Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to
the Brand Fortress HQ podcast On
this Tactics Tuesday we'regoing to be discussing Amazon
Prime Day.
This is something that comesaround each year, where there's
a lot of hype, usually a couplemonths beforehand, and you
really wanna make sure that youare prepared for it.
But today, what we wanna do istake that discussion even at a
higher level when we talk aboutfirst principles, when we talk
(00:21):
about strategies and overallgoals for Prime Day and, quite
frankly, whether you should beparticipating in Prime Day at
all for your brand or evenspecific products.
So, with that said, I'mactually going to turn it over
to you, mike, and if you cankind of share what your
experiences have been with yourbrand and Prime Day over the
last few years.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah.
So I think, just to clarify,our attempts to utilize Prime
Day actually really is only oneyear.
We tried last year and in thepast.
So to give some context foranybody who doesn't listen to
the podcast regularly or hasn'tbeen privy to an episode where I
said what I sell and what we dowhat we do.
(01:07):
So we sell pool cleaning toolsand we sell at a really
significant price premium overthe rest of our category because
of our unlimited freereplacement warranty.
But the issue there is that Ait's not a consumable, not even
it's not a consumable in thetraditional sense, and it's also
not a consumable in the saydisposable kind of consumable
item that we see oftentimes inthis category, because most of
(01:29):
the other products that areselling in this category are
very disposable.
You know one or two seasons andthen somebody's coming back to
buy another one from somebody.
At least Our products are notthat.
Not only you know are theygoing to last longer, but of
course I have to replace themand it's at my expense.
So I have traditionally stayedaway from Prime Day A because I
(01:50):
didn't really want to discountour products, because we are
selling in that premium pricepoint and we're not really
competing on price.
So that's one factor.
But then also, I just wasn'treally sure whether we would
gain much out of it.
I didn't know if I could reallyoffer enough of a discount to
make it worth it, because I haveto make sure that my margin is
(02:13):
high enough so that I canactually fulfill on the warranty
.
I mean, unlimited freereplacement means I'm going to
replace quite a few of them.
Now we've talked before as faras warranties go.
Most people don't takeadvantage of them and there's
all sorts of reasons why.
It won't cost you nearly asmuch as you think, but it's
still an expense and you have toaccount for it.
So, that being said, last year Idecided to take a swing at it.
(02:37):
I thought well, you know,there's a lot of traffic rolling
through, a lot of individualswho might not pay attention to
our brand.
If I could bring them in thedoor with the first product you
know, maybe, maybe we could pushsome sales down the line on the
back end.
Maybe it's worth it.
(03:03):
So we did some relativelysignificant discounting on a
number of our products last yearfor Prime Day, and what I can
say essentially is the resultwas we robbed Peter to pay Paul,
because what happened was wesaw a massive spike in sales, of
course because of the discounts, and then, following Prime Day,
we saw a massive decline insales over what we would
(03:25):
normally have seen and thenthings picked back up and
leveled off.
But if you were to look at ouroverall sales over, say, like a
three-week window, prime Day didnothing for our overall sales
numbers and the only thing thatit did was cost me money because
I gave such a significantdiscount on those products and
(03:47):
maybe, you know, we'll bringthem in to purchase later on and
purchase other products.
But part of me believes thatthere's a much lower chance that
those individuals who came inpurchasing our products at that
discount are likely to purchaseour other products at full price
.
They're probably going to bethe customers that just kind of
(04:09):
sit around waiting for us tooffer another significant
discount through our email listor whatever, and we can't afford
to sell every product to thisperson at that significant
discount because then there'sjust no room to supply on the
warranty.
So for us it was really, I feel, a bad decision.
Now maybe it was a gooddecision because we probably
(04:30):
should try it and see.
I mean, you don't ever know youmake a lot of assumptions but
you don't know.
Now we know Sales over thatthree-week period, basically,
were flatlined to what theynormally would have been,
because we had the peak and thenwe had the trough and then we
were back to normal.
So I don't feel like it was awin for us.
