How Black Friday transformed until now? What can we expect this year in terms of sales? What can you do to improve your conversion rate and make customers stay loyal to your brand? Tune in to find out!
Black Friday is approaching fast, and you need the right tactics to get to your target audience and make them stay. This shopping event is an ideal chance for you to show that you are a reliable seller with quality products and Amazon PPC is going to help you highlight them and make some serious sales. Listen to this episode and get some really useful insights! Don't forget to follow us on our website and Facebook page!
[00:00:00] Lazar: Hey guys, welcome to the Wild PPC Bunch podcast. My name is Lazar and I'm a PPC nerd. I have over 10 years of experience in online advertising. And currently I'm the owner of the growing Amazon advertising agency called Sellers Alley.
Brent: And I'm Brent, the owner of AMZ Pathfinder. I started this company five years ago and we've been working in online advertising since 2013.
Lazar: Every week, we will spend around 30 minutes covering one topic and it won't get too nerdy. I promise we'll prepare a topic, covering everything from PPC basics in depth strategy and current trends.
Brent: One thing's for sure you won't be bored or insights, tactics, and ideas. Great. From two experienced agency owners, go strap in for the ride and enjoy.
Lazar: Hey guys, it should be like 10 seconds or something. Like 30 seconds is a lot of time, you know,
Brent: that was like a little bit of a dance [00:01:00] over here.
George: I was just like, yeah, mate.
Lazar: And George, we need to like, change your last name or something. Like we cannot see the agency or
George: it's, it's a game for everyone. They got to figure out it's like hangman...
Lazar: Okay, cool. Yes. So basically this. This, this is not really planned like that much. Like it's, it's like a couple of weeks ago I talked with, uh, Brian Johnson because he was late for 48 hour stream.
Um, yeah, both guys were on 48 hour stream and like, we wanted to do Wild PPC Bunch podcasts. And like, since we already are doing like a couple of videos, like we were like, like, Let's go with another video. Why not though? We are going to use it for podcasts as well. So, uh, we [00:02:00] have one interesting topic to talk to talk about.
I'm pretty sure that you didn't prepare anything. Some
Brent: notes. I prepared some notes. I have some things up here. The old noggin.
Lazar: Come on.
George: No comment from me. No comment. No,
Brent: no. You're, you know, you're tangled with here.
George: Okay.
Lazar: I'm just curious, like, okay. So like we're going to talk about current situation and like, since we're prime day prime day, we are going to, to w with, uh, you mentioned that with a black Friday and cyber Monday, there's one thing that's.
Probably nobody's going to buy and it's PlayStation five, but there are other stuff that we want to talk about. I'm saying about PlayStation because they desperately want to buy one.
George: Well, I just got, I just got an email from madness and saying they're back in stock in the UK tomorrow.
Lazar: Okay. That's really good to know.
Brent: That's cross connection. As you can make it work.
George: I'll buy [00:03:00] you on for Christmas Lissa.
Lazar: Thank you so much.
Brent: I'll hand deliver it to,
George: is it going to get lost?
Brent: There's a Serbian border border and customs. They might just take it for themselves. Like, Oh, it's a PS five in this box. Huh?
Lazar: There is one illegal Spider-Man here.
Yeah. So basically we are going to talk about like strategies and some ideas, uh, what to do and in the next. Period, because it's going to be absolutely crazy when it comes to black Friday and cyber Monday. So like, I know that you guys are doing a lots of different stuff from DSP to regular ads and kind of volunteer experience with Google ads as well.
So like shoots from any weapon, you can, you can talk about whatever you wish, how to help somebody to improve [00:04:00] their performance during this periods.
George: Great. Um, I guess I think that the most interesting thing is the consistent growth in, in, um, in sales for Amazon in the U S and in the UK. And obviously everywhere else. Um, year on year during black Friday and cyber Monday. So it continues to grow. So I think last year I've got the stats here somewhere.
