Prime Day is one of the biggest shopping events of the year.  We now fully expect Prime Day to land in June of 2021 (at the time of recording this podcast we were still uncertain of whether it would be June or July).  OMG’s Amazon Director, Chris Tyler and Amazon Specialist Amber Norell join me for this week’s episode to break down what we’re expecting for this year’s Prime Day and what you need to do to get ready.  

If you do nothing as an Amazon seller, you’ll likely see some lift in sales for Prime Day.  If you use some of the tactics we discuss in this podcast, you could generate some record sales days for yoru brand.  Here’s a look at what we cover in this episode.  

• Prime Day discounts and coupons - which is usually better and how to structure your offers.
• Amazon Live! - a perfect compliment to your Prime Day deals
• Lightning Deals
• Amazon posts
• How to maximize your storefront for Prime Day
• Does and don’ts to get your listings ready for Prime Day
• Plus more.

Also, read our complete Prime Day Blog here.

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Mentioned in this episode:

Amazon Sponsored Brands Video

OMG Commerce Blog - Prime Day Prep 2021

Amazon Live

Open Broadcaster Software (OBS)

Amazon DSP

Amazon Sponsored Display Ads

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Chris Tyler

Via LinkedIn

Amber Norell

Via LinkedIn

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Episode Transcript

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry CEO of OMG Commerce. And I am super excited about today's show. Today, we're diving in deep, to Jeff Bezos's favorite holiday. Yes, this was a holiday all about shopping. You love it, I love it, as Amazon sellers, we love it. We're talking about Prime Day 2021. How do we prepare for it? How do we maximize it? How do we extend the value and the impact from Prime Day to beyond?

Brett:

Today man, I get to bring on some of my team. Some of OMGs very young, some of our best and brightest. And I'm just going to grill them with questions about what we're planning and thinking for our clients, for our brands on Amazon this year. And so I want to first welcome back to the show and I think this is man, this maybe four. Is it? Real quick, Chris, is this the fourth episode you've been on or five?

Chris:

I think it's fourth.

Brett:

I think it's the fourth. That was my thought as well. So Chris Tyler, he is our Amazon director. Tons of experience. He's kind of a PPC mad scientist. A little bit of a savant when it comes to PPC. But also just understands business growth and online marketing and knows the Amazon platform inside and out. And he's becoming a really solid podcast guest as well. And he's got a fun background that he's using right now if you're watching the video. So welcome back to the show, Chris, and how's it going man?

Chris:

Man it's good to be here. Things are going well. Keeping busy but always have time for your podcast.

Brett:

Thanks. I mean, you have to say that. But I also felt like you meant it-

Chris:

I do.

Brett:

So that's all that matters. And then in addition to that, we've got a newcomer. And I just found out this is the first time that this guest has ever appeared on a podcast. And so we're bringing on our Amazon specialist and she heads up our Amazon full service offerings. She's got seven years experience managing brands on Amazon. That's like a lifetime of years working on Amazon. She's very, very bright. She's managed some amazing brands on the Amazon platform. We're just thrilled to have her at OMG. But I want to welcome to the show, Miss Amber Norell. Amber, how's it going?

Amber:

Good. Brett, I'm excited to be here.

Brett:

Yeah. Thanks for taking the time guys. So it's going to be a lot of fun. So we're going to dive in and as we get started, I just want to set the stage. I want to look at Prime Day globally. We all know it's huge. We all know it's the biggest day of the year for Amazon sellers, or biggest few days of the year typically. But just a quick recap. So last year, 2020, odd year obviously because of the pandemic and all the things that transpired there. There was such a huge COVID bump with e-commerce and Amazon had crazy volume all throughout the year that they weren't ready to do Prime Day in July like usual. So for the first year ever, Prime Day was in Q4, Prime Day was in October last year. But it was still a big increase over 2019.

Brett:

So let me just unpack the growth, talk about the growth a little bit over the last couple years of Prime Day. And then I want to get Chris and Amber's perspective on what are we anticipating for this year? What are we expecting? So in 2019, total of about seven billion, 7.19 billion, I believe in total sales on Prime Day. That's when it was in July and this was according to Statista. And that represented about a 70% year over year growth in 2019. Last year again, it was really kind of a kickoff to holiday shopping because it was an October. 10.4 billion in total sales.

