it's very impressive that uh this is what it was able to generate.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and aligned with the brand tonality, right? So um, yeah, so again, uh, you know, description, right? So you have a description, you have your back and search terms, um, you know, which is important, and then you have uh, and then we get into um so copy, title, descriptions, back and search terms, and then we get into a lot of the reasons why, right? And so it helps to explain, like, hey, how we evolved the content. So before it was like goes on easy and stays on. Now it's like the non-binding top band stays up, so it's linking the benefits. It's um, you know, it's added some additional uh benefits, right? It's value explained, right? So it kind of goes through like you know how it's aligned the voice, right? So it's explained to you like all the things that it's done in the listing, it's gone through all the mapping. So all that this is that Cosmo mapping, the technical mapping, you know, used for, used in what situation target audience is showing you, it's mapped all of that, right?
SPEAKER_00And I'll explain to you how it has the why as part of it too, so you can at least understand the rationale behind the changes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, now keywords is obviously important, so you can click on this to see all the keywords that you're semantically mapped for, right? So, yes, there's exact match. There should be something exact match. Interestingly, I don't oh yeah. So, you know, it's exact match. Interestingly, I don't know why. Yeah, typically, you know, you should have at least exact match on some of these, right? So it's showing broad match uh uh oh, here's an exact exact match is actually interestingly in the back end search terms, right? So um, you know, it'll show you all the keywords that you are broad and exact match through, right? Across the whole set, right? And this is from primary data from brand analytics data that's saying, like, hey, what is the most important keywords that we should be exact and broad match for to make sure that we map semantically to to all the keywords that are out there? And there's a significant amount, right? So you're you're across all of these keywords without overstuffing your listing with a bunch of stuff, right? So so pretty cool, right? And then um we answer all the roof QA questions, you know, and then we get into you know things that you also want to look at. Like, what is my ideal customer profile, my USP, but importantly, like how what do we understand as your ideal customer profile? And then how do we cover this where we connect the the unique selling proposition with what customers want, right? And so there's a whole bunch of explain explanation there. Um, and then the compliance side, like hey, some of the compliance things that we need to make sure that we addressed, right? So a lot to read there. I don't know we don't want to get too much into that, but you have all of that that you can review, and then you can go to the launch center to see, hey, how will my content look, right? And then importantly, you can do any quick fixes. So, like, you know, there's always gonna be like, you know what, like we actually we actually want to say um you know extra wide socks, you know, right? Uh we actually want it to exact match on extra wide socks, so we can change that, right? Or hey, you know what, like this bullet here I can even use, I can delete things, or I can even go, hey, you know what, like I actually want to lead with um you know this compliance, right? So can you put that first, right? I can put exactly what I want, or can you can you write this as 250 characters instead of 500, right? You can I can say, you know, write as 250 if I want, you know, like I mean, obviously that's two uh pretty big uh characters, right? Um and it will come back and oops, characters. Um, and you know, you can you can you can change it, right? And it'll say, hey, there's a delete, you want the new one? Sure. So like if you want if there's any final edits, you can do it, you can do it, you can download the CSV. Integrate into your system, you can upload it into your partial flat file, whatever, right? So this is the copy side of it, right? Now, um, the other side of it is the um the image side, right? So if I go down here, you can see the image analysis. Now, this is slightly different because we're not giving you the final solution of like, okay, this is the exact image generated that you should drop into your your your listing. Uh, we've done that for a very specific reason, but we're giving you all the insights and the recommendations to go behind it. So think of it as the ultimate like technical and creative brief that you could give to your uh your creative team to execute on. And you know, they all the research and everything that needs to be done has been done here uh for both human conversion and AI readability. We even give you down to the prompts that you can add to nano bananas or whatever you're using to generate images if you want to use that for inspiration or if you actually want to use it. So, whatever that is, we give it to you, right? So, you know, what's there's some cool stuff in this report as well. One of the important things here is like this thing here, what customers want, features and benefits. This is exactly what matters to customers. What you know, comfort and fit, medical and therapeutic suitability, material and construction, size, etc. Right. What we do up front is we give you a snapshot of the landscape of your listing versus your top competitors, but with this concept of like customers buy with their eyes, right? So, what is the narrative that you're telling in this image set, right? There's and there's no narrative at the moment, right? So, like, you know, I need to look at this through squinted eyes and be like, what is the story telling me? Probably the one that's maybe jumping out best is maybe this guy here, diabetic socks, like non-binding top. Remember, that was important. Best for people with enhanced comfort, moisture wicking cotton blend, comfort that lasts all day, right? So they're telling a story as I scan through the carousel. So we want to make sure that we're we're telling a story to our users because they're gonna buy looking at your images, but also that same story and narrative is what um AI is also looking for, right? In how it reads it, right? So we give you that, and then we give you a recommendation in terms of your carousel order, main image. We all know about the main image, hero shot, close-up macro shot of the non-binding top band gently resting against a bare ankle and lower calf, right? Lifestyle scene, infographic, feature highlights, social proof, package bundle, right? So that's what is recommended, recommending as a sequence. And then it goes into every single image, right? We'll go to the second image, right? Hero shot, research insight. For shoppers managing diabetes, edema, or lymphedema, the fear of painful elastic marks is the primary purchase barrier. And a close-up macro shot of mark-free skin is the most direct way to neutralize that fear at the emotional level. So include that in your insight. Visual description, extreme close-up macro shot of the non-binding, blah, blah, blah, right? Headline copy, zero marks, zero constriction. Supporting copy, non-binding top band stays up all day without squeezing your ankle or calf, right? So that's the messaging that needs to go into it. And then we even give you the technical aspects and the AI prompt. So, you know, a lot of brands will upload their current image stack and then upload these prompts and say, hey, give me a better image with the prompt. And it will come back with an image with your prompts over it. You can either use that or obviously you can you can um you know put it to your creative team, right? So it's it's a creative will look at this and be like, I know all this the strategy behind this. Let me just make sure this is the most awesome image possible, right? Um, and we do that for all your images, and then we do it for your EBC too, right? So down here, um where am I? Uh yeah, a A plus EBC content, right? So brand hero banner, research insight, visual description, all the way through to technical requirements, alt tag that you need to put on the back, image prompt, right? So again, this is gonna help you solve it for everything on the front.
