Aaron Conant  0:18

Happy Tuesday everybody. My name is Aaron Conant. I'm the co founder, Managing Director here at BWG Connect giant networking and knowledge sharing group we've been around for well over six years now, wow. I spend my time talking with brands that start up to Fortune 100 up every vertical would love to talk with anybody on the phone today, here. And from those conversations, just sharing what's going on across the landscape kind of serve as a focal point. But I'm also gathering Hey, those biggest topics that people are trying to understand and solve for. I also do a ton when the partner selection space, we work together as a giant network of 9000 brands now to determine, hey, who's working and who's not. And that's how we get the resident experts on the line is from the network as a whole. And so a couple housekeeping items as we get started. The first is we want this to be as educational and informational as possible. If you have any questions along the way, don't hesitate to drop them in the chat into the q&a. Or you can always email me, Aaron@bwgconnect.com. And that includes tomorrow, next week, a month from now if you have any questions in a digital space, you're ever doing an RFP, don't hesitate to reach out more than happy to share who the network is saying is working and who's not. The other thing is we're starting this three to four minutes after the hour. And just so you know, we're not going to take this right up to 1pm. Eastern, we are going to wrap it up early, but we're going to try to get as many questions answered as possible. And so that I don't think anybody surprised Black Friday, Cyber Monday topic right now we're in q4 Prime Day is today and tomorrow, the second Prime Day who knows if they'll have three or four by next year. But Black Friday, Cyber Monday are still huge parts of most people's digital revenue during the year. And so we got some great friends partners supporters to the network over Perpetua. They have been for years now. They're just fantastic people in love to provide insight. So really appreciate them. But Omar, if you want to jump in, you want to give a brief background on yourself. That'd be awesome and Perpetua and then we can kind of jump into the slide deck. Sounds good?

Omar Mourad  2:23

Yep. Absolutely. Nice. Nice to be on the panel today. Super excited. My name is Omar, I work at Propecia as a data strategists. So just very briefly, I work with different brands, agencies across all different categories on Amazon and in different marketplaces, like Walmart. perpetuate itself is a is a company that offers an eCommerce advertising software, where we offer managed and unmanaged services. And so yeah, that's kind of what I do. And I'm excited to get going. Awesome. So

Aaron Conant  3:00

a quick reminder, for those of you who joined drop questions into the chat or the q&a, and we'll get them answered as we go. You drop them in real time. But yeah, all right, let's, let's jump into it.

Omar Mourad  3:13

So yes, we're gonna be talking about Black Friday, Cyber Monday, today. It's a huge shopping event. And I think what's what's really important is, you know, kind of identifying the opportunity, setting the scene of why it's so important. And then going over different strategies that can help you kind of, you know, capitalize on the shopping events to the best of your ability. And please, if you have any questions as we go, please feel free to ask them. Cool. So real quick, the agenda that we're going to go over today, kind of just setting the scene, as I said, a quick overview on the on the actual events, and then some things to consider the Amazon Marketing screen, which I think is a huge tool that you can use to your benefit during the shopping event, some other top tips. And then if there are any questions after all of this, we can we can go over those as well. Perfect. So setting the scene, I just want to kind of give context as to how large the shopping event is and how much preparation there is when we start to look at like different plans, different strategies. So this was something that I came across recently where 40% of you know, Gen Z shoppers start planning for, you know, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, two weeks in advance. The reason why this is very important, and we're gonna go over in a few slides is because preparation P pre the peak, I think is absolutely essential. And it's and it's shown in this in this stat over here where people are shopping for a long time before even if they're not actually checking out. So we need to make sure that we're ramping up prior to the actual events. And others just quick, quick start is, you know, generally two to 3 billion on online sales a day. Cyber Monday, jumps up to upwards of 11 billion So just the sheer volume of sales that that happen is definitely something that we need to prepare for, there's going to be a lot of noise, there's going to be a lot of competition. So how can we try to, you know, make ourselves stand out? How can we put ourselves in a unique position to attract our shoppers, not only now during this event, but then afterwards, to get them to keep coming back, I think is absolutely essential. And so we'll go over some of those strategies as well. So this for me is just very important to understand the magnitude of the shopping events. Okay, overview. So it's happening on November 24, to the 27th. And so like I said, I think it's absolutely key that we prepare for this for this traffic that's going to come. And it's the way I like to do it is pre, during and post. And we'll go over each of these different phases throughout these events, and different tactics that you can employ in order to like best capitalize on each of these different phases. So if you're participating, obviously, this goes without saying, if you are participating, it is absolutely essential that you make sure that your budgets do not go out during any of these phases. It's just going to impact your discoverability, it's going to impact your organic rank. And we want to avoid all of these things. So budget planning, I think is actually one of the most essential things. And just staying on top of budgets throughout the throughout the day, and throughout all four days is I think going to be absolutely key. Talking about budget, because, you know, CPCs are expected to increase as they do every single year, budgets will likely run out faster. And so just keep that in mind. When you are setting budgets, it's important to make sure that you're accommodating for these higher CPCs. You know, it's just obviously going to be more expensive to advertise, there will be more people trying to get, you know, this placement, those placements at top of search, and whatnot. So if you do actually run a budget, as I said, again, pretty obvious, but I think it's very important to reiterate is that you will miss out on pressures on clicks on spend on sales, and ultimately on conversions. So this is absolutely something that we need to avoid to the best of our ability. And I think something that is very helpful to do this is stream. And we'll get to that in a bit. Any questions? So far? We're all good.

