Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 0:18

Happy Wednesday, everyone. I'm Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson Digital Strategist with BWG Connect, and we are a network and knowledge sharing group. We stay on top of latest trends, challenges, whatever shaping the digital landscape. We want to know and talk about it. We will do at least 500 of these virtual events this year due to the increase in demand to better understand the digital space. We'll also do at least 75 in person, small format dinners. So if you happen to live in the United States, feel free to check out our website, bwgconnect.com, or feel free to ping us. Send us an email. We'd love to send you an invite. These dinners are typically 15 to 20 people having a discussion around a certain digital topic, and it's always a fantastic time. We spend the majority of our time talking to brands. That's how we stay on top of the latest trends. I'd love to have a conversation with you, so feel free to drop me a line at Tiffany@bwgconnect.com, and we can get some time on the calendar. It's from these conversations we generate the topic ideas we know people want to learn about. And it's also where we gain our resident, experts such as Blue Wheel, who's with us today. Anybody that we ask to teach the collective community has come highly recommended for multiple brands within the network. So if you're ever in need of any recommendations within the digital space, please don't hesitate to reach out. We have a short list of the best of the best, and we would love to provide that information to you few housekeeping items before we get started. First and foremost, we want this to be fun, educational conversation. Also drop the questions comments into the chat or the Q A, and we will get to them as we move along in the presentation. And we started here about five minutes after the hour. Rest assured, we're going to wrap up at least five to 10 minutes before the end of the hour, to give you ample time to get to wherever you need to go next. So which with that, let's rock and roll and start to talk about creating a winning strategy with Amazon Marketing Cloud and DSP, the team at Blue Wheel are awesome partners and friends of the BWG community. So I'm going to kick it over to you, Whitney, if you can give an introduction on yourself, that would be lovely, and then we'll dive right in. Thank you.

