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May 14, 2024

041: Tactic Tuesdays: Prime Day

Ever wondered if Amazon Prime Day is the golden ticket for every brand? We tear down the facade of one-size-fits-all strategies as we navigate the complex waters of Prime Day sales, particularly for high-end products like my own pool cleaning tools company. Join us for a revealing discussion that uncovers the true impact of deep discounts and mass sales on premium brands, sharing first-hand experiences with the rollercoaster of a temporary sales spike followed by a plummet, resulting in no real gains.

As we dissect Prime Day advertising tactics, we shed light on the counterintuitive concept of turning ads off to protect brand value and discuss how crafting a strategic 'tripwire' product could be your secret weapon for future sales. Dive into the conversation as we stress the importance of maintaining a product's perceived value and how aggressive discounting can sometimes do more harm than good. We also navigate the misleading allure of discount-driven sales and how they attract customers who may not be the best fit for a brand's long-term vision.

Rounding out our Prime Day expedition, we unravel the potential behind virtual bundles and third-party logistics, offering insights into how these can maximize your sales without compromising on the integrity of your brand. Don't miss our take on the post-Prime Day landscape, where we pinpoint opportunities for sellers to shine, especially when others might be retreating due to drained advertising budgets. This episode is a must-listen for brands looking to hone their Prime Day maneuvers and emerge victorious in one of retail's most competitive arenas.

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Chapters

00:00 - Prime Day Strategy for Non-Consumables

09:35 - Optimizing Strategies for Prime Day

23:42 - Optimizing Listings With Virtual Bundles

26:47 - Optimizing Strategy for Prime Day

30:59 - Maximizing Prime Day Strategy Opportunities

Transcript

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00:00:00.059 --> 00:00:05.849
Welcome everyone to the Brand Fortress HQ podcast On this Tactics Tuesday we're going to be discussing Amazon Prime Day.

00:00:05.849 --> 00:00:13.769
This is something that comes around each year, where there's a lot of hype, usually a couple months beforehand, and you really wanna make sure that you are prepared for it.

00:00:13.769 --> 00:00:29.134
But today, what we wanna do is take that discussion even at a higher level when we talk about first principles, when we talk about strategies and overall goals for Prime Day and, quite frankly, whether you should be participating in Prime Day at all for your brand or even specific products.

00:00:29.134 --> 00:00:38.332
So, with that said, I'm actually going to turn it over to you, mike, and if you can kind of share what your experiences have been with your brand and Prime Day over the last few years.

00:00:39.640 --> 00:00:39.899
Yeah.

00:00:39.899 --> 00:00:48.615
So I think, just to clarify, our attempts to utilize Prime Day actually really is only one year.

00:00:48.615 --> 00:00:52.191
We tried last year and in the past.

00:00:52.191 --> 00:01:07.540
So to give some context for anybody who doesn't listen to the podcast regularly or hasn't been privy to an episode where I said what I sell and what we do what we do.

00:01:07.540 --> 00:01:11.929
So we sell pool cleaning tools and we sell at a really significant price premium over the rest of our category because of our unlimited free replacement warranty.

00:01:11.968 --> 00:01:32.686
But the issue there is that A it's not a consumable, not even it's not a consumable in the traditional sense, and it's also not a consumable in the say disposable kind of consumable item that we see oftentimes in this category, because most of the other products that are selling in this category are very disposable.

00:01:32.686 --> 00:01:36.683
You know one or two seasons and then somebody's coming back to buy another one from somebody.

00:01:36.683 --> 00:01:38.689
At least Our products are not that.

00:01:38.689 --> 00:01:43.727
Not only you know are they going to last longer, but of course I have to replace them and it's at my expense.

00:01:43.727 --> 00:01:57.153
So I have traditionally stayed away from Prime Day A because I didn't really want to discount our products, because we are selling in that premium price point and we're not really competing on price.

00:01:57.153 --> 00:01:58.605
So that's one factor.

00:01:58.605 --> 00:02:03.371
But then also, I just wasn't really sure whether we would gain much out of it.

00:02:03.371 --> 00:02:16.531
I didn't know if I could really offer enough of a discount to make it worth it, because I have to make sure that my margin is high enough so that I can actually fulfill on the warranty.

00:02:16.531 --> 00:02:19.763
I mean, unlimited free replacement means I'm going to replace quite a few of them.

00:02:19.763 --> 00:02:22.872
Now we've talked before as far as warranties go.

00:02:22.872 --> 00:02:26.105
Most people don't take advantage of them and there's all sorts of reasons why.

