Aaron Conant  0:18

Happy Wednesday, everybody. My name is Aaron Conant, the co founder, Managing Director here at BWG Connect. And we're a networking and knowledge sharing group of 1000s of organizations that do exactly that we network and knowledge here together to stay on top newest trends strategies, including partners that work as well. You know, a lot of people, as you're looking for somebody to help you out anything from Amazon, to direct consumer to drop shipping, international expansion, whatever it might be. You know, it, it's easy to do good Google search, but you never know who's actually working. So a lot of people now use us for partner selection as a whole. And I throw that out there because a lot of people are looking right now. If you need any recommendations across the board, as a network, we work together to go out and evaluate who's the best and who's a leader in any particular space is affected, affecting digital, so don't ever hesitate to shoot an email over to me Aaron Aaron@bwgconnect.com. And we'll get you kicked you over some solution providers if you need it, we're gonna close close to 300 to 350 of these virtual events this year. So don't hesitate to shoot us over your biggest pain points. So we know what to have these topics on. And we're also going to do close to 100 in person, small format dinners, like we used to do pre pandemic days. And so if you're in a tier one, tier two city, also shoot us your info, I want to make sure we get you on those lists. And if you're going to any of the big upcoming shows a shop talk or retail X for sure, let us know. housekeeping items. So we get started, send over as many questions as you want the chat the q&a or email them to me, Aaron, aaron@bwgconnect.com. The other thing is, we're starting four to five minutes after the hour and try to wrap up with three to four minutes in the hour to go as well. Gonna give you plenty of time to get on to your next meeting without being late. And with that, we're gonna go ahead and kick this one off. Because usually what happens is we're doing this one a month from now and everybody the network's like that was a month too late. And so we're doing this a lot earlier than we usually do to help, you know, give a lot more guidance across the network for what's coming up with Prime Day 2222. You know, our great friends, partners, supporters of the network over at Orca Pacific are here to guide us and what they're seeing is going to take place and also answer as many questions as we can throw at them. So, you know, I'll kick it off to you, Mike, if you want to do a brief background on yourself. Orca Pacific that'd be great. And I know we have Jeni on here as well. And yeah, why don't we go ahead and get off sound good?

Mike Battista  2:42

Yeah, sounds good. Thank you. Um, yeah. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the call today. My name is Mike Battista. I am a senior advertising manager here at Orca Pacific, and came directly from Amazon advertising as well in Seattle. Joining me today is Jeni Doig. Hopefully we can get her going a little bit today. She is a very seasoned business manager here at or cific has been here for just over four years, and has recently joined the as a senior business development manager here as well. So we really, really excited to be able to hear some of your questions today and kind of go through some of these tips and tricks for preparing for Prime Day in 2022. Before we do that, I wanted to give you guys a little bit of an intro on Orca Pacific here. A little bit about us where we've been around for a little over 13 years now we're born and bred in Seattle, we're about two blocks away from the Amazon campus. Our bread and butter is Amazon. And although we specialize in a number of different platforms, in eCommerce, our main focus has always been the Amazon ecosystem here. So a large percentage of employees working here now are either former Amazonian or industry leaders within the space. And we're really, really proud to be able to have that really strong relationship with that organization, obviously. And, you know, with that comes some really strong leverage and being able to build out those strong relationships on a daily and weekly basis there. So we work with brands, from you know, anywhere from brand new to Amazon to well established brands that have kind of already cut their teeth within the Amazon space. We can help grow their sales, grow their incremental revenue, understand and fix some of the main issues when it comes to content inventory planning, demand forecasting. And then also obviously, advertising, marketing and promotional strategy as well. We help with that strategy and execution to maximize your potential and your impact on the platform. So, really happy to be here and happy to kind of kick this off

Aaron Conant  4:59

So just a quick reminder, questions you can drop into the chat into the q&a or you can email them to me, Aaron Aaron@bwgconnect.com. Yeah, I mean, I say we go ahead and jump into it. And then just questions and comments come up, we can bounce back and forth between you and Jeni sound good?

Mike Battista  5:15

Yeah, sounds great.

Jeni Doig  5:16

I want to test it real quick. Can you guys hear me? Yeah, loud and

Mike Battista  5:19

clear. Clear. Perfect. Thank you. And second test here. Is everybody able to see my screen? Okay. Yep. Wonderful. Okay, well, then let's dive in. Um, first thing that we kind of wanted to discuss today was, what kind of products actually makes sense to promote on Prime Day. And, you know, what kind of products we need to be increasing advertising spend on. Um, I think the main, the main goal here is to identify exactly what items have within your catalog, have a strong Hills sales history, and then also, obviously have inventory, right. Since we know that Prime Day historically has shown a massive influx of traffic every single year, budgets tend to run out very quickly in the mornings. And and we also want to ensure that we're staying on all day and currently available with our in stock rate being up. So we need to do some planning in before Prime Day in the months and weeks before just to make sure that we're staying on. But kind of focusing on specific products here. Again, we want to take a look at some of the if we have a larger catalog been on Amazon for a little bit a little bit of time, make sure that we're promoting your hero a sense, right, we want to ensure that we're putting our best foot forward are acent that have had proven sales history, strong conversion rate or returns. And then also products that have a very strong star rating, you know, in the high fours, or five would be ideal there. But since we have a very large influx of traffic, a large amount of those shoppers are going to know who you are, and even a larger amount are not going to know who you are. So if you have new products, or relatively new products that have recently been launched on Amazon, that you'd like to get a little bit more exposure to that you really tried to, you know, garner some additional reviews, or more star ratings, those are a really, really great pick for prime day as well, because of that really large,

