Preparation is the backbone for success during the holiday season.

Today I am talking to  a few of our OMG experts on preparing to win the 2022 holidays. Joining us is Amber Norell, OMG’s Amazon Director, Bill Cover, one of OMG’s amazing Google Strategist, and Savannah Knight, one of OMG’s rockstar Google Specialists. 

This holiday season should be quite interesting. Inflation, rising ad costs, privacy issues, and new campaign types have this year shaping up to be anything but ordinary. 

In this episode we cover how to: 

• Drive MORE traffic profitably
• Go omnichannel
• Turn every interaction (even support) into sales opportunities

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Mentioned In This Episode:

OMG Commerce Resource Guides

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Transcript:

Brett:

Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today I have got a treat for you. You get to hear from not one, not two, but three rockstar OMG Commerce traffic experts. So today it's a traffic panel and we're unpacking what separates the winners from the losers when it comes to holiday season. Now, I know when you're listening to this, we're right on the edge or maybe in the thick of holiday shopping season, so this may be kind of one of those. Use this for last minute tweaks and maximizations and optimizations and things like that. And also use this information to get ready for next holiday season because the best time to start planning for next holiday season is right now. So I hope you'll use this episode to do that. And then also there's gonna be some nuggets, some bits of wisdom, and some truths here that will help you even beyond holiday season.

So at OMG Commerce, we're a digital marketing agency. We work a lot with Google Search shopping Performance Max, YouTube also on Amazon, and we're managing tens of millions of dollars a month in ad spend. So everything we share is based on data, based on real results, and I can't wait for you to meet the team. And I hope you enjoy this episode with the OMG Traffic panel. Are you a D to C brand spending over six figures a month on paid media? If so, then listen up. My agency, OMG Commerce, and I have worked with some of the top e-commerce brands over the years, including Boom, native Groove, moan, Organicy, and dozens more. And every year we audit hundreds of Google, YouTube, and Amazon ad accounts, and we always find either significant opportunities for growth or wasted ad spend to cut or both. For example, are you missing YouTube ads? Whatever you're spending on top of funnel Facebook, you should be able to spend 30 to 50% of that or more on YouTube with similar returns. So if you're spending 300 to 400,000 a month on Facebook, you should be able to easily spend a hundred to 150,000 or more on YouTube. Visit OMG commerce.com to request a free strategy session or visit our resource page and get some of our free guides loaded with some of our best strategies for YouTube ads, Google Shopping, Amazon DSP and more. Check it all out@omgcommerce.com.

All right, I am so excited about this session. We, we've done a lot of webinars now, it's something we do at OMG Commerce, and almost every webinar, the favorite session, the session that people keep raving about is the OMG traffic panel where you get to learn from some of the best and brightest that OMG has to offer. And today is gonna be amazing. We got Bill Co, we got Savannah Knight, we got Amber Norell, and so I'm gonna intro them for you. I'll keep it brief, but I'm gonna keep this I'm gonna be the hype man for just a minute just so you can feel confident in who you're about to learn from. So I'm gonna go the way I'm seeing them on my screen, which may be different than what you're seeing but first up is bill cover. Now you probably see their balloons behind Bill.

I'm gonna have him explain that in a second. But Bill is an mba. He is 10 plus years in e-commerce forever in e-commerce. Years prior to that, he worked with Fortune 500 brands through big ad agency for about four years. And so Bill's just a wealth of knowledge for all things marketing, all things branding. He is a strategist on the Google side and really just one of the smartest guys I know and somebody that we bring in to a lot of discussions on, Hey, how do we grow this account? How do we make this bigger? What's the angle here? What do we do here? So Bill, thanks for taking the time and anything you would add to that intro, and then also please explain to us why you have balloons, larger balloons behind you. Yeah, no, the intro was perfect, actually. I wish I could capture that and just use that as my intro for everything going forward.

So we have balloons, omg, OMG, Commerce, and yesterday we found out that we won the 417, which is a local publisher here 4 7 20 best places to work. And four 17 is our area code. So it counts for more than Springfield, Southwest Missouri, Southwest Missouri region, southwest Arkansas. And so this is the second year in a row that we've won this award. And so we're number one, baby number one. Yeah, super cool. So glad you chose that. As a backdrop, look at these giant OMG balloons, which is fantastic. So next up Savannah night. Now Savannah is what I would call this quiet warrior. She doesn't say a whole lot all the time, but when she does speak, it's very powerful and she knows her stuff. So we hired her as a Google support specialist. So kind of behind the scenes doing stuff, grew into a dedicated specialist. Now she's a lead specialist and really helping grow some of our biggest brands. She was the first one on the team to scale Performance Max. And so we trust her with some of the biggest clients. She's a hard worker, she's super smart. You're gonna love her ideas. So Savannah, welcome. Thanks for taking the time. Anything you would add to that. And is there any reason why you don't have balloons behind you? <laugh>? I don't

Savannah:

Think so. So I think you did a pretty good job, but yeah, no balloons for me. Bill stole 'em all.