Brett:

So nice increase really just a huge, huge couple of days there, but it was a slower growth rate. So it was a 40% year over year growth rate from 2019. So now as we look at 2021. I've got some thoughts here, but curious Chris and Amber, what are you thinking? What are you expecting in terms of year over year growth and total volume? And then just what do you think we can expect? And I'll dig into a couple of specifics in a minute. But just globally, what are you expecting this year for Prime Day?

Amber:

Yeah. I think-

Amber:

... go ahead, Chris.

Chris:

Oh no. You're good, go ahead.

Amber:

So I think similar to any year, we're going to expect to see a normal growth. I think more similarly to 2020, we can expect some curve balls just because of the state that we're still in. Some things popping up, movement of deadlines. But similar to 2019, I think we can expect a more normalized timeline. Where we're not so close to Q4 experiencing really difficult situations with inventory going in and running out of inventory from Prime Day and trying to replenish with replenishment limits. I think that's something that could clear up a little bit this year.

Brett:

Yeah. Awesome. What about you Chris?

Chris:

Yeah. I agree with everything Amber said-

Brett:

Hey, I think that could be the strategy for this show Chris. You could just say," No I totally agree with Amber."

Chris:

You've given away my plan. So now I got to think of something.

Brett:

I tipped your hand.

Chris:

I do think the benefits of this Prime Day is we have months to prepare. There shouldn't be any challenges on Amazon's end. I remember last year clients kept saying, "All right, When is it really? When is the day?" And even references people that we chatted with within Amazon were, "Hey, we don't know or we can't tell you." And it was a few weeks it felt like before and they're like, "Here's Prime Day." But I think as advertisers, there's challenges we face and that even the customer is not really knowing when it was coming out.

Chris:

We're not going to face those headwinds, so I do think it'll be more normalized this year. I do think though on top of that it's going to be hard to follow 2019's 70% growth, right? As these numbers increased, I think you said 10 billion last year. Even 40% is 4 billion which is more than 2020's 40% growth. So I can't say I'd see the 70% because that's 7 billion would be pretty massive, though that'd be fantastic. But I do think it'll be normalized. I do think we have time so as a team on our end and as advertiser being able to prep for that, it's going to be so beneficial.

Brett:

Yeah. I agree with you guys. I think once you get into really huge numbers, which Amazon has been there for a long time. But $10 billion over a couple of days, doubling that or increasing that by 70%, I think it would be really really tricky outside of some crazy outside circumstances. Like a global pandemic, like last year, hopefully we won't be dealing with anything like that this July. But yeah, I think we can say it's going to be bigger than last year. Almost certainly probably a slower growth rate. But lots more opportunity. I think this year for sellers to benefit because of the things you mentioned, because there's not as many inventory concerns and because we do have a clear timeline and so we can execute that and be ready.

Brett:

Any specific things you guys might share on what you're expecting this year in terms of ad spend and... We'll start with ad spend. Any expectations there for this year and what clients might expect with ad spend for Prime Day?

Chris:

Yeah, I think looking at the numbers from 2020 and 2019 there has been an increased use in CPC. Also, the correlation with Prime Day growth, whether it's 40 or 75% does tie into ad spend growing with that. So that's naturally going to happen Amazon would continue these expanding their PVC offering. Some of that pay-to-play mentality comes in. Granted, if you get organic, that's the place to be. So I do think expectations are ad spend will increase at the same rate or even a little more than previous Prime Day periods. And then one specific campaign call out I would say is sponsoring video.

Chris:

That was pretty new last year, kind of the golden era and still performance is great with advertiser we're working with. But CPC and a cost to continue to take up as more and more... I'm trying to skid get into that space. Depending on your goals, your margin, what you're trying to accomplish you definitely want to review and see if you should be pushing or if the numbers just don't line up with maybe the goals you've set in terms of expanding ad spend there.

Brett:

Yeah. It's very similar to Q4 on other platforms as well. So I'm more of a Google guy in terms of my background and my day to day. But when holiday comes search, shopping, CPCs do go up, but conversion rates also go up. So performance is still good. Volume is up. So it's guaranteed, we're going to spend more. And wholeheartedly agree with sponsored brand video is a place to be right now. And even though it's getting more competitive, it's still very powerful and I think should serve us well. And our clients well for Prime day. Anything you would add to that Amber?

