Prime Day is now one of the most anticipated shopping events of the year for both shoppers and sellers.

It started in 2015 as a way to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Amazon.  Mostly it was designed to help boost sales during one of the slowest times of the year (July). 

It has since grown dramatically and rivaled some of the largest shopping days of the year. 

In this episode, we break down what we saw this year including some surprises, key learnings, and take aways for upcoming big sales events like other Prime events and Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

OMG is large enough now that aggregate data from our clients is informative and meaningful.  In this episode we unpack global Amazon trends and data and data from our growing list of OMG clients. 

Amber, OMG’s Amazon Director, and Trenton, our Amazon PPC lead, join the podcast to break down what we saw from OMG clients and what we saw globally. 

Here’s a look at what we cover.

• 300 million items were purchased on Prime Day 2022.
• 60,000 items purchased per minute (wowza).
• Most shopping was done from 8p-9p PT on Wednesday 7/13.
• What happened to CPCs and conversion rates during Prime Day.
• What offers and deals did well, vs. what didn’t do so hot.
• What categories really shined and outperformed others (some pretty surprising results here).
• Key learnings to apply for Prime Day Early Access and Cyber 5.

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Mentioned in This Episode:

OMG Commerce Resource Guides‍

Trenton Bodenbach

- LinkedIn‍

Amber Norell

- LinkedIn ‍

Amazon DSP Roadmap (Guide by OMG Commerce)

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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 today, joining me are two of the best and brightest from OMG Commerce.

Brett:

And I do want to clarify something. I didn't say the best and brightest. Every time I say something like that, someone else on my team says, "Oh, so they're your favorite?"

Brett:

I do love these team members, they're absolute rock stars. You're going to see that for yourself in just a minute. But hey, today we're talking about what has become a lot of people in eCommerce's favorite summer holiday, Prime Day.

Brett:

So we're going to be unpacking what just transpired with Prime Day 2022. We're going to look at some of the global numbers and some of the surprising things that happened this Prime Day.

Brett:

We're going to take a look at our clients because now OMG Commerce is big enough that we have a lot of meaningful data from clients, so we can talk about some trends and some things we saw. What types of offers and deals and what kind of prep led to good results, and what didn't.

Brett:

So that you can be ready for it next year's Prime Day, but also a new flavor of Prime Day that's coming this Q4, which we'll talk about in a minute.

Brett:

So I want to introduce these rock stars to you right now. So first up, Mr. Trenton Bodenbach. And Trenton, this is your first podcast ever. Do I have that right?

Trenton:

Ever. First podcast ever.

Brett:

First podcast ever, but he does listen to a lot of podcasts. And Trenton's not shy. Trenton, we do an annual award show at OMG, we call the OMGs. And did you actually name those awards, Trenton? Did you come up with that name?

Trenton:

I did.

Brett:

Okay. Yeah. So he named it and he's very comfortable with a microphone, very comfortable in stage. Especially if you've got a microphone and a drink in your hand, you're super, super comfortable.

Trenton:

Coffee this morning, ...

Brett:

Got it, man. Got it. And so Trenton is our Amazon advertising lead, so this guy knows Amazon Ads inside and out. As we're analyzing new clients to take on or as we're working on new strategies, Trenton is heading that up and he's at the forefront. So really, really sharp. So Trenton, welcome to the show and congrats on your first podcast.

Trenton:

I'm excited.

Brett:

Apparently, we were supposed to have another podcast, but I bailed on you. And I don't remember this story, so you

Trenton:

and you canceled and I went by the wayside. You never ...

Brett:

Oh man, that's hilarious. Gave Trenton the cold shoulder, and then forgot about it. But you're back, and this is going to be awesome.

Trenton:

But I'm back. And I'm here for Prime Day, so it's going to be fun.

Brett:

Here for Prime Day. And we'll see how it goes, Trenton. We should probably do another podcast after this, depending on how it goes. We'll see. Just kidding. And then back again for, I think, the third time Amber Norell, who is our new Amazon director.

Brett:

And I will say, if I ever have an Amazon question, or if anyone says, "I wonder if this is possible on Amazon? I wonder how you do that on Amazon," my immediate reaction is, "I don't know, talk to Amber. Amber will know, Amber knows everything about Amazon."

Brett:

And that's maybe only a tiny exaggeration. But Amber's been working in Amazon now for about, what, eight years. Something like that, Amber? Eight-ish years.

Brett:

Managed some really big brands, helped launch some big brands, helped launch BOOM! By Cindy Joseph. She is just phenomenal when it comes to anything Amazon related. And so welcome to the show again, Amber, and really glad you could take the time.

Amber:

Thanks, Brett. Excited to be here.

Brett:

Yeah. All right. All right. So quick history lesson, and I know that's probably not the way you want to start a podcast. Some people are tuning out right now or falling asleep, but Prime Day started in 2015 on the 20 year anniversary of Amazon.

Brett:

And the whole idea was, can we do something to get more people to become Prime members? I think at this point, it's really hard for me to imagine life pre-Prime membership, right?

Brett:

But that was the tipping point, getting that Prime membership. That's when you go from, "I order from Amazon occasionally," to, "I order everything from Amazon because of Amazon Prime."