I would say if you're not aconsumable product that people
(04:53):
are going to come back for, youknow, like a protein powder or
something like that, I meanthose kinds of situations I can
absolutely see.
If you've got tremendousreviews and you know they're
going to come back for yourproduct because everybody loves
your product, then of coursetake advantage of Prime Day.
I think it's a greatopportunity.
But a product like ours I don'tthink it's good.
It's not a spontaneous purchasekind of a product and so you
(05:15):
don't get as much of a bump,whereas on Prime Day for
products that I think are morespontaneous in nature, that are
less it's not tools and thingslike that Maybe you've got a
better shot.
It didn't work for us.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I think one of the
biggest things to take away from
that is like for me, when Isold, we did utilize Prime Day
the very first year that we sold.
We launched our barbecueaccessories brand in 2020.
And we did Prime Day becauseback then I just thought that's
what all Amazon sellers do.
Amazon was promoting it.
(05:46):
Amazon was like get yourinventory in.
So I took the bait.
And so for me, I didn't reallyhave a reason or a goal for
Prime Day, except Amazon told meto do it.
And so the next year I flippedthat script a little bit and I
was like okay, so if I'm goingto decide to participate in
(06:07):
prime day, what is my goal withwith this decision?
And for me, you know we hadjust come back in stock from
being out for a couple of months, so you know it was.
And so in the barbecueaccessory space there's we have
Memorial Day, and then we haveFather's Day, and then we have
July 4th and then Prime Day.
(06:28):
So those four holidays whetherthey're actual national holidays
or man-made, amazon madeholidays there's a span of about
four holidays right there thatwe did a lot of promoting, and
so for me then my goal withPrime Day was.
I want to increase our organicrank.
I want to get our organic rankback to where it was.
Let's generate a whole bunch ofsales velocity.
(06:48):
And it worked and I felt awhole lot better about what the
results of it were, because Icould certainly see that the
goal that I set out to it helped.
Now, after that, the challengethat I have in MySpace is
MySpace is inundated withChinese manufacturers selling
direct and it's a race to thebottom in a lot of those cases.
And similar to what Mike saidis I'm not playing that game
(07:11):
with them.
So once Prime Day is over andall of those you know that's
usually the end of those kind offour holidays you know they
dropped their price.
They kept their price at whereit was.
I like, similar to Mike, I'm atthe high end of pretty much all
the categories that I sell inand my organic rank dropped
(07:33):
again.
You know it went back to whereit was.
So like, yes, I had the secondyear.
I feel like I had a better, abetter mindset going into prime
day because I knew what my goalwas with it.
But you know, I a lot of thesame things that Mike said is is
what with?
I don't want to play the raceto the bottom game.
It certainly increased salesvelocity, which increased
organic rank, but what did Igain overall?
(07:54):
And it just to me wasn't worthit, for the same reasons that it
was for Mike.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
And I think that's a
great point.
What you bring up there, matt,which is having a game plan when
you go in, not just, hey, we'redoing Prime Day because Amazon
says we should do Prime Day,because of course they want you
to do Prime Day, because it's awin all the way around for
Amazon.
When you look at it, customerscome there on Prime Day Like you
said, it's an artificialholiday in order to find
(08:19):
discounts.
And, let's be honest, a lot ofthe people that are coming for
Prime Day, they're looking forbig discounts.
They are bargain shoppers which, based on, like Mike, your
brand, your brand is nottargeted towards bargain
shoppers, so it's not evennecessarily your demographic, or
at least your psychographic, Ishould say.
(08:40):
And then the other thing isthat I think to take away from
this is looking at your productmix.
So if you have a product thatis a consumable where there's
more reorder, or you have areally deep catalog, doing
something like Prime Day tobring people into your brand can
make a lot of sense becauseonce they buy one product, then
(09:00):
they know what your brand is.
Hopefully they have a goodexperience.
