Nectar

Co-CEO

Co-Founder

KLP Solutions Inc.

Co-Founder & General Counsel

Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, LLP

Associate Attorney

White and Williams LLP

Swartz Campbell LLC

Associate

Law Clerk

Scaling Established Brands Online | Co-Founder of Nectar

I was born an entrepreneur, but I didn't realize it until after I toiled my life away as a litigator for 5 years.

Once I decided that I had enough of law, I took the plunge into entrepreneurship in 2018, starting an e-commerce brand, which we sold in 2021. 

In late-2018, I co-founded Nectar, which began as an Amazon marketing agency and is now a full-service digital marketing agency.

My expertise is in positioning, content, marketing strategy, and I also manage Nectar's sales and marketing operations. 

I love figuring out complex problems and devising strategies to scale.

There’s a disturbing trend on LinkedIn where agencies and services providers do “take downs” of brands and publicly shame the people working at those brands by tagging them

I’ve seen it on issues such as fulfillment, retail media, content, and more

And it’s wrong

First, I can’t imagine these agencies and service providers think publicly shaming people is a good biz dev tactic to get business from the brands they are shaming

That would be insane

So I’m going to assume they are pandering to the competition 

Either way, it’s seedy

Second, the people working brand side are typically working hard and are doing their best

They don’t have all the resources they want, so these posters don’t know the tradeoffs the brands have to make

Also, the people writing these posts lack context such as what is and isn’t possible, automated errors, distribution strategies shaped by larger customers, etc

I doubt my post will stop people from making these stupid posts. 

However, I urge everyone to not engage with this type of content and privately hold people accountable who are posting garbage like this 

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should 

Rant over

Jason Landro

Co-CEO @Nectar, a Digital Marketing Agency Scaling Brands Online

Being a boostrapped founder has forced me to make a lot of tough sacrifices 

Over the years, I've sacrificed friendships and time with loved ones for long stretches to give the business the time and attention it needed to grow

I'm not advocating for being out of balance

Rather, it just happened (even though it shouldn't have happened)

As our business has matured, I've focused on rebalancing my time, health, and relationships

This past weekend, I got to hang out with my best friend David Scheetz, RA, NCARB

I whooped his butt in some golf-billards at Lawn, we visited WTC memorial (which I had never done despite only living 1.5 hours away for the last 15 years), and lots of walking 

We even pretended it was my birthday at some killer omakase joint in Manhattan so I could get free cake 

Don't worry, we tipped well. 

Dave has been instrumental in my journey as an entrepreneur 

He's always there for me to bend his ear when I've felt like giving up or am just maxed out

It's been really important to me to have friends like Dave because my chosen profession is inherently lonely and emotionally grueling

It was great to check out for a whole weekend, not work, and spend time with my best friend

I'm glad I'm reprioritizing what's truly important

If you're a founder who is struggling with juggling it all, don't hesitate to reach out to others who have walked in your shoes

Wisdom is invaluable; you just have to ask for it from the right people

Last year, Nectar was at a crossroads. We were losing way too many new business opportunities for retail media and our ads team wasn’t evolving

When Sreenath Reddy introduced Daniel Katona and me to Youval Peltier about a potential acquisition of iDerive, Dan and I were really excited about two things…

The first was the iDerive platform because it’s absolutely incredible

But the second was iDerive retail media team

It was incredibly strong and led by the incredible Harriet Carson 

Harriet truly understands how retail media works, especially on Amazon where ads heavily influence organic performance

She is also a voracious learner who is also on top of new marketplaces and capabilities 

She’s doing some of the most innovate things with AMC that I’ve ever heard anyone do

When we were close to finalizing the deal, Dan and I made clear to Harriet that we wanted her to lead and remake Nectar’s retail media team in her own mold

We knew it would be a painful transition that would result in most of the Nectar retail media team turning over

Because the right leadership hadn’t been in place, so too many bad habits had been formed

And most people are afraid of change or uncomfortable with it 

So we knew the likely result would be that many existing team members would self select out

That’s exactly what happened, but way faster than I thought

The entire former IDerive retail media team has stayed on while we’ve hired 6-7 new retail media managers 

And we’re winning new retail media business at a higher rate than we ever have

More importantly, we are absolutely crushing it for our client partners 

It’s because we have a best-in-class team that is always pushing the boundaries with a best-in-class platform 

Are we perfect? Hell no 

But I’ve never been so confident about where we are going 

We are hiring on our retail media team right now

Don’t hesitate to check out the careers page on our website 

#hiring #retailmedia #amazonadvertising

Stop building your Amazon brand store like a catalog. It's costing you millions of dollars in revenue, especially during peak Q4 season.