Amber:

No. I am totally in agreement with you guys.

Brett:

Cool. And just for those that don't know and I'll show this really quickly. This is what a sponsor brand video ad looks like. It's used to be video and search. I think most people know, but just in case not. It's where you see that video ad in the search results as you're cruising through and looking for products on Amazon. So it's probably my favorite ad unit right now on Amazon because I've always loved video and I used to love the tie in with video and search and it's pretty powerful. So awesome.

Brett:

Let's talk now about our game plan, our plan of attack. So how do we get the most from Prime Day? I think it's clear that most sellers could do nothing and still see a bump. Because there's more shopping, more people on the platform, rising tide raises all ships type of thing. But why would you want to do that? Why not come with a game plan? So you can maximize those couple of days and build some momentum there that you can carry on into the rest of the year and into holiday shopping and things like that. So let's talk about this Amber.

Brett:

As we're looking at planning how we're going to maximize Prime Day talk to me about Prime Exclusive Discounts and Prime Week coupons. Because like holiday shopping people do expect Prime Day deals. And so they're ready to buy, but they don't want to buy a full price that they're looking for deals typically. So what advice would you give around Prime Exclusive Discounts and Prime Week coupons?

Amber:

So I just from experience have noticed that the Prime Exclusive Discounts do tend to create a higher lift. Part of that could be because the minimum for setting those up is higher. You have to offer a minimum of 20% off. But they also have a deal badge that says Prime Week deal exclusive. So it kind of ups that urgency where they feel it's not just a standard coupon, I need to buy now in order to get this discount. I think they're super effective. And if it's something that you can set up you definitely should. Some things to keep in mind is that you do have to have FBA inventory available.

Amber:

Again, that 20% off. And the deadline to submit those are two weeks prior to the event, which we don't know the event dates. So we don't have a firm deadline on that. We're tending to just kind of submit them now, just so they're out of mind. And you can cancel them at any time, but once that deadline hits, you will not be able to set them up at all. So definitely get those in if you're wanting to go that route.

Brett:

Awesome. And we are still thinking July. That we haven't seen any indications it would lean towards a late June or something. We're still thinking sometime in July?

Amber:

Yeah. That's kind of what I'm thinking. Chris.

Chris:

I would think so. It's interesting how many people I've talked to or articles I read and it's like, "Oh, for sure June. Oh, no, it's back to July." So to be safe, I would say definitely summer. And I'd probably look at June, July with July being the higher probability.

Brett:

Yeah. So have all your stuff together. And I know Amber is going to cover some more dates for a few other things, a few other deadlines. And we also have an amazing resource and also blog posts that Amber put together. Thank you, Amber, that we'll link to that has all the dates there. So you can have that as an easy reference. But yeah, just kind of plan on, okay it could be late June into July. And kind of three to four weeks in there just to be safe to prepare there. So I liked that though and considering what's going to create the greatest lift? What has the best perceived value to the customer? What does maybe Amazon favor and then what have we seen as far as results? So you're saying that Prime Exclusive Discount is working a little better than just doing a coupon during Prime Week.

Amber:

Yeah. It tends to work a little better. I mean a coupon is always a great fallback because it will show up on all ad types. So it is still giving that extra incentive. And at least that's something, I think the minimum is 5% for that. So it's if you have products that have tighter margins, that's definitely the way to go. And I've seen standard coupons get submitted during Prime Day and go through. So there's a little more flexibility with the deadline there.

Brett:

That's awesome. Okay. Let's talk about Lightning Deals. And I only have a slight understanding of Lightning Deals. I've seen them obviously. But you guys are the pros on setting these up and maximizing these. What advice would you give around Lightning Deals?

Amber:

Yeah, so Lightning Deals, if you're listening to this podcast, the deadline has already passed you can't opt into them now. But if you were able to slide some through, definitely be keeping an eye on your price prior. You don't want anything off of Amazon at a lower price point that can cause a deal cancellation. Keep an eye on the timelines, because if you get like a really wonky date or it's late into Prime Week, maybe you feel like you want to cancel it. Just knowing that that price to opt into a Lightning Deal is 500 bucks per deal. That would be my main thing is just watch your pricing on Amazon and off don't make any crazy pricing increases. 30 days leading up to Prime Day.