Aaron Conant  7:39

really quick question that comes in is Prime Day a good time to launch a new product?

Mike Battista  7:44

Yeah. It that's going to depend on a couple of things here. So because Prime Day is so large, and in effect has all of that traffic coming through, we have quite a lot of competition happening on Prime Day as well. So we're not only going to be competing with all of the smaller players in the space and the resellers. But these larger, these larger manufacturers, these larger sellers, with deeper marketing pockets as well. So if you have budget, I would say that, you know, launching a new a brand new product on Prime Day could be beneficial, essentially, for getting a little bit more traffic to that Asin. But you also want to make sure that you are coupling that product with a product that has already have some proven sales history on the platform, and some trust built up within the listing, meaning a higher star rating and some strong reviews attached to it as well. Another way to look at that is you know, we don't we don't only see a higher amount of traffic coming through on that particular day, we see higher traffic coming through in the week, preceding Prime Day, the week after Prime Day as well. And conversion rate, in fact, starts to go up in the week after Prime Day too. So, you know, although it's going to be a little bit of a crowded space to launch a brand new product, you I would certainly encourage anyone who's launching one of those new products to leave those products on in anticipation for Prime Day as well and through Prime Day to awesome,

Aaron Conant  9:27

love it. And just a reminder, chat or q&a For any questions or email, keep emailing them to me. Um, there's a couple more that come in and it's more around. Do you see the brands that you're working with excited about Prime Day? Or is it going to be kind of a repeat of the past couple years where there's a shortage of inventory and I'm elaborate a little bit on the question. There's a shortage of inventory. You know, cost increases profitability are things that are of high concern. You know, you know, if you look back three or four years ago, there was this massive movement you know, and brands are getting excited about because you know how much they could grow a product or product category? Are you seeing a return to that level? Or are you seeing the brands? You're working with kind of trepidatious? About, you know, what's around the corner?

Mike Battista  10:11

Yeah, it's a great question. I, I think it's a mix. I would agree with you, you know, within the last couple of years that the hype that has surrounded Prime Day has been infectious among all of our clients, we've been prepare, we prepare for months, in anticipation for Prime Day, this year, as you, you know, so rightly stated, herein is, you know, there is a little bit of trepidation in regards to, you know, taking a look at your inventory flow there. You know, in years past inventory flow hasn't been a problem, their price increases haven't been a problem. And, and, and profitability, at least, you know, geared towards this day, in particular hasn't been such an issue as this year, I'd say that, we still have a pretty large group of our clients here that are preparing for Prime Day, every single year, no matter what the circumstances are, just because of the large amount of traffic that is guaranteed to come through on those detail pages, especially when you're talking about larger clients who've been on the space for quite a while, or any client with a larger catalog, or if you have a new and exciting product and have been kind of doing some really good progress on that product lately. So you know, although there may be some trepidation there, it is always, always recommended that you're still preparing to be able to put your best foot forward in front of every single one of these shoppers that see your detail pages there, and hit the Add to Cart button. Awesome. Love it. Love it. Yeah, so, um, with that, you know, we want to kind of also talk about how to prepare for Prime Day, Prime Day is unlike any other day, throughout the month, and, you know, possibly any other day throughout the year, you know, kind of leaving to the side some some of those holiday days. But we want to talk about budget a little bit here, because it's really important to have a keen eye on your budgets all day long throughout Prime Day, and really kind of start to explore that evergreen strategy, meaning having an always on budget. So you know, as we can see from one of the graphics here, this is just kind of a sample of what, you know, I see almost every single Prime Day for at least one or two of our clients. And this is happening at either seven or eight in the morning. As you can see, you know, a majority of the campaigns start to go out of budget quickly, because there are so many window shoppers happening on Prime Day, there are so many shoppers that are looking for that deal. And they're going to click on the click on the ads. We want to ensure here that we have a very strong preparation strategy, you know, leading up to Prime Day and and also leading us through prime day in the week after ensuring that we are looking at our daily budgets and preparing to spend it least three times that amount on Prime Day. And I say at least strongly, right, because we again want to ensure that we're on all day long for any consumer who is coming through in the morning, afternoon or evening. You know, we want to make sure that those budgets are very, very healthy for that day. And also for the day after, as well, when you know, some of the stragglers are starting to come into the detail pages and trying to you know, continuously shop for more deals. We usually plan with our clients at a minimum of a month before Prime Day. So really glad that we're having this call with enough lead time here so that we can kind of get our ducks in a row and ensure that you know, if we're kind of tight on budget for the next couple of months or even throughout the year, if we have a really stringent budget, that we are kind of planning for that and reallocating dollars on a daily or weekly basis to make sure that we have at least react, the amount to spend on this day.