Brett:

So in the early days, it was all about how do we get more Prime members? Now it's just this huge freaking holiday in the middle of summer. Everybody shops for stuff.

Brett:

We even see a lift on sales from D2C stores, people that sell not on Amazon see an increase on Prime Day as well. And so this year was a bit of a monster.

Brett:

Some weird stuff over the last few years. You had the COVID year, where they had to shift Prime Day to Q4, then you have last year... Was it last year when Prime Day was in June instead of July? I think that was last year. Bad with years on occasion.

Brett:

But anyway, it's just been different. But this year, everything's right with the world, right in terms of Amazon Prime Day. It's back in July where it all began.

Brett:

And so as we look at some of the global numbers, this is just some of the stats that came out from Amazon and other places, what surprised you guys? What was interesting about this Prime Day year?

Amber:

For me, the weirdest thing that we saw was the impact on different categories. So in past years, we would always see luxury products or products that just people wouldn't typically indulge in just go through the moon on Prime Day: 3, 4, 5x in sales.

Amber:

Things like groceries, home essentials, things that you actually need. There was a little bit of an uptick, but nothing crazy. This year was totally different. Some of those were some of Amazon's biggest categories, and that was just totally unexpected to us.

Brett:

Yeah. Usually Prime Day's the day for buying expensive TVs or other cool things you don't really need, but you want, you've been holding out on. Yeah. Go ahead, Trenton.

Trenton:

I'm from the Midwest so I'll probably say every time I accidentally talk over somebody. No. I was going to say just from some of Amazon's data they put out, that one of the best selling items worldwide was Honest diapers and wipes.

Trenton:

We've seen that historically for all the accounts I ran when I was in the nitty gritty of running for clients. To see a jump in that kind of a market on a Prime Day, we're just showing that people are looking more at what they need from the day to day and not just the big ticket items. And so the increase on the smaller sellers was higher than we've seen historically.

Brett:

Yeah. It's a super interesting time economically, right? A lot of signs point to recession. And a lot of the pundits and experts are saying, "Hey, recession is on the horizon. It's not a matter of if, it's when."

Brett:

But everybody's got a job still, so there's still money flowing and moving around in the economy for sure. But we all know inflation is just a monster.

Brett:

It's a bear right now, which is contributing to this where it's like, "Yeah, maybe I'm not going to buy the TV, but I do need a deal on diapers," because those have gotten super expensive lately. Just like everything else has.

Brett:

So yeah, really interesting, the shift to like, "I'll just buy my groceries and some other stuff on Prime Day because I really want a deal there." So that's unique to this year. And maybe one of those things that won't happen again, if we had to predict. So what else was interesting in the global numbers?

Trenton:

I'll say for, again, a historical point is day one on Prime Day has always been really good for our clients. And then day two is usually pretty soft compared to... Always an increase in overall sales, compared to the weeks leading up or your average-

Brett:

Always better than a normal day, of course. Yeah.

Trenton:

Man, on day two for our clients, we saw not all across the board, but a majority of them almost hitting the same numbers as day one. So an increase that we haven't seen in the past.

Trenton:

And I think Amazon released that the US did the most shopping actually on day two from 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM. So the day two was actually... We sold more units on that day than on day one, which is historically not the case from our experience.

Brett:

Yeah. So Prime Day is a two-day event. So this year was Tuesday, Wednesday, July 12th, July 13th. Yet typically, there's a lot of hype, there's a lot of buzz. Day one, we just come out of the gate strong, people sell a ton of stuff.

Brett:

By day two, a lot of people have spent their budget on Prime Day, so we see a slow down. Not the case this year, both days were strong. And yeah, that 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM Pacific time on Wednesday was when Amazon saw the most shoppers, which was pretty crazy. Any thoughts on reasons why there, Amber or Trenton?

Amber:

Yeah. I think people were more focused, again, on what they actually needed this year versus what they wanted. Of course, there were people that were indulging, but it was contingent on when were those Lightning Deals running on those products.

Amber:

So if they were running on day two, that's when they were buying. And I also think a lot of people have really adopted Prime Exclusive Discounts this year, which are running both days. So that dispersed it a little bit more than it has in previous years.

Trenton:

Yeah. I'll echo that obviously over the last couple years, we've seen an increase in sellers on Amazon. And so Prime Day, obviously there are going to be more deals throughout the day, and so I think that we saw...

Trenton:

The prime placement historically has been day one. Prime? The placement that all of our clients or anybody selling on Amazon was on day one.

Trenton:

But I think also for me, an example from my life, my wife didn't even know... I should've told her because I work on Amazon, I work on the platform, but she was like, "Oh, it's Prime Day. I had no idea."

Trenton:

So she didn't even realize till the afternoon of day one. And so then for us, we ended up buying a vacuum or a vacuum wet mop thing. And she waited and we found the lightning deal was on day two. And we kept looking.

Trenton:

And so those deals that normally were hitting on day one, some of the bigger players and the bigger clients, day two was really good for them. And so a lot of consumers were...

Trenton:

And this might just be the lack of paying attention or it's because Prime Day moved around so much and not historically the same weekend, and so people don't know it's coming. But they figured out Prime Day was happening, and they figured out why it was happening.