00:02:26.105 --> 00:02:31.169
It won't cost you nearly as much as you think, but it's still an expense and you have to account for it.

00:02:32.159 --> 00:02:37.652
So, that being said, last year I decided to take a swing at it.

00:02:37.652 --> 00:02:45.027
I thought well, you know, there's a lot of traffic rolling through, a lot of individuals who might not pay attention to our brand.

00:02:45.027 --> 00:02:51.256
If I could bring them in the door with the first product you know, maybe, maybe we could push some sales down the line on the back end.

00:02:51.256 --> 00:03:03.544
Maybe it's worth it.

00:03:03.544 --> 00:03:29.164
So we did some relatively significant discounting on a number of our products last year for Prime Day, and what I can say essentially is the result was we robbed Peter to pay Paul, because what happened was we saw a massive spike in sales, of course because of the discounts, and then, following Prime Day, we saw a massive decline in sales over what we would normally have seen and then things picked back up and leveled off.

00:03:29.164 --> 00:03:51.913
But if you were to look at our overall sales over, say, like a three-week window, prime Day did nothing for our overall sales numbers and the only thing that it did was cost me money because I gave such a significant discount on those products and maybe, you know, we'll bring them in to purchase later on and purchase other products.

00:03:53.061 --> 00:04:05.915
But part of me believes that there's a much lower chance that those individuals who came in purchasing our products at that discount are likely to purchase our other products at full price.

00:04:05.915 --> 00:04:22.882
They're probably going to be the customers that just kind of sit around waiting for us to offer another significant discount through our email list or whatever, and we can't afford to sell every product to this person at that significant discount because then there's just no room to supply on the warranty.

00:04:22.882 --> 00:04:27.382
So for us it was really, I feel, a bad decision.

00:04:27.382 --> 00:04:31.572
Now maybe it was a good decision because we probably should try it and see.

00:04:31.572 --> 00:04:35.067
I mean, you don't ever know you make a lot of assumptions but you don't know.

00:04:36.189 --> 00:04:46.528
Now we know Sales over that three-week period, basically, were flatlined to what they normally would have been, because we had the peak and then we had the trough and then we were back to normal.

00:04:46.528 --> 00:04:48.759
So I don't feel like it was a win for us.

00:04:48.759 --> 00:04:58.040
I would say if you're not a consumable product that people are going to come back for, you know, like a protein powder or something like that, I mean those kinds of situations I can absolutely see.

00:04:58.040 --> 00:05:05.473
If you've got tremendous reviews and you know they're going to come back for your product because everybody loves your product, then of course take advantage of Prime Day.

00:05:05.473 --> 00:05:06.595
I think it's a great opportunity.

00:05:06.595 --> 00:05:09.324
But a product like ours I don't think it's good.

00:05:09.324 --> 00:05:24.867
It's not a spontaneous purchase kind of a product and so you don't get as much of a bump, whereas on Prime Day for products that I think are more spontaneous in nature, that are less it's not tools and things like that Maybe you've got a better shot.

00:05:24.867 --> 00:05:26.129
It didn't work for us.

00:05:26.529 --> 00:05:39.125
I think one of the biggest things to take away from that is like for me, when I sold, we did utilize Prime Day the very first year that we sold.

00:05:39.125 --> 00:05:40.851
We launched our barbecue accessories brand in 2020.

00:05:40.851 --> 00:05:44.942
And we did Prime Day because back then I just thought that's what all Amazon sellers do.

00:05:44.942 --> 00:05:46.543
Amazon was promoting it.

00:05:46.543 --> 00:05:48.586
Amazon was like get your inventory in.

00:05:48.586 --> 00:05:49.627
So I took the bait.

00:05:49.627 --> 00:05:57.795
And so for me, I didn't really have a reason or a goal for Prime Day, except Amazon told me to do it.

00:05:57.795 --> 00:06:11.449
And so the next year I flipped that script a little bit and I was like okay, so if I'm going to decide to participate in prime day, what is my goal with with this decision?

00:06:11.449 --> 00:06:19.372
And for me, you know we had just come back in stock from being out for a couple of months, so you know it was.

00:06:19.372 --> 00:06:28.848
And so in the barbecue accessory space there's we have Memorial Day, and then we have Father's Day, and then we have July 4th and then Prime Day.

00:06:28.848 --> 00:06:42.911
So those four holidays whether they're actual national holidays or man-made, amazon made holidays there's a span of about four holidays right there that we did a lot of promoting, and so for me then my goal with Prime Day was.

00:06:42.911 --> 00:06:44.601
I want to increase our organic rank.

00:06:44.601 --> 00:06:46.870
I want to get our organic rank back to where it was.