So last year, uh, the U S black Friday sales were 7.4 billion compared to the previous era when it was 6.2 billion. So there's a massive influx of traffic coming in on the larger, in that weekend. So, so fantastic opportunity to maximize on sale. Um, I could just, I just wanted to introduce with that, so I'll let anyone else carry on with anything else and I'll tip in
Lazar: awkward silence.
So you jumped in, so it's okay.
[00:05:00] George: Yeah, but w we're we're really pumped, like, um, because at the end of the day, like as long as you have good products that have been set in well, Drew in the times they tend to sell well, uh, if you provide good discounts, you're going to get more exposure. There is going to be more sales.
So just bearing that in mind. And there are some accounts that we have, and I, I had a debate of my team because I couldn't on Slack. Is that right, guys? This is the question that I'm going to be talking about. And there's still an argument going on right now. And it started two days ago. And it's carrying on with some was saying that it's not hard.
Much of an impact and a number of my accounts. It's not for everyone. I'm just saying, that's not the point is brand loyalty, and we need to focus on that, you know, getting your products to so many people. So that's the kind of conversations that we've been having internally about kind of black Friday and the impact it will have.
Lazar: I made a blog post recently [00:06:00] about, um, prime day and the growth compared to the previous year. Because like this year is pretty crazy when it comes to literally everything. And like, I didn't know what to expect. Like, is it going to be like huge peak during that one day or sorry, two days, or is it going to be like, the sales are already up a lot?
I'm to like all these, like exhibiting just a small bump on the road or something like that. So yeah, it ended up being like huge increase in sales during, during prime day and that's something and Amazon, like, they did something really good. I remember that there was a lot of. Talk about, uh, delivery times and like how Amazon is growing, all of it.
And like what, what we, what we've heard like this year I, Amazon is tired. I think lots of people like 400 or something, maybe even more and most of them in warehouses, I think so. It it's, it's working pretty well. And [00:07:00] I didn't know, like, did you, did you hear anything like negative from your clients regarding like delivery time?
Since I, I didn't see anything specific that was problematic
Brent: for me. The only problem that we've heard about is the IPI restrictions. So we have clients said the intent to send it a lot more units than they're actually physically able to do, because they're just restricted. Let's say they have a new product that's selling really well, but Amazon like, Nope, just 200 units.
That's all you get. Um, that's like really frustrating. And I would say that most. Businesses we work with also have at this point woken up to the fact that, uh, having like a three PL in place as a backup is a really, really smart move if they already weren't doing that. So they have that in Europe and in the U S um, You know, if they're selling in both markets so that they have that kind of second, second line of defense.
And I think, uh, as you mentioned with the, it was on hiring people. I think it was a hundred thousand people at warehouses. They were hiring. And that was in the course of, uh, you know, late summer into [00:08:00] now. Uh, and it's amazing how many people that can onboard that quickly. That's like, that's unbelievable.
Um, yeah. And, and that comes from a place of, uh, uh, knowing, knowing what that's like to actually, I worked at Amazon warehouse years ago, so I was hired there too. I know, I know what the onboarding process is. Right. Hey,
Lazar: can you share them?
Brent: They probably changed a lot since then. I worked there part-time for a peak season, which is now they call this peak internally at Amazon.
Lazar: Nice. Yeah.
George: Yeah, yeah. I agree too much with what you just said. Right? I think the third parties is becoming an instrumental part in ensuring that you don't want to ask doctor in this period. And I think with, especially in the UK at the moment, we're in a lockdown, so
Brent: same here, Francis.
George: Yeah, so people have money now.
So, uh, w we are seeing sales overall just increase even now. So to also couple that with black Friday and cyber Monday, and also thinking about Christmas now, for those who are [00:09:00] super organized and are looking into gifts, it's, it's actually, um, I think this will not only become a weekend spike in sales. I think it will just drag on, uh, until Christmas.
It might slow down a bit, but it will. I think just nicely, kind of see us through solid sales.
