Unlocking Prime Day Potential | Linkedin Live Recording

Unlocking Prime Day Potential 

Prime Day is just around the corner, is your brand ready?

Join Amazon experts Daniel Tejada and Kris Weissman for some last-minute tips for keeping that Prime Day growth going
Or.... you can use these tips to head start your Summer Prime prep!

 

Transcript

alrighty hello everybody uh very excited for our LinkedIn live here just give everybody just a couple minutes so some people settle in and then we'll jump into it awesome all right so let's kick off here with uh unlocking our Prime day potential uh going to start with h introduction here so we've got Chris Weisman Chris why don't you introduce yourself to all the folks here yeah pleasure having me on board uh my name is Chris wisman I'm the vice president of Brands here at sell rocket and so cell rocket we deal with

00:59

uh affiliate in e-commerce helping Brands get connected with Publications to be featured in review guides list calls and such uh to feature their products for e-commerce sales awesome um how do uh how do customers use affiliate in general uh we'll definitely jump into Prime day specifically but just generally how are how are you guys finding sellers out um yeah a lot of a lot of Brands and sellers utilize Affiliates is a another Revenue stream uh to to help diversify you know where the traffic is coming from and overall sales uh obviously you

01:35

do want to invest in other marketing efforts like PPC sponsored display um but it's another way to diversify where the traffic's coming from um and as well as you know Amazon does actually been shown to boost uh what's called your organic rank uh within the uh within the retail platform by seeing external traffic from these publisher sources uh driving to the listings but also it is a nice PR thing that you can post on your own independent websites you know featured in fors BuzzFeed uh things of

02:04

that nature that you know I a consumer may have come across cisal featuring your product at one point um and it then they come across again on Amazon or through another Avenue and they see feature a buzfeed it's just a reminder of like oh yes this is some familiarity here it's awesome what uh what size Brands typically are are leveraging affiliate is this like startups and these large Brands like where do you kind of see that sweet spot um or is is that really a limitation it's not necessarily A limitation um however

02:37

brands that are selling about a million dollars in Revenue uh annually is definitely where you want to start thinking about diversifying where your sales come from and start investing in Affiliates awesome awesome um so obviously everybody wants to talk about prime day uh here so uh you know it's coming up uh what are your guys's just general like best practices you know I think one thing that's important to talk about is ultimately timeline uh there too so like I know from a from a PPC standpoint ultimately when we're

03:11

thinking about prime day or really any Peak holiday whether it's fall Prime whether it's uh uh you know Cyber Monday Black Friday we're trying to win for us at least like two months in advance right is kind of where we're starting uh and particularly like you alluded to it you know ranking in particular uh is expensive right ranking when everybody else is trying to rank at the same time is even more expensive right if if we're thinking about prime day so um I know like from a PPC standpoint when we're

03:39

thinking about you know PRI to here like ideally if I'm trying to rank on a search query like I've already started my campaigns right I've already figured out what my budgets are um I've probably already increased my spend you know uh 45 to 60 days earlier I might tear my way in there um or step ladder that spend in but uh essentially like we're already starting to Pace up um so that we can have good disability once that traffic occurs and so I'm curious from an affiliate standpoint you know how do you

04:07

guys tackle Prime day or or Peak holidays in general yeah absolutely um so it's definitely different in tactics you'd want to approach when it comes to what call tent pole events so Prime day you know Turkey 5 turkey 10 turkey 11 whatever it's going to be this year um seems to change um but uh basically you want to start about eight weeks in advance as far as like contacting Affiliates Publishers uh a great easy way is you come across you know BuzzFeed article or a publication you see who the author is start reaching out to them

04:40

find them on LinkedIn find their email shoot them a note now if you're not an attemp poll event you know it that's a great way to really kind of give them your story of your brand like how you got started how you diversify from the competition if you do have uh competitors within your uh brand category when it comes to tent pole events it's drastically different a lot of these writers and editors are on their tight deadlines you know uh I know we did a pre-recording uh previous to this uh session about you know commenting eight

05:13

weeks in advance Prime day was just announced a couple days ago if not yesterday to the public Publishers found out the same time um and so because of that they're now starting to scramble and start generating content so it is not too late so previously you know would say oh four weeks in advance three weeks in advance uh it may be a little bit of a challenge they're under the same uh surprise as everyone else and so now is really the time to start reaching out but with that you got to be precise and brief I always say if you're