Instead, you need to merchandise the homepage

Too many brands list their categories and have a subpage for every category on their homepage 

However, you have the data sets for what consumers are most likely to buy

Amazon gives it to you in sales reports, brand analytics, ad reports, and store insights 

Your job is to guide them to buy what they are most likely to buy AND get them to buy more with strategic product placement 

Your store should make it easier for consumers to buy more

Not be an endless shopping experience of clicking around

Sure, there might be an exception or two for highly technical product categories

But by and large, if you adhere to the advice above, you’ll increase your revenue and average order value

That doesn’t mean you can’t list all your products

Rather, you need to do it strategically 

When you do it strategically, your brand store should account for approximately 10%-20% of your overall revenue on Amazon

With higher average order values and units per order

Below is a before-and-after comparison of the homepage for the brand store we did for Suave this year where it functioned like a catalog before

We saw great increases through the optimizations (case study is on the way)

If you’re struggling with your content, don’t hesitate to reach out to me or Nectar

When we acquired iDerive in the beginning of this year, I wasn't prepared for the next phase

When you're bootstrapped, no one gives you a comprehensive playbook for how to acquire a company and integrate the two

Sure, we had advisors and outside counsel, but they give advice; 

They don't do the work for you

In fact, I'm an attorney by training, education, and experience, so I probably am more inherently prepared than most founders to do an acquisition

The hardest part wasn't negotating the transaction or closing it

Rather, it was integrating the companies

We had a strategic plan, but you don't know what you don't know until you jump in and start doing the work

And there were lots of challenges that we didn't anticipate would be such a lift, including:

-Gaps in processes

-Training 50+ people on an a new software platform

-Changing ways of working to harmonize the two companies

-And so much more

I thought we'd have more territorialism on both side, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well the two teams assimilated and worked together

Part of the reason for that is that 3 people from iDerive came over as senior leaders at Nectar, which I believe helped build trust

Within 6 months, we were fully integrated, which was incredible

The two companies were a perfect compliment to one another

We were able to put together two companies to create best-in-class ad management, brand management, creative, and data and analytics for marketplaces

The growth we've had in the past 10 months has been impressive

But we're just getting started

It's crazy to think that we started out with just 3 people and in a month or so, we will have 100 people on our team

As we head into the heart of Q4, I'm excited to see the impact our team will have

It's also reinvigorated me as we prepare for our next phase of growth

Being a bootstrapped founder can be exhausting most of the time, but it's fun when you can see the the growth materializing each day

It's what you dream about

Here’s 3 reasons why you must regularly track your market share on Amazon…

1. If the category is growing at a faster rate than your brand, you’re falling behind

So what if you’re hitting your sales goals in this case? 

You’re actually losing market share, which could be an existential crisis over time

But how would you know if you aren’t tracking the growth (or decline) of the category

Similarly, you might be flat or slightly down but category growth could be way down

If you’re not tracking category performance, then you’re probably freaking out when you shouldn’t be

In fact, you might wrongly change your strategy if you aren’t tracking market share

2. You need to be able to benchmark to your competitors to make appropriate changes

Hitting your sales goals is only one part of the equation

If your competitors are taking share from you, then you need to adjust your marketing strategy or product strategy or both

Otherwise, you are prioritizing short-term results (sales goals) over the long-term health of the brand/company

3. If you’re gaining share, you need to know to double down 

How would you know whether you’re gaining share if you aren’t tracking it?

If you’re marketing strategy and execution is working and resulting in share gains, you likely want to be more aggressive as long as you have the inventory to support the growth and there is more to capture

In essence, focusing on sales goals and not measuring market share is like trying to lose a ton of weight but only focusing on diet or exercise, not both, which is just short changing yourself 

We track market share and category performance for all our managed service client partners. 