Aaron Conant  14:18

So really quick question comes in how many days before? Should we start the ad lift? Because there's this, you know, this this like little I don't know if it's the hack anymore, right? But it's, you know, ramping up because you know, there's going to be so much volume, they're ramping up ahead of time, maybe it's a month or two months where you're ramping up the exposure so that organic search on the day is naturally higher. And even if your budget goes out, then at least you've got that organic search that's been built up ahead of time because you poured more money into it. So kind of what you're talking to here, you know, Sarah writes In how many days before should we start add lift?

Mike Battista  14:56

Absolutely. I if if there are If you have a little bit of extra budget this year, I would strongly encourage anyone to really start to lift their budget at least one month before, if not a little bit, maybe a month and a half before just just to hit on what exactly what you were speaking on, Aaron is to ensure that we are winning on those keywords that are being indexed by the Amazon algorithm. And we are increasing our organic rank ranking, even the slightest increase in organic ranking is going to matter, you're trying to get as close to page one or page two, if possible there. So if we have a little bit tighter of budget, you know, I would definitely recommend that at least the prior two weeks minimum, we start to increase our budgets here. Because the other thing that to keep in mind is that your competition is going to be running deals and promotions in anticipation of Prime Day and through Prime Day as well. So in the spirit of competition there, you also want to ensure that we're getting as many eyes on our specific detail pages as possible, trying to steal a little bit of market share here and there, you know, in the month, preceding Prime Day to

Aaron Conant  16:14

the awesome, so tons of advertising questions pouring in, I think this is key because if you have inventory this year, but some of it right, so key takeaway so far, you know about triple the budget, on Prime Day as a whole, start upping your ad spend at least a month in advance for those for those items that you're looking to push a couple of questions directly related to it, do you recommend creating new campaigns specifically for Prime Day or increasing budgets on existing established campaigns? And then along with that increasing budget? The question is, aside from increasing it one month prior, should the bids also be increased? So a couple couple different questions there.

Mike Battista  16:57

Sure. Absolutely. So bids increased? Let's talk about bidding increases first, first of all, absolutely, we want to start to increase the bids. And doing this a month in advance is going to give you a little bit more data. So that you really understand where valuable keywords are actually coming in at when you start to increase your bids. Now you can start to increase your bids like crazy a month before. And, you know, if you're not doing kind of that backend homework, and ensuring that we are lowering bids on the high spend no sales keywords there and protecting a little bit of profitability there. Then when Prime Day comes around, we're not going to have a really great time. That's for sure. So certainly increased bids. Their second question was in regards to creating new campaigns and then having existing campaigns Great question, I always create one to two minimum new campaigns for Prime Day with Prime Day focus keyword inserted there. This is a little bit easier than just adding Prime Day focus keyword and this keyword can be Prime Day deals on instapot. Right Prime Day deals on sneakers, whatever your you know, the product may be, you know, you want to explore some of those words. And and you know, start to index for those words as well. That traffic may not be as qualified as more of a longtail keyword may be but those impressions are going to matter. And that traffic is going to matter as well. So definitely ensure that the campaigns that have already built up organic relevancy on the platform are going to be your main focus there. But one or two new campaigns that are Prime Day focused, I think, is a really great idea as well. Awesome.

Aaron Conant  18:51

So the next question that comes in is around merchandising. It's around Lightning Deals. The Lightning Deal idea where deep discount and you know, a huge buy up front, you know, Amazon's usually looking for a pricing session, and then there's this massive deal. It's kind of this like, I might lose money on this and I might lose a lot of money, especially if they're not taking price increases. So how do you look at Lightning Deals? And then they've got another question that comes in around budget split.

Mike Battista  19:26

Yeah, for sure. I would probably take this over to Jeni on that promotional strategy. See what your thoughts are on Lightning Deals their journey?