Brett:

<laugh>. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Bill, yeah, there's three balloons you could've shared, but he decided the word commerce is on its way. <laugh>, <laugh>, fantastic. And then Amber Norell last but not least, Amber is our Amazon director. And when the smartest people I know on Amazon don't know how to solve a problem, they go to Amber. Amber has helped grow multiple seven, eight figure brands on Amazon. She helped launch Boom by Cindy Joseph on Amazon, grew them from zero to 5 million per year in sales and growing. She runs our Amazon department. When you think the impossible can't be done on Amazon, just call Amber and it's gonna be done. And so Amber, thanks for taking the time. Anything you would add to that intro and anything else you would like to say before we get started?

Amber :

Well, I'm excited to be here, Brett. I would've liked some balloons, but they probably would've deflated here in Orlando. <laugh>.

Brett:

Yeah, so omg, we're 65 strong. We're spread throughout the United States. Bill, Savannah and I are all in Missouri, which is where the HQ is. Ambers in Orlando, hot, muggy Orlando. And you say that all year round. So yeah, balloons probably do not survive there. Okay. Awesome guys. Super excited to dig in here. So we're talking about winning the holidays. So how do we win the holidays in 2022? It's a unique environment, a lot of pressure with inflation and rising costs and supply chain issues, although some of those are getting better in a lot of cases it's just a unique environment. And so I think one of the things we have to look at, and you guys know, and I've mentioned this on the podcast and other places before I coach basketball, but I love sports. I love the focus on fundamentals. If the fundamentals are sound, then you can build on that. If fundamentals are off, then creative stuff you do on top of that just isn't gonna work as well. So what are some of the fundamentals we need to get to make sure we win the holidays? And I'm gonna go to you first, Savannah, if you're up for that.

Savannah:

Yeah, for sure. So I think the biggest thing in the holidays is just having a good attitude because it's easy to get stressed out during this time of year. So maintaining a positive attitude is my number one. But just having larger discounts than usual people expect a discount during this time of year. So keeping that in mind with all those supply chain issues, making sure you have enough inventory of your best sellers. And then the last one is really having a plan B. I think that's really important in this case that something does go wrong, then you have something to lean back on.

Brett:

I love it. We're going attitude first. This is great. This is what I tell my kids every morning. Hey, good attitudes. So it's where it's at. But I do agree. I think you solve problems better with a good attitude. And that's one of the, our core principles at OMG is we believe that positive attitudes create better results. So it's not just like, let's be positive for the sake of being positive. It creates better results. So I love that. So really appreciate you bringing that to the forefront. And I also love to have a plan B because I think now more than ever, we need to think through contingencies. And maybe we don't need contingencies, let's hope we don't. But think about, hey, what happens if something goes down? What happens if we can't rely on this channel? What if? So plan as best as you can and you'll be stronger for it. So we'll go around the horn here. Amber, what about you? And Amber's gonna be on the Amazon side, of course, Bill and Savannah are more on the D to C that the Google and direct tier Shopify store, whatever, Amber's Amazon. What are some of the fundamentals we need to get on Amazon?

Amber :

Yeah, I think the basics are really just planning out your budgets, upping your bids, leading up to that big event, getting your listing content ready, making sure you have inventory. And then once you have those three things in place, what are you doing to promote what you've put into effect? So are you doing discounts? Are you pushing it through outside ads? Are you running it through influencers? Those would really be the four core things that I would focus on.

Brett:

Cool. So how do we make sure everything is ready that we're geared up, and then yeah, how are we gonna promote, How are we gonna make sure that whatever we have is actually visible and available for sale? And so yeah, love that. Bill, what about you from your perspective? Fundamentals? Yeah, so I feel like advanced prep is key. I was listening to Nims UJA on Joe Rogan, and he's the guy in 14 peaks, if you've seen that on Netflix. And as a Sher, I'm not in that, but that looks amazing. So he is a Sherpa. Yeah, we talk about that. I think that's the role of a good agency is to be a Sherpa, right? Which you dunno, it's a, yeah. So explain what a Sherpa is, Bill, if there's, Yeah, it's a perfect analogy because a Sherpa is there to help anyone who wants to go to the top of a mountain, get to the top of the mountain and back.