00:06:46.870 --> 00:06:48.985
Let's generate a whole bunch of sales velocity.

00:06:48.985 --> 00:06:59.154
And it worked and I felt a whole lot better about what the results of it were, because I could certainly see that the goal that I set out to it helped.

00:06:59.300 --> 00:07:08.774
Now, after that, the challenge that I have in MySpace is MySpace is inundated with Chinese manufacturers selling direct and it's a race to the bottom in a lot of those cases.

00:07:08.774 --> 00:07:12.209
And similar to what Mike said is I'm not playing that game with them.

00:07:12.209 --> 00:07:19.533
So once Prime Day is over and all of those you know that's usually the end of those kind of four holidays you know they dropped their price.

00:07:19.533 --> 00:07:21.708
They kept their price at where it was.

00:07:29.879 --> 00:07:33.249
I like, similar to Mike, I'm at the high end of pretty much all the categories that I sell in and my organic rank dropped again.

00:07:33.249 --> 00:07:34.091
You know it went back to where it was.

00:07:34.091 --> 00:07:34.894
So like, yes, I had the second year.

00:07:34.894 --> 00:07:39.663
I feel like I had a better, a better mindset going into prime day because I knew what my goal was with it.

00:07:39.663 --> 00:07:44.851
But you know, I a lot of the same things that Mike said is is what with?

00:07:44.851 --> 00:07:46.935
I don't want to play the race to the bottom game.

00:07:46.935 --> 00:07:54.591
It certainly increased sales velocity, which increased organic rank, but what did I gain overall?

00:07:54.591 --> 00:07:57.810
And it just to me wasn't worth it, for the same reasons that it was for Mike.

00:07:59.480 --> 00:08:00.682
And I think that's a great point.

00:08:00.682 --> 00:08:13.151
What you bring up there, matt, which is having a game plan when you go in, not just, hey, we're doing Prime Day because Amazon says we should do Prime Day, because of course they want you to do Prime Day, because it's a win all the way around for Amazon.

00:08:13.151 --> 00:08:20.423
When you look at it, customers come there on Prime Day Like you said, it's an artificial holiday in order to find discounts.

00:08:20.423 --> 00:08:26.190
And, let's be honest, a lot of the people that are coming for Prime Day, they're looking for big discounts.

00:08:26.190 --> 00:08:40.331
They are bargain shoppers which, based on, like Mike, your brand, your brand is not targeted towards bargain shoppers, so it's not even necessarily your demographic, or at least your psychographic, I should say.

00:08:40.331 --> 00:08:46.807
And then the other thing is that I think to take away from this is looking at your product mix.

00:08:46.807 --> 00:09:01.720
So if you have a product that is a consumable where there's more reorder, or you have a really deep catalog, doing something like Prime Day to bring people into your brand can make a lot of sense because once they buy one product, then they know what your brand is.

00:09:01.720 --> 00:09:03.124
Hopefully they have a good experience.

00:09:03.124 --> 00:09:21.024
Hopefully you know you already have a system in place for you know the after purchase funnel and those types of things and that can make Prime Day a win over the long run for your brand if you have kind of the right strategy going in and you know what that's going to look like.

00:09:21.690 --> 00:09:35.186
But if you just do Prime Day to say, hey, we're going to do a Prime Day and then you're celebrating afterwards because you see your top line revenue went up during Prime Day, then you're probably not moving in the right direction.

00:09:35.245 --> 00:09:40.455
In fact, I mean one of the episodes that we had not too long ago with Ritu Java.

00:09:40.554 --> 00:09:50.471
One of the things that she mentioned was for brands that are not using one of those strategies or don't have a specific purpose for driving a lot of visibility during Prime Day.

00:09:50.572 --> 00:09:52.938
She actually for the accounts that she manages for a lot of them.

00:09:52.938 --> 00:10:22.953
What she mentioned was that she actually turns the ads off, which to me makes a lot of sense because, especially during Prime Day week, what we see both on the organic and the paid side is that the amount of clicks go up and the conversion rate drops dramatically A couple of weeks beforehand because people are basically just looking, because they're kind of getting ready and looking at those products, but they're not buying because they want to see what the discount is going to be for Prime Day and then during Prime Day, because a lot of them are bargain shoppers.

00:10:22.953 --> 00:10:23.956
They're tire kickers.

00:10:23.956 --> 00:10:28.615
It's something that they only want to buy if they're getting a good deal.

00:10:28.615 --> 00:10:42.244
So you have to be kind of careful, especially on the ad side, that you're not spending a whole bunch of money getting visibility for people that are going to convert at half of what your regular traffic would convert outside of Prime Day.