Hopefully you know you alreadyhave a system in place for you
know the after purchase funneland those types of things and
that can make Prime Day a winover the long run for your brand
if you have kind of the rightstrategy going in and you know
what that's going to look like.
(09:21):
But if you just do Prime Day tosay, hey, we're going to do a
Prime Day and then you'recelebrating afterwards because
you see your top line revenuewent up during Prime Day, then
you're probably not moving inthe right direction.
In fact, I mean one of theepisodes that we had not too
long ago with Ritu Java.
One of the things that shementioned was for brands that
(09:42):
are not using one of thosestrategies or don't have a
specific purpose for driving alot of visibility during Prime
Day.
She actually for the accountsthat she manages for a lot of
them.
What she mentioned was that sheactually turns the ads off,
which to me makes a lot of sensebecause, especially during
Prime Day week, what we see bothon the organic and the paid
(10:02):
side is that the amount ofclicks go up and the conversion
rate drops dramatically A coupleof weeks beforehand because
people are basically justlooking, because they're kind of
getting ready and looking atthose products, but they're not
buying because they want to seewhat the discount is going to be
for Prime Day and then duringPrime Day, because a lot of them
are bargain shoppers.
They're tire kickers.
(10:23):
It's something that they onlywant to buy if they're getting a
good deal.
So you have to be kind ofcareful, especially on the ad
side, that you're not spending awhole bunch of money getting
visibility for people that aregoing to convert at half of what
your regular traffic wouldconvert outside of Prime Day.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Well, and getting
back to that idea of whether
you're even reaching your targetmarket because you're looking
at those bargain shoppers.
So for our brand, there's anumber of potential issues with
that, because when you sell toan individual who's only going
to buy your product if it is onthis kind of significant
(11:04):
discount, then A in order tosell them other products in your
line, you've already primedthem psychologically, let's say,
prime day for discounts, right?
So that's what they're going tobe looking for going down the
road.
So even if you've got a goodbackend, post-purchase process
in place and you're getting themon your list and things like
that, you're still not likely tomake as much on that customer
(11:28):
as you would on the customerthat's willing to pay full price
for your premium product.
And not only that.
I think there's also a betterthan average chance with those
individuals that if you'reselling, so let's.
Let's talk numbers.
So our pool pole is like $200and they can buy a $30 pool pole
(11:48):
off of, you know, amazon thatessentially does the same job,
right?
It's a telescoping pole, 16feet long, you know.
So, okay, 30 bucks, 40 bucks,maybe, right?
It's a telescoping pole 16 feetlong, you know.
So okay, 30 bucks.
40 bucks maybe, right, it's notnearly as good, it doesn't have
the lifetime warranty, thelocking mechanism is not as good
, all of these things right, butit is still a telescoping pool
pole.
So my problem is let's say Isell a $200 pole and I give them
(12:13):
a really good discount Maybeit's you's, I don't know let's
say 30%, so that's 60 bucks.
I sold it for 140 bucks butthey still paid $100 more for my
poll than that less expensivepoll in that category.
And this person, because of thetype of buyer that they are,
(12:35):
they probably were like oh, it'sa really great deal, I should
go ahead and do it.
But after the fact those typebuyers are going to have many of
them are going to have buyer'sremorse they're going to be like
oh, you know what?
I should have just bought that$40 pool.
I really didn't need to do this.
You're going to get morereturns out of that and, from
our perspective, you're going toget more complaints.
We have often said selling tothat customer who's willing to
(12:57):
pay $200 for a pool pool becausethey know it's the absolute
best and that you're going totake care of them, means you get
a better buyer, you have abetter customer.
They're not the complainers.
They're the ones who arewilling to solve problems when
they call you or they contactyou.
Most of the time they're prettyreasonable.
Those people on that lower endof the spectrum that are only
going to buy with that massivediscount, they tend not to be as
good a customer.
(13:17):
You have more problems withthem.
They're not problem solvers,they're typically complainers.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Yeah, I think and it
just kind of boils down to you
know, like what we were talkingabout before is making sure you
know what your objective is forPrime Day, and I think not only
at a brand level, but you canalso look at it from a product
level, because you may have aproduct that is a great tripwire
product and really what you'rebuying for Prime Day is you're
buying visibility.