Whitney Weaver 2:13

Great. Thank you so much, Tiffany. Hi everyone. It's nice to be here today. I'm excited to be talking about this very exciting subject. So a little bit about me and my role here at Blue Wheel. My role is a director of marketplace advertising, and so I work with a team who is living in these platforms, living in Amazon's platforms, across search and DSP, as well as all things marketplace or retail media network. So your Walmarts Targets, Critio, what have you, my team and I are constantly working in those platforms and learning about all the new and exciting things that are happening in them and how to work with our brands to best leverage them. So I'm excited to talk to you today about AMC. This has been a hot topic for a couple of years, and we're going to get into it here. So just a quick overview of the subject matter for today and how we would approach creating a winning strategy using the marketing cloud, using DSP as well as search. Search is still a cornerstone and absolute foundation for when we're building out a strategy, and AMC can also help with search as well. So we'll get into that, and then we'll also look at some testing and consideration formats that you can take to your agencies or your marketing teams and actually take some action based off of this webinar and some direction for what to do next. Great. All right, so I'm sure this looks familiar to most of you, if you are in the marketing world. I'm sure the marketing funnel is something that you talk extensively about in your meetings with your teams, and you know, it really projects this, this linear experience for the shopper of going from brand awareness, you know, learning that the brand even exists through consideration and eventually conversion, but as the platforms that we're advertising on is shoppers become more informed, the the marketing funnel maybe oversimplifies this journey a little bit, and while at its core, it's still really effective and a great way to be understanding how shoppers are looking at brands and considering brands. The new reality is that with all of the different brands, all of the different platforms vying for attention, this has become a little bit more complicated in the digital space. So if we can go the next slide and so the shopper journey is not necessarily linear. We like to say that it's more of a corkscrew of shoppers, maybe starting in the awareness stage, going through consideration, maybe they drop back off and pull back into awareness. But there's a lot of different touch points within each of these stages. That we need to make sure that we're reaching them at those particular stages where they're based on the signals or the behaviors that they are taking, in order to ultimately get them to convert and then further nurture that relationship and that loyalty long term and part of the challenge that we've had, especially on Amazon and I'm sure across multiple different platforms, is understanding how all of these different pieces work together. For Amazon in particular, it has a last touch attribution, so the last ad that they clicked on or that they saw a shopper sees is where the sale is attributed. So it might look like sponsored products is getting all of the credit for all of the sales, but perhaps it was that streaming TV that really brought them into the fold and ultimately led them to conversion and so with the traditional method of attribution, it's been challenging to really understand how all of these different aspects work together, but with AMC, which officially launched almost four years ago, now, we have a better way of understanding the interaction between all of these different touch points, how they work together and how they're ultimately leading to stronger conversion, what products are leading to those initial new to brand purchases, or those initial conversions, and so much more. And so we can go to the next slide to talk about all that AMC can. Oh, yeah, sorry. So the key things as we're looking at these last touch attributions is with search and DSP, it really comes down to how we're generating demand and how we're capturing demand, and as we're thinking about generating demand, it's about how we're pushing out ads to these audiences, and the shopper is taking a more passive role within this stage of the marketing funnel, or within this stage of the strategy. And so there's not exactly an action that the shopper is taking that's ultimately leading to them being served an ad. This is through other behaviors, other data points that the algorithm is looking at and saying that this person might be a good fit for this particular brand or product, whereas demand capture is more of an active role the shopper is taking a particular action, whether it's doing a search, whether it's going to a particular product page, and that's where we really Want to make sure that we have a good foundation and whatever demand is coming in for your product or your brand, the brand is showing up and being front and center to capture that demand. And so it's this relationship between these two different strategies that we really look to balance between search and DSP in order to make sure that we're growing and converting those shoppers. Awesome. So AMC is able to connect the dots, and so between that search, that demand generation and demand capture, how do we understand which role each of these different tactics or ad types platforms are either generating that demand or capturing that demand, and how do we invest in those different tactics in order to maximize one or the other? Excuse me, what are the other metrics that we're looking to hit. And so with the measurement through AMC, we have a number of different reports that can be pulled, but I would say the most common that we use is what is called the path to purchase report. So we can see how did a shopper what are the ad types that a shopper interacted with in order to ultimately get to that conversion point, what is the exposure of any combination of ad types, and how did that lead to a higher conversion rate or unique reach? And then also gateway products, loyalty, Subscribe and Save. It's a really big way to drive revenue through Amazon and through your DTC site, and understanding which products are that gateway or new to brand customers tend to purchase first can be really helpful for understanding how you want to structure your your media strategy, and how you want to invest in that additionally, AMC can help with creating audiences and doing analysis of the audiences that you have. So there's a couple of different ways that this can be. There's different parameters that can be set in place in order to create these audiences. So for example, we can create audiences that look at shoppers who searched whether it's your brand keyword or a category keyword that's really relevant for your product. Up, but maybe they haven't seen a DSP ad, or they haven't been exposed to a sponsored brand ad. We can build those audiences and then make sure that we're either targeting them through DSP or using something like a bid boost through sponsored brand to get the shopper further into the journey. Additionally, things like cart abandoners, those who are obviously showing some interest in the product that they've added to cart. How do we remind them that it's there and make sure that they actually convert on it? Additionally, things like look alike lapsed audiences, those who maybe purchased six months ago. How do we re engage them with the brand? And AMC can do all of these things through custom audiences. And then third and finally, looking at how AMC can really leverage a couple of different data sources to understand how omni channel strategies are working together. So we can use AMC to leverage first party data to build audience off of that, or if we want to create exclusions and make sure that we have Amazon shoppers and DTC shoppers. We hear that a lot from brands as well, and then also understanding how those two audiences overlap, for those who are exposed to Amazon ads versus those who are going to the DTC site, what are those behaviors and conversion rates and interactions look like, and AMC is something that can help with that.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 11:24

Some questions come as put into the chat or the Q and A as we move along here. I always appreciate everything that Blue Wheel does you guys have the best presentations and really help simplify, per se, a very complicated process, right? Like Amazon, it's a lot to connect the dots and, like, bring it all together. So my first thought, having managed a brand for 10 years on Amazon, is like, Could I take all of this juicy Intel and testing and leverage it on other marketplaces, on my own, direct to consumer sites, or is this a very unique journey that isn't going to help those other channels,