Brent: I wanted to go back to that prime day idea. So what we did is, um, use of tools. We use to compare data and kind of chart things out. And we looked at the clients we had last year during prime and the clients we had the same clients, uh, know this year, uh, during prime and we compared their numbers from prime last year to this year.
And probably last year was certainly better for most of them. Uh, because I think prime this year was in a very awkward kind of time of year. And for some of them, it was pretty ho-hum, you know, overall I'm talking about advertising data specifically, but you know, when we went in their accounts and looked at overall sales, it was also, you know, kind of like middle of the road.
Uh, if we look at the clients in [00:10:00] aggregate, not just the ones we had prime at this time last year, that the picture is suddenly different. Um, because we just have more, uh, more clients in general than that time. But if we look at the ones who've had that same time period, it was, it was like flat. Like there were some huge bump.
Um, and I think that, and I hope that, uh, people have extended the buying season. So, um, there's websites, there's an e-commerce site that I, uh, I buy bike stuff from here in France. And they have like a two weeks of a black Friday thing. Cause they're trying to like spread out the shipping and it dissipated the demand.
And I was talking to my 84 year old neighbor today and he's this old dude he says, Oh, I order three times a week on Amazon. He's always on exercise. So he's getting in like the holiday shopping mode, like early on. Um, I think that, that's my, that's my it's kind of hypothesis for what we're going to see.
And I think we're already seeing right now,
Lazar: What do you think about, like, sorry for jumping in? Like, what do you think is going to happen? Like in, in some new Amazon [00:11:00] markets, like Sweden or Netherlands, that's going to be tricky because like, people are, people are not used to buying. On Amazon, like when you're from, well, you know, like when you're in from Sweden or like any normal country, when you search for Amazon Google, like when you type in Amazon, you're redirected to do German one.
And basically like, that's one of the reasons why German market is bigger than the rest of the markets, because like all of the Nordics are using German wine.
Brent: Right. Poland too, probably because it's not live in Poland yet. Although I've heard rumors about that very soon.
Lazar: I know Corey HSA has like the right direction to, to determine, even though the language is literally like,
Brent: get everything first, not the, in the Balkans Croatia.
Lazar: That's terrible. Dirty guys. Yeah. I just want to say my best friend is his creation, so
Brent: well, anytime you have someone from the Balkans distinct another country for the Balkans, the comments turned into a race [00:12:00] war. So let's let's
Lazar: yeah. Slowed down. We were here. Yeah.
George: I think
Brent: they're in Netherlands, advertising still not live there in Sweden.
We don't have advertising either. So I
George: mean, we, I think Netherlands just went live. There was
Brent: peers,
George: I think, I think sponsored products. Yeah. With the Netherlands. I've got, I'm sure I got an email from someone. Last week saying that it's, now you can do PPC in the Netherlands. That's just opened up. But one thing I do love Lizzo about kind of what you've just mentioned about like the, these new marketplaces open in like Sweden is the fact that.
Um, you can go into those marketplaces and you could be one of the first, and it's always who is the first, whether there's the net fairly new can hold good sales velocity and hold those positions and rank. And I think. With the fat. Now that Amazon is just turning its [00:13:00] stores around the world into one kind of global account.
So your reviews from Germany, France, the UK, do you S I transferred over to the other marketplaces again, that gives sellers a massive opportunity when they do go into those marketplaces and they do put PPC behind. Uh, there are listings, there are low, their chances of conversions are going to be high.
Now at this point, in terms of traffic, no one knows. Right. We don't know, but, but in terms of positioning yourself an entrance of a new. That is a massive, massive opportunity here. I'm just going to quickly jump back to something interesting that Brent said earlier about this old chap that buys three times a week.
I was actually having a conversation with one of my clients and he was kind of, he threw a lot into this and he's looking at development opportunities and. What's happened recently is because of [00:14:00] the pandemic and because of, um, how it's impacted the older generation, they are now being conditioned to buy more on Amazon.