Aaron Conant  7:23

Now we're all good. Yeah, but if people have been traveling, then I think as we get into the details,

Omar Mourad  7:27

more questions are streaming. Alright, perfect. So as I mentioned, considerations for the different peak periods. So we're gonna kind of go over all of these and pre over the peak, and then post the peak. So leading up to the event, I would say, you know, two weeks to one week, typically is when we start to see, you know, brands are really starting to ramp up. But pre peak, we want to make sure that we're top of mind, we're starting to build that brand awareness. And the way that we start to do that is by starting to actually push different ad units prior to the actual event. So how can we actually increase brand awareness and consideration is by starting to activate sponsor brands and sponsored display. And at least from my experience, typically a lot of brands will put a lot of their budget and focus on sponsored products, which, you know, makes sense to me for many reasons. But in order to start to increase awareness and consideration, we want to also tap into the sponsor brands. This is where you actually bring build that brand, building that credibility, you know, those eye catching campaigns that you might not necessarily be able to get from sponsored products alone. Sponsored display, very, very important as well. The reason why I say that is because I think this ad unit specifically gives you the ability to start targeting, you know, different competitor PDPs, or, you know, having, you know, brand defense strategies as well, in order to make sure that that consideration, or that awareness actually sticks.

Aaron Conant  9:00

So really quick question. A couple questions. One is, you know, are we able to shoot around a copy this presentation afterwards?

Omar Mourad  9:08

Sacco? Absolutely.

Aaron Conant  9:10

All right. The other one is, you mentioned one to two weeks ahead of is the pre peak timing. Does that vary by category? Or should we start even earlier?

Omar Mourad  9:21

So it's a good question. I think seasonality definitely comes into it. So if like, if you are going to look at category, we also need to look at seasonality of does your seat does the product that you're selling? Is it already impacted by the season? And might you need to ramp up a bit earlier? If it is then yes, probably a bit earlier than one to two weeks. But typically, I think one to two weeks is an appropriate time. We also want to make sure that if there are budget constraints, we're not burning through those budgets. And so that's something that we want to make sure that it's sustainable. And so yeah, I think one to two weeks is an appropriate time for generally for most for most categories. With the exception of all See, see that seasonality? Awesome, awesome. The next point that we were gonna go over, it's just kind of insurance, obviously, that your PDPs are optimized to the best of your ability. I know that this can sometimes be tricky. I don't think there's a magic rule as to how best optimize PDPs there are definitely best. There are definitely best practices. So a plus content, you know, PDP descriptions, you know, making sure that you're priced competitively, if you're running any deals, get those deals going. And then also, just, I personally find this to be essential. If you if you are on prime, just making sure that you have that, you know that that obvious to all to all your shoppers, I think that makes a huge difference. And then reviews, I cannot stress as to how important it is that your reviews are, first of all high, you have a decent number of them. And then if there are any bad reviews, trying to address those in a way that shows that you care about the customer. So these are all things that you can do off of PPC, you know, this is I would say just traditional marketing that most definitely needs to be addressed. If you haven't already started, I would start from today. Cool. Starting to increase budgets, kind of already touched on this before anything whose budgets to make sure that you know you're not going dark throughout the day. Shoppers are shopping from the morning to the night. It's not like an average day. People are preparing for this. And then obviously starting to increase bids for target equals target a cos is something a bit more specific to Perpetua. But it's essentially saying, you know, how can we start to, you know, allow our software or a software in general, to start being more aggressive when it comes to those bids, in order to accommodate the higher CPMs and, and make sure that you're still getting those, you know, those top placements?

Aaron Conant  11:54

Like, it's not entirely a cost to you, is that taking into account profitability?