Brett:

Yeah. It's really interesting. So yeah, more Lightning Deals or more deals being spaced out throughout those two days, just because there are more deals.

Brett:

Which makes you wonder, will this eventually be a three day event? Will it become Prime week at some point? Like we have the Cyber Five globally for eCommerce. We shall see. It's hard to say, but super interesting.

Brett:

A couple other little tidbits that I thought were fun. 60,000 items purchased per minute, on average. So there you go. That gives a little context to what's shaking on Prime Day.

Brett:

Also thought it was interesting, there have been times in years past where I just heard... Everybody I knew was buying an Alexa device. And we've got Alexa devices in all of our rooms, so I'm sure people are listing in all the time.

Brett:

But I don't hear as much buzz around people buying Alexa devices now. But Amazon released, in their press release for this year, more Alexa devices were purchased during this Prime Day than any Prime Day in the past, which is pretty crazy.

Brett:

So that's another area that really is going to give Amazon an edge going forward. The more data they can get from these Alexa-enabled devices, is it going to allow people to shop...?

Brett:

Voice shopping, which will be more of a thing, I think. But also just the data is extremely powerful for Amazon. So any other global numbers, Amber, Trenton that you thought were interesting that we can dive into before we look at OMG specific numbers?

Trenton:

This isn't something that is groundbreaking. So the US best day was on Wednesday, but the global best day was on Tuesday.

Brett:

Interesting. Yeah.

Trenton:

So like-

Brett:

Which is more what we would expect, right?

Trenton:

Yeah. Just to be aware of that. And so I think for me, all of this data, I'm always thinking of it from a client perspective like, how do I use this in the next year or the next?

Trenton:

What we just alluded at, maybe a Prime Day two, which we're not supposed to call it that. Whatever they named the one coming up in the fall,...

Brett:

So there's an event coming up in the fall. We'll talk about it more later. We'll tease it now.

Trenton:

Yeah.

Brett:

What's that called, Amber?

Amber:

What's that?

Brett:

The event coming up in the fall, the Prime whatever. Prime Early Access or something.

Amber:

We're calling it Prime Day two, but we don't think it's actually going to be Prime Day Two.

Brett:

Prime Day Two?

Amber:

Yeah.

Brett:

You heard it here first. That's our name for what Amazon calls it. It's surprisingly different.

Trenton:

It's Early Access or something like that.

Brett:

Early Access? There you go. There you go. Yeah.

Trenton:

There's not much information about it, but we'll get to that in a minute. So for me, I'm always thinking about, how can we use the data points that we have?

Trenton:

And so looking at worldwide, so for sellers that we have at OMG, if you're looking at the next Prime Day, knowing, okay, maybe Tuesday is going to be the day that we push heavily, shift a lot of that budget there.

Trenton:

If we don't use it, then we can shift it to Wednesday. Or knowing the US maybe historically this year, Wednesday was a bigger day. So thinking about how you use those data points in informing what your strategy is for the years to come.

Trenton:

Cyber Five coming up. We have a lot of big days coming, so these data points are always good. So just looking at the Amazon numbers for us, just saying, "Where's the money being spent? What categories? What days? What times?" And then that informs us on when and a strategy to talk to our clients about.

Brett:

Yeah, because one of the worst things would be to run out of budget. Run out of ad budget, midday, day one of Prime Day when you're just slaying it.

Brett:

Or you hit budget caps in your campaigns and you don't notice it, so you can't raise those and fully take advantage of Prime Day. And so yeah, understanding the trends both to prep for next Prime Day, but then also yeah, for Cyber Five and Early Access and other cool things like that. So good.

Brett:

Awesome. Any other global takeaways, Amber? If not, I want to get into some specifics that we saw with our clients who are high growth e-commerce brands.

Amber:

No I think just outside of the change in less exciting products, we saw even more increase in the exciting products that we expected to do well. So increases in clothing, beauty.

Amber:

According to Amazon, customers purchased more than 1.2 million pairs of sunglasses and one million swimsuits. So a lot of people out there buying a lot of different things this year.

Brett:

Getting to the beach baby, let's go back on vacation. It's happening. Yeah. Good signs that those categories are increasing. And it was interesting. Looking at again last year's Prime Day, it was not a huge increase year over year.

Brett:

Some of the early years... And this is typical, early years of Prime Day, you'd see a 40% lift year over year of Prime Day numbers. And we're talking about billions of dollars in sales. And so huge increases.

Brett:

Now Prime Day isn't quite as new and quite as novel, so year over year growth has slowed down. Last year was almost flat. It was just barely growing year over year.

Brett:

I think a lot of us, going into this Prime Day, we wondered how good of a Prime Day would it be? But would you say it's safe to say, Amber, that we've probably exceeded most expectations, like Prime Day was better than most people thought it would be this year?

Amber:

Yeah. Based on last year, we were expecting there could almost be a decrease on some accounts. And there was year over year growth, pretty much consistently across all of our clients, which was awesome to see.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah. So let's dive into a couple of, "Hey, what were some interesting results versus expectations?" We already talked about categories.

Brett:

So we saw some of the home essentials and everyday goods that likely saw a bump because of inflation, but what were some other expectations that didn't line up with results?

