13:31
Amazon FBA
In this Helium 10 "Scale Stories" episode, mentors Jason and Vincenzo audit In Motion Hemp's stagnant ~$140,000/year hemp pain-relief cream business and prescribe subscribe & save optimization, A+ content and PPC diversification (Sponsored Display, Sponsored Brands video), and TikTok Shop expansion, with a stated goal of at least doubling sales to a quarter million dollars and ideally reaching a 2-10x increase.
David built In Motion Hemp after a hemp seed oil cream relieved his sore shoulder; he invested and grew into running the business, which now does about $140,000/year in revenue.
The brand's challenges include hemp-related advertising restrictions, a lost bank account after the bank learned the product was hemp-based, and resistance from Walmart over the hemp ingredient.
Jason's first listing critique: the subscribe & save price is nearly identical to the one-time price, removing any incentive to subscribe.
Helium 10 data shows a non-subscriber's average lifetime spend is $49 versus $300 for a subscriber, which the mentors use to justify prioritizing subscriptions.
Recommendation to get 30-35% of daily order value from subscribe & save, using a 5% or 10% discount (pending a deeper P&L review) plus a subscribe & save first-time coupon as a "double hook."
Buyer behavior insight cited by the team: shoppers click into reviews first, then scroll back up to view A+ content.
A+ content was redesigned to explain the unique formula (a skin-layer penetration graphic), highlight pain points (non-greasy, mess-free, easy to apply), and add a secondary image with drug facts and directions.
After the A+ content update, conversion rose from 13% to 15% and units sold rose from 497 to 548 in a month, projected to add $15,000-$20,000 over the next 12 months.
PPC strategy recommendations: add Sponsored Display retargeting and interest/audience-based campaigns, and start Sponsored Brands video campaigns targeting top 3-5 historically best-converting keywords and pain points found in reviews.
The rationale for audience/video advertising is that competitors concentrate on Sponsored Products/keywords, leaving audience-based and video placements as cheaper, more tailored, and less contested.
TikTok Shop expansion is proposed as an upper-funnel brand-awareness channel; impact can be measured via branded vs. non-branded search lift and new-to-brand customer counts.
TikTok Shop scaling plan: engage influencers to create content, then "whitelist" (pay to boost) pieces that gain organic traction while they still appear to come from the creator, and measure impact on Amazon/Walmart/eBay sales within a week or two.
Two new product opportunities are proposed: a hemp menstrual pain cream (very low competition per Product Opportunity Explorer, large non-hemp market) and a heel-crack roll-on (most competitors only sell cream format), with a longer-term idea to launch a whole foot-care product family that upsells and raises customer lifetime value.
Subscribe & Save (SnS) — Amazon's subscription program where customers get recurring orders at a discount; the video notes SnS subscribers spend $300 on average lifetime versus $49 for non-subscribers. Apply: Set the SnS discount to at least 5% (or 10% pending a P&L review) and aim for 30-35% of daily order value coming from subscribe & save.
Subscribe & Save first-time coupon — An extra coupon redeemable only the first time a customer subscribes to a product via Subscribe & Save. Apply: Stack it on top of the base SnS discount as a "double hook" to convert more first-time buyers into subscribers.
A+ Content — The enhanced image/graphic module on an Amazon listing that, per the mentors, shoppers view right after scrolling back up from reading reviews. Apply: Redesign A+ modules to explain the product's mechanism (e.g., a skin-layer graphic), call out concrete pain points and use cases, and add a secondary image with drug facts/directions.
Sponsored Display retargeting — A Sponsored Display campaign type that shows ads to shoppers who previously viewed the listing. Apply: Start running Sponsored Display retargeting campaigns to recapture shoppers who viewed but didn't purchase.
Sponsored Display audience/interest targeting — A Sponsored Display campaign type that targets shoppers by lifestyle/interest audiences rather than search keywords. Apply: Build campaigns around lifestyle audiences (e.g., golf, other sports, other pain conditions) to find cheaper, more tailored traffic than keyword-focused competitors.
Sponsored Products — Amazon's keyword-targeted PPC ad type, described as where "most of the money is going to come from" and where most competitors concentrate spend. Apply: Keep it as the core keyword-driven revenue engine while diversifying into Sponsored Display and Sponsored Brands to avoid competing solely in the same keyword auctions as rivals.