Omar Mourad  12:00

Absolutely. So targeted costs will have an impact on profitability, you know, typically when you set a higher target, because you know, your advertising costs could could and most likely will go up. But it comes down to the question of like, you are choosing to participate in a peak shopping period. So it is absolutely normal unexpected for advertising costs to go up just due to the you know, the sheer amount of competition that's going to come your way. It's just part of, I think the game when it comes to these specific shopping events. Now after the shopping events, you know, you know, by week or something, people typically start to drop their target it causes again, and start to return to kind of normal, normal standards. Because, you know, it's it's kind of not as intense anymore. But actually, you know, what's, what's interesting those q4 specifically leads right up into the shopping period, right? So you know, the the gift giving period of like Christmas and whatnot. And so there's often like, there's this bridge between November to December, that's actually kind of blurry. And people sometimes continue to try to ride the ride that wave, obviously, their shoppers fatigue. So I don't know how long you can continue to run at the same level. But it's interesting to look at different, you know, ad units that you can use, like remarketing, how can I how can I get the shoppers that didn't purchase to come back within the next four weeks during this gift, gift giving period? So you know, maybe you maybe you don't decrease targeted costs as much as you would if you weren't in q4, but it's just something to think about.

Aaron Conant  13:33

Cool. So another quick question, if you've seen just because a Prime Day is right now, have you also seen a significant increase in in paid media right now? Or are you seeing people as a whole brands kind of just say, Hey, I've got Amazon Prime Day fatigue, I might discount, but I'm gonna hold the ad dollars, right? Because the conversations I'm having are profitability, profitability profitability. And I love what you're saying here, like you're calling it out, you must be seeing the same thing, your ad budget, your ad budget, budget planning, budget planning, right, because you want to get the most out of it. But it's just interesting. I've just had a couple people ping me on the side are wondering about, you know, how much paid media is going on right now? Compared to what's going to take place on Black Friday, Cyber Monday?

Omar Mourad  14:26

I think it's definitely, I think it's definitely high now I think Prime typically has. Obviously, it has a huge, huge impact on Amazon, I think with Black Friday, Cyber Monday, though, in my general opinion, it's more of a eCommerce event, whereas prime is primarily focused on Amazon. So I think I think it varies, you know, who are your shoppers and whatnot. One thing that you mentioned was like profitability, profitability and so on. And I definitely understand that I'm not I'm not trying to make make it sound like that's not important. That's probably one of the most important things but it's it's often hard. And I always have, you know, the brands and agencies that I work with, I often tell them like, it is not the easiest, especially during a shopping event, whether it be be prime or Black Friday, Cyber Monday to achieve scalability, but then also achieve efficiency at the same time. And when I what I mean by efficiency is costs. So profitability, it is very hard to achieve both, you know, oftentimes you have to kind of decide for this event, I want to get as many impressions as many clicks, as many new brand customers as possible, or I primary here primarily just want to maintain or care about my level of costs. You know, it might not make sense then to participate in an event like this, if that makes sense.

Aaron Conant  15:43

No, it does is it completely does is kind of that reiteration around? What are the KPIs you're going for? And then making sure you're, you're communicating those right to the executive team? Absolutely. Right. Because they're, they totally get it right. Because what are your KPIs? And that let that guide how you're spending to what you're doing? Absolutely. Awesome. Awesome. And everybody keep dropping questions in the chat in the q&a, we'll keep getting to this awesome.

Omar Mourad  16:13

So over the peak, so continue to focus on you know, different engagement metrics, CTRs, tracking your sales targets, I think is absolutely important. And this is important, because you want to know if what you're currently doing is working or not, doesn't need to be any changes in terms of like, bidding, bidding, bidding adjustments, different looking at different keywords, are the budgets set correctly, do they need to be increased, could you potentially, you know, find different ad units to tap into. And so that's why the third point talks about, you know, promoting visibility across all ad units. Again, I think it works best as a as a collective effort, I don't think just relying on sponsored products is enough. Because I can I can, I can say with complete conviction that most of the neurons are tapping into all three ad units, and you want to make sure that you're doing the same. Again, continue to avoid that you're going to continue to avoid going dark. So if you need to increase budgets, do that, and then don't get lost in the noise. And this is, you know, again, having to make sure are making sure that your bids are actually high enough. What I personally like to do with this, when I when I give, you know, strategy, advice to some of my customers is I like to identify, you know, my top 1520 keywords, or search terms, and just put column to column of what is my CPC? What is my bid? Do I need to up my bids? It's that simple. I don't even think you need to be that complicated during the shopping events, because it's so fast, and there's so much competition going on. I think live changes need to happen right away without, you know, without being too scared to actually make those changes. The third phase is post peak, I think this is really interesting one, and I think it's an often forgotten one. And so I really encourage you not to forget it, because especially like I said, q4 is I find the biggest shopping quarter of the year. So we want to make sure that we're you know, capitalizing on that. So, you know, re engaging with your customers, or your potential shoppers as much as you can, I think, is absolutely key. So, you know, using sponsored display, or even the DSP, to kind of pull those customers back in who haven't actually bought a product, I think is low hanging fruits that you don't necessarily want to miss out on. Understanding, obviously, you know, how did it work? How did your How did these strategies for Black Friday Cyber Monday work in terms of new target customers, right? That's every I believe every advertisers goal is to get new to brand customers, and to eventually starting to reduce your, you know, your dependency on advertising, right. So starting to improve your organic position. And so that, I think, is the ultimate goal. And so that's something that you can definitely learn from when you start implementing these strategies. And then that kind of ties into the fourth point as well, is kind of getting a bit more insight. What works, what didn't work, and then, you know, how can you better or, you know, improve in the future events. So actually