Trenton:

So we have some consumable clients who are in the supplements, which have... Historically, we see a bump. Again, rising tide raises all ships. So when we have a client...

Trenton:

And we've broken some of our data into clients who ran ads, and then some of our clients don't want to run ads on Prime Day, because their products historically haven't been good products to run ...

Brett:

And ad costs go way up on Prime Day too. Right?

Trenton:

Yeah.

Brett:

So it's like, "Why do I want to overpay if people aren't buying?" Yeah.

Trenton:

But we saw with a couple of our clients who, again, have a consumable product and within the supplement category, their growth was higher than we really expected, in the sense of what we've seen historically. So that was awesome. Slightly unexpected.

Trenton:

I remember being on the call, I think it was about three weeks ago and we were still deciding... Because we signed up for the Lightning Deals just in case we wanted them, we weren't for sure. Historically, they've never ran ads... They've turned off ads on Prime Days, so it's not worth it. We'll just ...

Brett:

"Our category doesn't explode on Prime Day, like others. So let's just not pay the increased CPCs."

Trenton:

We talked them into, "Let's test this year. Let's just do something different." So we ran ads and their growth was just phenomenal. So I think we saw about 4, 5x total sales that day or something like that.

Brett:

Over a normal day?

Trenton:

Over a normal day.

Brett:

Crazy.

Trenton:

We take the average of the first two weeks leading up to Prime, so we have a benchmark. And I would say we were right at 4 to 5x for that client, which is crazy.

Brett:

Crazy. And that's a category. Yeah. You don't look forward to... You're not probably sharing with your spouse like, "Hey, we can get this supplement cheaper." Not like you would have a TV or a new mixer, or something more fun like that.

Brett:

So yeah, that's interesting. But kudos to you, Trenton and team for saying, "Let's just try it. Let's just put something together and let's see how this goes." Cool. Amber, what about you? Where did results differ, exceed expectations for our clients?

Amber:

So I think what was a little bit unexpected to me is that over the past couple of years, we always knew there was going to be an increase on Prime Day.

Amber:

Even on consumables, home goods, those essential products, it would be very, very slight, but they would see some sort of increase from the week prior.

Amber:

And we weren't seeing as much of a difference if people were running deals versus not. We would have some clients not running any sort of deal and get a two to three increase on their sales.

Amber:

This year, it was very, very clear that people were shopping for deals and being very selective about what they were buying. We split everything up according to people who were running deals versus not running deals.

Amber:

And on day one, those that were running deals, on average, had seen a 352% increase. Those that were running no deals only saw 60% increase. And when we say deals, we're talking about Lightning Deals, Prime Exclusive Discounts, coupons. I mean anything really. Even a nominal 5% coupon saw a much bigger lift than if you just did nothing to prepare for Prime Day.

Brett:

That's crazy. So companies that did nothing day one of Prime Day, grew... Sales grew about 60%? Which is still nothing to sneeze at. That's still exciting.

Amber:

Right.

Brett:

But those that did any kind of deal, even a 5% deal, whatever, 352% lift, which is better, which is awesome. So can you unpack those deals just a little bit? So we got Lightning Deals, we got Prime Exclusive, we got...

Brett:

You can just do a coupon or whatever you want to do. What are the ranges there? Because for some deals, you've got to go minimum of 20% for some categories of deals. Can you talk through what that looks like, Amber?

Amber:

Yeah. So the Prime Exclusive deal, it's really close to a standard coupon, but it says Prime Exclusive deal on it. So there's a lot of urgency, they think they'll only get that coupon on that day.

Amber:

Like you mentioned, there is a 20% minimum, so it's not viable for a lot of people. But for those that it is, it's super effective during Prime Day, during Black Friday, Cyber Monday.

Amber:

Standard coupons, that's a great alternative to that if you need to be at a lower percentage off. And then the Lightning Deals, Seven Day deals, those are... What we saw this year is, it was 50/50.

Amber:

So some of them did exceptionally well. They had what we would have considered great timing. And in the past year, that's how we would determine which deals we would keep.

Amber:

Versus this year, it could have had great timing but it didn't get any visibility, so it just did not do well. So we were super selective with what we were submitting for Lightning Deals.

Brett:

Interesting, and Lightning Deals... I heard you say Seven Day deals as well, but Lightning Deals are often... It's a shorter time window typically, right?

Amber:

Right. Usually around 12 hours.

Brett:

Got it. Got it. Cool. Any other areas where you were like, "Wow, we were expecting this, and Prime Day far exceeded it"?

Trenton:

I will say historically for the clients who just ran coupons... So again, talking about... Amber just overviewed those. Again, we'd see a lift. But the lift we saw this year, even with just a coupon was significantly higher.

Trenton:

And so I think that's either buyer intent, like people are looking and they want those consumables or they want those smaller items, ticket items. Again, sometimes for clients I've run in the past, the bigger the item, the better they do on Prime Day. Or the more expensive the item, the better they do.

Brett:

Right. Right.

Trenton:

Whereas this year, our clients who have maybe a $30 to $50 product, their increase was bigger and way higher than historically. But also, we were just talking about the increase in overall sales. The conversion rate for me, I was looking at that, was interesting.