Right. So they're getting used to buy more on Amazon. So what we have is a brand new demographic of people. You are now seeing the benefits of shopping online, having things conveniently sent to their homes. So that's another big bulk of traffic, but big bulk of traffic that will be kind of getting through now that we might not necessarily would have been getting last year.
So you can imagine, I can imagine sales will increase further across for Amazon as a whole
Brent: great insight. Yeah. And this reminds me of something at DSP, which is like, when you break out the targeting by age, It's like goes to 65 and then it kind of stops. Like there's no like 65 to 80, 80, 82. I was like, Whoa, they're missing my neighbor.
Like they need to hit them with retargeting ads, man. Like, he's got a, he's got a
Lazar: computer right now. So the little bicycle [00:15:00] parts for him.
Brent: No, no, I think you are in his books. Mostly. He's a, he's a very interesting guy. Um, but, uh, yeah.
Lazar: Yeah, there there's one other thing that I wanted to mention, like everybody's talking like this year, I think one of the hottest topics was like, uh, posts and the other one videos.
On Amazon in us are huge thing. And they're introduced to, I think, UK as
George: well. Now
Lazar: the funny parts about Germany. You cannot use, uh, English version of. So you need to translate this and like everybody's talking like, it's like, it's so hard to find like good video and that kind of stuff. Like Amazon has their own tool. It's a really bad tool just to like
Brent: the video creative builder.
Lazar: Yeah.
Something like [00:16:00] that.
Brent: It's a 15 second videos.
Lazar: Yeah. Yeah. They said that like 15 second is like the right amount of like it's because like they, they, they can create created from victories. And that's one of the reasons probably because like, it's, it would be super boring too, to be like, One minutes, video, just pictures, like moving around.
Brent: It was really important and it adds that background music in there too. I think it's like
Lazar: the products are here, but we had,
Brent: except for except except the only half as long instead of that 30.
Lazar: Yeah.
George: Well, let me give you guys a hack on that because, um, this is that Liz asked me one of our biggest frustrations recently because we've got the, we got the, um, notification for Amazon agent that's available in Germany.
In the UK. I've been prepping our German and UK clients to get video ads done. I literally copied and pasted the dimensions [00:17:00] of what the videos need to be. The lens, the audio spec, everything I said here, it is in advance. I few months ago, it's going to come a few months ahead of September and it's going to come.
No one did anything. Right. And as we all know, in the U S in the U S like, it's the video ads just perform so well, it's been incredible. Now what we've done now, and this might help. I'm sure you guys are doing it, but like, if you like, w what has helped for us is also amaze house. And he just showed me a video.
He did on canvas. And I was like, hold on, this is Epic. Like he just used Canva. He got all the texts that he wants to put into the video. He certainly not the dimensions and the ratios. And we just have video ads for a lot of our UK clients. And because. Um, because no, one's really adopted it here because of just a frappe.
It involves it's helped us tremendously kind of just take those slots on Amazon and just get good conversion rates. So, um, and we've Canva. [00:18:00] It was great. It's like we had one client who gave us a video, the dimensions were wrong. So what he did is he put the video into Canva. He put it to the side and he put some nice texts to the left of it, of the client's brand as a.
For those of you who haven't taken advantage. Of sponsor brand video ads is CAMBA gone. CAMBA. You might need the prohibition. Um, if you can't be asked to do it, uh, like can put you in touch with someone who does it. I have no affiliation to him. He just does it. Um, so that's kind of been a massive breakthrough for us.
Brent: And that's canva.com forward slash George. Uh, if you want to get that referral.
George: No, no, no. It's just kind of, Oh, I'll try it. You know what? I encourage you guys, especially if you have a bit of time now, try yourself, go into Canva, mess around with it. And there's so many YouTube videos, to be honest, I look to it.