So if you've got a product thatfits well into that category,
(13:49):
then you can get a ton ofvisibility and that is great.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Or even if you don't
come out with a product like if
you're going to use Prime Day,if you want it for the volume,
if you want it for thatopportunity, then come out with
a product that is specificallydesigned for that purpose.
That is, that tripwire productthat you can afford to break
even or maybe even lose money onto get people on your list and
you get this massive volumeuptick so that you can put a
(14:15):
massive number of people on yourlist and then maybe you can
funnel them in.
That's one of those thingswhere so like for us, if we were
going to use Prime Day, anopportunity for that would be,
say, pool water test strips,let's say, now I don't like that
option as much because youreally want to nail those,
because people want to get theirmeasurements right.
But let's say you could easilyfind a relatively inexpensive
(14:37):
test strip from a manufacturer.
You could roll that out and aslong as the test strips are
decent, you can get them for afew bucks, cost a few bucks to
get them to the customer.
So now you got six bucks in.
Maybe you sell it for five orsix dollars on Prime Day.
Right, You're going to lose alittle money on that, but the
nice thing about that is even mycustomer that'll pay 200 bucks
(15:00):
for you know a pool poll.
You know test strips are teststrips to some degree, and so
you could probably get away withthat and you still bring a lot
of people into your, into yourcustomer list.
That may actually be part ofyour target market, whereas if
you were selling something elselike like if you're heavily
discounting in order to get itthen maybe you're getting the
(15:21):
wrong customer.
But I think there's a balancethere that if you get the right
Tripwire product, you can stillget that right customer on your
list and sell them those premiumproducts down the road.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Yeah, that's a good
point.
I also wonder so, what's that?
What I'm thinking about too,and I'm wondering.
It would take some coordination, although there might be a
couple of different ways you cando it, because there's always
two sides of the equation.
The easy side of the equationis offering a discount and just
lowering your price.
Yep, the side of the equationthat, in the long run, is
(15:55):
usually more valuable for yourbrand and, quite frankly, for
your customers as well, issaying how could I add value
instead of lowering my price?
And so I think it'd beinteresting if you could come up
with a way to have a Prime Dayexclusive, you know, freebie
product or add on or somethingthat you only offer during Prime
(16:16):
Day.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Would people see it,
though?
In theory I kind of like theidea, but generally speaking, on
Prime Day, the only way you'rereally getting highlighted, at
least by Amazon, is if you'reoffering a discount, and so in
that sense, wouldn't your offerkind of get drowned out by
everybody else?
Speaker 1 (16:35):
So you would run into
yeah and yes and no.
So you get additionalvisibility during Prime Day.
If you're running a officiallysanctioned by Amazon Prime Day
exclusive, there's definitely alot of visibility you get with
(16:55):
that ad on.
Again, you wouldn't want to dothis for all your products and
you wouldn't want to do it forall keywords, but maybe keywords
that had high buyer intent thatyou knew like your prime
(17:16):
customer was looking for.
Then it could make sense inorder to do that as a headline,
either sponsor brand staticimage or, even better, if you
did it as a video.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
In theory, that makes
a lot of sense, but I think
Amazon made a big shift in howand what products are visible
during Prime Day.
I think it was 2021 or 22.
I didn't participate in PrimeDay.
I didn't do any Prime exclusivedeals or anything like that.
I did do a discount, but I wasactually more aggressive with
(17:50):
advertising, just to takeadvantage of the traffic I mean,
there's a lot more traffic onthe platform and it worked to a
degree where, yes, I did getsales.
My velocity did increase from acouple of weeks prior to that,
but then the next year we triedsomething very similar and
actually close to what you weretalking about, john, where we
added something.
We added an additional product,a real cheap product, to one of
(18:15):
our top selling SKUs, and we didthe same strategy where we
didn't do any actual primediscounts.