Brett:

Nice. You said 500 bucks per deal. Can you explain that?

Amber:

Yeah. So there is a $500 price to run a deal during Prime Week, normally it's 150, right.

Brett:

Okay. I was thinking some kind of discount or what was something that we're showing the customer and I was confused by that. Okay. Totally makes sense. Let's talk then about Storefront Deal pages. So that's something that we help with at OMG. We help build client storefronts and really help maximize those. I think that that's an important part of managing your brand and growing your brand and really maximizing Amazon as a channel. But talk to me, Amber, about Storefront Deal pages. What are those, how do we get max value out of this?

Amber:

Yeah. So a deal page is super easy to set up. It's just a matter of setting up an additional page on your storefront. There's a module that you can use that's featured deals. You basically just populate any ACE that you plan on running a coupon or a Lightning Deal or anything like that into that module. And it's basically done and you can run traffic to that page. Sponsored brand ads will give us some flexibility to mention Prime Day, so we can... as long as we're canceling it on Prime Day, so that it's ending with the event we'll have-

Brett:

Because you want it to be a true Prime Day deal and not just something we're calling Prime Day deal.

Amber:

Yeah, exactly. So we can run additional ads there and it's really just highlighting anything that's going to have some sort of incentive. The other thing that's really cool about this module is that it's dynamic. So say you're running a deal during Prime Day and then some during Prime Week, it's going to change out according to deals. And very few of the modules on Amazon are dynamic. So that's a pretty cool thing where you're not having to monitor it.

Brett:

That's awesome. Chris Tyler anything you would add on storefronts. So that's something you've been involved with and we've definitely seen an impact and a benefit as we have clients that we help build out their storefront. Anything you'd say to that in general or to deal pages.

Chris:

I would say we just think solid success, even when creating these not during Prime Day. And we have some clients that ran some aggressive deals during their own seasonality. And so I'm excited that this Prime Day what it can do. And as Amber said being able to run sponsored brand campaigns. I can run DSP and we'll talk on that a little bit later. I think we'll just do really well. And then one thing I would add the coupon in an exclusive discount discussion is... One cool thing with those, especially if you're a category in a product that does get repurchased or as a really high margin. Going aggressive with those Prime Day discounts, we have seen much higher improvement in performance compared to the coupons. They both do really well.

Chris:

So being able to plan out that you can tie that to, okay, what's going to be in the storefront. How aggressive do you want to be? One other kind of PBC and DSP do you want to run for that? So just be thinking if you're in that space that 20% steep as a coupon, but could you really well to bring in new customers and previous subscribers to the account and a few other things.

Brett:

Nice. Okay, awesome. So I want to talk about something now that I think well, it would just be interesting to dive into this a little bit. People are getting all excited about Prime Day and we're talking about how do we maximize and get the most from it. And I have a suspicion that there may be some people that are saying, "My listings are not all that well optimized." And Chris Tyler talked about, "Hey, I want my ads to really be performing well and at their peak, but also organic. I wanted to capitalize on organic. So I'm optimizing my listings. Let me see if I can get more organic traffic and optimize those listings." Amber, what would you say to people that are having this internal urge to maximize and tweak their product detail pages and their product listings on Amazon?

Amber:

Don't do this in the weeks leading up to Prime Day. Do this well in advance. So this is something you should be doing now. Look at your search term reports, things that are converting really well for you that are maybe missing from your listing especially your title. Work that in now, because if you experienced a listing suppression or D indexing, you do not want to be dealing with that during the days leading up to Prime Day. Another thing to consider is that A-plus content is now taking up to seven days to review. So if you're considering testing different things in your A-plus content, you don't want to be waiting to get things approved. I mean, it's taken... if you make additional revisions, it's taken three weeks in some instances for changes to go through for us. That's crazy right now. So be doing that now and-

Brett:

Now as in the time we're recording. Probably by the time you're listening, the answers just don't do it until after-

Chris:

It's too late.

Amber:

But yeah, another thing that you can definitely leverage, is experiments under brand features in seller central. So if you want to really prove that what you're doing is working. Do some AB tests with the title of the A plus content, the main images, so that it's serving two different options through that tool. And you can really weigh that out and go with the best option during Prime Day.