It’s a core part of our QBR process where we reevaluate our marketing strategies

If you’re working with an agency who isn’t tracking and reporting on market share, it might be time to reevaluate

If you want to steal market share on Amazon, you must tailor your content specifically for Amazon

Amazon has so many consumers who are in aisle for specific products or a solution to a problem but aren’t necessarily brand loyal

Therefore, brands need to adapt their content to be more educatational for those consumers

So what works on your website where there is no other competition usually doesn’t work on Amazon unless you’re the dominant category leader

What we see is that most brands don't properly plan their content before they begin creating or adapting it for Amazon

They often reuse the same content that they have on their website 

Yet your content on Amazon typically has to be more educational re the product benefits or problems it solves to win over those in-aisle shoppers

The creative strategy and research process is just as important as the creative execution for Amazon 

At Nectar, we have a comprehensive creative strategy process where we dive into...

-competitive research/analysis

-wireframes

-accessibility analysis

-how to harmonize brand guidelines and style guides with marketplace best practices

-data analytics

-and so much more that AI just can’t do

The output is a 40-50 page creative strategy for marketplaces

Only then do we dive into creative execution

As a result, we create content that looks like this for Hero Cosmetics as well as many other brands

We have a 4,000 sq ft studio in Denver, CO where we do photo, video, graphic design, and copy

Don't hesitate to reach out to us if you want to take your content strategy or content to the next level

#creativeagency #ecommerce #creative

Do This To Grow Market Share

If your Amazon brand store isn’t generating at least 10%-20% of your total Amazon revenue, follow these steps to fix it:

1. Your home page is the gateway that should drive purchases

It should generate at least 50% of your revenue (with a few exceptions)

So you need to merchandize it properly with shoppable products

Don't make it a catalog with categories and no shoppable product

2. Your site map should be simple based on how consumers shop

It shouldn’t be a cluttered mess of every subcategory that you sell

You can check the amount of sales your pages are generating in store insights

3. Balance aesthetics with functionality

Your store should look good and make consumers want to buy from you

Also, ensure they can easily add to cart and buy products

So don't make them click 2-4 times to have to purchase

Amazon gives you all the data to do this, including:

1. Store Insights

Which contains sales by page, conversion rate data, dwell time, CTR, organic traffic versus paid versus other sources, and so much more

2. Sales Data (Retail Analytics or Business Reports)

You know which products are your best sellers, so leverage them in your store

3. Brand Analytics

Market basket data can be really helpful for product placement and driving increased order value and units per order

There's a ton of other use cases as well

Brands that optimize their stores see higher average order value and units per order according to Amazon 

Below is a store the Nectar team did for Suave this year

If you're struggling with leveling up your content, don't hesitate to reach out to us

We have a 4,000 sq. ft. studio in Denver, CO where we do photo, video, graphic design, and copy

We've built amazing content for brands like Shark Ninja, Colgate, Belkin, Suave, Hero Cosmetics, and so many more

#amazonadvertising #amazonads #amazonvendor #amazonsellers

Use this advertising strategy to maximize performance during and after the Prime Big Deal Days this week

On high-visibility events like the PBDD, your deals should drive your visibility, not ads

Amazon makes deals more visible organically during these tentpole events. 

Consumers are looking for deals, so you need to make sure you’re running them and putting the bulk of your daily budget to those ASINs

However, that doesn’t mean you should go crazy with spend

The real work begins in the weeks leading up to the event

People are window shopping to come back for deals during the event 

That means you need a lead-in ad strategy

You want to target people who are in market and in aisle 

You can do that a variety of ways through search and ADSP 

Essentially, you want to get relevant traffic to your PDPs that you’re running deals on in the couple weeks before the event 

And then the key is to retarget the shoppers who didn’t purchase during the event

That is how you capitalize on their attention 

In addition, after Prime Day, you want to retarget people who didn’t purchase before or during Prime Day through retargeting

You can even exclude shoppers who purchased competitor ASINs through DSP

This takes a lot of planning work, but it’s worth it

If you feel like you don’t have the right tentpole strategy, don’t hesitate to reach out to me or Nectar

Most brands are frustrated by the fact that they can't measure their contribution margin at an ASIN level on Amazon. 