I couldn't be asked and I was like, Sam, can you sort this out for me? And he did so, so that's just how I. There was stuff, but, um, um, but just to have a go up, cause it could, [00:19:00] it literally, it doesn't need to be spectacular. It could just be clean and straight to the point. And you're taking those slots.
Brent: That's similar to the custom image, creative that's available with sponsored brands. Um, so you can get a, you know, those lifestyle images kind of like product in use shots. And we have clients who give us, you know, here's all our collateral and then it just, here it is. And we have a designer, a part-time now, so she's been able to.
Cut and edit some of those down and make them suitable for that, for that ad type. And as far as I'm aware, although we did get a screenshot from a client the other day, Um, that those, uh, you know, custom images, they show up only on mobile, but, uh, we got a screenshot from a client of the day, right? Oh, no, I couldn't replicate it.
Yeah. Any of our accounts where I was building those, but it doesn't show it as one of the four, uh, places where it displays, but it definitely was like a video, a screenshot. It was mostly your screenshots with video. The client had made for us, that was. Here's this, uh, you know, uh, custom image creator. How do I get [00:20:00] this?
And th the images, uh, sorry, the products kind of like move over a little bit when you go to scroll and it's like, it looks really good. So yeah, I would roll those out too. That seems like another
Lazar: thing. Definitely what take her from our clients that didn't have money to like, Do like full production of videos.
They use a tool called bikeable and like, I also don't have affiliate link or anything like George doesn't have. It's just that I know that I just know that the couple of clients use their service. It was pretty cheap, like under 50 bucks a month. Yeah, something like that. And like, you can create whatever you wish you just need to have like 10, 15 minutes to create anything.
Like, and then like when, when there is no competition to advertise at some point, like it's what their plays there. You are going to show up, you know, it's such a huge [00:21:00] opportunity because it's, it's like. Really big portion of federalizing space in a really big portion of search result page. So you literally like people click on them just because they're still big.
And like what you mentioned brands like we have for a huge success when it comes to a custom image as true responsible brand ads. And it's really good. They're available on desktops now as well. Um,
Brent: just the U S. Because we're not seeing it consistently.
Lazar: Yeah. It's, it's, it's in a U us, I didn't know for Europe to be honest at this point, but I'm pretty sure that they're going to introduce it anytime soon.
So that's
Brent: pretty much always to us first. Isn't it?
Lazar: Yeah. Well, it's the biggest market. They're testing all of this out there,
Brent: right? Yeah. I mean this, this particular, client's also in the U S and screenshot video, they provided those to us. So, yeah. Anyway. Very cool. So bikable and Canva, both great options.
Um, [00:22:00] it's amazing. You know, video production used to be something at the spend $700 on Adobe premiere. And now it's like not just use a web web app. That's $50 a month, then you're good.
As we learned this videos don't need to be Hollywood quality.
Lazar: You know, some of the clients just to take their phone and record that. Like whatever, because like, just because there's nobody else, like, especially in Germany, like when you compare the amount of people that are advertising in the us.
Probably somebody else in the field is going to have any kind of video, but in Germany, probably nobody is going to have, it's only, only problem with that. You will have theirs translate to everything to do German. And that includes to have a audio translated and also texted to be translated in individuals.
So if you have any kind of tax or so on,
Brent: well, the trick with audio is just have some, you know, like generic soundtrack, but then use the subtitles. In German, no, to, to [00:23:00] convey because people are watching, I would guess. I mean, we don't have the numbers on this, but I would guess most people are watching his videos.
If they're on mobile, on silent mode. Like, they're just scrolling through Amazon. They see it, but they have to tap to enable the sound. Most people don't tap. I mean, I would never do that. Like if I'm out in public somewhere, uh, not that we do that anymore in the era of COVID, but like, I don't want to be annoying people next to me with like some random, massive video on Amazon play.
Um,
George: Yeah, I so agree, Brad. And just to add to that as well, people, I think underestimate the power of text as well, because you can, you can get some keys selling points in the sponsored brand video ads, but just add in some, some words in there, because people will be able to read just what what's there and now will help convey your unique selling points.