Whitney Weaver 12:03

so you can absolutely leverage this information. And so it might not be exactly like creating this audience and AMC and adding it to your Facebook, you know, media plan, or whatever that might be. I know that there are third party like data, like a live ramp or something that can upload those, like third party audiences, I'm not as familiar with those, but in terms of sharing the data and the insights, absolutely so how are we looking at keywords, the creatives, the audience insights? So if we're seeing a group of an audience group that is taking a particular action through AMC, maybe leveraging that first party data. How can we look at that crossover between what's happening on the DTC site and what's happening on Amazon, and then sharing those audience insights with other programmatic platforms, if you're running through Walmart or Macy's or Rondelle. Using that programmatic option there, it can help with informing those strategies as well, and perhaps creating some exclusion categories to really refine the retargeting. The other thing that I think is really awesome for with DSP in particular, and DTC sites is we can add ad tags to a DTC site and see how DSP is Dr helping to drive traffic conversions on a DTC site, because DSP shows up everywhere it's, you know, is born on an Amazon platform, but it shows up across all of the internet depending on the inventory. And so you can get some really good insights from tagging your website to understand how DSP is also supporting the sales. There.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 13:47

Awesome. And question here, What is the look back window

Whitney Weaver 13:52

for AMC? It's 12 and a half months. So

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 13:55

12 and a half months you can pull, yeah, awesome. Good question. All right, cool. Bring out more questions and comments as we move along.

Whitney Weaver 14:07

All right. And so in a recent announcement, AMC is no longer for DSP advertisers only go into that dramatic transition. It is now available to brands and advertisers who are only running sponsored ads. Now getting an instance, you will have to work with an agency or your Amazon AE may be able to support you with getting an instance if you're only running sponsored ads. But this does open up the door to advertisers and brands, the same information that bigger brands have had access to that are really investing in DSP. So it's it's exciting for all brands, but it does mean potentially some more competition, but also better refinement of your targeting. How do you really know that you're invested. Assessment is making the biggest impact. And so this, this new beta, a new opportunity is is really exciting for for all brands and advertisers.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 15:10

That is a big announcement. Was this at unboxed, that they announced this. So

Whitney Weaver 15:16

officially, yes, there were some like rumblings of it. And we were having discussions with Amazon about it previous or prior to unbox, but I think that was the true it

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 15:27

is, yeah, it is formal that now you can actually be part of that. That's a huge announcement for smaller brands. Yeah, that was always something that I was challenged with having a small brand. So, very cool, very interesting, and I'm sure there'll be lots of questions around it. 

Whitney Weaver 15:46

Yeah, so I guess, what does this mean for brands who are only running on sponsored ads? So your sponsored products, sponsored brands and sponsored display within the search what we call the search UI. It is evolving into a programmatic display UI as well, but traditionally known as kind of like the search platform. And so what this is now going to allow all advertisers and brands to do at the sponsored product level is better understand the impact of each ad type. So historically, we always thought of sponsored brands as like that awareness play sponsored products is more of a conversion play and display kind of filled in the gaps because there's a lot of different targeting options within display, whether it's category targeting, asin targeting, or even retargeting. So sponsored display can kind of fill a couple different roles when it comes to the search side of things, and then you are able to create some custom audiences and leverage them in different ways through search now, so if you're created a custom audience, it can be added to sponsored display and actually run as like a custom audience through sponsored display. And one thing about sponsored display, just to differentiate it from DSP, sponsored display is what I would consider like DSP Lite. It shows up on a lot of the same inventory that DSP does. However, there are far fewer controls in terms of look back, windows, exclusions, audience refinement, so there's not as many levers as in the DSP, but now with this beta using AMC and being able to use the custom audiences through sponsored display, it does give us a better way to refine the targeting through sponsored display. So just to clarify the difference there too, and then how we can activate on this and so really looking to engage shoppers through AMC audiences, you can use what is called a bid booster. This is very new. This was announced at unboxed, that we can use bid boosters for sponsored product and sponsored brand ads in order to basically engage those AMC audiences, those custom audiences that we're building. I've not seen it yet in an account. It's still kind of being rolled out, so you might not have it in your account yet, but just know that it's, it's on the roadmap. They announced it at unboxed, and we expect to, you know, see this coming up in accounts more often in the future, and this is really just going to help with that targeting refinement, which is ultimately, ultimately going to help increase conversion rate, which, with better conversion rate, we tend to see higher rankings, better reviews, and then the the flywheel starts with higher sales, and it just keeps going from there. So just helps us really refine the retargeting, and stuff, guessing which keywords are going to work, we can get a little bit smarter about how we're spending our our investment.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 18:49