Aaron Conant  19:14

give a breakdown of like, the PPC campaigns versus DSP and how it's, does it change? Or is it pretty much stayed the same and just budgets go up and down? Because the other thing that's really, you know, like blown up over the past couple years is DSP as a whole. Right. Now, it's another variable like we were talking about at the beginning, this has gotten so difficult for everybody. And there is always changed. The learning curve keeps getting steeper and steeper. And now there's this variable as well. I don't know if you have like a just a few people asking about the DSP to PPC breakdown on budgets as

Omar Mourad  19:53

a whole. So typically, I find that more budgets will almost always go to PPC. Oh, the ad unit of sponsor product typically takes more. I wouldn't say that there's a specific again, breakdown of what should be going to PPC versus what should be going to the DSP. I will say, though, that the DSPS returns on investment, when it comes to looking at is this working is my budget actually going towards something that's benefiting me is a bit trickier to gauge because, you know, with the PPC or sorry, with the DSP, you're looking at a complete funnel, complete journey. And so it's harder to say, you know, and you're looking at impressions versus actual clicks. And so it's hard it's actually say, this is working as much as you know, sponsored products is where it's directly attributable, attributed to a specific, I find that the DSP definitely requires, you know, you know, a large amount of budget, I know Amazon has specific minimums, I can't remember off the top of my head. I know, Perpetua also has specific minimums for the DSP. So will typically say you need to be spending, I believe it's around at least 10k a month, on sponsored to be able to qualify to to, to be able to qualify to run a DSP with us. And so, we definitely have many brands that qualify for that. And they genuinely, I think, enjoy the DSP because of the granularity that you can get into it when you're targeting specific audiences. So you know, with with sponsored, you're typically going after keywords. Whereas with DSP, I think the biggest difference is you're going after audiences. And you can really get into the nitty gritty of who you want to target when you want to target them. And you can't necessarily do that on sponsor display at all. So I think being able to have both more budget typically will go to sponsored, but being able to have both, I think is is a pretty neat, neat package. Awesome. Love it. Yep. Alright, so the next thing I want to go over is the Amazon Marketing stream. So just some quick overview for for for those of you who might not be fully aware of it, it essentially allows us to track performance on an hourly basis throughout the day, every day of the week. This over here is Perpetua as interface. So might look slightly different. If you if you haven't been on

Aaron Conant  22:15

question comes in how do I get access to the Amazon Marketing stream?

Omar Mourad  22:20

So on Amazon or with perpetual? Do you mind? Clarifying it, you should be able to access it, and Amazon as well.

Aaron Conant  22:29

So any brand has access to

Omar Mourad  22:30

it usually go through, you should be able to. But I would I would actually need to double check that if you are with Perpetua, you automatically have access to it. But I believe brands also have access to it on Amazon.

Aaron Conant  22:48

It's just whether or not then you have the tool to crunch the data. Awesome.