So it's a perfect analogy. So NIMS has a 100% success rate of getting his team to the top of the mountain and back. And when asked, how do you do that, he said advanced prep. So I really feel like that's a good analogy for walking into q4, is prepping in advance. Yep. Love it. So hey, you're here, you're listening to this. You've already hopefully done some prep already, but now we're gonna bring it to the home stretch, finish things out for you so you can really capitalize and maximize this all season. So let's talk about then so we got some fundamentals in place. What are some of the things that people overlook? So if we're trying to maximize this holiday season, what do people overlook? And I'll start with you, Amber.

Amber :

Yeah, so I mean, outside of just planning the fundamentals in general just overlooking seasonality. So you hear a lot of brands saying, Well my products don't really see an impact during Thanksgiving or Christmas, and they don't realize how much of an impact it can have to put lifestyle images in your listing on your storefront. So it's like, well what did you really do to make an impact? And I think that's what you need to be focusing on seasonally.

Brett:

Yeah, so talk a little bit about that. So we're gonna potentially look at updating our listing to be more holiday friendly. So maybe updating some of the images up, updating some of the A plus content. What are we doing specifically here?

Amber :

Yeah, I mean depending on how well your product does as a gift, I would definitely add it to a plus. Your gallery, your storefront, even the copy just give customers, help them paint that picture of them using it at the holiday table under the Christmas tree. That kind of stuff really, really is effective.

Brett:

I like it. And if we think I was comparing the digital shelf to the physical shelf in store and everybody has to buy a gift, we all wanna buy a gift, we wanna look like a hero or we don't wanna look bad on holidays for forgetting a gift. But also we don't have a ton of time and we maybe wanna shop kind of quickly. I know I like to shop quickly at times and occasionally procrastinate. So yeah, how do we make it easy? How do we make it clear that hey, this is a great gift idea and this is how it could be used as a gift. And so how do we make it easy and clear and obvious for a shopper to choose our product? And yeah, I think, you know, brought that up a second ago, Amber. I think there's some people that think my product's not really gift product or my product won't do well in the holidays, but you'd be surprised stuff sells in the holidays.

I always love using the example, and I know Bill, you know him well, but our good friend Brett from Microfiber Wholesale, he actually they sell mops and Microfiber Claw and other stuff too, but they started running ads that say the worst Christmas gift ever and it's like, don't buy your wife a mop or something like that. But it worked like everybody's buying mos like okay, that's funny. And the eye duty to mos, I'll buy one. So yeah don't underestimate the power of the holiday, even if your product isn't an obvious gift, but if it is, then really lean into that. So what about you Savannah? What are some things that people overlook on the D to C side?

Savannah:

I think one thing is overlooking the buildup to the holiday season. So the pre-holiday by the time Black Friday comes around, people already have a general idea of what they're gonna buy. So you wanna be there whenever they're making those decisions and making that list. But then also just being able to take advantage of those cheaper CPCs and things like that to build up your marketing list and your email list during that before the big showtime. And then also putting yourself in the mind of the buyer. I think that's easy to overlook when we get caught up in the stuff on the back end, but just remembering to think how are they looking, when are they looking, what are they looking for that can really help you level up during the holidays.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that so much. Really as we look into October, early November, that's the time to be building your remarketing list, beefing up those email lists, getting people interested and into the funnel. Because yeah, by the time Black Friday hits, people kind of know, a lot of people know what they're gonna be looking for, what they're gonna be shopping for. So while the purchases might not happen until right around Black Friday, that's when things really take off from a conversion and a purchase standpoint, build that up and take advantage of those lower CPMs and lower CPCs early in the holiday. I love that. Bill, what about you? What are some of the things that you think of people overlook for the holiday? Yeah, so as Aana was saying, put yourself in the mind of your buyer. And on the Google side ads need to match your landing page.