We did a coupon, but the amountof impressions that we got in
2023 compared to 2022 wassignificantly less.
And I think it was about a weekor two later, destiny, who was
also another guest, did ananalysis on LinkedIn and she
(18:40):
actually proved that theproducts that weren't involved
in Prime Day, in terms of actualPrime discount, the amount of
visibility that they got wassignificantly less than it was
the previous year, so I don'tthink that Amazon is showing the
products as prominently anymore.
No matter how much you'respending, if you aren't
(19:02):
participating in Prime Day.
I think there was a pretty bigshift about a year or two ago
and Destiny proved it withactual data, so I think it's
different now.
You know, I think Amazon,you're either participating or
you're not going to get as muchvisibility as you would
otherwise.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
Hmm, interesting.
I'm just trying to think aboutany other ways that you could
take advantage of all thatadditional visibility without
having, you know, officiallysanctioned prime day deal offer.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I wonder.
So it seems it strikes me thatmarketing on you as opposed to
maybe necessarily top of search,picking some products or brands
in your category you know thatyou know are going to be
aggressive for Prime Day and sotheir product listing is going
(19:54):
to get a lot of traffic and soyou target their listing.
You know with, say, sponsordisplay, you know like
everything you can throw at thatcompetitor's listing with this.
You know additional offer, likeyou're suggesting John, you
know where maybe there's anextra freebie in there or
there's something else thatyou're advertising with it and
you make it very prominent onthat.
Those competitors listings thatyou know are going to be
(20:16):
aggressive.
Maybe you could get more volumethere.
It strikes me that, matt, Ithink you're probably right in
terms of the general volume oftraffic that you're going to be
able to pull off a Prime Day ifyou're not participating.
But there might be strategieslike that where maybe you could
get away with it.
The other option that you couldtry that maybe sits somewhat
(20:38):
outside of that would be DSP andwhether DSP would give you
access to more ad volume thatmaybe isn't being affected, like
Amazon's not throttling it anyway, because you're not
participating.
I don't, I don't know.
You know we haven't tried it,but you know I like the idea,
john.
I think it's basically justcoming and doing some testing to
(20:59):
see can you actually get enoughvolume out of it to make it
worth the effort you know torework your listing and all the
things that you might have to doin order to make it.
You know, do it right.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
And I think you'd
have to be really smart about
how you do your competitortargeting on that, because you'd
want to make sure that you knowif you're.
If you're a premium brand, forexample, then you're going after
a competitor that maybe has alot of visibility, but they're
already cheaper than what youare and now, with a Prime Deal
(21:29):
discount, maybe their productnow is 50% less.
The reality is, the people thatare clicking on there are
probably not going to beinterested in buying something
at twice the price, so you'dhave to be pretty strategic
about the competitors that youtargeted.
The other thing I wonder is ifthere's a way that you could use
virtual bundles.
So that way, from a logisticsperspective, maybe what you do
(21:51):
is you know you create a largerbundle and then offer a dollar
off amount.
That you know sounds impressivebecause I mean, let's say, you
put together you know a few $100dollar bundle and you offer,
you know, 20, 30, $40 off ofthat.
That kind of is in the sametheme, if you will, of prime day
(22:11):
, but you're not losing quite asmuch on the margin because your
dollar amount is so much higheron that order, on your order
value.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah, yeah, it's an
option.
I mean, virtual bundles areinteresting.
I mean there's a lot ofbenefits that that you know to
be had.
Unfortunately, the one benefitthat doesn't translate, you know
, as you're not saving anythingon your fulfillment costs, you
know you still get mailed.
It brings up a question for me,though.
I'm curious what you guys haveexperienced, because it's
something that I'm thinkingabout recently, is that you know
(22:40):
virtual bundles.
Now they show up differentlythan, say, you know, a variation
, but a lot, of, a lot oflistings that you go to will
have an individual products andthen they will also have bundled
products on that listing as avariation.