Sponsored Brands video campaigns — A Sponsored Brands ad format using video creative, currently unused by the seller and by most niche competitors. Apply: Produce videos addressing pain points found in review/complaint analysis, target the top 3-5 historically best-converting keywords, and run them as Sponsored Brands video ads to open a new traffic channel and gain extra placement real estate.
TikTok Shop — A social-commerce channel cited as reaching ~175 million households, with 50% of users over age 30 and ~90 minutes/day average engagement. Apply: Expand onto TikTok Shop for upper-funnel brand awareness and to drive both direct sales and branded-search lift back to Amazon/Walmart/eBay.
Influencer whitelisting — Putting paid ad spend behind viral or high-performing organic influencer content so it displays with greater reach and frequency while still appearing to come from the influencer. Apply: Engage influencers to create content, identify pieces gaining organic traction, whitelist and boost them with ad spend, and measure impact on Amazon/Walmart/eBay sales within a week or two.
Branded vs. non-branded search lift measurement — An analytics approach tracking the change in branded-term search/purchase volume versus non-branded terms to gauge the effect of off-Amazon marketing on brand awareness. Apply: Monitor branded vs. non-branded search volume and new-to-brand customer counts before/after TikTok Shop activity to quantify its impact on Amazon sales.
Product Opportunity Explorer — A Helium 10 research tool used to assess demand and competition levels for potential new product launches. Apply: Use it to validate new product ideas, such as confirming hemp menstrual pain cream has very low competition despite a large non-hemp market, signaling category appetite.
The subscribe & save push isn't framed as a discount tactic but as an LTV lever: the $49 vs. $300 lifetime-spend gap is the actual justification, not the percentage off.
The 13%→15% conversion bump is small in absolute terms but is reframed as a ~10% unit increase and $15-20K/year, using this small A+ content test as proof-of-concept to justify further investment rather than as the end goal itself.
The "reviews-first" behavioral finding reframes A+ content's job: since shoppers already read reviews before seeing it, content should reinforce or answer what they just read rather than serve as a cold first impression.
The advertising strategy is explicitly arbitrage-based: because competitors cluster spend on Sponsored Products/keywords, moving into Sponsored Display audiences and Sponsored Brands video is framed as finding a "loophole" for cheaper, less-contested traffic.
Influencer whitelisting is presented as a hybrid of organic and paid: the ad still displays as though it's the influencer's own post even after brand ad spend is placed behind it, preserving perceived authenticity while amplifying reach.
The new-product ideas follow a format-adjacency logic rather than pure category discovery: the brand's existing roll-on format is pointed at a niche (heel cracks) currently dominated by cream, treating format as the arbitrage variable rather than the ingredient or category.
The hemp-related banking and Walmart friction is presented as context/backstory but the mentorship never proposes solving it directly — all prescribed levers (listing, retention, ads, TikTok, new products) work around the stigma rather than resolving it.
«I don't know what a brand story is.»
— 00:08
«I didn't even know I had a storefront.»
— 00:17
«The goal here is to minimum 2x your sales or bring you to a quarter of a million dollars.»
— 00:36
«But if I'm honest with you, we want to reach this 2 3 4 10x, right?»
— 00:40
«We don't just sell a product. The product enhances everybody's life.»
— 01:34
«The banking industry's been an issue for us. One time, we actually lost an account because they found out it was a hemp-based product.»
— 02:17
«your average customer spend on your products from a non-subscriber is $49 during their lifetime. A subscriber spends $300 on average.»
— 02:59
«That's like a 50 increase, a 10% increase.»
— 06:03
«A 2% increase in conversion is going to result for you this this just small test we did, 15 to 20,000 dollars for you for the next 12 months.»
— 06:11
«Go meet the customer where they are.»
— 10:31
«We can launch a whole family that can at the end of the day can upsell each other, and we can do what is at the end of the day the easiest way to scale a brand, which is, you know, increase the lifetime value and how much money you make out of every single client.»
— 13:03
Reception
Viewers found the breakdown highly valuable and practical, with strong praise and no real criticism of the content.
The video is a Helium 10-branded case study/testimonial built around a single seller's numbers, doubling as a tactical checklist covering subscribe & save economics, A+ content redesign, PPC diversification, and TikTok Shop expansion.
13:31