And I have to think about like, seasonality of items with like, the holidays coming up different seasons. Like, how can that? Can you better utilize this opportunity for a better planning around seasonality of items. Absolutely,

Whitney Weaver 19:05

that's a great question. So I would definitely look at, you know, especially going into the holiday, at your baseline. You know, what are you seeing in terms of your current path to purchase? Is it DSP, sponsored brands, sponsored product that is driving the best conversion rate. What is that combination of ad types and the path that shoppers are taking most often in order to lead to higher conversion? Or maybe you're looking to find a more unique reach? What is that combination and making sure that you're really investing in those particular ad types, and that you're segmenting and targeting is set up in a way that it can be more sequential. And so that comes with, how are you excluding certain audiences, the different match types that you're using on the search side? How you're using that bid, bid booster for the AMC audience? In sponsored products and sponsored brands to help with that, that journey as we go into the holiday season. And then another way that you can also leverage AMC for seasonality is understanding or creating an audience of shoppers who purchased, maybe on fall Prime Day. And maybe you sell air purifiers, for example, and maybe you want to retarget them and say, Hey, we know that you bought our air purifier a month ago. Here's our filters. Do you want to sign up for, Subscribe and Save and you know that that shopper purchased during a tent pole event, maybe you have a sale on filters come Black Friday, and it just helps to build that loyalty, so it gives you more of that, that structure around the seasonality.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 20:50

Great example question here, do you recommend a general percent spend on DSP versus sponsored ads?

Whitney Weaver 20:59

It's a good question. It does come down to what the goal is. So I would say, if a brand is really looking to, say, increase brand awareness, and in turn, increase top line sales. In order to do that, we need to get enough people to the brand or the product pages in order to reach that sales goal, right? And so DSP can be a great way to drive a lot of traffic, and with AMC and more of those audience refinement opportunities within DSP, you can make it a more higher intent audience through DSP going to your product pages. And so if you're looking to grow and you're looking to get that brand awareness, I would say maybe as high as 50% going to DSP, if you're looking to do some retargeting and be more efficient or target, particularly like Subscribe and Save users something like that. Maybe it's closer to like a 20 or 30% depending on your I guess, margins and how much you're willing to, I guess, forego some ROAs while you're growing the brand. Additionally, I would say, first and foremost, your sponsored products and your search should be solid, because you want to be able to capture that demand that you're generating before you don't want to put the cart before the horse. Make sure that search is really solid. You're maxing out your branded spend so that when shoppers come to look for you, you're showing up and it's not the competitors.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 22:34

Good question. Keep them coming.