Trenton:

Historically, I went back and looked at past Prime Days. And the average across, I think, 2018, '17, '18, '19 was like 11%. Somewhere there. And then it jumped during COVID a little bit.

Trenton:

For our clients who ran deals, their conversion rate on average was just over 18%, which is awesome. And for those who didn't, they still saw a rise, but it was right at the average of the historical Prime Day, which is right at 11.

Trenton:

So just even if you have the ability to do those coupons right now or coming up thinking about that, if you can use... And again, I'm not saying... Always run your numbers in a range, from worst case scenario to best case scenario.

Trenton:

So maybe running from that 11% conversion rate to that 18% conversion rate, take your historical clicks, find out how many people you're landing.

Trenton:

And then you can then begin to write a narrative of like, "If I run that 20% and I hit the 11% conversion rate on what we saw last year," then you can have a model for next year or a range of thinking through what you might actually do.

Trenton:

So thinking through that conversion rate and your price points, and then choosing what discount you might want to do. "Do I want to do the 20% off? Do I want to do the Lightning Deal? The Lightning Deal's going to cost me X amount."

Trenton:

And I don't know what average they were for our clients this year to get into that Lightning Deal. But you can then begin to have a working model for your team to think through a strategy, or whoever's running your ads to think through a strategy for the upcoming years.

Brett:

Yeah. I love that. I want to unpack that just a little bit. So you start a few numbers. Typically on Prime Day, the conversion rate's 11%. This year we saw it was like 18%.

Brett:

Just to put that in a context, standard eCommerce conversion rates, when you look at all e-commerce sites, it's 1% to 3%. So one to three out of 100 people that visit an e-commerce site purchase.

Brett:

Amazon's higher. Most people just go to Amazon to buy. They're researching or buying, so the conversion rates on Amazon are higher. But on Prime Day, if it got to 18% for some people, that's insane. That's an insane purchase conversion rate.

Brett:

So you got a couple things at work here. You got more people shopping on Prime Day, and then a much higher percentage of those people buying on Prime Day, which really has a nice compounding effect.

Brett:

So as we look at that, how would you run some of those models, Trenton? What are we seeing, in terms of increase in number of visitors? So you're looking at that maybe 11% to 18% conversion rate. What kind of lift are we seeing, in terms of visitors to our stores and our PDPs?

Trenton:

So I'd always use your historical models because we have a lot of people in different verticals. So I can give overall numbers, but those are going to be a little bit skewed in the sense of we have electronics, we have home goods, we have consumables.

Brett:

Right. Right.

Trenton:

So when I talk like overall here, please be aware that...

Brett:

Always check your numbers. Yeah.

Trenton:

Check your numbers. Please look at your vertical. Talk to your Amazon rep, if you have one. Find out what the average growth for impressions were on those days.

Trenton:

And then what I would do is I'd apply that to, let's say, the month leading up to next year's Prime Day. So let's say you're averaging 1,000 impressions a day. It's an easy number.

Trenton:

But we saw a growth of 20% of impressions last year. So you can then take that and say, "You know what? I'm going to have this amount of growth for impressions. If I run a deal, I can have maybe 11% to 18% conversion rate."

Trenton:

Again, look at your historical conversion rate. Because if you're at a 15% already, you're probably going to be at an 18%. If you're running at 11 historically...

Trenton:

So you always have to use your historical numbers, but then you begin to take the information that we've gleaned from this year, so a high number... I think our highest conversion rate, it was up there. It was something like in the 30%, which is super high.

Brett:

Crazy.

Trenton:

And then we had obviously lower, the 10s and people who were running lower than that. But what we were going to do is say average across the board is 18%.

Trenton:

So if I take those impressions, I know my click through rate, I can then see how many visitors I could have there. So an increase of X amount of visitors and increase of X amount of purchases.

Trenton:

You've got to remember you're giving 20% off. So then my profit margins are coming down. So then you can really begin to build a model, "If I have this many sales..."

Trenton:

And you can just tier it. "If conversion rate is this and my sales are this..." And then you can begin to go all the way down and find where you want to be. So again, I always look in brackets from worst case to best case.

Brett:

Yeah. Yeah.

Trenton:

But when you use those historical data markers, it does give you a context to work within to forecast what you can do.

Brett:

Love that. So this is very much related to what we just talked about. But ad costs... So conversion rates are up, more people are shopping, but that also means more advertisers are bidding on clicks.

Brett:

And so ad costs go up. How should we be planning our ad budgets for next Prime Day? And the new thing in Q4, what do we typically see there as far as ad cost and budgeting?

Trenton:

So historically, for most clients that I would run, I would say you're looking at usually at 2x for budget. That was higher this year. We saw spend increases, I want to say, on average between 3 and 4x for most clients, which is pretty high. There were a lot of people shopping this year.

Trenton:

For clients without a deal, that was down to about 2x. 1.5 to 2x on average for people who were not running. Again, strategy wise, you have to think through like, "Am I going to run a deal? Am I not?" And then you can then apply the model.

Trenton:

So I would suggest anywhere to be thinking through, and be okay with anywhere from 3 to 4x in your budget for those two days. Again, you will see an increase in the two weeks coming up.