Brett:

Awesome. Anything you would add to that, Chris?

Chris:

No, I agree with Amber.

Brett:

Game plan is in action.

Chris:

Yeah.

Brett:

Yes, I agree with Amber. Very smart. I like it. Okay, good. That's brilliant. Okay. So let's talk about Amazon Posts. And this is something that they could be new concepts, at least some people listening. But what are Amazon Posts? How do we utilize them for Prime Day?

Amber:

Yeah. So for Amazon Post it's something that should definitely, I feel be implemented because it's driving free clicks. I mean where are you going to get free traffic on Amazon other than that. We don't have the ability to see what's actually converting, which is kind of a bummer. But we can see the clicks now, which is great. You can easily repurpose anything you're using on social. So it's very low effort to do that. And kind of breaking news this week, we've spotted that posts are automatically populating on Amazon Storefront as a page. So if you're running ads to your Storefront, your posts are going to be showing up there. It's also something that you can use to kind of promote a Lightning Deal. So you can schedule it at the same timeframe or right ahead of a Lightning Deal that you know is going to run.

Brett:

And how do you, for those that are unfamiliar with that don't know. How do posts drive organic traffic? And Chris you want to talk about this one because I know you've done quite a bit with posts, maybe not as much for Prime Day, but in general.

Chris:

Sure. Yeah. So placement for posts are mobile, the product pages, young brands pages, competitor pages, and the past few months, it actually also came out that it could show on the bottom of search results, which is pretty awesome. So it's not just relegated to specific pages. And then brands have their own feed that customers can follow the brand and be able to see what posts come out. And we actually have a couple of brands with several thousand followers, which I think is pretty awesome. And I think that Amazon has a focused on brand presence and building that whole brand equity. That posts what they're doing with Storefront are going to be more and more important.

Chris:

And so I think you mentioned it at the beginning of the post section, you're saying some people might not know this. And it's a pleasant surprise to a certain extent because we're able to tell them. But there's an audits we do that on thing, "Hey, what about Amazon Post? You're running that." And they're like, what? So I think that that value alone, if you're not running it, just setting it up, reviewing what it does, what you can put out there and then putting the game plan. We're kind of saying in place can do a lot of good for free essentially.

Brett:

Yeah. And not a huge amount of effort either, right? I mean you want to be strategic. You want to think it through, but it's not a mountain of work and then there's no cost other than creating the content and-

Chris:

You've got the one image and you can put up the 10 ACE and that used to be just one ACE. Now you can put a child variations in there. And I think it's up to 2000 characters, though we usually recommended a paragraph or so. People aren't really going to read a whole novel within that. And at least at the time of this recording, they're not indexing by the keywords and characters you put in that content. They do auto kind of categorize what your product is. And so your posts can go into whatever station or categories in. So I would just be more attention grabbing and clearly stating what the product is or what it does. Lifestyle images do best. Don't do the white background images and try to improve click rate. Think kind of that social proof mentality.

Brett:

Love it. Let's talk about another concept that I just think is awesome. And I've always enjoyed infomercials. I like a good sales pitch. This is fun for me I guess I'm little bit weird that way, but let's talk about Amazon Live. So Amber, what is Amazon Live? How can we use it for Prime Day?

Amber:

So Amazon Live is an option where you can live stream depending on whether or not you're using a brand account or you have an influencer doing this for you. It'll show up in various places. Main places, the Amazon Live hub. Also if you have a brand account or a seasoned influencer account it'll actually show up on the detail page. My thoughts on Amazon Live are, we're getting a boost in traffic on Prime Day. It gives you a rare opportunity to really like engage with customers real time. It can be really impactful to showcase products that have Lightning Deals and answer questions while it's happening. From what I have seen it converts really well on Prime Day. Click through rate is great on Amazon Live videos and you can get a huge burst of views and traffic. So I think if you have someone in place that has that experience and is familiar with OBS, it's super easy and it's a no brainer to definitely tap into that during Prime Day.

Brett:

Sorry, what was that acronym you just used?

Amber:

OBS.

Brett:

Which is what? Sorry.