So the message should be continuous, Hey, we're running this deal. And certainly as the abbreviated version of the deal, the hook. And then when they get to the landing page, it needs to pay off that message in the ad and help people understand that this is a rare deal that this is a great product because as we were saying, you know, might not be buying for yourself, you might also be buying for yourself. So I don't wanna discount that either. Cause I buy for myself selfishly, nothing wrong. Buying for yourself. Yeah, absolutely. And so when someone lands on that landing page, do they see the same message that was in the ad, the reason that they came in the first place? Is it clear? Is it simple? Do I understand how to achieve the deal If it's different here, spend a hundred, get 15 off, spend 200, get 30 off.

I don't know what it is, but make sure that's clear. Walk through your own add to cart process once it's live, make sure that this is clear that I understand that I'm getting a deal how I get the deal. And so I see a lot of times ads are the evergreen ads and lead you to a great landing page or vice versa, the ads are promoting the deal and lead you to an evergreen landing page. And I think either of those scenarios will reduce the amount of impact you could have in q4. So totally agree. It's one of those things where sometimes I'm surprised by how much merchants make their shoppers work to get a deal or to figure out what's going on with a deal. So you see a deal promoted in an ad, a discount free shipping, something for the holidays, you click to the landing page and now there's no mention of that promotion, it's the product page or it's whatever.

And you're like, wait a minute, what was that deal again? I think it was this Well do I need to go back to the ad and look at that? Or now do I need to look for a promotion page on the website? What do I need to do? And at that point, often then people are just gonna bail. So yeah, create that congruity between ad and landing page and make it super clear, super simple, super easy to say yes to a deal because hey, a confused shopper where a frustrated shopper does not buy. And so we gotta make it it easy. Awesome. Any other kind of things that are often overlooked? Tactic strategies that are overlooked during the holidays for many of the three of you?

Okay, so I'll throw one in there that I, it's a bonus, right? But I read recently through a shop of I blog doing the post-purchase survey. And what I really like about that is that that's next year's learning. So you can ask them, yeah, how did you find out about us? Is this for you? Is this for a loved one, a friend, whatever a gift you know can ask any question you want and you're not gonna get a hundred percent completion rate on a post-purchase survey, but that's all right. You're gonna get data that then you can use to structure your strategy and your message next year. Yeah, I love that. Don't miss an opportunity. This is an opportunity when you've got more traffic at any other time of year, more conversions, hire buyer and have all of that. So obviously we wanna capitalize, make sure we maximize sales, but we also wanna maximize learnings. How do we capture enough information and data to know, yeah, how do we win next year? How do we win during the next big sale opportunity and how do we get better? So love that. Call out Bill. Really good. Anything else? Savannah? Amber?

Amber :

I think just go ahead Savannah,

Savannah:

You got I said that I think that just caught it

Amber :

For me. I was gonna say I think back to Bill's point about keeping things consistent across your landing page and your ads, also keeping your branding consistent. So when you're up to you get in the groove and you're setting up promos and upping your campaigns and you kind of lose your brand voice. So just staying playful with that and staying true to your demographic. Yes. So you can say like you said, this is the worst Christmas present and people love that or they say you'll be the hero at Christmas. Play into your target customer for sure

Brett:

Earlier. Yeah, don't just abandon who you are and your brand identity and go full on promotion. Keep that voice because that's what's gonna resonate and make everything work better. So similar question. It's okay if we don't have too many answers here, but what are the best doing that the rest are not? So you may have the privilege of working with some amazing brands like Native deodorant and boom, my Cindy Joseph and Truvan and many others. So what are the best doing that the rest are not? And whoever would like to go first, go for it.

Amber :

I'll go ahead Seth <laugh>, we'll keep petting you. I

Savannah:

Say keeping it, I like to follow the kiss rule, the politic, keep it simple and specific. So we're really competing for buyers. Stupid

Brett:

Part cuz I've also heard kisses keep it simple, stupid. So keep it simple. And what was your other ass

Savannah:

Specific?

Brett:

Specific, I like that, right? Less insulting. It's good.

Savannah:

Yeah, so we're competing for the buyer's attention and we're competing for their time as well. So if we're not keeping it simple, then there's a lot for them to have to do. They're probably gonna go to somebody else and purchase. So really just making it really straightforward for the user and also starting early, so building your lists early but also offering discounts early. So we've seen that people are buying early in the season and not waiting until Black Friday. So offering discounts early is a big one too.