Trenton:

So that's why we try to take the average for those two weeks because you do see an increased traffic because people start to run deals early, the week leading up.

Trenton:

People are running coupons and things like that. And so your traffic might be increasing then. And that's when we also start to pay attention to... We're always paying attention to CPCs, the cost per click.

Trenton:

But for this year we saw, again, wide range of different verticals. There's a lot higher and some lower. But for those not running a deal, I would say our cost per click was about the same, but that's based on strategy.

Trenton:

That's people who were like, "Hey, we don't want to spend more. We want to stay where we're at. We would rather just our profit margin go up so we're not spending more. We're going to see sales increase anyway."

Brett:

So that could be that, "Hey, we're just not going to bid more on clicks for Prime Day." So for those clients, the CPCs didn't go up?

Trenton:

So a different strategy. Usually that's, again, in the historical verticals that don't do really great on Prime Day. But now I would say... I'd probably come back with them with this data next year and say, "Do you know what? Hey, you need to rethink this strategy, because we saw a different Prime Day in 2022 compared to previous iterations."

Trenton:

But for our clients who were running deals, we saw an average of about a 50% increase in cost per click. Again, that ranges. There are a lot higher... Electronics were higher than that.

Trenton:

And then the consumables were, I think, right at 70%. Somewhere in there. But the average across all of them, 50%. So I would, again, probably plan on at least a 50% increase in your cost per click, and then a 4x in spend overall for budget for those two days.

Brett:

Awesome. Love it. Got to be competitive. So there's a lot more people shopping. But hey, advertisers are like sharks in the water and they're trying to get those clicks. So got to be ready, got to be prepared, got to budget for it.

Brett:

It all works out if you've got the right strategy in place, but you've got to be ready. So awesome. Good stuff. So Amber, let's think about what are some tips?

Brett:

What are some takeaways? What are some key learnings that we can apply, knowing what deals worked better, what pricing strategy might work better? So just walk us through. What are some of the tips and learnings that we can apply to next Prime Day?

Amber:

Yeah. Definitely Prime Day, but even sooner Black Friday, Cyber Monday, you want to take a similar strategy. Again, Prime Exclusive Discounts. If you can swing it with your margin, they're amazing. They do really well. You get a lot more visibility, so I definitely recommend those.

Amber:

Lightning Deals, again, they can be 50/50. But I think if you have a best selling product and you're getting offered a really great time period, take it, test it, if you're comfortable with it. As long as the projections make sense.

Amber:

And then something that we did see work this year, which you do have to be careful with, is changing the listing price. So typically, we avoid making any changes to pricing 30 days when you got-

Brett:

Right. It can be dangerous, right? Amazon doesn't necessarily like it. And you don't really know how consumers are going to respond when you change the list price.

Amber:

Right. People have Chrome extensions on their browser. They can see that this was listed lower at whatever point or 60 days before. So that's definitely a red flag. It can cause ad suppressions, deals get canceled constantly. So those are things you all want to definitely keep an eye out on.

Amber:

But if you're really strategic about it, you're lifting the MSRP price, which is now called the list price... That's where we saw a little bit of success this year.

Amber:

And just doing that about 30 to 45 days in advance so that it's showing us strike through price on the page. We did have one client, they did extremely well with it, but they did get picked up as, I think, a featured deal or something like that. And it just blew up. It went viral all over a bunch of blog sites.

Amber:

So we think a lot of that came from that sort of lift there. But we did have a handful of other clients that were testing that, and they definitely saw a similar lift.

Brett:

Awesome. Good stuff. Anything you would add to that, Trenton? Just some key takeaways on, "Hey, let's do this next time." We were talking about budget and bids, so I know that was probably the core of it. But anything you would add to that?

Trenton:

So the only thing I would add on the actual advertising side of cost per click and looking at keywords is the 80/20 rule. We talk about this a lot here.

Brett:

Yeah.

Trenton:

It's a lot of you could put 100 keywords in a campaign and really 20 of them are going to... Usually, five of them were going to drive most of your traffic. It's just the weirdness of Amazon.

Trenton:

So paying attention, strategy wise, of maybe your budget. Thinking through best keywords and mainly getting down, and thinking through your customer's journey to your product.

Trenton:

And thinking and strategy like, "What do I want and where do I want to spend this money?" Our profit margin might be higher on some of these long tail keywords, but obviously there's not a lot of traffic to them.

Trenton:

So really putting that money towards those keywords that are driving most of your traffic to your product detail page, and then also utilizing DSP in the... Weeks.

Trenton:

Or sponsor display, if you don't have access to DSP. To then begin to remarket to those customers who, A, did purchase. And maybe thinking through, also in the coming weeks, to still maybe doing some type of coupon, and then pushing and remarketing to those people who didn't purchase your competitor's or your product.

Brett:

Yeah. I love that strategy, and that's something... We need to get Austin on a future podcast. He's the lead for Amazon DSP, which if you don't know what Amazon DSP is, it's basically a way to run, display video ads on and off Amazon to people based on their Amazon shopping behavior. So it's a way to run remarketing.