Jeni Doig  19:33

Absolutely. So even though they upped the length of time for Lightning Deals last year, I'm not exactly sure what it's gonna look like for this year's Prime Day but prior to last year, you only received the deal on site for about four hours. Last year they upped that to 12 hours but still you have to pay a merchandising fee for Lightning Deals and for the the best deals that run during Prime Day. So they're like the merchandising fee is $500 plus they want to see The, the deal will be at least 15% Better than what's currently on site for Lightning Deals in particular, um, you know, you, as Mike had mentioned earlier, you really see, you know, prime to be in such a competitive space during that day, you really can't for Lightning Deals, you can't choose exactly what hours, your product your deal is going to run for, with all of the, you know, hot, you know, Insta pots of the world, or like the higher ASP that are using those Lightning Deals. For the merchandising vehicle, I think you really need to be strategic on if it makes sense for your product. So for the lower ASP, you know, the items that are not as high of retail items, were, you know, consumables, etc, items that are not necessarily the products that maybe the consumers are waiting to purchase on Prime Day, not sure it really makes sense to run and pay for that merchandising fee to run that promotional vehicle such as a Lightning Deal. But instead, what we do with a lot of our clients is, you know, really take advantage of that traffic lift that we're seeing the week before Prime Day when we're seeing consumers that are already pre shopping deals. And then we see that large halo effect for the week after. So even though that deal might not run on Prime Day, for the items where it doesn't make sense to pay that merchandising fee for those types of promotions, maybe run it for the week before and the week after, you know, or either one so that you can take advantage of the traffic during that time period. Right now, I've

Aaron Conant  21:25

got another question. This just pops up a lot. You know, the bulk buys, they do the deep discounts they want affecting overall profitability on the platform, you know, the past year and a half, a lot of brands have set up, you know, drop shipping on the back end, so they don't go out of stock. Right? So just general advice on these new like bulk orders that come through. But you see more and more brands say no, because they have the ability to drop ship out of the back or they find like a digital age three PL that can you know, do all that drop shipping. So they never actually go out of stock even one p on Amazon FBA as well. But you know thinking more about those bulk buys and the one beside like assault brands still taking those so they can get the Prime shipping? Or would you say actually, if you've got to set up over here, don't do the bulk buy discount when you run out of stock, you know, do vendor fulfilled or, you know, anyways, we'd love to hear your thoughts here.

Jeni Doig  22:25

Yeah, the only reason I ever suggest that our clients take advantage of the bulk buys is if there are items on there that they're getting. They're they're discontinuing, and so they're ready to sell off at a discount anyways, or if they're items that Amazon's requesting on bulk, that are on the verge of crapping out so Amazon's not ordering them. As far as getting inventory into one P, you can use other options such as Born to Run I mean, they've given us you know, these vendor initiated purchase order options. So there are other ways to get product into into what into their fulfillment centers. And of course, you want to be strategic on the amount that you send in and that's a whole other conversation but you with Amazon is going to order the product if the demand is there, there's no reason to to give Amazon another discount with with the bowl guys. As far as what you're referring sorry, we're talking about with the drop ship, though I think it is important to have if you have the capability of drop shipping, or if you're on Seller Central have the capability of doing FBM. It's very important to have both of those options set up especially during Prime Day or holiday events. One thing that we saw Amazon do for the last couple years, especially last year during COVID. With all the warehouse constraints, Amazon could not fulfill orders, they could not ship product out, especially with all these peak holiday events. So what they did we saw happen up quite a bit last year was they basically even though they had product in the warehouse in their fulfillment centers, they were using third party offers to fulfill their orders. That's right. Yeah, devoting

Aaron Conant  23:55

it to companies that could you know, do FBM That's right,

Jeni Doig  24:00

exactly. And it was really frustrating for a lot of our clients because you know, they had planned for this large holiday event for inventory, sales, budget, advertising budget, etc. And all of that came to a screeching halt if they weren't one of the Insta pots or one of the top items that Amazon was was also promoting on site. So Amazon flipped the switch over to three P use them to help fulfill orders and it just you know, left the manufacturer sitting on the sidelines not able to participate in the event. So if you do have the ability to drop ship or or to fulfill via FBM it's it's very important to have both those options and inventory loaded on that direct merchant opportunity.

Aaron Conant  24:42

I forgot about that's right on the line if anybody needs help, or needs a connection to a three PL like a digital age that's going to do the Drop Shipping. You can either raise your hand here paddle grab it, we can shoot you an email or you can shoot me an email Aaron Aaron@bwgconnect.com because there's a few out there that just come highly recommended from the network. So more than happy to make those connections if you're looking for but I completely forgot about that Prime Day that happened last year. The next question that comes in for brands that rely on branded search, how do you split budget? You know, is it 5050 6040 between search and DSP to fill top of funnel, hopefully gaining an increase in branded search? So it's that split, you know, kind of a, how do you split traditional search versus DSP on Prime Day?

Mike Battista  25:34

What does that look like? Yeah, traditional search should be the foundation of Prime Day, because we are expecting the traffic to come into Amazon. Now, obviously, with DSP, we're going to be marketing to shoppers who have already, you know, recognize your detail pages enough to land on them. And when they are off Amazon kind of going about their day as well. I typically do probably a 7030 split, favoring sponsored ads on Amazon, DSP being about 30%. And that, and that, by the way, is is with that comes with, you know, companies who are already kind of spending on DSP quite regularly, who have some data to kind of back up their decision making on Prime Day Before Prime Day and right after it as well. I wouldn't say that that number is completely set in stone, you know, some, some people that I work with, we kind of want to do an 8020 split. And, in fact, some want to do a little bit a little bit more, right, we kind of move that DSP budget up to about a 40% allocation, which is, which is quite hefty. So on that day, again, you know, we do want to have that holistic ad approach, we want to ensure that we are showing up any possible place where one of our relevant shoppers is going to be landing or irrelevant shopper of a competitor is going to be landing well on or off. Awesome.