05:44

reaching out to an author or an editor keep it to 50 words two to three things about your product that is that highlights you from the competition or that really stands out to whether it's your Niche consumer uh keep it very simple because they're gonna have so many products flooding into them also their own editor is going to be throwing things at them and so the quicker you can keep it the more concise the more it's going to resonate with them and actually consider the placement there yeah I think that was some really

06:16

really helpful feedback like you know I think sometimes with Affiliates people get uh overwhelmed or think that they don't have a shot of getting in there right but like like you mentioned like uh yeah some manual work that you described there but uh it's do it's like I uh I and I used the goal was to get 300 no a day because I get to my five yeses right and I feel like kind of the same same uh same type of play right it's like yeah you're gonna get turned down um for sure there's plenty of people

06:45

that probably don't respond to you guys but uh I think having a system or a process uh in place is is huge um exactly yeah that's cool um I would even actually add to that a little bit more is also depends on the type affiliate reaching out to um so like if it's like an influencer you know YouTuber obviously highlight your Lightning Deals because they're going to Showcase that in the content they fighting if it's a publication that relies on a specific URL and Google search to gain their

07:13

traffic lightning deal means nothing to them and the reason being is they're very focused on what's called their bounce rate so consumer clicking the article and then leaving and so if they focus on Lightning Deals consum is going to click in see Lightning Deals over and click out and therefore the the URL and an SEO ranking is going to plummet and so Publishers shy away from Lightning Deals they want they want the full Prime day timeline deals to highlight and focus on because that's when not only

07:40

they'll push from maybe an evergreen organic standpoint but they'll boost traffic so they utilize their own socials they'll do their own posts associated with it uh but again they're very cognizant on their balance rates because it can hurt their overall site domain Authority uh so just F depending on the type of affiliate you're reaching out to keep that in mind of what deals you're kind of highlighting I think that's a really good gem there as well uh I I didn't think about that like the

08:06

deal thing definitely makes sense from influencers especially because like they're going to do some I mean everybody does a affiliate link right so they're getting Commission on on that traffic anyway um but I feel like it's from what you're saying it sounds like the influencers are more focused on conversion where the uh the some of those like website like lists or whatever are more focused on on uh getting folks to actually like stick on on page and things like that that's cool um for you guys like other than peak

08:41

times like do you find or the tent pole events do you find that uh Affiliates can still be successful not during temp pole events are they more successful less successful I'm curious you know your experience um yeah it it's really category dependent so during you know like Prime day uh and especially Q4 uh you know the turkey 5 turkey 11 whatever it's going to be uh HomeGoods are always a very big category uh that focus on um but also from an evergreen standpoint minus the temple events they tend to do

09:14

pretty well uh even like for example air purifiers there are also some uncontrollables so Canadian wildfires can have a big impact um and how in consumer search very hot summers uh as we experience this past week where I'm in the midwest you know ice nug makers sound great window air conditioning units portable air conditioning units um and so environmental impacts can make a difference but overall like homegood items are always on the demand um so it's really category dependent but we do tend to see a more drastic spike in

09:52

those times especially for products that are higher priced so if you're in a more higher priced category you will see a more increase in performance around the temple events because more than likely you're running a deal a substantial discount off uh and that's when people when consumers are really especially within Affiliates their target is new to Brand consumers people who are doing their research haven't bought from the brand before haven't bought from the category before so they're doing their

10:19

research and so they're usually not only trying to figure out what is maybe the best product for them but they want the best deal too would you say in general General like uh if you are driving Affiliates you should be leveraging some sort of discount as well um especially for Amazon like whether it's coupon or light de or whatever yes absolutely in fact we ran a test um with one Our Brands who uh was SS a toaster whole good item um and it was a little more higher price point uh it was a more premium product it was

10:51

about $70 um but when day look at who are the top selling toasters in their category the top 10 were under $30 now of course this brand is I'm a more premium brand uh you know my stuff is built to last um and through Affiliates they did Drive some traffic but we really noticed is when they did run a onewe coupon their conversion rates doubled uh it's because people became it is a more cost or or cost conscious item um so people are willing to Fork over a little more dollars for a premium brand but they still want within reason um of