00:10:43.650 --> 00:10:51.201
Well, and getting back to that idea of whether you're even reaching your target market because you're looking at those bargain shoppers.

00:10:51.201 --> 00:11:15.283
So for our brand, there's a number of potential issues with that, because when you sell to an individual who's only going to buy your product if it is on this kind of significant discount, then A in order to sell them other products in your line, you've already primed them psychologically, let's say, prime day for discounts, right?

00:11:15.283 --> 00:11:18.191
So that's what they're going to be looking for going down the road.

00:11:18.191 --> 00:11:32.711
So even if you've got a good backend, post-purchase process in place and you're getting them on your list and things like that, you're still not likely to make as much on that customer as you would on the customer that's willing to pay full price for your premium product.

00:11:32.711 --> 00:11:34.596
And not only that.

00:11:34.596 --> 00:11:41.332
I think there's also a better than average chance with those individuals that if you're selling, so let's.

00:11:41.332 --> 00:11:43.096
Let's talk numbers.

00:11:43.177 --> 00:11:54.364
So our pool pole is like $200 and they can buy a $30 pool pole off of, you know, amazon that essentially does the same job, right?

00:11:54.364 --> 00:11:55.676
It's a telescoping pole, 16 feet long, you know.

00:11:55.676 --> 00:11:56.722
So, okay, 30 bucks, 40 bucks, maybe, right?

00:11:56.722 --> 00:11:57.789
It's a telescoping pole 16 feet long, you know.

00:11:57.789 --> 00:11:58.874
So okay, 30 bucks.

00:11:58.874 --> 00:12:08.172
40 bucks maybe, right, it's not nearly as good, it doesn't have the lifetime warranty, the locking mechanism is not as good, all of these things right, but it is still a telescoping pool pole.

00:12:08.172 --> 00:12:21.299
So my problem is let's say I sell a $200 pole and I give them a really good discount Maybe it's you's, I don't know let's say 30%, so that's 60 bucks.

00:12:21.299 --> 00:12:31.140
I sold it for 140 bucks but they still paid $100 more for my poll than that less expensive poll in that category.

00:12:31.889 --> 00:12:38.716
And this person, because of the type of buyer that they are, they probably were like oh, it's a really great deal, I should go ahead and do it.

00:12:38.716 --> 00:12:45.460
But after the fact those type buyers are going to have many of them are going to have buyer's remorse they're going to be like oh, you know what?

00:12:45.460 --> 00:12:47.114
I should have just bought that $40 pool.

00:12:47.114 --> 00:12:49.059
I really didn't need to do this.

00:12:49.059 --> 00:12:54.057
You're going to get more returns out of that and, from our perspective, you're going to get more complaints.

00:12:54.619 --> 00:13:04.700
We have often said selling to that customer who's willing to pay $200 for a pool pool because they know it's the absolute best and that you're going to take care of them, means you get a better buyer, you have a better customer.

00:13:04.700 --> 00:13:06.113
They're not the complainers.

00:13:06.113 --> 00:13:09.610
They're the ones who are willing to solve problems when they call you or they contact you.

00:13:09.610 --> 00:13:11.653
Most of the time they're pretty reasonable.

00:13:11.653 --> 00:13:17.822
Those people on that lower end of the spectrum that are only going to buy with that massive discount, they tend not to be as good a customer.

00:13:17.822 --> 00:13:19.105
You have more problems with them.

00:13:19.105 --> 00:13:21.854
They're not problem solvers, they're typically complainers.

00:13:24.259 --> 00:13:44.239
Yeah, I think and it just kind of boils down to you know, like what we were talking about before is making sure you know what your objective is for Prime Day, and I think not only at a brand level, but you can also look at it from a product level, because you may have a product that is a great tripwire product and really what you're buying for Prime Day is you're buying visibility.

00:13:44.239 --> 00:13:51.938
So if you've got a product that fits well into that category, then you can get a ton of visibility and that is great.

00:13:52.399 --> 00:14:05.173
Or even if you don't come out with a product like if you're going to use Prime Day, if you want it for the volume, if you want it for that opportunity, then come out with a product that is specifically designed for that purpose.

00:14:05.173 --> 00:14:18.595
That is, that tripwire product that you can afford to break even or maybe even lose money on to get people on your list and you get this massive volume uptick so that you can put a massive number of people on your list and then maybe you can funnel them in.

00:14:18.595 --> 00:14:34.133
That's one of those things where so like for us, if we were going to use Prime Day, an opportunity for that would be, say, pool water test strips, let's say, now I don't like that option as much because you really want to nail those, because people want to get their measurements right.