Amber:

It's a streamer software that you use-

Brett:

Got it. Got it. Okay. Okay. And yeah, I mean people love QVC and they love to see... even though there's like a little bit of cheesiness to those things sometimes. People like to see a product live in action and see people demoing it and talking about it and stuff like that. It just ties in really well to retail is a hobby for some people. There's shopping therapy that goes on and we like to watch and see demos and explanations. So definitely tap into Amazon Live if you can. Let's talk about ad budgets. So we already talked about this a little bit and you know what some expectations are there.

Brett:

But let's maybe put some parameters around that just a little bit and create some expectations of, okay we're expecting this huge lift in overall traffic, in lifting competition, more advertisers jumping into the fray and bidding on keywords or increasing their bids on keywords. So I'll pose this to you first, Chris and then Amber, I want to hear your perspective too? How are you advising clients to adjust or look at their... prepare their ad budgets for Prime Day?

Chris:

Yeah, great question. For specific answers, we always like to go client by client and be able to get their own data. But high level, the things we're looking at is what are the trends for the past couple of years of Prime Days? We know there's anomalies with last year. But we don't want to say that that is worthless. So just seeing what happened then, what were some wins or some challenges or what were things that are available now that weren't then that they should be using and if they are using should be pushed and then breaking down and probably carry it into the lead up. The two days of the run of Prime Day and then the follow-up because I did mention earlier, you normally see a 10% plus increase in sales post Prime Day. So we want to prep for that, we want to capitalize on that-

Brett:

And post Prime day. How long is that post Prime Day window typically? And again, obviously it's different for every client, but how long does that 10% average bump last after Prime Day?

Chris:

I would say for most clients that actually kind of starts that next level of growth for some that are seasonality based it's about two weeks, and then we'll kind of settle into wherever their numbers should be. But we found as we get more aggressive kind of post Prime Day with DSP, coupons, PBC that that kind of pushes the next quarter, at least in our view to be a bit stronger. Obviously I said fits the KPIs the clients are going after but I would look the two weeks after, but you use that as kind of a jumping board for the next few months.

Brett:

So maybe that just unlocks a new level of growth Prime Day kind of unlocks that. And now we can accelerate growth just a little bit afterwards.

Chris:

Yeah. We've seen success with that. I also think that obviously you have your client and for us we work on this with our clients. We want to know what the strategy is all the time. What are you going for? Is that eight cross tacos growth or next year? And it always is a combination. But determining what it is that you, as an advertiser want to be seeing during Prime Day, some clients just want to do that. "Hey, I'm just going to rise with the tide." Others want to own the space for products or keywords, or just capitalize on sales with some coupons and deals. So I think high level figuring that out is even talk any kind of budgets. And then based on deals, coupons, promotions you're running go product level to figure out, okay where should a budget be spent during the lead up, during an after, but at the product level, because if you're running a deal on 10% of your products, those need to have some focus and not just one size fits all.

Brett:

Awesome. Amber, anything you would add to that or did Chris do a good job? Or do you want to like, make him feel good just say, "I agree with that."

Chris:

Or did I do a bad job?

Brett:

Really kind of you Amber to help Chris out like that? I agree with Chris as well. Okay, good. So let's let's move on then. I want to talk about DSP and typically if I'm invited to speak at a YouTube event or I'm sorry... Tell where, what I usually talk about is YouTube. I get invited to speak at an Amazon event or Amazon podcast I'm usually talking about DSP. I love it. It's fascinating to me. So just a quick explanation of what DSP is, and then I want to dive in. And I want to hear from both of you on why you view DSP as a bit of a secret weapon for Amazon sellers for Prime Day? And not the DSP itself is a secrets so much anymore.

Brett:

I think a lot of people are talking about it. But it could be a secret weapon for Prime Day. So DSP for those that don't know stands for Demand Side Platform. It's really just a way to target shoppers on Amazon, off Amazon, but based on their Amazon shopping behavior. So you can run ads that appear on news sites or blog sites or things like IMDb or other Amazon owned properties, or just across the web, even like kind of through a back door of the Google display network. You can run ads to people, display ads based on what they're doing on Amazon. So it could be remarketing ads, people that have viewed your ACEs on the Amazon, they didn't buy. Now you can hit them up with an ad on potentially espn.com or something like that and get them to come back.