Aaron Conant  27:09

The questions keep coming in others drop into the chat or the q&a or keep emailing them to me, Aaron Aaron@bwgconnect.com. Can you speak further on the organic relevancy you mentioned on existing campaigns?

Mike Battista  27:24

Mm hmm. Yeah. So I think the question that we were answering was inch, we were saying to ensure that we are all that we have a higher percentage of our budget allocated to campaigns that have already been running for a little while on Amazon, the longer that campaigns are running, you know, and this is, you know, taking into account, you know, ensuring that we have been in stock for most of that time. And that, you know, we haven't been running out of budget every single day, are we, with those campaigns, the more those campaigns have been running, the more we are triggering that Amazon algorithm, right, which can be a bit opaque at times, we certainly do know that, that it looks for how many clicks and views that each product or detail pages getting, it takes into account how many reviews that page has in the star rating as well. When you are planning to try to increase your organic ranking, it's it's very important that a one your patient, right, because it takes a little bit of time to increase that organic ranking, it takes day by day by day, ensuring that our products are in stock, and that we are running budget throughout the day as well. The longer that those campaigns, though, are running typically, you know, the higher we are getting indexed from an organic standpoint. So you know, here at workup, we really like to do share voice reporting. If you haven't heard of share voice reporting, you're not familiar with it a lot, quite a bit of encourage you to take a look into that. Because what we do there is we can take a look at over time how much organic market share essentially on page one, we are getting we are earning for a certain set of keywords versus how much we're paying for on those same set of keywords as well. And the interesting thing with that report is that we can also compare ourselves to the main competitors that are coming up against those same exact keywords on page one and page two. So this is not a report to be running every day or even every week. But we typically like to look at that report every month, certainly quarterly to see kind of how we're moving the needle on that overall organic placement for those certain sets of keywords really very been very helpful for some of the clients

Aaron Conant  30:00

Next question that pops in how many weeks in advance should I send in Prime Day inventory

Jeni Doig  30:07

of inventory in really no later than a month. That was another issue that we challenge that we ran into last year, in previous years as well. But especially last year with the constraints, the performance centers, just and just the amount of time it was taking Amazon to receive the product. They're also experiencing the employee shortages, like the rest of us are. So right now especially I would send it in at least a month ahead of time just to make sure that your product gets received into the into the fulfillment centers and inventories available for purchase.

Aaron Conant  30:42

Awesome. Awesome. Love it. So anyway, say see, there's more slides we can keep going everybody even keep dropping the questions in there. Awesome. Okie fielding them as we go.

Mike Battista  30:53

Yeah, we can keep fielding additional questions. I actually put this on accident.

Jeni Doig  30:58

I think yeah, I think a lot of the questions of the next coming slides are some of the questions we've gone through so it's, it's

Mike Battista  31:03

perfect. Okay, great. Well, yeah, we we've gone through Lightning Deals on Prime Day a little bit with with any Jeni's or anything else that you'd like to add to this particular slide on Lightning Deals, or on any strategy behind those particular deals. You think we hit it on the head

Jeni Doig  31:22

there went through it, um, the best deals. So in the past best deals, and normally they do not have a merchandising fee as well. But merchandise, there is a merchandising fee for best deals now, too. But those are, you can only take advantage of the Lightning Deals and the best deals through the recommended deals. For Prime Day with Amazon, those are not deals that you can just submit on your own, you have to take advantage of the promotional suggested promotional opportunities through for Lightning Deals and best deals. Again, I'm not sure if that's going to change for this year, because that's not how it was the year previous to last year. So it was on likes to change things up, as we know, for each Prime Day, merchandising vehicle and promotions and just how everything is set up.

Aaron Conant  32:08

That leads right into another question that comes in. If you're not a good candidate for Lightning Deal on Prime Day, what other promotional tools do you recommend coupon prime exclusive, you know, discounts?