00:14:34.133 --> 00:14:40.085
But let's say you could easily find a relatively inexpensive test strip from a manufacturer.

00:14:40.085 --> 00:14:49.076
You could roll that out and as long as the test strips are decent, you can get them for a few bucks, cost a few bucks to get them to the customer.

00:14:49.076 --> 00:14:50.416
So now you got six bucks in.

00:14:50.889 --> 00:14:53.619
Maybe you sell it for five or six dollars on Prime Day.

00:14:53.619 --> 00:15:02.442
Right, You're going to lose a little money on that, but the nice thing about that is even my customer that'll pay 200 bucks for you know a pool poll.

00:15:02.442 --> 00:15:12.043
You know test strips are test strips to some degree, and so you could probably get away with that and you still bring a lot of people into your, into your customer list.

00:15:12.043 --> 00:15:22.538
That may actually be part of your target market, whereas if you were selling something else like like if you're heavily discounting in order to get it then maybe you're getting the wrong customer.

00:15:22.538 --> 00:15:31.899
But I think there's a balance there that if you get the right Tripwire product, you can still get that right customer on your list and sell them those premium products down the road.

00:15:33.534 --> 00:15:34.289
Yeah, that's a good point.

00:15:34.289 --> 00:15:36.778
I also wonder so, what's that?

00:15:36.778 --> 00:15:40.994
What I'm thinking about too, and I'm wondering.

00:15:40.994 --> 00:15:46.563
It would take some coordination, although there might be a couple of different ways you can do it, because there's always two sides of the equation.

00:15:46.563 --> 00:15:51.221
The easy side of the equation is offering a discount and just lowering your price.

00:15:51.221 --> 00:16:01.605
Yep, the side of the equation that, in the long run, is usually more valuable for your brand and, quite frankly, for your customers as well, is saying how could I add value instead of lowering my price?

00:16:01.605 --> 00:16:16.708
And so I think it'd be interesting if you could come up with a way to have a Prime Day exclusive, you know, freebie product or add on or something that you only offer during Prime Day.

00:16:18.211 --> 00:16:19.275
Would people see it, though?

00:16:19.275 --> 00:16:34.669
In theory I kind of like the idea, but generally speaking, on Prime Day, the only way you're really getting highlighted, at least by Amazon, is if you're offering a discount, and so in that sense, wouldn't your offer kind of get drowned out by everybody else?

00:16:35.190 --> 00:16:38.250
So you would run into yeah and yes and no.

00:16:38.250 --> 00:16:42.033
So you get additional visibility during Prime Day.

00:16:42.033 --> 00:17:03.341
If you're running a officially sanctioned by Amazon Prime Day exclusive, there's definitely a lot of visibility you get with that ad on.

00:17:03.341 --> 00:17:18.625
Again, you wouldn't want to do this for all your products and you wouldn't want to do it for all keywords, but maybe keywords that had high buyer intent that you knew like your prime customer was looking for.

00:17:18.625 --> 00:17:28.459
Then it could make sense in order to do that as a headline, either sponsor brand static image or, even better, if you did it as a video.

00:17:29.349 --> 00:17:38.472
In theory, that makes a lot of sense, but I think Amazon made a big shift in how and what products are visible during Prime Day.

00:17:38.472 --> 00:17:42.118
I think it was 2021 or 22.

00:17:42.118 --> 00:17:44.544
I didn't participate in Prime Day.

00:17:44.544 --> 00:17:46.794
I didn't do any Prime exclusive deals or anything like that.

00:17:46.794 --> 00:17:59.240
I did do a discount, but I was actually more aggressive with advertising, just to take advantage of the traffic I mean, there's a lot more traffic on the platform and it worked to a degree where, yes, I did get sales.

00:17:59.519 --> 00:18:10.214
My velocity did increase from a couple of weeks prior to that, but then the next year we tried something very similar and actually close to what you were talking about, john, where we added something.

00:18:10.556 --> 00:18:21.736
We added an additional product, a real cheap product, to one of our top selling SKUs, and we did the same strategy where we didn't do any actual prime discounts.

00:18:21.736 --> 00:18:31.105
We did a coupon, but the amount of impressions that we got in 2023 compared to 2022 was significantly less.

00:18:31.105 --> 00:19:00.230
And I think it was about a week or two later, destiny, who was also another guest, did an analysis on LinkedIn and she actually proved that the products that weren't involved in Prime Day, in terms of actual Prime discount, the amount of visibility that they got was significantly less than it was the previous year, so I don't think that Amazon is showing the products as prominently anymore.