SPEAKER_00Nothing left unturned. That's what I like. And not only you guys doing the architecture, the branding, but now you're also the the image guideline essentially. So you're covering, I mean, all aspects of it a lot, even so the back end. So it's a lot covered inside this report.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's it. So yeah, absolutely. So, you know what we're seeing, and this is important, is like, okay, well, what's the ROI on that, right? Um and uh how do you track that? And and what's interesting is it, you know, it's not just pure A-B testing, because A B testing is ultimately testing for conversion, right? But what we want to understand is discoverability. So tracking sessions, are my sessions incre increasing? Tracking uh conversion rates, is there a better conversion rate? Because we've been recommended in in in ways that customers are looking for the product, but also that we're connecting with them and they're converting, right? And then your niche rank, which which is like versus my competitors, my niche rank improving. So if we can see improvements in that, and importantly, while obviously making sure we track uh PPC spend and price, because if someone spends more and drops their price, you're gonna get better rank and sessions, right? So we we we have that as a variable because we want to make sure that, like, if that's stable, are we seeing increases in sessions, conversion rank, and and niche rank? And and overall, with the listings we're tracking, we're seeing notable uplift in that from day zero, right? So uh, you know, 68% increase in sessions, 13% increase in in niche rank, 18% in improvements in conversion rate, right? These are the kind of stats we're seeing, and you know, that ROI comes back because now you know people come back to us and they say, Hey, well, not much has changed, you know. Cosmo is is is smart enough to know, like, if I'm tracking for these keywords, you know, it's gonna match me to the keywords and stuff. Yes, but you know, you've seen that. Like, if you're not sending all the strong signals across Cosmo and Rufus, so that discoverability conversational layer, you're surfacing in the right way for that. If you're not maximized for that, you're missing out on traffic, right? And that traffic is converting at a higher percentage, higher values. So, you know, it it's it people have to understand that it's not just keyword intent anymore. There's so many, you know, exponential pathways that people can find your product. So you've got to send those signals to it to make sure that you are discoverable. And so that's what we're doing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. And what I hear too is like uh there's so many generic brands on there, so many people using AI incorrectly. And what I take is not only what the software offers, but the brand storytelling, that unique selling proposition, like what's gonna actually help you stand out. And even if it doesn't stick right away, at least you have something you can iterate against based on actual data, as opposed to just, you know, even just semantic text. Because as you mentioned earlier, the game has changed. So I really like what you presented here, John.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I um a comment I make on that is like we we have the saying, like you know, chat GBT is the new keyword stuffing, right? Which is which is like anybody who just uses chat GBT, it's just surface level, right? You you're gonna get you're gonna get some you know better answers and probably some some better things, but you have to have the the the knowledge of first-party data, like what's actually happening in Amazon, and clearly we can get at that through our API connections, right? Um, you know, what you know, reverse engineering and understanding what Cosmo really really needs, uh, reviews, customers, all that kind of stuff, but then also making sure that that mapping and the technical stuff is in place, right? So those are things that that are not easy to replicate, and certainly Chat GPT is not going to do that. So you need that information. And then to your point, like, you know, as marketers, as e-commerce, um, you know, sellers, you know, what are the what are the things that are important? And clearly brand strategy and positioning are are really important as well, right?
SPEAKER_00Differentiator. John, thanks so much for coming on. Before I let you go, I'll include all links in the show notes. But for anybody listening, where where can they find you? And anything else you want to share before I let you go?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, um, we'll give you the links, but zonguru.com, uh, you know, on the homepage, there's actually a couple of things you can use, you know, a general technology and software for tracking and insights and you know, dashboards, et cetera. But you know, the helix is there for you to sign up. It's free. Just sign up and start using it and do the transformations. There's credits that you can purchase. But we also have a readiness report on there as well, which is it is totally free. And that will audit and score your current listing. So if you want to, if you're curious and you just want to check your listing, go ahead and run that um and then you know, see how you score. And then based on that, uh jump in and and get the transformations done.
SPEAKER_00Heck yeah. John, thanks for coming on and sharing the knowledge. This is really insightful, and I love what you guys are working on. So we appreciate coming on selling on Giants. Thanks. That's a wrap for today's session. The big takeaway here is that listings are moving from keyword optimization to structured product understanding. The brands that adapt to that shift early are gonna have a real advantage over the next 12 to 24 months. Appreciate John walking us through all of this. If you're listening and this got you thinking about how your listings are structured today, it's worth taking a step back and reassessing what you're actually feeding Amazon. As always, if you found this helpful, make sure to like, follow, and subscribe wherever you're tuning in. We'll see you on our next episode of Selling on Giants.