Jeni Doig  32:21

Yeah, so you, you can do the best deals like I was referring to earlier like running them for two weeks, the week before the week after that's, that's one of my favorite ways to promote product. But last year, we did a lot of coupons, you just have a lot more control with coupons, you can set the budget, you can whether that be a financial budget for a unit budget as far as how many units that you want to be able to sell at that price. And you can also if for some reason that the promotion is getting out of hand, you can actually also cancel the coupon where with the other types of deals you can't. So we ran a lot of coupons last year and same same thing with coupons, running it the week before and the week after, to really, really take advantage of the increased level of traffic that we see during this time frame. To be clear, though, those those deals on best deals and coupons if they're not ran through Amazon suggested deals they will suppress on Prime Day. So it'll basically be really just taking advantage of the week or the week after they would not be showing up on the actual day

Mike Battista  33:23

of Prime Day. Awesome, love it. So, um, we talked a little bit about this already introducing brand new products on Prime Day. So just to kind of be clear here. With that increased competition that is happening on Friday, we want to ensure that we are putting that best foot forward. And that best foot forward being our hero aces the ACE and that we already have some historic sales data to back up, the more popular Jason's write with either four or five star ratings on there with strong reviews, this is a really, really great way to build trust, not continue to build not only continue to build trust with the shoppers that may know who we are, and maybe conducting branded searches, but to build trust with net new shoppers and try to increase some of that incremental revenue that could come in from those net new shoppers who may be looking at a competitors page, or who may just be kind of using a brand agnostic word to search throughout the category not exactly knowing what brand they'd like to go with quite yet. So ensuring that you know a balance is happening, you know, between those hero agents and making sure that we are reaching net new customers there and having those new products also kind of be a part of that but a smaller part will be on Prime Day is going to be important. And then secondly here just Keeping, ensuring that we are staying on all day long past Prime Day has been very, very, very advantageous to the clients that we have been managing campaigns for in the last couple of years. And, you know, on to the week after Prime Day, conversion rate starts to go up a little bit. And traffic still steps tends to stay pretty high throughout that entire week. So as Jeni was saying a little bit earlier, referencing the brand halo effect, we may not be able to convert every single customer that comes onto our detail page back, we probably won't. But we want to ensure that that touchpoint is leading to a sale a little bit down the line there when those shoppers come back and reengage with Amazon with your product in the weeks following Prime Day.

Aaron Conant  35:52

Question I think that skipped over earlier, just and all the other ones that came through what data fields hold the most strength for keyword placement? I think that was coming out if we were talking a little bit about you know, in the search ones, you can put you know, Prime Day deals on. But anyways, what data fields hold the most strength for keyword

Mike Battista  36:10

placement. Yeah, so that's going to be unique to products and different companies. But we've tended to see that the more agnostic or the more broad that search term is that you're bidding on, you know, typically, the more traffic there's going to come through that particular word. Again, this is going to be really dependent on category and product. But how we kind of iterate on that and optimize those words is to start to build out a little bit longer tail keywords, as well. So ensuring that we have a broad phrase and exact match words that we are testing and learning on with those prime date based keywords, having short kind of broad agnostic words with a little bit more limited of a budget, and then also being being able to allocate some budget to a little bit more specific words. So Prime Day deals on rent, you know, chopsticks, Prime Day deals on black chopsticks or you know, whatever you the product seems to be. So there isn't a particular word that I can particularly identify that has, you know, the most row ads that's coming back to it. But I think that you have to strike a balance there, right, because some of those words that could be a little bit more agnostic could get some really great click through rate. This can set set those shoppers up for future retargeting. Now, you know that the other half of that balance being having those little bit more specific words, so that we are showing up when a very with a shopper with a higher intent search is placing that we're going on today. Awesome.

Aaron Conant  38:05

So another question that comes in any advice you have for companies that have limitations on inventory during Prime Day? So I think that's, you know, kind of a carryover even from last year where we have a lot of, you know, questions around, like, you know, Amazon wants a discount, and, you know, they want us to do Lightning Deals, but I've got limited inventory. I'm not how do I, I don't need to discount it. I mean, even carried over into q4 a lot as well, where deep discounts weren't there because, you know, brands knew they're going to go out of stock anyway. So why ramp up advertising and get deep discounts if, you know, they didn't have the inventory to backfill. So

Jeni Doig  38:41

it was actually I think it was controversial, I think, if we have if they have any inventory constraints, I do not I would not suggest that they run anything on deal. Not just because the fact that they don't need to, they're probably going to sell through it but more of the fact that if they run out of inventory, it puts them in a worse situation just as a whole. You know, that's what we really want to keep inventory going as much as we can and spread that inventory out as long as we can until we're back in stock just so we don't really stop all of the efforts that we've created up to this point with advertising relevancy with you know, where you're where you're where you're ending up on the page as far as your search Relevancy is concerned. So I think it's much better to stay to keep that inventory to stay present and stay relevant on site versus running through that product as quick as you can just because it's Prime Day I think you should spread that inventory out not writing on deal

Aaron Conant  39:36

that makes sense. I mean, it does is kind of even the approach to using q4 of last year. Right if you know you're gonna run out don't accelerate running out right if you can nurse the long is the one that you don't want to do is go out of stock. Right? Right. And and that's the first phase is just going out of stock on Amazon. Get it back up. You know three PL that can drop ship for you if you can't do it on your own. It kind of shore yourself up from going out of stock. But if you literally have complete constraints on inventory, it's a whole different issue in, in pulling back on advertising and promotional events completely agree because you going out of stock is the worst.