00:19:00.230 --> 00:19:04.114
No matter how much you're spending, if you aren't participating in Prime Day.

00:19:04.114 --> 00:19:10.460
I think there was a pretty big shift about a year or two ago and Destiny proved it with actual data, so I think it's different now.

00:19:10.460 --> 00:19:16.021
You know, I think Amazon, you're either participating or you're not going to get as much visibility as you would otherwise.

00:19:16.569 --> 00:19:17.531
Hmm, interesting.

00:19:17.531 --> 00:19:31.364
I'm just trying to think about any other ways that you could take advantage of all that additional visibility without having, you know, officially sanctioned prime day deal offer.

00:19:32.391 --> 00:19:32.932
I wonder.

00:19:32.932 --> 00:19:58.083
So it seems it strikes me that marketing on you as opposed to maybe necessarily top of search, picking some products or brands in your category you know that you know are going to be aggressive for Prime Day and so their product listing is going to get a lot of traffic and so you target their listing.

00:19:58.083 --> 00:20:05.435
You know with, say, sponsor display, you know like everything you can throw at that competitor's listing with this.

00:20:05.435 --> 00:20:14.423
You know additional offer, like you're suggesting John, you know where maybe there's an extra freebie in there or there's something else that you're advertising with it and you make it very prominent on that.

00:20:14.423 --> 00:20:17.432
Those competitors listings that you know are going to be aggressive.

00:20:17.432 --> 00:20:19.916
Maybe you could get more volume there.

00:20:20.798 --> 00:20:30.440
It strikes me that, matt, I think you're probably right in terms of the general volume of traffic that you're going to be able to pull off a Prime Day if you're not participating.

00:20:30.440 --> 00:20:34.060
But there might be strategies like that where maybe you could get away with it.

00:20:34.060 --> 00:20:51.413
The other option that you could try that maybe sits somewhat outside of that would be DSP and whether DSP would give you access to more ad volume that maybe isn't being affected, like Amazon's not throttling it any way, because you're not participating.

00:20:51.413 --> 00:20:52.635
I don't, I don't know.

00:20:52.635 --> 00:20:56.692
You know we haven't tried it, but you know I like the idea, john.

00:20:56.692 --> 00:21:07.415
I think it's basically just coming and doing some testing to see can you actually get enough volume out of it to make it worth the effort you know to rework your listing and all the things that you might have to do in order to make it.

00:21:07.415 --> 00:21:08.279
You know, do it right.

00:21:08.884 --> 00:21:18.172
And I think you'd have to be really smart about how you do your competitor targeting on that, because you'd want to make sure that you know if you're.

00:21:18.352 --> 00:21:32.382
If you're a premium brand, for example, then you're going after a competitor that maybe has a lot of visibility, but they're already cheaper than what you are and now, with a Prime Deal discount, maybe their product now is 50% less.

00:21:32.382 --> 00:21:42.851
The reality is, the people that are clicking on there are probably not going to be interested in buying something at twice the price, so you'd have to be pretty strategic about the competitors that you targeted.

00:21:42.851 --> 00:21:47.422
The other thing I wonder is if there's a way that you could use virtual bundles.

00:21:47.422 --> 00:21:57.097
So that way, from a logistics perspective, maybe what you do is you know you create a larger bundle and then offer a dollar off amount.

00:21:57.097 --> 00:22:06.421
That you know sounds impressive because I mean, let's say, you put together you know a few $100 dollar bundle and you offer, you know, 20, 30, $40 off of that.

00:22:06.421 --> 00:22:18.819
That kind of is in the same theme, if you will, of prime day, but you're not losing quite as much on the margin because your dollar amount is so much higher on that order, on your order value.

00:22:19.869 --> 00:22:21.734
Yeah, yeah, it's an option.

00:22:21.734 --> 00:22:24.020
I mean, virtual bundles are interesting.

00:22:24.020 --> 00:22:26.757
I mean there's a lot of benefits that that you know to be had.

00:22:26.757 --> 00:22:33.653
Unfortunately, the one benefit that doesn't translate, you know, as you're not saving anything on your fulfillment costs, you know you still get mailed.

00:22:33.653 --> 00:22:35.759
It brings up a question for me, though.

00:22:35.759 --> 00:22:42.942
I'm curious what you guys have experienced, because it's something that I'm thinking about recently, is that you know virtual bundles.

00:22:44.030 --> 00:22:56.992
Now they show up differently than, say, you know, a variation, but a lot, of, a lot of listings that you go to will have an individual products and then they will also have bundled products on that listing as a variation.