11:25

some of the competition in there as well so definitely if you're working with Affiliates run coupons test those they can and if it's in a hyper competitive category it can make a difference that's awesome yeah really good input there um what sort of like frequency would you say brand should be thinking about running affiliate campaigns uh there I would love to say all the time um you know just because diversify your your sales flow U but diversify where the Affiliates are coming from influencers are great uh but they're

12:00

great for a short stint uh you know they make their post you can see the Sal Spike and then it kind of dies off Publications tend to be a little more long lasting uh everra consistent you won't necessarily see the massive like sales lift right away uh but it can be consistent in a gradual increase over time uh and then YouTube kind of O you know operates very similar to influencers where it can be a quick Spike uh however it is kind of an in between uh because we do work with some uh YouTube influencers so to say or at

12:29

least their only platform is YouTube and where we see the initial Spike of the posting however you know within two to three months later we're still seeing a significant amount of traffic coming through uh and sales coming through just because of YouTube's algorithm and the video is still you know showing up not necessarily as cons or they show up consistently on different people's platform that could have been a video two months ago all a sudden I get on YouTube and I now see that same video that I never came across and

12:58

viewed now that that's awesome and I think uh specifically for Prime day I think one of the things people don't necessarily always think about is the retargeting component so like yes you're going to see a lot of sales obviously the day Prime day you'll start seeing increased traffic on Amazon you know really starting the weekly up to Prime day because Brands start start offer discounts and so um we find that like setting up retargeting campaigns even on your own products uh can be really helpful uh particularly if you have

13:26

access to like Amazon's DSP uh for example if you guys are spiking traffic through something like Affiliates um you know you might have customers that are buying a lot on Prime day and maybe they just like forgot about you guys right because of the rush so setting up retargeting campaigns with custom creatives uh using really like unique selling like USPS uh for those custom creators we find perform really well as well um yeah I definitely that would defin be a little Pro tip for you guys like you'll see obviously a lift on

13:55

Prime day but it doesn't have to be a gr or it doesn't have to be like a massive drop off in sales immediately following right we actually find like a pretty natural lift that can occur if you if you play some of your retargeting things right so um I think that definitely will help relate with some of the affilion stuff um for Peak holidays like something like Prime day here do you find that certain Affiliates work better than others um are more effective so that's where it's G to get really

14:25

interesting this year uh and the reason I say this is especially because you know I come from more of the publisher background the publisher affiliate side of things Google has made a lot of updates over the past months um and those of you you know in the audience who are unaware just do some searching Lily Ray is a great person you can find on LinkedIn who posts about this conol she's in probably the best SEO expert I know uh and all of these updates were obviously to combat AI uh rightfully so you know a lot of AI spinning up blogs

14:59

and now Google's identifying what is Spam FCO and so many of you have probably done some Google searches over the past couple months seeing Reddit showing up more often the top feed there's a reason for that they're trying to keep you know uh consumer forums as another Avenue of you know educating Their audience for digest as well but there's been some shifting even again uh to where you know initially there's a lot of new sites doing Commerce some of those are starting to go away uh because they were

15:26

kind of piggybacking off their the main domain of the public publisher and it was causing some Havoc that way um but because of that Publishers are really trying some new things this Prime day that they really haven't well I shouldn't say they haven't before but they haven't done in a long time and so uh there's three main things it was actually a great dig day article that was talking about this um that what there's a couple things they're doing this year that they haven't done the

15:54

past or are we servicing now the first one is an on-site EXP experience Improvement as I highlight now those of you in the audience you may kind of chuckle at this um but understand that Publications are they're operating several years behind the rest of the tech World um so what I mean by that is they're posting content where the price will update in real time now you may say well that yes of course that hasn't been the case so you'll see those articles where it's like oh it's 20% off well

16:26

it's actually could be 10 or 30 so now they'll be able to actually in real time update the pricing of the products that they're featuring uh another piece what they're doing now is obviously increasing the Content Volume than they used to a lot of them used to piggyback off of uh Google SEO um or in many cases just updating content that they did last year I know every one of you has come across a buzzfeed article about the top 67 products on Prime Day this year uh if you haven't you sure will after I said