Jeni Doig  40:16

Exactly. I mean, even on items that we see our clients are low on inventory. You know, that's where, you know, our AD team and our business management team and account team really work closely together, we see that we have a large inventory constraint for a certain amount of time, you know, we're gonna pull back on advertising or, you know, pause it, I'm not sure we wouldn't really necessary pause advertisement, but we'd really pull back on it. In my case, I speak to that a little further. But the last thing I want to do is continue to drive traffic to items that we are so that we're really close on running out of inventory, just because yeah, that the entire flywheel.

Mike Battista  40:47

Yeah, right. Right. Exactly. That's what I was just gonna kind of, you know, hop on to your point just from a moment ago, you know, it's, it could be pretty detrimental to, you know, ensure that we are increasing our advertising budgets in the in the days and weeks, prior to Prime Day, just to run out of inventory, when that peak amount of traffic is going to come through, or, or even right before, right. Once that happens, we will start to lose a little bit of that relevancy. And, you know, the dynamic is going to shift because your competitors who have planned for inventory, you know, appropriately or, or, you know, even just in the luckier position to have that inventory, there, Relevancy is going to start to increase, right. So you're going to increase that disparity between you and your competitors, organic ranking on the site, if we're really not trying to stretch that inventory out as much as possible, you know, Prime Day, it, you know, is unfortunately, just not going to be the best possible option for every single person selling on Amazon, you know, but for anyone who's selling on Amazon, who, you know, has current campaigns running, who has some strong inventory. You know, obviously, we want to abide by best practices here.

Aaron Conant  42:10

So, a question that comes in curious to hear an overall advice, any overall advice, your best practices for integrating advertising and promotional strategies for maximum impact while keeping budgets under control? Right? It's that balance of, you know, I wanna, I want to grow Amazon, but I want to do it profitably. Right, I want to advertise, I want to provide promos during this time. But I do it profitably. And I'm willing to give up margin short term for high volume to drive future, you know, growth and spin the flywheel faster. So, you know, there's can be some attribution on the back end. So, like, advice or best practices for kind of doing those, and what does attribution look like?

Mike Battista  42:55

Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, it's, it's going to be important, as you said, that, like this, this is a bit of a balancing act, right? If you are seeing data that's coming back from your advertising campaigns that, you know, from some of the campaigns that you're currently running, and that is a not profitable venture right? Now, there needs to be some, you know, we need to look ourselves in the mirror here and make some cleanup. And, you know, clean up some of these campaigns, whether that be kind of delineating some of the data that's coming through to those campaigns, adding negative targeting there, adding different ad groups ensuring that ad, different match types are delineated within ad groups before Prime Day. And, you know, as you said, right, there's going to obviously be that that, that balance between profitability and ensuring that we are consistently driving more and more traffic to the page there. I think attribution is a really, really great and Amazon attribution in general, it's just a really great tool, and kind of a cleanroom environment where you can get a little bit more granular than you could be for BI understanding that path to purchase to your products and understanding where that path is, and where typically, those shoppers are actually purchasing can really help when making data back decisions on where to allocate additional ad budget to for, you know, where to take take money away from right that maybe, potentially they're working right now. You know, in understanding kind of where those those customers are in that path purchase will, you know, it should give us a little bit more detail on how to kind of button things up and tighten it up. In a profitability sense, you know, Especially these days when that's getting, that's getting to be a smaller and smaller window.

Aaron Conant  45:05

No, I completely agree we're at a point now. You know, I bring this up the course that we do, it's digital 3.0. And it's, it's the point where you can't just have an ad campaign and have it running. It's not old school AMS, right? And you bid a nickel and you get, you know, a 17x 35 row ass, right? It's this now incredibly complicated, you need an ad tech tool on the back end, right? Every everybody's got to have one. Now, if you're spending 5000 plus a month, or the money is just gone. But then on the other side, you have to have an integration to figure out okay, well, what is the attribution? What does it look like? How are you handling the promos? You're right. Is it profitable? Is it not profitable? Or is the end sale profitable or not profitable? And you bring in DSP, you know, it's this, you know, and then multi touch attribution, Which part did what is now incredibly complicated to trace it all back to say, hey, it was this AMS campaign, I've only really old school, right? This, you know, AMS campaign that led to this click, and therefore, you know, sales went up. So it kind of gets back to your your share of shall share voice. It's just it's incredibly complicated.

Jeni Doig  46:15

And the other part of the question, I think, was, you know, about pairing the advertising with the promotions. And we absolutely do advertise our promotion. So that again, that's where it's so important to have, you know, your advertising team and your account team working side by side on these accounts, we make sure that all of the campaigns that we're running, or I'm sorry, all the promotions that we're running, our AD team has that in front of them and are creating campaigns accordingly around those. As far as managing your budget there, that's again, if you really have a tight budget with with certain products, due to profitability, etc, that that's where coupons really come in handy, because you can, you can set that cap amount, you know that to not spend more than XYZ or not sell more than the certain amount of units that you can afford to sell during that promotional time period, whereas the other promotional vehicles, you don't have that kind of control. So if you are in that tighter, you know, position as far as your budget is concerned, then I would take a look at the components.