00:22:57.714 --> 00:23:01.750
I know Amazon sometimes doesn't like that, depending on the category and whatnot, but a lot of people get away with it.

00:23:01.750 --> 00:23:07.675
But the reason I bring that up is I like our virtual look at the 3PLs that we're working with.

00:23:07.675 --> 00:23:27.738
We can actually get well for a bundle like that.

00:23:27.738 --> 00:23:41.951
We can actually get a much better shipping rate for shipping that bundle through a 3PL than we can through Amazon, because they'll give us a reduced rate for packaging multiple products in the same box, whereas Amazon's not giving us any discount at all.

00:23:41.951 --> 00:23:58.000
So I'm starting to wonder about creating bundle variations on our listings and having them FBM instead of FBA, and then the prime product that's on there that gets all the traffic, you know, is the one that's showing up in the listings and that one stays FBA.

00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:08.332
But then once somebody is on the listing, then they see the bundle and you know, I mean we could save significantly shipping it through the 3PL versus shipping it as a virtual bundle through Amazon.

00:24:10.377 --> 00:24:13.026
I think that's a really good point and a really good idea.

00:24:13.047 --> 00:24:38.067
A couple of things that come to my mind on that is that, first of all, I think that virtual bundles could be a great way to test to see how much potential there is for bundling some of those products together so, because it's so easy to do, and then if you see a good amount of traction with that bundle, that you just take that same offer and you essentially translate it, like you said, into its own variation and you move that over to FBM instead, right?

00:24:38.067 --> 00:25:10.076
The other thing is kind of going back to this prime Day of what we started out with is, I think, also keep in mind that I think there's a lot of opportunity that's not being used with virtual bundles now having their own title and their own images of using them for more of holiday promotions and those types of things where it's it's limited time offer or you know a special use case to where you can bundle those things together and give people an excuse to buy a couple of products at the same time.

00:25:12.345 --> 00:25:13.568
I like it as a gift option.

00:25:13.750 --> 00:25:24.323
You know, like I mean, virtual bundles are really not that difficult to create and I think I think there's something to be said for having well, as we started this whole podcast.

00:25:24.363 --> 00:25:29.763
You know, in terms of looking at Prime Day, and if you're going to do it, then have a purpose behind it.

00:25:29.864 --> 00:25:42.965
You know what is the actual goal, right, and with virtual bundles not that you can't create virtual bundles that don't technically have an independent goal, right, and with virtual bundles not that you can't create virtual bundles that don't technically have an independent goal except to just sell more products and that, you know, frequently bought together or things like that.

00:25:43.006 --> 00:25:46.807
You know, I mean there's ways to do that and you don't have to have a lot of strategy behind it.

00:25:46.807 --> 00:26:03.748
But having a strategy behind it and deciding what to put together into that bundle and turning it into more of a gift offer, you know, for Father's Day or Mother's Day or birthdays or you know whatever that is, I think actually could be a really good strategy because, of course, obviously it can have its own image.

00:26:03.748 --> 00:26:05.502
You know, the main image can be different.

00:26:05.502 --> 00:26:23.846
As you said the title, the bullets, the whole nine yards, so you could essentially create an entire listing that really revolves around more so the gifting of those items or something like that, rather than the independent items themselves, and that's a very different way to market that bundle of products which might be useful to a lot of sellers.

00:26:25.500 --> 00:26:28.691
Yeah, I think there's a lot to be done there.

00:26:28.691 --> 00:26:46.303
So, as we you know, probably a good place to wrap on Prime Day as we think about it, a good place to wrap on Prime Day as we think about it, Any action items that kind of stick out to either one of you guys for our listeners to think about as we kind of prepare for Prime Day in the next couple of months.

00:26:47.025 --> 00:27:05.351
I think the biggest one that we've touched on a couple of times is deciding on what your goal is If you're going to participate, what is your goal with it, and having a clear and defined plan and being able to measure that measure the success of the goal Did I achieve my goal or did I not achieve my goal?

00:27:05.351 --> 00:27:13.012
So that you can make an educated decision, don't just participate in Prime Day because Amazon tells you to figure out what your goal is.

00:27:13.012 --> 00:27:28.521
If there is any goals that meet, what Prime Day would help you with, yeah, so that's my biggest tip is just decide if actually make a decision based on what will happen if you do participate, as opposed to just jumping in with both feet, like Amazon wants you to.

00:27:29.684 --> 00:27:31.409
Yeah, I really like that.

00:27:31.409 --> 00:27:34.903
I think, to be honest, I actually I like the second part of that.