Whitney Weaver 22:36

Oh, sorry. Okay, so moving forward. So we all have difficult business questions, but AMZ is here to help, and so it can. AMC is such a nebulous, like theoretical thing. It's this clean room where all of this data lives, and the way that the data comes out of the the cloud is through a SQL query. Amazon and some other partners have made some templates and ways to make this easier for advertisers to pull these reports. But there are some some really custom queries that can be run through AMC to get really specific insights, maybe it's at a product level or a campaign level, but just to give you a few examples of questions that we get from brands a lot is how many interactions is needed before a conversion happens, and so that would be our path to purchase report, which I'll show you in the next slide, what That looks like, and how we might take some action items away from that. Additionally, how long does it take for the customer journey, customer purchase journey? And so depending on the type of product that you're selling, perhaps it's ceiling fans, where shoppers need to measure they need to look around. They need to, you know, get an electrician, whatever that might be, to get it installed. It might take three to six months for a shopper to make a decision, whereas, if you're buying a hairbrush, you know, maybe you don't need as much time to make that decision and purchase. And that can be really helpful for understanding how much investment is needed in order to start to see those conversions, those sales come in, especially if you're launching a new product, launching on a new platform, whether it's on Amazon or elsewhere, it can help inform when you could start to see some of those sales picking up, and then how it would compound over time. And then lastly, how can my DTC data inform my Amazon strategy? So also add on box they did announce a new AMC Data Manager API. And excuse me with this new API. It base it allows brands to directly. Upload their first party data into the marketing cloud. You know that first party data is, it's precious. It's, you know, you've worked really hard to get it. You've created this loyal customer base, and you want to maintain that trust with your customers. And so Amazon has created a way where it doesn't have to be sent in a file to an agency or a data partner. It can be uploaded directly into the into the marketing cloud, and then, whether it's a data analytics team or your advertising teams, are able to then pull those insights from the marketing cloud. And what the marketing cloud does is it strips any identifying information away from those those data points, and just looks at the actions that they've taken. And so from that you can, oh, go ahead, Tiffany, yeah, so you can

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 22:46

use the Amazon Marketing Cloud for your own first party data to then get intel to ultimately grow your own direct to consumer site or other partners you may have.

Whitney Weaver 26:05

Yeah, exactly. So you can it can help you understand, I guess, the the overlap or the purchase journey between the Amazon customer versus the DTC customer. We can also use first party data to build look alikes, upload that audience into the DSP, and we can even run DSP to the DTC site, as you would for any other like programmatic type platform. You can use the DSP to help boost sales on your DTC site. It doesn't have to all be on Amazon as the point of sale. It can also support sales on DTC sites.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 26:45

Interesting. It's like AMC is taking the approach logistics side of Amazon, where it was like Prime was only through Amazon, and then it became omni channel, and they'll fulfill to anybody. And the same kind of approach now with the Amazon Marketing Cloud, to be able to leverage that very, very interesting. If anybody has questions comments on that, that's a big one put into the chat, looking at this and, you know, business questions galore. I remember having a lot of them and thinking about, Okay, this is not a linear process, as you said. And then you're looking at, you know, all of the variables. So if it's reviews in stock levels, prime badging and shipping time, you know, all of those things also have to be taken into account for the conversion part. So how does that come to play with all of this? Do they play nice together, I guess. And who are the stakeholders that are involved in all of this intel gathering? Because I would think that this is, you know, kind of the gift that keeps on giving, and you can leverage that with other departments outside of your marketing department and organization,

Whitney Weaver 27:54

absolutely. So to answer your question about those different aspects that help with the consideration and ultimately conversion. So when we're looking at the AMC reports, so for example, Path to Purchase, which we'll see an example here in a second, but tracking that traffic, that unique reach and that conversion rate is going to be really key, and then under really overlaying inventory, when you have the badges, what your star rating is and getting that baseline. So if we're pulling that today, star rating is strong. Inventory strong. We have a you know, best seller badge, and then we see a conversion rate of 30% when we combine these different ad types, then maybe in a couple of months, say, inventory falls off for whatever reason, and then understanding that, or then re pulling that same report and seeing what that impact is on that conversion. Right? Are we seeing maybe the same amount of traffic because the the ratings are still really high, so we're getting people to the page, but it's not maybe in stock. And so that can help understand the correlation and why you need to invest in improving reviews, ensuring that inventory is up to date and and maintaining those badges.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 29:20

It literally is a checklist. Yeah, sure, all the steps are aligned, and then exactly. And

Whitney Weaver 29:26

I'm sorry, Tiffany, I know there was a second part to your your question there. Let me tie

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 29:30

into this, actually, this now looking at the Intel gained, and then Who do you share it with within the organization?

