#401 - How TO Launch A Product On Amazon with Influencer Marketing

·57 min·5 clips

William Gassner explains why managing hundreds of micro-influencers for product seeding was a nightmare before he built Stack Influence.

Host Carlos Alvarez welcomes William Gassner, founder and CMO of Stack Influence, to episode 401 of the Wizards of Ecom podcast. Gassner begins by recounting his entrepreneurial journey, starting with selling handmade products at art fairs in 2008 before moving into e-commerce. He founded Stack Influence in 2018 after a decade of selling, having built internal tools to automate and scale influencer marketing for his own brands. The core discussion focuses on using micro and nano-influencers for product seeding, where brands send free products in exchange for social posts. Gassner recommends deploying 100-300 such influencers for a new product launch, with Stack Influence offering a campaign starting at $3,000 for 100 influencers. He argues this strategy is crucial for new launches because it drives high-converting external traffic to Amazon, giving the algorithm the data it needs to rank the product—a problem Amazon calls the 'cold start'. Gassner suggests investing in influencers before Amazon PPC to build the brand and generate user-generated content, then layering in PPC once organic ranking improves. He acknowledges that PPC is a 'necessary evil' but notes some sellers run influencer-only strategies to reduce dependency. The conversation explores operational aspects, like how Stack Influence vets creators, prevents oversaturation by limiting campaign participation, and manages supply and demand across product categories like supplements. Gassner advises new sellers to test influencer marketing manually with 10-20 creators before scaling, and he invites listeners to contact him or his team for consultancy. The episode concludes with Gassner recommending the book 'Crossing the Chasm' and a plan for a future episode on post-launch strategies.

As heard by us

A practical Amazon launch discussion on using influencer content and outside traffic to help Amazon place a new product.

Episode 401 treats an Amazon launch as a content and traffic problem: sellers need useful creative, but they also need enough outside signal for Amazon to understand where a new product fits.

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Why you'd press play

You want your new Amazon product to earn attention before PPC has to carry the whole launch.

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