Brett:

And I think that trend kind of started during the pandemic. I remember I saw Lowe's doing it. So a lot of big retailers doing online that hey, Black Friday deals all November long, that type of thing. I think that's a trend that's likely to continue. And while we're not hearing as many supply chain issues, I know there's still some but not as severe as last year. I think there's still gonna be some people that maybe shop a little bit earlier, Hey the procrastinators like me, were still out there but I totally agree start earlier and that's definitely a good suggestion. Amber, what's your perspective here?

Amber :

So I would say the best are testing. So you're never gonna find a better time to test entire level and actually be able to get a good return. So I would say be testing the experimenting as much as possible.

Brett:

Yeah, it's one of those things where some people don't want to test during holiday shopping because they don't wanna screw something up. And we should talk about that in a session in this webinar. We're gonna talk to Matt for peak activity about that, what's safe to test on the holidays, but this is also the best time to learn and you can also test little things and learn quickly and then take a winning learning and scale it up cuz all the traffic is here right now. So yeah, now's the time to be thinking about, hey what do we want do type of funnel? Is there some top of funnel DSP ads wanna run on Amazon or we wanna do some type of funnel on YouTube? What is it that we wanna test here? So love that idea Amber for sure. What about from your perspective Bill? What are the best doing at the restaurant?

Yeah, so if you had to keep it simple and you have to be lean, please ignore this. But you asked about best. So what I would suggest is playing off of Savannah's Justin to start early is also varying your promotions as you go. So I would drum up excitement through October, but maybe you hit November and once a week, something like that. I'm picking an arbitrary interval that we'll say once a week you switch up your promotion. Now that doesn't mean you go, hey this week it's 10% off and next week it's 20% off. That's really gonna offend some people. But you can switch up the type of promotion so that the math is not really apples to apples. So this week it's 20% off. Next week it's a BOGO or free shipping or something of that nature maybe a limited time product or something around the holidays.

And so switching that up and looking at a calendar and going, okay, we've got October, November, we've got Black Friday, we've got Cyber Monday, we've got cyber Monday week, we've got what's the one Green Monday or whatever that's called. And then last chance for shipping just before December 25th and that sort of thing. So look at that calendar and go, this is where we're gonna start. New promo messages now you're gonna freak out cuz you're gonna go well the creative, we have to create new creative for all that. Now you can have evergreen images and the best images convey that this is a holiday sale and that's important for the user cuz think about your own experience. If you don't recognize it that an ad is for a holiday sale, you're less likely to act because you think, well this is evergreen. So we are savvy as customers and your customers are also savvy.

They're gonna react better to something that looks like and feels like a holiday sale. So a good evergreen image, maybe your product with a bow or snow or who knows. But then you can swap out headlines, all these ad platforms, Amazon, Facebook, Google, they're now made so that you can put one image in there and swap out your headlines and descriptions and that sort of thing and deploy different messages with the same image that's built for q4. So yeah, I love it Bill and I like having those kinda limited window opportunities. So if you can execute on this, you're having Black Friday type deals, all of them are long let's say, but then it's changing from week to week and that can create some urgency for someone to say, okay, I will buy this first week of November, second week of November cuz I want that particular deal and I know it ends on Friday or whatever.

So really that super, super smart. Cool. And while we're talking about promotions what are some of the ways you suggest we structure promotions? And I do wanna say this can be different for everybody. Some brands don't discount at all, some only discount a little bit. Boom by Cindy Joseph as an example. They usually don't discount at all except for around the holidays and occasionally like a customer sale and they'll usually do 10%, they do not discount very deeply most of the year. So you don't have to do big discounts, but a lot of people do. A lot people expect it. That's what shoppers are looking for. So how do you suggest we structure our deals and a we'll start with you?

Amber :

Yeah, so I would say structure your deals based on your margin. That's something that is missed a lot on Amazon, so pay attention to that first look at your deals and your prime exclusive discount badging. So I've probably said this in a couple other webinars, but that's how much I love Prime exclusive discounts. They work really well. Set those up, work them around your deals and this is kind of like a new one, but stay away from lowering your listing prices on Shopify, Walmart, Target. If you are very set on a deal running on Amazon, those are already getting flagged today in September because of the prime fall event coming up. So you definitely wanna make sure if you want to maintain buy box that you are keeping competitive pricing across all marketplaces.

Brett:

Right, I love that. So let's just double click on that real quick so that we are saying, so we're about to run a deal on Amazon, but we keep our list price, let's say Amazon, but then we offer a 20% discount. Well everywhere else online we're maybe already 25% below list or something like that. What does Amazon do in those cases or what could they do?