Brett:

So you can remarket people that visit your PDPs. You can remarket to them the next time they're surfing the web with their favorite news sites. They could see an Amazon DSP display ad there.

Brett:

And so yeah, this is the time to have your DSP strategy in order because you just 3 or 4x to your visitors to your site, and yes, you increase your conversion rate, but there's still a lot of people that didn't buy.

Brett:

And with Amazon DSP, you can build audiences of people that visited your site or your competitors that didn't buy, or your products and your competitor's price that didn't buy. You can build an audience there, and then you can target them. So it's next level strategies.

Brett:

That's something we look at doing for Prime Day, for Cyber Five, any really big sales event and ongoing too. But especially for these big events.

Brett:

Any other tips, takeaways? Because I want to transition to talk about this new October event here in just a minute. But any other tips or takeaways or learnings that you'd want to share, Amber or Trenton?

Amber:

Yeah. I would say if you want to see growth in your account, we're not at a point where you can simply just not plan for peaks at this point. So you hear horror stories about people that just take every deal that's accepted to them. They'll throw up a 40%, 50% off coupon, and then they're like, "Well, I had all these sales, but I made no money or I lost money."

Brett:

Right.

Amber:

You have to run deals, but you have to be strategic about it. Think about what Trenton was mentioning about the numbers and the increase in conversion rate, what that's going to do to your future sales, what that can do to your advertising.

Amber:

As you mentioned, DSP, following up the days after Prime Day and having some sort of small coupon on there. It's going to give you more visibility. It's going to improve conversion rate.

Amber:

It's just super important to partake and get that visibility at that point, especially knowing that consumables and things like that are on their rise, where you have the opportunity to really hold that customer as a long-term customer, get them into Subscribe and Save.

Amber:

So if you're seeing a slight decrease on your profit, if it strategically makes sense and it's going to drive that longer term customer value, that's what you need to be thinking about going into these peaks, for sure.

Brett:

I love that. Yeah, think strategically about your discounts. I'm not a huge fan of discounting, but I do know that when you do it the right way, it's great to bump sales and to get new customers.

Brett:

But yeah, if you do a 40% or 50% off deal, that's potentially, and probably, cutting your profits by like 90%. Well, now you've got to 10x your sales just to make what you would normally make.

Brett:

So that's where for some people... And Trenton and Amber, you guys both talked about this, for some people, you look at your numbers and you're like, "I can't even do a 20% discount. I'll just take my bump that I get from Amazon Prime Day. I'll maybe spend a little bit more on ads. But it doesn't make sense for me to discount that much because of the lift I'd have to have."

Brett:

So run the numbers, look at the math, think strategically, which goes without saying, but we need to say it. Anything you would add to that, Trenton, before we talk about the new October event?

Trenton:

Yeah. Two things, and they're pretty... Well, I'll piggyback on what Amber just put out there, because what she said is great. And you're also changing your mindset, in the sense of thinking of it as an investment in your brand.

Trenton:

It's hard sometimes to... Especially when profit margins are tight, but thinking through of, man, the more people... Especially if you have a quality product.

Trenton:

And if people are excited and you know what you have is a good product, getting that into consumer's hands, word of mouth is so powerful at times.

Trenton:

And so thinking through of just like this, "You know what? Our profit margin is going to go down, but we're going to get into more people..." Household, and whatever your product is. We're going to get this product into the hands of consumers more, and hopefully build the brand awareness along through word of mouth, through social media, through whatever avenues you can.

Trenton:

But along with that, and this is the most simple advice I can give because I've ran into this in the past and it's the worst, is think through your inventory before you push a product.

Trenton:

Because the worst thing that happens is you have this crazy awesome Prime Day, and then... Especially if you're in a crowded vertical market where you have a lot of competitors with similar items, and you do great, you knock it out of the park, and then a week later you completely run out of stock, and then you're scrambling.

Trenton:

Or a month later, whatever. If it's detrimental to your ability to push your product on Amazon, then that'll affect the strategy of which I would say to push your product.

Trenton:

Because man, stock outs on Amazon are not a joke, especially with... Again, like I said, if you're in a vertical that's crowded or you have a lot of similar products or competitors are selling, and then all of a sudden you're like, "I was Amazon's top choice. I was number one."

Trenton:

And you come back a month later and you're so far down on the list, and it's just a heavy climb to get back up there. And there are tips and tricks, and it's going to cost money.

Trenton:

But if you can avoid that, then thinking through the strategy long term of, "You know what? We're not going to push this heavily because our inventory doesn't justify this." But make sure you're thinking through all those avenues.

Brett:

Yeah. Such good advice. Really, really good advice from both of you. That's awesome. So we've only got about five minutes left. I want to talk about this new October event.

Brett:

So a couple years ago, Amazon had to shift Prime Day to October because of the pandemic bump and supply chain and things like that. And you know what happened.

Brett:

Prime Day, when it was in October, was pretty good. It pulled some of those holiday shopping numbers a little earlier in the shopping season. If you can be the first merchant to get holiday purchases going, then that's all the better.

Brett:

But just like we always see, even stuff like supplements and other things that aren't gift items typically, those see a lift too. So new October event called Early Access Prime something or another... Early Access Prime Sale in October.