16:57

this now um so you know it's not just now updating those articles they have to create even newer content as well to kind of gain visibility and traction and then the third piece that they're really focusing in on and many of you again May chuckle at this because this is what you do on a daily basis is segmenting Their audience and targeting the content and so before they would obviously yes certain Publications know their Niche they know their consumers and know the products that they would be shopping for but they

17:28

were so Reliant and so used to piggybacking off just normal SEO search ranking results to where now they can't necess rely on that they have to invest in their social posts maybe running some ads many of you probably have noticed that there's a lot more sponsored content when you do a Google search over you know the best ice nugget maker and all a sudden you see Publications are running ads they're doing that now to boost their lift and visibility but they're also doing it through socials uh

17:56

as well but they're you know because meta and Google are also so great tools to advertise on and you can segment the audience and certain uh GEOS within that they're now utilizing that more than they ever have before and so also picking backing out the retargeting that's going to be something very very uh that'll be interesting to see post Prime day where if you run some of those uh retargeting campaigns that you knew you featured in are you getting a different audience than you did previously because of how the pubs are

18:25

interacting with how they're diversifying Their audience now it's really interesting I actually uh I noticed that for years I always wanted to get on those news sites because like like if you search like best protein bar protein powder whatever like those were the first things that were the most prominent and I have noticed search results have been different uh huh that's interesting uh it's cool to hear from that SEO side of things um okay well what would you say would be like your you know sort of best tips and

18:54

tricks for folks uh here I know obviously we're a little bit late from a prime day perspective but um I guess what would be your trips and or tricks for like the immediate future knowing we don't have that much time left and then just sort of best practices in regards to uh when we're thinking about fall Prim day we've got a lot of stuff coming up for Q you know Q4 here uh obiously brand should start thinking about planning in Q3 uh what are sort of the best practices to to get things going for those whole events absolutely so

19:22

some easy tips and tricks I'm going to present something here real quick uh let me know you can see my screen uh let's see here all right can you all see this now we're good cool so one very easy tip and this is what you can utilize now uh because a lot of Publishers are under crunch shine when it comes to Prime day as I said a lot of them are just going to update existing articles and so go to very very simple you can go to Publishers website go in their search so for this I went to reviewed search Prime day and found one

20:12

of these articles they've you can see they're already starting up to Amazon Prime day 2024 uh but this one was completely written about prime Day 2 last year 2023 you can find these listicles and see are they featuring a product in your category or a product very similar to yours if that's the case fantastic go find whoever the writer was uh if you can find their editor even better shoot them that quick email that quick note uh even a LinkedIn message sometimes that works uh and as I said keep it very

20:41

simple keep very high level 50 words here's my product here's why it be a great feature here's how it stands out liks the competition you can easily do that um does it always work no um but if it does they will constantly look at the flood of emails that they're getting because they're trying to figure out what they need to post in the content so the easiest Tri uh trick is just find existing content because you know they're going to update it you know they're not going to feature all the

21:05

same products because some products may have gone out of business some products may have sold off to a larger company uh and so that could be a great way to capitalize there I would definitely say also the types of products that you're you're featuring in around the or at least around the temple events the listicles are great uh focus on that uh same thing with like you know BuzzFeed example here uh discounts are key so highlight the discount itself because if the discount is large enough one they'll

21:33

obviously highlight there but sometimes here's a great example um where they actually uh where reviewed itself spun off a separate article uh that was you know the 67% off this Prime day product so very simple tip right now start reaching out to the authors where you know there's existing content um within a prime day specific however uh for Evergreen you know post Prime Day events if you can find review guides that were featuring products in your category start sending emails start sending messages and that's when you're going to

22:07

start to give like the little bit of the Brand Story um to go along with it I love that that was super easy um not too much work you could really do that in a few minutes and at least start getting some potential ad bats or some nose uh but just go to your yes exactly and you know you're getting traction if they ask for the price products awesome awesome let's go um well Chris I appreciate all the uh the time and all the knowledge you shared where can folks find you guys um you want to reach out and chat uh affiliate yeah absolutely

22:42

you can reach us at www.sellerrocket. uh and easily just send us the contact us form uh and we'll have something reach out to immediately love it all right till next time everybody see you later thank