Aaron Conant  47:16

Awesome. Next question that comes in? Do you talk about when you expect Prime Day to be a because of any indication? You know, this is a we've been hearing mid June, any wild crystal ball guesses? And if you have to abstain from answering, I understand that too. If you've got connections? I don't know how you dance around that question, if

Mike Battista  47:44

I wish I could abstain, because that would indicate that we knew, but at this point, we're still a little bit in the dark about exactly when that date is going to be. But you know, if we look at historic data, you know, mid June to late June is typically when Prime Day is, you know, again, you know, we cannot make any any forecasts on exactly when Amazon is going to set that date. But if Amazon also understands that, you know, there are a vast majority of us are trying to prepare for this. Right. So they shouldn't be really, they typically wouldn't throw a curveball, you know, with the exception of, you know, kind of moving it to October during, you know, the COVID-19 crisis, right. But, you know, typically they understand all of this prep, all of this strategy that is starting to get developed in anticipation for Prime Day. So, you know, I don't want to say it's safe to say that it's in June, but, you know, that's, that's kind of where our heads are at quiet.

Aaron Conant  48:52

That makes sense. Otherwise, it pushes into back to school, right. And in that was kind of a, we had a lot anybody that was in, you know, selling into, you know, the back to school type sales, they were holding off on Prime Day because they wanted to hit ball back to school. So that guy kind of messed up last year, but also, I mean, q4 now starts, you know, the holiday shopping starts in October now. That's just the reality. Right? It's, that's just when it starts. And so seems like they would want to do a June, right, and then in August, and then October, and then, you know, a final year end push. That would make complete sense. So yeah, I mean, I would just concur. I don't know, hear from there. But that that would make sense because I do know, they want to kind of spread those two apart, at least they did in the past. Now, who knows? Everything's a little bit different in the middle of a global pandemic here. You know, and kind of getting to really quick a, what ad tech attribution tools do you recommend?

Mike Battista  49:50

We typically are, we've used Amazon, Amazon attribution, you know, in the past. We also have Yeah, the ability to, you know, take a look from, you know, we kind of have lucky here, right? Because we were, we've installed a, a, essentially a software that we built kind of from the ground up, that gives us some tools that we're able to share kind of with our clients there. So no Amazon attribution there are, you know, also other things that we can kind of go a step further on that including like Amazon Marketing Cloud, which gives us even more access to granular data on the path purchase. Now, this isn't going to be a recommendation for you know, probably everybody on the call, because some of those higher strategic level platforms are can get pretty expensive, especially coming directly from Amazon there. But I wouldn't, I would certainly, you know, continue to dig into Amazon attribution as much as you possibly can there and really kind of scrape the bottom of the barrel for any possible data that you can make any decisions on. Sure.

Aaron Conant  51:10

Yeah, I mean, there's one day that's obviously I know you guys deal with on the paid media side, you know, work with an agency the flip side is you can jump in to the skies that are patchy was the pack views the thing Helium 10. Hey, you know what acquired press design, there's like, there's this, like the top ones that that are out there that brands are using today? Yes, kind of evaluate to see what is the best, you know, fit for what you're looking for. I know, we do a lot with with sky just because they've been great friends and partners in the network as well. But I see we're getting right here at time. I do want to say a quick thank you, obviously, Mike and Jeni, thanks for your time. Today is an all round, great conversation. Thanks for letting us throw like you know, as many questions as we could feel derecha over the past 15 minutes. Again, anybody on the call today, if you need any help at all, with Amazon, one p three P paid media, DSP, whatever it might be consulting, anything across the board, the team at orca Pacific, comes highly recommended from a ton of brands in the network 100% worth of follow up conversation, they won't let you down. They're incredibly friendly people and wicked smart and knowledgeable as well. So don't hesitate to reach out, it's worth 30 minutes to put on your calendar and chat with them. From my side, I'd love to have a conversation with you as well. We don't sell anything here at BWG Connect. We're just a giant networking group. I'd love to pick your brain on your biggest pain points, topics for calls and or dinners we're going to do. Also, I mean, if anybody you need these, any kind of help with partner selection, always lead you know love spending 30 minutes on the phone with people and help them pick through Hey, who's the best and leaders in a particular space. There's anywhere from Amazon to direct consumer international expansion, whatever it might be. Don't ever hesitate to reach out. And with that, we're going to wrap it up. Thanks again, Jeni. Thanks again, Mike. Thanks to everybody who's sending the questions. Hope everybody has a great week everybody. Take care, stay safe and look forward to having you at a future event. Awesome. To see everybody