Amber :

So lately I've been seeing a lot of brand health issues and that is essentially just saying it's listed cheaper at Walmart, it's listed cheaper at Target and they are removing your buy box. No, yeah.

Brett:

And this is really, I think one, it's frustrating as a seller cause we wanna be able to just control our price how we wanna do that. But I get it from Amazon's perspective, what Amazon does not want shoppers to do is that buyer's remorse to buy something on Amazon and then turn around and say you got that 25 bucks cheaper over here. And so Amazon's scouring the web, they know what you're charging on other places. So if you lower your price everywhere, but Amazon, Amazon very likely is gonna remove the buy box, which just means they tell customers they'll buy this here, it's cheaper over here, so don't be disappointed and buy it here. Awesome. Okay. Savannah, what would you say, how do you recommend merchants structure their deals and their promos?

Savannah:

So I'd say that sitewide discounts usually perform the best without a code

Brett:

I can easy to execute on as well.

Savannah:

Yep, exactly. Without a code is preferred. But if you have to have a code, make sure it's really visible everywhere on site. And if you don't like to discount your products, I would say still offer people some type of incentive. So free shipping, maybe a free gift or a bundle offer because they are expecting some type of discount. So I've worked on accounts where they didn't have any discount during the holidays and we really saw that revenue go down during that time. So offering some type of incentive is really important.

Brett:

And I love that you mentioned the free gift and we've seen, we have a few other brands we work with that don't like to do discounts. And so what they'll do though is they'll bundle a really cool item with their core product. So now, and then let's say this is in a category where maybe your core product isn't the best gift and like boom, I said Joseph would fall into this category. Some people want cosmetics for Christmas or whatever holiday they celebrate or they want skincare, but a lot of people don't. But a lot of people will buy boom for themselves around the holidays. And so if you include a gift, a tilt bag, water bottle, something kind of neat to go along with that, then that could be something to push someone over the edge where they can say, Hey, I can buy this for myself. Still get that little gift that I can use as a stocking stuff for something else for someone else. And so yeah, love that. You gotta do something around the holidays so love that. Bill, what about you? And I know you just talked about promotions and gave away a cool bonus tip, but anything else you would suggest on the way we structure our promotions?

I think we're talking about the digital shelf. So if you picture a brick and mortar scenario and someone walks into your store, they're a little bit unfamiliar, this is for a gift how do you want that customer to go about looking at your set of products? You don't wanna point them to the accessories and the things that only your advanced customers are aware of and understand, point them to your bestseller, point them to a good entry level product. And so you get to set how that works on your site, whether it's on the homepage, on a category page, on the landing page, what products you push through ads and that sort of thing. So point them to a best seller or a good entry level product because then they're gonna be more likely to comprehend it, understand it, and act upon it. And then on the back end of that, go ahead and recommend additional cross sell, upsell products that fit with that product that also drive up your aov.

So if something makes sense that it goes along with this and it's easy to comprehend and understand build the technology on your side or whatever it takes to recommend products that go with that. And then I wanna address bundles real quick because I don't wanna make a blanket statement. You shouldn't do bundles cuz if you sell something that's easy to comprehend, say a necklace, a bracelet, a ring, a bundle probably works really well. But if it's hard to comprehend and it drives up that initial price point for someone who's not really familiar with your product, they'll probably more likely to act on a best seller that's say 30 to 50 bucks than a bundle that's 130 bucks. Even though it's a good value and a good deal someone who's new to your brand and new to your products and buying it for a gift made out and understand that right out of the gates.

So you gotta be careful sometimes with bundles. Yeah, I like that a lot. So remembering that someone may wanna buy a gift and so just buying a one-off is what they want. But I do like having the bundles available and I love the idea of cross sell, upsell add-ons, right? This people's wallets are open and once you make that initial decision to purchase, once you've already sent money, spending a little extra is easier. And so it's always good to have those upsell cross-sell opportunities. I love that. Any advice? I don't wanna kind of key in on that just a little bit. Amber, any thoughts there? Cause I know there's some creative things we do on Amazon to get cross-sell and upsell opportunities on each of our product detail pages, but anything you would recommend there to either sell bundles or cross sell upsell on Amazon during the holidays?