Whitney Weaver 29:37

Yeah, absolutely, so when we're looking so this is an example of a path to purchase report, and depending on your brand or your business goals, there's a number of different ways that you can leverage this data to help with how you're investing, how you're merchandising, how you're understanding your customer journey for maybe new product opportunities even. Um, so in this example, if you're maybe looking to increase your reach and your your brand awareness, you're just really trying to take over the market. People are searching for you everywhere. That's the ultimate goal. How do we get that brand awareness up? You know, you might look at this and say, Okay, awesome. DSP and sponsor display has the highest unique reach. How do we invest more there to keep that going in order to reach as many customers as possible, or you might be looking to be more efficient. And so what are those combinations of ad types that lead to the greatest efficiency? In this particular example, we see that sponsored display hits on all of the top three metrics here, but maybe you're looking at DSP and sponsored display combination as well as DSP and sponsored brand. How do we make sure that those are properly funded? The targeting aligns, the products align in each of those, I guess, like customer pathways, in order to continue to drive that really efficient ROAs. So depending on what you're you're trying to do as a brand and a business, you can look at this and use these combinations of ad types and information in different ways, and so to as far as the rest of the team outside of your advertising or marketing team, merchandising is a big thing. You can actually get down to an asin level with some AMC reports. It gets into that custom SQL expertise, but you can understand at an asin level how the products are performing within particular ad types, how much it's driving you to brand, and that might be able to inform how you're thinking about the merchandising. Maybe it's bundling, maybe it's a new product type. And so that can really help those teams. And then I would say your business analytics teams and understanding, maybe that mix between ASINs and how they're helping to to drive the overall business. What is really driving those new to brand customers? How can we double down on that or create something just as exciting to to get more new to brand customers in the door? Very cool. I love this.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 32:24

This table is so cool and really breaks it down so easily. Nice work, questions, comments. Keep putting them into the chat, yeah. And

Whitney Weaver 32:31

I guess one more sorry before you go to the next slide, sorry. One comment on the path to purchase is if you were only running sponsored ads, you would be able to see, like, just remove the DSP bubbles from here, and you would be able to see, kind of like, the the path within your sponsored ads. So this is available again, to those with access to an instance. Yeah. Music awesome. So I mentioned a lot of things about audiences and different ways we can use custom audiences, but I think in a more actionable format, one way that we have seen success with ANC custom audiences is, how are we looking at what those shoppers are, maybe focus, or they've taken a particular action on a product line, for example, and so say it's an apparel client, and they're looking at boots. And so we want to create a story of where we're really showing them the versatility of the boots, the durability of the boots, and we can create those, those customer journeys, again, through specific creatives, if we know these are the different audiences that we're targeting that is really focused on the boot category. And how do we make sure that the creatives are only going to those shoppers who are focused on buying boots or interested in buying boots or buying jackets. And so that can really help with creating specific budgets creatives and audiences all in one customer journey and really understanding the ROI of those audiences once you have them segmented in that way, and it gives you a cleaner slate to test different creatives, maybe testing some upsell or cross sell. If someone has purchased boots, maybe they want a jacket, it just gives you a cleaner slate of understanding what shoppers are in the market for. How do we keep driving them through the customer journey with creative and then really understanding those different segments for the ROI. So

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 34:48

this is definitely giving more transparency. If you think of, I guess, target audiences, certain personas that maybe you want to grow as a brand or you've never tried to market to before. Sure to help plan accordingly and budget and set the objectives and goals around that and be realistic, because you have better Intel to know if you're going for this certain demographic or persona like these are the these are the turtles, and this is our roadmap, essentially, which is very cool, because I remember never having anything like that, just being told from the powers that be, like, we want to grow x, y, z. You're like, okay, i Good luck,