I know Amazon sometimes doesn'tlike that, depending on the
category and whatnot, but a lotof people get away with it.
(23:01):
But the reason I bring that upis I like our virtual look at
the 3PLs that we're working with.
We can actually get well for abundle like that.
(23:27):
We can actually get a muchbetter shipping rate for
shipping that bundle through a3PL than we can through Amazon,
because they'll give us areduced rate for packaging
multiple products in the samebox, whereas Amazon's not giving
us any discount at all.
So I'm starting to wonder aboutcreating bundle variations on
our listings and having them FBMinstead of FBA, and then the
(23:51):
prime product that's on therethat gets all the traffic, you
know, is the one that's showingup in the listings and that one
stays FBA.
But then once somebody is onthe listing, then they see the
bundle and you know, I mean wecould save significantly
shipping it through the 3PLversus shipping it as a virtual
bundle through Amazon.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
I think that's a
really good point and a really
good idea.
A couple of things that come tomy mind on that is that, first
of all, I think that virtualbundles could be a great way to
test to see how much potentialthere is for bundling some of
those products together so,because it's so easy to do, and
then if you see a good amount oftraction with that bundle, that
you just take that same offerand you essentially translate it
(24:32):
, like you said, into its ownvariation and you move that over
to FBM instead, right?
The other thing is kind ofgoing back to this prime Day of
what we started out with is, Ithink, also keep in mind that I
think there's a lot ofopportunity that's not being
used with virtual bundles nowhaving their own title and their
(24:52):
own images of using them formore of holiday promotions and
those types of things where it'sit's limited time offer or you
know a special use case to whereyou can bundle those things
together and give people anexcuse to buy a couple of
products at the same time.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I like it as a gift
option.
You know, like I mean, virtualbundles are really not that
difficult to create and I thinkI think there's something to be
said for having well, as westarted this whole podcast.
You know, in terms of looking atPrime Day, and if you're going
to do it, then have a purposebehind it.
You know what is the actual goal, right, and with virtual
(25:33):
bundles not that you can'tcreate virtual bundles that
don't technically have anindependent goal, right, and
with virtual bundles not thatyou can't create virtual bundles
that don't technically have anindependent goal except to just
sell more products and that, youknow, frequently bought
together or things like that.
You know, I mean there's ways todo that and you don't have to
have a lot of strategy behind it.
But having a strategy behind itand deciding what to put
together into that bundle andturning it into more of a gift
(25:54):
offer, you know, for Father'sDay or Mother's Day or birthdays
or you know whatever that is, Ithink actually could be a
really good strategy because, ofcourse, obviously it can have
its own image.
You know, the main image can bedifferent.
As you said the title, thebullets, the whole nine yards,
so you could essentially createan entire listing that really
revolves around more so thegifting of those items or
(26:15):
something like that, rather thanthe independent items
themselves, and that's a verydifferent way to market that
bundle of products which mightbe useful to a lot of sellers.
Speaker 1 (26:25):
Yeah, I think there's
a lot to be done there.
So, as we you know, probably agood place to wrap on Prime Day
as we think about it, a goodplace to wrap on Prime Day as we
think about it, Any actionitems that kind of stick out to
either one of you guys for ourlisteners to think about as we
kind of prepare for Prime Day inthe next couple of months.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
I think the biggest
one that we've touched on a
couple of times is deciding onwhat your goal is If you're
going to participate, what isyour goal with it, and having a
clear and defined plan and beingable to measure that measure
the success of the goal Did Iachieve my goal or did I not
achieve my goal?
So that you can make aneducated decision, don't just
(27:08):
participate in Prime Day becauseAmazon tells you to figure out
what your goal is.
If there is any goals that meet, what Prime Day would help you
with, yeah, so that's my biggesttip is just decide if actually
make a decision based on whatwill happen if you do
participate, as opposed to justjumping in with both feet, like
Amazon wants you to.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah, I really like
that.
I think, to be honest, Iactually I like the second part
of that.