Amber :

Yeah, I mean to Bill Point, it can definitely get confusing if you're just throwing bundles out there. But if you check Amazon market basket analysis, it gives you a pretty good breakdown of what's actually getting purchased together within your brand and over zone specifically, they've had a ton of success with virtual bundles. So I would,

Brett:

Overtone is a coloring conditioner, so temporary color. So if you want you're hair to go green, pink, gray, whatever mine's already going gray naturally, so I don't need it. But add that conditioner washes out over time. It's made of avocado Ezra Firestone, own the brand. So yeah, market basket analysis, super, super cool. Amazon will tell you what people are buying together. So you have that and then you create a virtual bundle. Was that right Amber?

Amber :

Yeah, so just set up a virtual bundle in Amazon. It's its own listing, but it kind of ties to that main flagship product and we've seen them do really well with Overtone, I think several other brands too. And it's something you definitely wanna get in place for the holidays.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. It's like understanding, hey, customers are already buying these things together. You can do the same thing in inside of Google Analytics or Shopify or whatever. Just Amazon makes it easy. And so then you say, All right, let's create a virtual bundle, let's bundle these together. Cause people like to buy 'em together anyway, so it's super, super smart. Cool. Okay. So Amber, we're kind of tease this in the very beginning, but having great promotions having the good attitude, having everything prepared and ready, having contingencies, all that, none of that really matters if we don't promote stuff and promote it. Well, if we're not visible, if people don't see our stuff on the shelf if they walk through the virtual store and miss us, then it's all for not, right? So how do we make sure we're maximizing visibility and maximizing traffic for the holidays? You wanna go first, Savannah?

Savannah:

Sure. So one big thing there is to have a robust marketing build out. So making sure that we're taking advantage of that traffic that is brand aware, so that way we're taking advantage of those cheaper CPCs and things like that. Really just being everywhere. Don't wait for them to come to you. So we wanna utilize all our channels, search, display, discovery all of those. So impulse buying is higher during the holidays, so keep that in mind. If you have a great display ad, someone's more likely to click on it during the holidays than maybe they were beforehand. And here I'll get into some technicals too. So

Brett:

Love it. I love, let's get technical, let's get tech nasty for a minute.

Savannah:

So if we have a clear definition of success, I think a performer based budget is something I like working with better. So that way we're not missing out on opportunities. So say it's Black Friday, your campaigns are out of budget before noon. We wanna make sure that if we are seeing good results, we can go ahead and boost that budget. So that way if you're out to dinner with grandma or something like that, we're not interrupting and waiting on that approval process.

Brett:

So that's, grandma doesn't understand, we like, Grandma, I gotta update my CPCs, I gotta get a promo approved. She's like, What whatcha doing right now? <laugh>.

Savannah:

So that's a big thing bidding up as well. Our bids that have been working throughout the rest of the year probably aren't gonna be competitive enough for the holidays. Getting our ads up early, this is a big one. There's longer approval times during holidays, so getting those up early is going to ensure that everything's gonna be approved. And also more doesn't always mean better. So if our promotions are a shorter duration using 20 images, five headlines, five descriptions is kind of too much for the smart bidders to really find the winning combination. So more doesn't always mean better.

Brett:

Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love all those by the way last one's great. So yeah, if you had a limited window, you don't necessarily wanna follow Google's best practices for responsive display where load up 15 images and a ton of headlines. No, maybe you just need a couple, right? Maybe it's just two or three that you really feel good about and then you can still have a little bit of testing going on. But yeah, you don't wanna overwhelm the smart bit or set yourself up where you can't succeed because of that limited duration. Love that. Bill. From your perspective, how do we maximize visibility? Yeah I think using the gray overtone is one way. <laugh>. Just kidding. So <laugh>, Brett, don't you think you would? I just have a question. You think you would look younger if you intentionally use the gray fully silver and I'm like, No, I want to go silver.

You may be onto something cause the kids are doing it. So yeah, actually I ordered some overtime for my kids. My 17 year old daughter chose silver. She wanted to go silver. Yeah, okay, well, and 30 years you're gonna be doing the opposite, but yeah, is cool. So I mean I'm getting pretty gray up here too, so I was considering it. I was like maybe I'll look younger if I do what the kids are doing. <laugh>, but <laugh>. No for real though. I think making sure that your messaging on Facebook and Google matches and any ad platform that you're promoting your sales on I think compelling headlines. Headlines that convey that this is a sale save big, our biggest sale yet Black Friday sale is fine. Communicate also with your team. If you're working with an agency, an internal team, whatever, communicate with your team what your vision is for the sale.