Whitney Weaver 35:32

right? And it's tough, because the audiences that you see within the DSP, now it's Amazon's one priority data, which tends to be, you know, more accurate than some third party sites, because they know what people are searching for and buying. But you're it is still fairly broad, you know, you might be looking at skincare enthusiasts, and that could mean anything from people who are buying a $20 product or $100 product, you know, and that's a big range of shoppers to try to bring into a brand. And so this just gives us more of those controls based on what people are actually doing or not doing, and how do we bring them into the brand? Yes, very exciting. Awesome. So taking a look at some testing frameworks and considerations as you're looking to create your stretch or to develop your strategy leverage AMC as part of that strategy to help you with the decisions and investment allocations go the next perfect. So before we get into any marketing, advertising conversation, when we're talking to brands, the one of the biggest things, especially on Amazon, is operational excellence, is ensuring that your content, your inventory, reviews, all of those different aspects of what we call like the logistics sides, or like the back end side of the business are really solid, because that is the absolute foundation of how brands are built and can excel on these platforms. Amazon is customer obsessed, and so they want to make sure that shoppers on their platform are getting the best information and converting that's how they make money, right? And so have a big part of that, making sure that there's inventory available and that shoppers get the information they need to make a decision. The other part that I think is really important is understanding where your brand or your product is at within the category and and really being realistic of what your starting point is. So are you more of a challenger brand where there's some, you know, big players in the space, and so you're really going up against some big brands, and how does that impact how you're going to address your strategy. To the person who asked earlier about DSP and search split, this might be an opportunity for challenger brands to push that brand awareness invest more in DSP and these custom audiences to make sure that they're really saturating the market and increasing that awareness as they're looking to grow and kind of go head to head with some of these bigger brands. And so just understanding your starting point is really, really key. And then timing and testing these platforms change all the time. And so even when we think we understand something, we got it nailed down, there's going to be something new that comes into the fold. And so just having that flexibility to test, I always recommend brands have a separate testing budget line item, because inevitably, something new is going to come up, or new advancements are going to arise. And so we want to make sure that we're front and center and ready to take advantage of those and not late to the party when it comes to new opportunities,

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 39:09

awesome final questions, comments put into the chat or the Q and A as we round it out here. Well, the holidays are upon us, right? So if you are a brand, is there anything you can do at this point, taking these actions considerations to make an impact or start testing?

Whitney Weaver 39:28

Yes. So what I would recommend starting right now is pulling a path to purchase report, and probably a gateway, asin report, and so you can understand, what are those particular ad types that are driving shoppers to the products, and what are those products that are driving the most new to brand shoppers? And then from those reports, understanding, ensuring that your investment levels in those different ad types and you're targeting. Is streamlined across those different purchase paths, and that the product that is showing you know the most propensity to bring in new customers, that that is the product that you're featuring and really showing front and center, because as we get into the holiday season, especially with discounts, shoppers are more inclined to maybe try something new, and so making sure that it's as seamless as possible, as connected as possible with that product that tends to bring them in the door is key to start figuring out right now. Awesome. So taking a look at the testing roadmap. So as I meant, as I mentioned, about the the shopping season and going into holiday what we recommend for brands to be doing right now is that discovery phase. How are we creating those or understanding what our current baselines are, and what is doing well right now that we can take advantage of coming into the holiday season. And also maybe what's not working is there a certain combination or ad type that just really isn't generating that demand, or really helping us capture that demand, and can we refine how, how much we're investing in that particular ad type? So now is a great time to get that baseline. Understand your path to purchase, understand those gateway ASINs. Another report is called The Overlap report, and so this is basically an aggregate of shoppers who are exposed to a combination. It's not so much a path in terms of steps. It's more like they saw a DSP ad. They saw a sponsored product ad. We don't know in what order, but this combination together resulted in X. I like the path to purchase a little bit better, because it's clear in terms of those paths, but overlap can be really helpful for supporting especially like DSP investment and how much it can drive overall conversion, then moving into identification. So once you have those initial reports, understanding and identifying high intent audiences, maybe look alike shoppers who have purchased from your brand two times before. How do you create a look alike audience of those shoppers and make sure that you're targeting them, especially in this high conversion time of year, as well as understanding those paths and making sure that your investment aligns with the different paths. So this looks like new to brand shoppers. Category searches is a big one. You can create an audience based on shoppers looking for airbrushes, and then create that audience and target them through the DSP or sponsored display. Then from there, you're looking at how to invest based on the audiences that you've identified, based on the paths that you've identified, and then just the ability to scale and and really keep checking in, I would say, at least, like once a month pulling these reports. It does require quite a bit of data. Unless you're spending a lot of money, it probably won't be effective to pull it every week, but I would say at least once a month for most brands to re pull these reports to understand if those top paths purchase, those top new to brand products, are really continue to be, you know those top performers for you as you increase investment, and then for further evolution, again, this like before and after, of understanding your baseline, making adjustments To the strategy, then re polling those reports to understand how they have changed as you have increased investment in those particular areas, or as you've tested out those new new audiences. Are you seeing the ROI that you want from them? Maybe not, and it's time to go back to the drawing board and test out a different set of parameters for those custom audiences, because it's, it's really infinite what is possible through AMC. So there's, there's never a shortage of testing and innovation opportunities using this tool,