You know, in the sense thathaving a goal is great, but if
the goal that you've set, youhaven't determined what KPIs you
can actually measure todetermine whether you achieved
it or not, then the goal is nothelpful.
So, not only deciding you knowwhat is the thing that I think
(27:52):
we're going to achieve, or thatwe hope to achieve by utilizing
Prime Day, but how would wemeasure whether we actually
achieved it or not, or at leastthe degree to which we achieved
it, so that if we come backaround to this next year, we can
make the decision of okay, wedidn't quite reach our goal, but
we were in the right direction,the directionality was right,
(28:14):
and so what could we change toget us closer to the goal?
You know, this time around, butagain, if you don't have those
measurements, you can't doanything with that, and I think
you know, ultimately, thebiggest thing is, whatever that
goal is, be careful that thegoal that you're setting is not
just sometimes exposure can begood.
You know, I don't want to saythat.
Don't have exposure be the onlygoal that you're shooting for,
(28:37):
maybe for your brand, maybeexposure is exactly what you
need, and so, therefore, maybeit is the right goal.
But ultimately, I think for mostbrands, especially right now,
with fees being as high as theyare, with profit margins being
squeezed as much as they havebeen, I think that you need to
take stock of what products canyou actually afford to discount,
(28:59):
because if you're going to takeadvantage of Prime Day, most
likely it's going to be withsome sort of a discount.
Maybe you could go with astrategy like what we're talking
about, with adding something toyour product, but if you really
want to get the best bang foryour buck out of Prime Day, it's
probably going to be some sortof a discount offer.
So the question is what can youafford to discount?
And then, how much can you sellon the back end of that?
(29:25):
What is the lifetime value ofthat customer likely going to be
?
Whether it's because ofconsumables, whether it's
because you have a massiveproduct line that's all centered
around the same product niche,and so, therefore, once you
bring that target customer in,you can sell all those products
to them.
Make sure that there's a lot ofselling availability on the
back end of that, if you'regoing to be doing the
(29:46):
discounting because thatlifetime value comes into play,
and if you don't know what it is, you're probably screwing
yourself.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Yeah, and I think the
piece that I would put out
there is, I think, coming backto what Ritu is talking about.
As far as turning off your adsis, I know it seems
counterintuitive, but especiallyfor those products where
they're great complimentaryproducts and there's some good
profit margin there but maybeyou're not moving a ton of units
, they're not your hero products, I think there's probably a lot
(30:14):
to be saved in those couple ofdays during prime.
By and again, you don't have toturn off all your ads.
Me personally, you know,thinking about this a little bit
, I'd probably at least leave mybrand defense on just to make
sure that I didn't get eatenalive by my competitors.
But I definitely would turn off, you know, for again, for
complimentary products, ifyou're running, you know, some
of the video ads, some of theother different placements out
(30:36):
there, this would be a good timeto probably turn those off,
since your conversion rates aregoing to be lower during prime
day anyway, and so that way youcan kind of save some of those
ad dollars and then put them toplay, you know, a couple weeks
afterwards when everybody's kindof over their prime day
hangover and into their regularbuying cycle again.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Well, you know,
that's a really good point, John
is that there's a lot ofsellers who blow a ton of cash
on Prime Day, not only in termsof advertisements but also in
terms of the discounts that theyoffered.
And so then on the backside ofthat, especially sellers that
don't really know what they'redoing, let's say, you know, they
may be in a position where,once Prime Day is over with,
they're like oh crap, like wecan't afford, like I don't have
any money, Right.
And so that's the time when youknow, when you actually have an
(31:20):
opportunity to to really kindof expand your advertising and
do some things, because,realistically, your competition
probably isn't going to be,they're going to be pulling back
.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah, absolutely All
right.
Well, I think that's a greatplace to wrap for today and I
think that we've given, you know, listeners out there, a few
different angles to approach thestrategy, as opposed to just,
you know, pumping up the volumeas high as you can for Prime Day
.
So hopefully that gives themsome options as they look at
what their strategy should befor their brand for Prime Day.