Omar Mourad  22:50

Let me double check actually get back to you on if that was on how to get access to that. And then we we can shoot whoever asked that question in email. Cool. So you can track hourly, like I said, already trends. And you can graph a bunch of different metrics, you know, CPCs, average our average order value sales, and spend it and whatnot. And then basically, this allows you to make very informed decisions as to how to capitalize on specific hours of the day based off of your specific goals and objectives. Right. So is it efficiency is it scalability is it you know, whatever it might be, it lets you kind of make more informed decisions and take even more control throughout every single hour of the day. So like I said, Here, identify opportunities for efficiency and growth, of course correction. So if there is anything that is going completely off, are you spending too much during a time of the day where you don't need to be doing that? How can I correct that. And that could very well be the case for an event like Black Friday, Cyber Monday where, you know, maybe there is a peak point during the day where you're not spending as much as you should. And so you want to course correct that and double down on the bids during that time of the day. And then understanding the impact of peak events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday throughout the day of like, okay, typically, you know, when is it that there is the highest peak, and so you can prepare for that better, you know, moving forward as well. So I present is one of my favorite tools to use. That was almost always recommended. I'm not going to go into too much detail here. But I think there's just three key strategies that I kind of put together, you know, being able to identify gaps throughout the day where CPCs are significantly high. But looking at a place where your conversions or your sales are much lower. That to me suggests that you probably are not winning those placements. Because CPCs are high and you're probably need to increase your bids. And so that's something that you can obviously do on an hourly basis during that gap where you can actually look at Okay, where am I missing? Let me try to close that gap. The last, these two second points are kind of category and then branded. So, you know, if you're running deals and you feel like you know, or you see that you're getting lost in the noise, you don't want to necessarily increase your your A costs or your targeted costs, which you can then start to do is, you know, look at your category of bids, and then start to increase those. And the same holds for this third point. Whereas if you see a lot of your competitors, you know, kind of on your page, or on your PDP, kind of taking up real estate that shouldn't be yours, or that you, you know, isn't, again, low hanging fruit that you don't want to be losing out, you know, increasing, you know, bids on your branded segment as well. I will say something about this last point out is we want to be careful about increasing a bit too much on the branded segment, I always advocate to make sure that we don't cannibalize, you know, organic sales that would have already been ours. So it's a bit tricky to kind of achieve that balance. But during these specific events, I think it's very important that you at least keep an eye out. And then action if needed. Does that all that does all makes

Aaron Conant  26:05

sense? Yeah, it does make sense? I mean, again, it's getting complicated, because it's almost, it's a tool needed to first analyze everything that's going on the detail pages, and who's targeting you, which then, you know, is probably dependent. I mean, you can get so targeted with it, that you don't really know who's getting who's not. Yeah, it's just, again, getting back to the complexity question that

Omar Mourad  26:32

what I like to do it for, even just to get an understanding of who was targeted, who's targeting you, I think it could be, again, because of the constraints of time that we have during the shopping events, is that being able to just monitor your, you know, your PDPs, or for the ASINs, that are the most important essence to during these shopping events? And just regularly monitoring these pages and seeing literally, you know, looking at the different placements that are or the different ads that are serving, like, is this a competitor? Do I need to then retarget them? I understand definitely the complexity. And I think there's definitely more work needed during these events in real time changes is I think, absolutely the key. Yeah, it's just, yeah,

Aaron Conant  27:16

yeah, the rest of the world is, you know, eating leftover turkey, and watching football for the rest of the weekend. And, and digital marketers are just, you know, monitoring everything.

Omar Mourad  27:29

Absolutely, no, I totally get it. All right, well, I'm gonna move on from this, then a few more top tips. Again, some of these are positive, so I'm not gonna go over them. But ramping up, we've already talked about this. You know, but it gives, you know, time to, you know, you know, Amazon or whatever engine it is that you're you know you're working with, or whatever software it is that you're working with, to prepare for it, you know, looking at specific, you know, if you are going to participate, making sure that you're increasing your bids, if you choose that you're not going to participate in the events, which, you know, I have seen cases where maybe it makes sense for you not to participate in an event like this, it's just making sure that you actually start to drop some of your bids. And I typically don't recommend not participating in events, but but I just want to, you know, address both some potential cases, because it could happen. And the reason why you want to start dropping your bids is, in order to ensure that you know, you're not wasting spends, because it is going to be expensive. And if this is not something that you want to do, then then why should you be spending as much as you shouldn't, and then, obviously, going dark, avoid that. And if you're going to use stream that will let you kind of understand where it is, you know, that is the most important hours of the day, and where you want to make sure absolutely 100% That you are not going dark, in order to avoid missing out on sales. So this little stat here, CPCs, generally increase your 2020 20 to 40%. Over this event, I think is absolutely key, I think it just shows the magnitude of how many people are, you know, participating in fighting for these different placements. And so, you know, if you do have budget constraints, which which could very be very well be the case, you might want to start taking down, you know, your your bids and your A costs, just to ensure that you're not, you're not going to talk too early. And so hopefully you don't have budget constraints, but I know that you know, every business probably will. It's just the way of the game. And so that's something that you could potentially start to do. And then if you do if you don't, like I said double down continues to increase. Conversions rate will obviously peak. So you know, there is a likelihood of your ads being clicked on. So CTRs are going to go up. And so that's something that's great. Making sure that once you actually have someone on your PDP Making sure that they actually convert I think is essential when you, you probably need to do more traditional marketing in that respect. I always like to say that, you know, PPC can only take you so far, right? I can bring someone to the page, I can potentially bring the right shopper to the page at the right time, you know, but I need to make sure that they're actually going to convert. And so I think a lot of that has to do with PCB PDP optimization.