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 44:18

awesome. And what about the post holiday, the aftermath of an opportunity of gift card redeeming, and looking at, you know, January, February, the highest time where those are redeemed. Where can brands leverage that time period

Whitney Weaver 44:34

with this? Yeah, so as far as gift cards in particular, it's, I don't know of any reports or ways that I can be like I guess, targeted or tracked directly. What I would recommend testing for brands is looking at those maybe high intent or shoppers who have spent over a certain amount in. Past on the brand and like retargeting or creating a look alike from those shoppers, because when you have a gift card, most likely you want to buy something that you maybe wouldn't have bought for yourself with your own money. So maybe this is an opportunity to push some of those higher priced items, or more unique items, to shoppers that have shown, like, higher intent for the brand or for similar brands. But I don't know if any way in terms of, like, tracking the particular gift cards. I guess one way you could do it is through like creative saying, like, spend that holiday cash or something like that, treat yourself. Sort of messaging could be a way to help drive some of those conversions after the holiday, too. Yeah, I

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 45:48

just suspect it's a different customer journey per se, you know, because of the way that they got to but maybe not. Maybe they've been researching for a while, and finally, at that point where they're willing to spend because they were gifted the money. So just, yeah, I always think it's a it's an interesting opportunity that a lot of times, and myself included, once you're over the holidays, you're like, Okay, I can breathe for a minute. But there is a lot of opportunity that four to six weeks post holiday with a gift card redemption. So definitely something to think about. Protest, yeah, I

Whitney Weaver 46:20

would say don't take your foot off the gas too quickly.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 46:24

Yes, yep,

Whitney Weaver 46:26

oh yeah, we can't get enough come the holiday season. Yeah. So a couple of key takeaways. So through search and DSP and with the help of AMC, it's essential to create multiple touch points so that you can convert and nurture those shoppers throughout the journey, no matter where they are in their journey, leveraging all the tools that are available through ANC, there's also some really great reports through DSP that allows show some audience insights, demographic information within the search UI, there are things like brand metrics and brand impression share, and so just really understanding how your brand is growing and that you're fully defending your branded space is another way to just connect everything together and make sure that You're filling in any gaps across the strategy, and ultimately, never stop testing and learning. There's always something new. The algorithm changes. And I always say that Amazon is a very reactive platform, and so whatever happens out in the world you will see happen on Amazon. And so just being ready to track those different events, understand how that could impact your business, whether for good or for bad. We all, I think, experience a shift when it came to COVID and how that affected businesses on Amazon, and so just being aware of that, and hopefully we never have that scale of shift ever again, but it's just so new, and so being adaptable and flexible is just always key.

Tiffany Serbus-Gustaveson 48:03

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Whitney, for your expertise. Providing this information as always, the Blue Wheel team rocked it with giving this awesome content. Will you be able to share the presentation? Yes, absolutely. Okay, perfect. So we can do that as follow up. We definitely encourage follow up conversation with the Blue Wheel team. As you can see, they are fantastic and what they do, and would love to have a conversation with you. That's how we get the content and Intel ideas for our future events. Always feel free to email me at tiffany@bwgconnect.com, so with that, it's a wrap. Thank you all for joining. Take care and happy Wednesday. Nice to see you. Whitney, take care. See you too.

Whitney Weaver 48:42

Thanks, everyone.