What is the discount? What is this called? Maybe you have a name for the sale. You wanna match that across all of your platforms because your customers are on all of these platforms, they're on email, they're on Facebook, they're on Google, Amazon, et cetera. And so match that title. If you have a name for it, maybe you don't, maybe it's just Black Friday sale, which is totally fine. And then also using a copy that will convey that this is not gonna last. So play on that. Fear of missing out or fomo these deals won't last, don't miss out. That sort of things trigger us to go, okay, I understand this is limited and I need to act now. So making sure that you match, making sure that you hit on some of those copy points I think will get action. So I love that. I think sometimes we may take for granted that people are gonna buy during the holidays and people will.

And so we may just think, well, I don't need to really worry about my copy too much. Still good copy makes a difference. And you wanna lean into it and it can be simple. It can be something like Black Friday sale, Black Friday deals, cyber Monday deals, whatever. But you do need to think about messaging and you do need anything about sense of urgency, even though it's already kind of built in. People have a limited window to shop for holiday. You wanna lean into that. So really, really good. Amber, what about you? How do we maximize the visibility during the holidays?

Amber :

Yeah, so I think if you are setting up some sort of promo, you're putting in that effort. I mean obviously driving additional traffic through ads, it's a no brainer, but you really need to go all in, add those deals to your storefront on Amazon, get influencers involved test and Amazon live event, try DSP during the holidays. Anything you can do to drive additional eyeballs to that promotion and get them in the door I think is super impactful for getting additional visibility. For instance, I think last year during the holidays we had one client that they actually didn't have any sort of deal. They just did like a strike through pricing, but they had mommy bloggers like go crazy for this strike through pricing. And I guess mommy bloggers are where it's at because they just had astronomical sales.

Brett:

Is there a greater source of influence than mommy bloggers? I mean, mommy bloggers run the world basically <laugh>. That is amazing. Yeah, it's one of those things where I think you gotta be nimble, so you gotta get the foundation laid, which the foundation is for most people. On the D TOC side, it's Google search and shopping and remarketing and likely Facebook a little bit top of phone, a little bit of remarketing. That's foundation on Amazon. It's your sponsored product sponsor, brand sponsor brand video, right? Little bit of remarketing, That's the foundation. You gotta have that. And then you gotta be nimble there where you raise bids, raise budgets so you can really capitalize on traffic. But then yeah, try some other things. Try some top funnel dsp, Lean in the top of funnel YouTube. It's a great time to do that. Do some additional things, reach out to influencers, find some mono bloggers and send them some free product.

You never know it. Do some of these little things that might move the needle and then be nimble and be ready when you say, Aha, this is working, I'm gonna lean into that and put more budget behind that. Same could go for email, right? Hey, this subject line worked, how can I tweak that, create variant of that, send that again so I can maximize that own media of email. So really, really good guys. Thank you for sharing. I feel better, I feel more equipped. I feel ready to win the holidays. Any final tips or suggestions? Yeah, I do have a burning one actually. All right, <laugh>. So I really appreciate it when anyone, I'm working with a client, any retailer is coming to me and giving me what the sale is and then they're open to how right? And the sooner the better because the how may include, well you need a video or you need to resize a video, which may take a few weeks.

Something that won't take as long, for example, is a shopping promo. So I know how to set that up in Google Merchant Center, but I have to know what, I have to know what you're planning on doing so that I can then go and use my tools that I understand to set that up and make your holiday Q4 work that much better for you. So communicate with your team and convey the what and let them come up with some of the how's. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, lean in because there's so many little nuanced ways to maximize the sale, but you gotta kind of know the details early, you gotta know the why and all that, and so then you can really, really maximize. Love that. Bill. Anything else?

Savannah:

I'm gonna go ahead and hit this one again. So just starting early. I think that's a big one that's overlooked. There's so much we can be doing now to start in October for holiday promotions and things like that. So just really getting prepared now I think is the most important thing.

Brett:

Love it.

Amber :

Yeah. Now outside of testing things now, I would say be monitoring on the Amazon side especially. We have our team there, they've got reminders already checking every day, because if you're not in the dashboard looking actively, you're already missing deadlines for q4. So that would be my biggest thing right now.

Brett:

Totally know what the deadlines are and know what's happening on the Amazon side, on the Google side, and monitor your competition, know what's going on so you can adjust and adjust quickly. Awesome. You guys crushed it. Thank you so much. You nailed it. We do have to transition to the next session, but this was awesome. Thanks guys.

Savannah:

Thank

Brett:

You. Thank you. Sweet.

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