Aaron Conant  30:27

Did you see a lot of people like right now, going back through and optimizing it again, as busy as they are?

Omar Mourad  30:35

Absolutely. 100% in terms of reviews, in terms of looking at the title description, in terms of making sure that they are bidding on keywords that are within their title, just building that relevancy, you know, image updates it, you know, a plus content. I think the best brands that I work with, they're constantly doing that, and I think they're the most self critical about these, you know, they're PPD peas, and they're not, they're not afraid to constantly make changes, right. And then the last one, pretty obvious, but I think probably one of the most important is do not go out of stock. We can do everything that we can to prepare for this event. If you're out of stock, obviously, your ads aren't going to serve, and your organic growth is going to continue to plummet. So it is absolutely key that inventory is planned well, well in advance.

Aaron Conant  31:28

Yeah, and we have a lot of people just going with no backup, you know, like a backup three PL, so you don't go out of stock. And that is I would say for everybody, it's key. If you don't have one of these digital h three, pls was distributed logistics that can still meet the prime guidelines. I mean, you need one that I would say, email me, and I'll send you so because we're gonna get the same product restraints and constraints we get every year with Amazon. They have this weird thing they did with the with Prime Day earlier, where they were actually driving traffic off site with to anybody who had by with prime, just to handle some of the traffic in the shipping. They're a fine tuned machine at making money. And that's something that's going to be key is are you able to ship the product? If Amazon can't. So you go

Omar Mourad  32:28

I like this one a lot. Using previous data trends, and what's happened in the past what's worked in the past? And really quick,

Aaron Conant  32:37

let's jump into this question. It says Do you consider a good strategy to give anticipated deals, discounts to top customers have a loyalty program? Or any way people will wait until black? Friday, Cyber Monday?

Omar Mourad  32:53

Um, let me realize you consider a good strategy to give anticipated deals, and it's helped customers have a loyalty program or any way people will wait. So that's good question.

Aaron Conant  33:04

So like, almost like a teaser? Hey, by the way. Wait. I so you know, this is coming up?

Omar Mourad  33:12

Yeah, exactly. I think I think there's definitely, you know, merit in that strategy of, you know, to your point of kind of, you know, letting them know, giving them some kind of preview. One thing I will say though, is, you know, when it comes to targeting loyal customers, or you know, how can I, you know, how can I kind of bring loyal customers, and the thing is, they are already loyal customers. And so, I always wonder if how much it is of your budget, or how much of your spend, do you want to go towards your customers that are likely already going to shop with you. So I don't want to say let's not target them at all. But I will say that if you do have, you know, budget constraints, or if you are trying to get new to brown customers, I would say wait until Black Friday, Cyber Monday, that's when we really see the peak, you know, I was reading a stat earlier where, you know, the first day so Black Friday is absolutely when the most searches go up, when the most spend goes up in the most sales goes up. And so, yes, giving a teaser, I think is definitely a you know, a strategy that could work. But I wouldn't put too much in that in that, especially if you're under specific constraints. Awesome. So, what I like to always look at is, you know, the previous quarters performance year on year performance, you know, get an understanding of what worked and what didn't work. You know, a lot of the times I get questions of, okay, what should I set, you know, my budget to or how should it how much should I increase my budget by and I don't want to just give an arbitrary number. I want to look at what happened last Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Sorry, what happened last Prime Day and that to me There's an understanding of typically how much you ended up spending. And using that as a starting point, and then actually increasing it a bit further, assuming that there's been growth since the last quarter since the last year. And so I think the data that we have in the past is super, super insightful, super helpful. And so I would definitely rely on that. Use the peak, the peak period to boost and reengage we've kind of already talked about this, I'm not going to go into too much detail, but you know, reengage in potential shoppers, especially with the q4, you know, the gift giving season. And that's also tied into here is, how is it that I can, you know, continue to target these people. So you might want to start looking at, you know, specific keywords, specific search terms that are around the gift giving season, and, you know, re engaging those kinds of people. I think with a DSP specifically, you can really identify those audiences, and target those audiences in a way that I think is actually mind blowing, can necessarily do that on sponsored display as to the level of detail, but it's definitely something that you can, that you can capitalize on, for sure. Won't over again, limited budgets, I am sorry for how much I talk about budgets, but I think it's absolutely important. But there is one thing it