Brett:

So there's all kinds of opportunities with Amazon DSP. I think it's still not a fully understood platform conceptually, yet people understand it. But how to maximize it people don't typically understand that. So I'll kind of to both. I don't know who wants to start. But why do you DSP is kind of a secret weapon and how should sellers approach DSP for Prime Day?

Chris:

Yeah, I can-

Amber:

I agree with Chris. Take it away.

Chris:

I was going to say whatever Amber says.

Brett:

This is super productive guys. Thanks.

Chris:

Yeah. So as you mentioned DSP isn't as secret anymore. There are more advertisers that are leaning into it. But I would say the secret weapon part is that full funnel approach. The lowest hanging fruit is retargeting, repurchasing and cross promotion, things like that. And those should always be run on one benefit obviously during Prime Days, you're going to have an increased traffics when you want to kind of lean into that and make sure you have the budget for it. But the difficult part is-

Brett:

Marketing audiences will suddenly balloons, a lot more people to target on your remarketing lists and then cross promotion, repeat purchase stuff, or just true remarketing that there's going to be huge opportunities for that. So yeah, awesome.

Chris:

Right. Yeah. And that's naturally going to happen, but the hiring the funnel aspect says you can push that more leading up to Prime Day, that you can have that competitive advantage that maybe your other competitors aren't leaning into. And so that's competitor targeting, so targeting people that your competitors and not purchase their products or yours, in-market people that are in market for the category you're in. And there's a few others with different placements, but it's kind of that just throughout. And one of the strategies we run is kind of the two weeks prior, we start to ramp up that targeting. You want to feed the funnel. You want to be able to during Prime Day period and onwards, be able to retarget to those. And one of the benefits of that, especially if you're running a deal, any type of promotion that does show in the ad copy, when you're running a dynamic eCommerce ad, which is just the way of saying the creative you build within DSP.

Chris:

And you can kind of push awareness for that product leading up to Prime Day. And then as you run those deals get really aggressive on the retargeting and the competitor targeting. If you're running on Prime Day exclusive discount of 20% and your competitors not being able to target people that viewed those competitors and have not purchased yet with your 20% off Prime Day badge is such a unique way to steal sales. I don't think there's other platforms that do it quite this way. So I think there's kind of a secret kind of approach there. And one of the things we also say is going back to that two weeks after Prime Day when we are going to see a lift.

Chris:

We found really good success, even putting like a 5% coupon, 10% coupon and running that retargeting still for people that need your product, even during Prime Day period, when you have that influx and it's not purchased we also normally add in purchases competitors as exclusions. Because someone could obviously look at your product during Prime Day buy another, hopefully not. Probably doing everything we said, that's not going to happen. But the ability to kind of extend that audience targeting that influx with DSP and coupons does fulfill that beginning to end approach through our strategy and adds another layer that I think not as many advertisers are using as I thought. And so I think it's a secret weapon.

Brett:

Yeah. For sure. Amber anything you want to add to it DSP?

Amber:

Nope. I think that was pretty well put together. Chris, did you want to talk on the dynamic ads and that as an alternative maybe?

Chris:

Yes. A great thought Amber. So sponsored display is DSP lite lite lite. With DSP you can manipulate where the ads are off and on Amazon device types, timelines, ACE and things like that. But sponsored display is enhancing and improving what it offers. And recently a new update came out where they-

Brett:

And maybe just to clarify that just really quickly, Chris. So Amazon DSP is a separate platform, separate program. It has minimums. You have to sign up for it. There's some, there's some hoops you got to jump through to get that going, or an agency can help you. But the benefit is you have all kinds of controls, all kinds of control on who you target and who you exclude and where you show up and all kinds of stuff. But then there's also sponsored display, which you call it the lite lite lite version, which I would agree with you. Easier to set up, easier to get going.But yeah, so let's talk about the differences there a little bit.

Chris:

Yeah. And that's available within seller or vendor. So it's something that anyone can access and then the benefit there is the accessibility to it. But up until now it's been very limited in what you can target. Amazon rolled out an update where now you can go after in-market, life events, lifestyle and interests. And this is really new. We're testing it. Don't have the results maybe at the time of this publishing we'll have maybe some stats we can add. But the benefits of this is there's no minimums with DSP you need 5,000 unique visitors for your audience and you can combine the ACE, but for advertisers that have new products or maybe products that just don't meet that threshold, which like everyone has, I think running these type of campaigns helps kind of give you the potential on that lite version, but still meaningful in general. But leading up to Prime Day and using a similar strategy in a condensed version I think can do well.So I recommend everyone kind of looking at sponsored display, getting familiarized with this new update because I do think it will be impactful.