As a result, they aren't able to have ASIN-level KPIs that are tied to the bottom line, which is how they are ultimately graded on performance

Instead, they default to top-line revenue KPIs and some focus on market share

Those are only part of the equation

Top-line revenue doesn't matter if you're not profitable

That's why we have a SKU-level P&L for both vendors and sellers in our iDerive platform

That way our team is fully aware of contribution margin at the ASIN level, which we can also roll up to the parent-ASIN level

We can even create custom groupings to look at profitability across parent ASINs or child ASINs

We can also alter the COGs for a finite time period (e.g., cost increases due to tariffs for a couple months)

We don't stop there. We bring in contribution margin to our advertising and sales dashboards so that we have a holistic picture of profitability

I think this is one of our capabilities that sets us far apart from our competition when it comes to providing account and advertising management

If you're worried about your bottom line or you're not measuring it and want to, don't hesitate to reach out to me or Nectar

We’ve audited and optimized hundreds of Amazon brand stores the past couple years. We’ve found that brands with optimized stores meet a minimum revenue threshold

That threshold is that 10%-35% of the total sales are attributed through the store

According to data published by Amazon, brands with optimized stores have higher average order value and units per order on their brand stores (as compared to their account as a whole)

Because you can use strategic product placement with targeted messaging

There are no competitor ads, and you can curate the shopping experience like we did with Tom's of Maine

Optimizing your brand store is a great way to increase revenue, especially in Q4 when their is more traffic on Amazon

When we build a store, we use data from store insights, retail analytics/business reports, advertising, brand analytics, and more to 

-create the site map
-curate the individual pages in terms of product placement
-inform the design
-and more

After we lock in the site map and wireframes, we then move onto design

To check your brand store sales and data, go to the ad console, click the heart in the shield and navigate to brand stores. 

Then click store insights for a store and you’ll be able to see a lot of data related to your store, including your total sales for the selected time period

If you're struggling to get your store to the next level, don't hesitate to reach out to us

#amazonsellers #amazonvendor #amazonadvertising #amazonads

If your Amazon agency isn't using Amazon Marketing Cloud, you’re woefully behind because AMC does the following four things you can’t do otherwise:

1. It answers the question of how your ads work together 

Such as path-to-purchase reporting and custom queries on ad combinations 

2. It allows you to create high-performing audiences that you can’t otherwise create such as cart abandoners or lookalike audience, for example, while also layering exclusions

3. You can modify bids for certain cohorts such as new-to-brand customers

4. You can use the data to measure customer lifetime value, which is not really available to vendors otherwise 

5. And so much more 

At this point, there is no excuse to not use AMC unless you're spending very little money on ads

Not only have we set up AMC instances for our clients for a long time, we also incorporate AMC into our platform iDerive

We include the path-to-purchase, time-to-purchase, new-to-brand overview, and audience insights in our in-app reporting, which is just the tip of the iceberg, and we are adding a bunch more 

AMC has a lot of great data you can activate ahead of the peak shopping season to maximize your performance with a lead-in strategy

If your agency isn't using AMC, don't hesitate to reach out to me or Nectar to see what the opportunity is

As we approach the heart of Q4, it’s more important than ever to be able to measure your contribution margin at the SKU level 

Because top-line revenue doesn’t matter if you’re not profitable 

On ecom marketplaces like Amazon, it’s very challenging to measure profitability at the SKU or ASIN level

That's why we have a SKU-level P&L for both vendors and sellers in our iDerive platform

That way our team is fully aware of contribution margin at the ASIN level, which we can also roll up to the parent-ASIN level

We can even create custom groupings to look at profitability across parent ASINs or child ASINs

We can also alter the COGs for a finite time period (e.g., cost increases due to tariffs for a couple months)

We don't stop there. We bring in contribution margin to our advertising and sales dashboards so that we have a holistic picture of profitability

I think this is one of our capabilities that sets us far apart from our competition when it comes to providing account and advertising management

Because we devise strategies with contribution margin at the forefront and then we can actually measure it on a daily or weekly basis 

If you're worried about your bottom line or you're not measuring it and want to, don't hesitate to reach out to me or Nectar 

#amazonvendor #amazonsellers #amazonadvertising

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