Aaron Conant  36:15

is top of everybody's mind. And

Omar Mourad  36:19

I will say I will say actually, this is also an interesting stat that I found is 2022 data, you know, highest sales are on the first morning of the first day. So you want to make sure that you have that budget available. And if you do have limited budgets, consider you know, front loading your deals, and your budget to the beginning. In order to first of all, like I say capitalize on that first initial morning, and then you know, there additional pressures, fatigue, no one can deny it. So you want to make sure that you're up in front from the beginning, as early as you as you possibly can be, you know, sort of the first day of the events. Organic rank, I cannot stress this enough. So starting to make sure that you continue to build that organic rank through relevancy, PDP optimization. I think it's absolutely key. And then reporting, you know, what went well, what didn't go well? What can I do better? Next year? Yeah, I think I think that's it for me. I believe the next slide is just a question slowed. But,

Aaron Conant  37:27

but yeah, yeah. So now, if there's other questions out there, feel free to drop them in the chat or drop them in the q&a? And we'll get them we'll get them answered. One that I know, that comes up a ton is around, you know, after, you know, the Christmas, New Year's timeframe, there's a ton of gift card redemption. And so from that standpoint, is there a strategy for the end of q4, I know this is Black Friday, Cyber Monday. But again, there's a significant amount of purchasing that goes on, you know, into January as well. We'd love to hear any thoughts on that?

Omar Mourad  38:08

Absolutely. I think it's continuing, I think it's continuing to put in low hanging fruit. And the way that I would best do that is through sponsored display, and through the DSP. And that's why, you know, a lot of the focus is always on sponsor products, again, which is very understandable. And I definitely always recommend the majority of your spending time and effort to be in sponsored products. But when you have specific opportunities, like what you just mentioned, of like, posts, posts, you know, the gift giving season of, of early January, and people are still redeeming these gift cards, how is it that you're going to pull them back in right? And that is by doing you know, sponsored display campaigns, you know, retargeting them remarketing towards them. And even with the DSP, and I think that is the best strategy is relying on that specific ad units. With sponsored products, you can definitely continue to, you know, look for keywords that are relevant to the specific, you know, posts, posts, gift giving season, if you will, I just find it to be a bit trickier. Because, you know, it's a bit trickier to understand how are people searching for these specific, you know, things that they want to buy, you know, I don't necessarily think that people are using terms or keywords gift giving, so it's harder to kind of identify that. Whereas with a DSP, it's much easier to know that this person shopped or sorry, viewed, let me retarget them. I think it's much more accurate in my opinion.

Aaron Conant  39:35

Yeah. Next question is, how important is it to tie the this time of year advertising to discounts?

Omar Mourad  39:48

Very important, I would say if you have the ability to give discounts Don't hold back. I understand that profitability is something that you'll obviously consider. But don't hold back because it is the it is The shopping season of the year, if you don't do it, I can almost guarantee you that your competitor is going to be doing it. And so you're going to be losing out on a potential sale, or in my opinion with which potentially even riskier on a new brand customer. And so I think it is absolutely critical to offer these deals, you know, if you have the ability, so

Aaron Conant  40:21

yeah, I totally agree. If you look at the last Prime Day, and talking to a ton of brands, they had their biggest Prime Day ever, but they also didn't make any more money and the bottom line, they just gave more money away. So it was kind of this you know, this Bellwether that, you know, customers are out there right now looking for a discount a deal, right, more than they were like a couple years ago, and people are short stock, and they weren't finding deals, but there weren't any to be had. Now, I think, you know, consumers out there are aggressively looking for, hey, is there a discount on this? Is it a deal or not? And so I would totally agree with you is, you know, you risk especially new to brand, you risk the potential of irritating somebody, like why even come here, there's not even a discount on this. Now, that's not for the entire year, but it is for this little block of time where everybody is expecting a discount?

Omar Mourad  41:17

Exactly. I think there's always a trade off right of like, again, do I want scalability? Or do I want impression resource? Or do I want efficiency? And I often think with these kinds of events, you know, efficiency should not necessarily be your main goal. I mean, it doesn't happen every day of the year. And so when it does happen, let's try to get the most of it that we can, you know, something else is shoppers in general are much and continues to become much smarter, they won't necessarily just buy the first thing that they see, they'll compare prices, they'll look for different reviews, they'll look so it is you are dealing with shoppers that are much more sophisticated than they were before eCommerce blew up in the way that it did. So that's something that you need to consider and deals is a huge part of that is like where can I save money? Yeah. Awesome.

Aaron Conant  42:03

Others who have questions drop in the chat the q&a or keep emailing them to me Aaron@bwgconnect.com. Omar, do you have any questions for me? I mean, I've been picking your brain this whole time we have as a whole. But I spend a lot of my time talking with brands more than happy to answer that you any more you might have. And then we kind of

Omar Mourad  42:22

question what what do you find? So, you know, when we look at prime it's primarily obviously just Amazon. But like, when we when we have an event like Black Friday Cyber Monday, like what do you find is, you know, the the most? Or do you feel like there's a platform or marketplace that typically does considerably more is that, you know, you look at Amazon Walmart, you know, Instacart is do typically find any marketplace to start out much more than, you know, 10.