Brett:

That's awesome. Really good. So before we kind of talk about maybe a couple of dates to remember, although we'll mainly keep that focus in our blog posts that Amber wrote just because that'll be an easier reference. I want to just kind of step back a minute and think what broad general Prime Day recommendations do we have? Anything we missed? Anything that you would add as we look to kind of wrap up here?

Amber:

Yeah. I think just going back to making sure everything's really aligned make sure that you don't have coupon overlaps. So if you have a deal going, you don't have coupons scheduled or you're monitoring that and canceling them and restarting them after the deal closes. Because you definitely don't want to stack coupons unless that's your intention. Just making sure that your budgets and what you're monitoring and PPC is aligned with your deals. So if you have a Lightning Deal going and you have a high budget auto campaign, you don't want it that to just go through the roof again unless that's your intention. So I think it's really just keeping an eye on everything holistically. Again, off Amazon pricing is huge, make sure everything is stable for L30, leading up to Prime Day.

Brett:

And when you say off Amazon pricing, mainly what you mean is you don't want there to be a lower price off Amazon leading up to Prime Day or during Prime Day that will hurt you significantly.

Amber:

And don't make... I would recommend if you can, if you're going to increase pricing on Amazon, do it incrementally and do it before the 30 days leading up to Prime Day, don't start making changes during that month leading up.

Brett:

Great advice, Chris, anything in general from you?

Chris:

Yeah. So taking that same thought of stability on the PPC side. I think thinking of what type of campaign you're going to want to be running during Prime Day and for what products and having those have data prior to Prime Day is key. Don't think, to build all these campaigns the week of Prime Day and just push them. You want to have somebody throw up a significance within Amazon, get the data and be able to have an efficient KPI, whatever that may be for you. And things that stand out are two months of display like we talked on, I would start testing that ASAP. So you have a month or two of data. So you know, what's working, you know where to push. And then sponsoring video, even though more advertisers are using it. There's still a huge amount of growth potential to kind of scale to more products.

Chris:

And I think that's one where if you're going to do that, do it a month or two prior, so that you can kind of leading up to it, get data, tweak it. Because the idea with Prime Day is you're going to lift budgets and push what you know, will work ideally. Instead of saying, "Hey, here's new campaigns." And let's find a lot and hopefully get the desired outcomes. So I think prep work so that you're stable during Prime Day is key.

Brett:

Yeah. So this has been brilliant. Thank you guys so much. I love the idea though, of thinking about this and being strategic, regardless of what your product is, regardless of your category, maybe Prime Day historically has been pretty good for you. Maybe it's been gigantic for you. I think just getting the most you can out of it. How do we leverage it so that those couple of days are huge? But so that we leverage that for growth beyond that. And that takes some planning and some prep and then some strategy. So maybe just a couple of dates to keep in mind. Amber, and then we'll mainly link to our resource. But any really important dates you want to point out?

Amber:

Yeah, I would just keep an eye on inventory shipments. That'll be in the blog post, but just depending on different regions and where you're selling, make sure that you're getting your inventory in and plenty of inventory in well in advance.

Brett:

Awesome. Sounds good. All right guys, fantastic man. You crushed it. It's going to happen again. I'm going to have to invite Chris back for the fifth time and Amber for sure inviting you back for a second go around here very soon. So thanks guys. Thanks for taking the time. Even though I didn't really give you an option, but I do appreciate-

Chris:

This was exciting.

Brett:

And you guys yes-

Chris:

Thanks for having us. Yeah.

Brett:

Awesome. And as always, really appreciate you as well. So we'd love your feedback. What would you like to hear more of on the show? And if you haven't already, leave us that review on iTunes, let us know what you think about the show. It helps other people discover the podcast and hopefully get some good stuff out of it. And hey, if you know other Amazon sellers that could benefit from this podcast, share it with them and love to connect with you on the socials as well. And so with that until next time, thank you for listening.