00:27:34.903 --> 00:27:47.442
You know, in the sense that having a goal is great, but if the goal that you've set, you haven't determined what KPIs you can actually measure to determine whether you achieved it or not, then the goal is not helpful.

00:27:47.442 --> 00:28:18.109
So, not only deciding you know what is the thing that I think we're going to achieve, or that we hope to achieve by utilizing Prime Day, but how would we measure whether we actually achieved it or not, or at least the degree to which we achieved it, so that if we come back around to this next year, we can make the decision of okay, we didn't quite reach our goal, but we were in the right direction, the directionality was right, and so what could we change to get us closer to the goal?

00:28:18.109 --> 00:28:31.983
You know, this time around, but again, if you don't have those measurements, you can't do anything with that, and I think you know, ultimately, the biggest thing is, whatever that goal is, be careful that the goal that you're setting is not just sometimes exposure can be good.

00:28:31.983 --> 00:28:33.487
You know, I don't want to say that.

00:28:33.487 --> 00:28:42.766
Don't have exposure be the only goal that you're shooting for, maybe for your brand, maybe exposure is exactly what you need, and so, therefore, maybe it is the right goal.

00:28:43.248 --> 00:29:05.228
But ultimately, I think for most brands, especially right now, with fees being as high as they are, with profit margins being squeezed as much as they have been, I think that you need to take stock of what products can you actually afford to discount, because if you're going to take advantage of Prime Day, most likely it's going to be with some sort of a discount.

00:29:05.609 --> 00:29:17.141
Maybe you could go with a strategy like what we're talking about, with adding something to your product, but if you really want to get the best bang for your buck out of Prime Day, it's probably going to be some sort of a discount offer.

00:29:17.141 --> 00:29:19.285
So the question is what can you afford to discount?

00:29:19.285 --> 00:29:25.144
And then, how much can you sell on the back end of that?

00:29:25.144 --> 00:29:27.951
What is the lifetime value of that customer likely going to be?

00:29:27.951 --> 00:29:40.567
Whether it's because of consumables, whether it's because you have a massive product line that's all centered around the same product niche, and so, therefore, once you bring that target customer in, you can sell all those products to them.

00:29:40.567 --> 00:29:51.422
Make sure that there's a lot of selling availability on the back end of that, if you're going to be doing the discounting because that lifetime value comes into play, and if you don't know what it is, you're probably screwing yourself.

00:29:52.785 --> 00:29:57.202
Yeah, and I think the piece that I would put out there is, I think, coming back to what Ritu is talking about.

00:29:57.243 --> 00:30:16.961
As far as turning off your ads is, I know it seems counterintuitive, but especially for those products where they're great complimentary products and there's some good profit margin there but maybe you're not moving a ton of units, they're not your hero products, I think there's probably a lot to be saved in those couple of days during prime.

00:30:17.462 --> 00:30:19.689
By and again, you don't have to turn off all your ads.

00:30:19.689 --> 00:30:28.326
Me personally, you know, thinking about this a little bit, I'd probably at least leave my brand defense on just to make sure that I didn't get eaten alive by my competitors.

00:30:28.326 --> 00:30:55.112
But I definitely would turn off, you know, for again, for complimentary products, if you're running, you know, some of the video ads, some of the other different placements out there, this would be a good time to probably turn those off, since your conversion rates are going to be lower during prime day anyway, and so that way you can kind of save some of those ad dollars and then put them to play, you know, a couple weeks afterwards when everybody's kind of over their prime day hangover and into their regular buying cycle again.

00:30:59.420 --> 00:31:05.502
Well, you know, that's a really good point, John is that there's a lot of sellers who blow a ton of cash on Prime Day, not only in terms of advertisements but also in terms of the discounts that they offered.

00:31:05.502 --> 00:31:17.740
And so then on the backside of that, especially sellers that don't really know what they're doing, let's say, you know, they may be in a position where, once Prime Day is over with, they're like oh crap, like we can't afford, like I don't have any money, Right.

00:31:17.740 --> 00:31:28.675
And so that's the time when you know, when you actually have an opportunity to to really kind of expand your advertising and do some things, because, realistically, your competition probably isn't going to be, they're going to be pulling back.

00:31:30.299 --> 00:31:31.981
Yeah, absolutely All right.

00:31:31.981 --> 00:31:42.651
Well, I think that's a great place to wrap for today and I think that we've given, you know, listeners out there, a few different angles to approach the strategy, as opposed to just, you know, pumping up the volume as high as you can for Prime Day.

00:31:42.651 --> 00:31:48.275
So hopefully that gives them some options as they look at what their strategy should be for their brand for Prime Day.