Brett:

What are some key dates and things we need to know about that, Amber? And then, what should we do to prep? And I know we've already talked about prep a little bit, but any insights you can share there?

Amber:

So right now, the only date that's been released for that Prime event is the Lightning Deal submission cut off, which is today. So by the time you guys hear this, it's going to be ...

Brett:

Oops.

Amber:

We're keeping an eye out to see if Prime Exclusive Discounts are going to be something that pops up for that, because that would definitely be something we pursue.

Amber:

But keep in mind, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, they are doing very early deal submissions on that. And the timeline is coming up very quickly. I think that's-

Brett:

September 2nd. Is that what I heard you say?

Amber:

September 2nd, yeah. So if you're going to be applying a similar strategy that you did during Prime Day, during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, make sure you're getting those deals in before September 2nd.

Brett:

Awesome. Yeah. So any insights on... I guess we would pull from a couple years ago when there was an October Prime Day, but anything we should be thinking about as we look at that sale?

Brett:

And then not too far after that, we've got the Cyber Five. What are you doing to prepare, Trent or Amber? How are you thinking about that? How are we advising clients right now about those two events?

Trenton:

Not to reiterate too much, but talking to my specialist, the main thing I'm talking about is inventory levels. Preparing for Q4, because you're not just having Cyber Five anymore. We're going to have a Prime Day two, and then straight into Cyber Five, straight into November, straight into December. So that's going to...And that's another reason... If inventory levels are a little bit low, that's another reason to not discount too much, right?

Trenton:

Yeah.

Brett:

Because you've only got limited items. So keep those margins healthy.

Trenton:

So forecasting there is really important, just of what your run rate was last year. And then maybe increasing that, knowing full well that you're going to have more discounts coming in this fall.

Trenton:

But also honestly, we asked our reps at Amazon or their contacts of, "Hey, can we get more information about this sales coming up?" And they were like, "We don't have any information."

Trenton:

So one of my biggest pieces of advice is just keep your ear to the ground, because we saw the Lightning Deals, we were like, "Whoa." And then we reached out to our clients very quickly like, "Hey, these are expiring this week. Let's sign up and we can always cancel it, or whatever."

Trenton:

But we reached out and we were like, "Hey, we saw these. What else is coming? Do we have any information?" And they were like, "There's deadlines coming and we don't even know about them yet."

Trenton:

So keep your ear to the ground because the information is sparse right now. At some point, someone was wondering if it's not going to be for all categories, if it's just certain categories. But for our clients, Amber, we're seeing most categories have Lightning Deals offered to them.

Amber:

Yeah.

Trenton:

So just be looking at your discounts that they're offering you, pay attention. Blogs. I hear stuff from blogs before Amazon does, and so just keeping that information...

Brett:

Blogs, forums, Facebook groups. Talk to your agency, hopefully they're keeping you in the know as well. So yeah, great advice. Awesome. Well, that is going to do it, as far as timing goes.

Brett:

I want to mention a couple things here before we wrap up. One, is if you maybe heard about this Amazon DSP thing, or maybe heard about it a long time ago and just wanted to go deeper on that, we do offer a free Amazon DSP roadmap.

Brett:

If you go to omgcommerce.com under resources and guides, you'll see the Amazon DSP roadmap. We'll link to the show notes as well. Check that out.

Brett:

We also have a couple other good Amazon guides, like how to run sponsored brand video, which is one of our favorite ad types. And you may be thinking, "Man, Amazon's going pretty good for me, but what would happen if I had Amber and Trenton helping me with Amazon?"

Brett:

And I can tell you one thing, it would get better. A whole lot better. And they do direct all things with our Amazon department, and so would love to chat with you if you are in growth mode and wanting to learn more about OMG's Amazon services.

Brett:

So shameless plug there, check it out. But as we leave, any parting words of wisdom, Amber or Trenton? This could be Amazon advice. This could be your favorite quote. This could be your favorite...

Brett:

I don't want you to tell your favorite joke. This could be any parting words of wisdom. Actually, if you have a good joke, that's fine too. But any parting words of wisdom, as we wrap up?

Amber:

Well, I know Trenton's got a joke ready. So I'm just going to say, be ready to pivot. Keep your ear to the ground, like Trenton mentioned. Maybe even treat it like Black Friday, Cyber Monday is coming early, and then just start implementing your strategy ahead of time, so that it has a nice override there.

Brett:

Love it.

Trenton:

I'll leave you with my kids' favorite knock-knock joke. We do this every night ... Okay. You ready?

Brett:

Ready.

Trenton:

Knock-knock.

Brett:

Who's there?

Trenton:

Boo.

Brett:

Boo who?

Trenton:

Why are you crying, Brett?

Brett:

I'm crying because his podcast is over and I wanted to keep going. That was beautiful, guys. Thank you so much. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and insights. Prime Day was a lot of fun.

Brett:

Looking forward to Q4. Even in the midst of economic craziness, you can have a successful Q4. I firmly believe that. So thanks, Trenton and Amber. You guys crushed it.

Brett:

And as always, thank you for tuning in. And hey, let us know what you'd like to hear more of on this show. Give us that review on iTunes, if you haven't already. And with that, until next time. Thank you for listening.

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