Aaron Conant  42:49

Now, nobody stands out. I mean, Walmart, you know, is primarily most the year, you know, what's what would go into a typical grocery run those brands are doing okay, on Walmart, and Walmart's going to be round, they're going to they're going to they're going to play in this space for a long time, they're not losing, they're not going to lose per se. But they do see an uptick, obviously, during this time of year, especially as Amazon might go out of stock. You know, target is very kind of picky on who can get on the platform. But you know, a lot of brands now are using, they're realizing that they can use Amazon as a marketing platform that you also might sell stuff on. And so that's kind of a view of Amazon that's changed, especially if you have if you don't have a direct to consumer site, then it's mainly EECOM. But if you ever have your own direct to consumer site, I mean, it's it's a marketing lever, and especially with, you know, where the algorithm, you're gaining sort search algorithm really values off site traffic coming on to it. So I have a lot of like brands that are leveraging, you know, Google traffic, you know, traditional paid search and social they drive it to an Amazon detail page. And if the person converts, that's off site traffic that found that randomly, and then converted and bought it. And so Amazon really values that it really increases organic search. Now, what happens if they do convert, you dump that in a DSP and you use that retargeting to drive anybody in that same category segment that aligns back to your direct consumer site rather than back to Amazon. And if they don't convert, just retarget them and send them back. It's an interesting play, how things have changed over the past year and a half and how brands view it again, at the end of the day, who wins Amazon wins. Amazon wins.

Omar Mourad  44:44

But to your point is definitely it's definitely an ecosystem. And I think that ecosystem is becoming much more dependent on each on, you know, the different players as we continue to move. You mentioned I just have one more question but you mentioned you know, social there, but do you think there's a huge impact When it comes to like influencer marketing during these specific kind of shopping events, whether it be prime or Black Friday or Cyber Monday,

Aaron Conant  45:07

what's at the micro influencer level? I do I mean, you see these platforms that pop up. I mean, I think you guys even have one where you can leverage micro influencers to drive traffic. To help, you know, again, it's offsite traffic, you're paying a micro influencer. So you're not paying for any conversions or review. So it's completely aboveboard. But you can drive a significant amount of traffic to a detail page view that or to a detail page, which again, increases organic search ranking. And we're having people move products from page two to page one, which is their legacy products been on the platform for years. And it used to be thought that's really, really hard to do without dumping a million bucks behind it. And so I've seen that be very, very successful is the past as influencer marketing and micro influencers in particular really took off for the past couple of years brands have been in this sticking point with actual inventory. And so you don't ever again, one of your main things, you don't want to go out of stock, and they're driving. So you have to be very, very careful. But now brands have inventory. Yeah. And I think it's going to be a very interesting q4, and going into next year, as brands get really creative, and how they spend their money, who they spend, and then what is the retail media landscape look like? A lot of conversations that I have are about, you know, incremental, right. incrementality is the right way to put it. How do I know it's additive to what I'm doing currently? So

Omar Mourad  46:43

ya know, it's a, it's a complex, it's a complex.

Aaron Conant  46:47

It's ridiculous. It's just really ridiculous. And one of the biggest issues is like executive teams don't understand how ridiculously hard it is, right? Oh, it's just Google ads.

Omar Mourad  46:59

I wish it was. I wish it was just that

Aaron Conant  47:01

simple. Yeah. It's so it's so hard. And yeah, it's. But you know, I think a lot of people that are in it that are doing well really enjoy that challenge, right? They really enjoy. You know, they win some they lose some. And when you really win and you get it figured out, you can win a lot more than you lose. And brands get excited about that. And they can look around and see and it can be hard. But it can be rewarding as well.

Omar Mourad  47:29

Cannot cannot agree more on that point. Absolutely.

Aaron Conant  47:32

Well, awesome. Well, Omar, this has been super fun. I don't have any other questions that came in but I encourage anybody have a file conversation with the team at Perpetua wicked smart people doing some really, really cool stuff in this space have been great friends, partners supporting the network for a while. Look for a follow up email from me, I'd love to have a conversation with you as well. More than happy to share across the board around what's going on other strategies and it can be anything from drop shipping, direct consumer international expansion. Those are all phone conversations I'm having every day. We're gonna do close to 100 in person events this year as well as next year. It would be great to meet people in person as well. But again, Omar, thanks for your time today. Thanks everybody for dialing in the great questions with that we're gonna wrap up everybody, take care, stay safe and look forward to having you heard a future event. That's been fun my friend