Within the video. So, um, Oh yeah, social good. I was actually gonna say that about the audio not having that is, is, is, has to be, it has to work without it.
Lazar: Yeah. And do you mean such a good point with [00:24:00] subtitles, even though they're in the same language? Well, he knew when, when you're on Instagram, for example.
And when you're like scrolling until like the beginning of the time, like she just points like w w w when you stop and like, read with somebody saying, that's the point when you turn on the audio? Because like some, some texts or something like I did frequently, that way
George: I can catch your interest.
Lazar: Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah,
George: I, I think, um, in terms of kind of capturing like the one thing you could do now, and this is also now available in the UK, is you can capture the audience through remarketing, through display ads. So everyone has access to display ads now. Well, it's been in the UK. If it, most people have access to it.
So you can, so this access traffic that's going to be coming through within the kind of black Friday cyber Monday, we can we not, you now have the tools available. To reengage that audience after that weekend, [00:25:00] giving me the opportunity to generate some more sales throughout that period. So that's another big benefit, I think for, um, for sellers nowadays.
Lazar: Yeah. If you were asking what's going on, brands is. He's under a fence and he needed to stand up.
It's probably that know,
Brent: move my light guy. Sorry. The lighting of my face was terrible now much better.
Lazar: That was such a beautiful guy.
Brent: I missed the last time. I just missed the last five seconds there. Jordan reset.
George: Sorry. Uh, it's fine. Cause I think it was insightful. Yeah, it was, I forgot what it was. Say.
Lazar: You can check it through the wild PPC bunch spot
Brent: about, um, sponsored display, right? I mean, this has been my recent obsession sponsored display. I did a thing with Amazon last night, where we had some people from Amazon talking about it and I learned a lot of cool [00:26:00] things from them. Um, about, about SD and I, I really think it has a super bright future. And I think it's kind of like, I'm going to democratize these ideas that maybe have been limited or restricted to DSP in some ex to some extent.
And that would be the retargeting views or targeting purchases. First of all. You know, obviously we all know product, uh, attribute targeting, you know, by ACE and that's a big one, but then they're building up more contextual stuff and dialing that in and making that work with SD. And I'm so excited to see where that's going to go.
And it's going to make a lot more, uh, businesses that are on Amazon way more comfortable with like the idea of CPM, for instance, cause everyone's so used to CPC and sometimes you explain CPM to class and they're like, huh? What's that exactly. I never heard of that before. Um, although some of them know Facebook and they understand the model and everything, but, uh, yeah, there's a, there's a lot, there's a lot with SD that I think is kind of relevant to the black Friday.
Uh, surge or the Turkey five as we call it here.
[00:27:00] George: Yeah. And, and I think, um, one of the big advantages, uh, w what, one thing I could see come in with display ads is, is different sizes of ads. So the moment is, is kind of fairly limited to the areas in which those ads serve, but it's going to, it's going to increase because.
That's what we have with the DSP. And they seem to be filtering through the features of display ads from DSP. And what I found very, very interesting is I was just doing some searches and Amazon the other day. And my issue has always been. Any display advertising Amazon does is that you'd have to on a desktop, you'd have to scroll down to find those ads, right.
But recently they've started serving ads above the main product has a very long product. That was a very long ad. Um, on top of the product now. If the offering of that product is better than the main product it's got the best positioning. So I think there's a massive [00:28:00] opportunity for that particular position, which is being pushed out a lot in a, in a, um, us and in the UK, that slot is available, but it's mainly being used by Amazon.
Um, so it's not been really utilized here. But that's another slot that's going to help, but unfortunately it's not going to be held for black Friday for an EU says, but for the USL is if you're doing display or that, that mobile ad is going to be really good. Especially if you add a coupon, it just gives it that additional push the ad.
Brent: Yeah. It's um, the, I forget what they called it. Exactly. I mean, Amazon has a couple different terms they use, like, they want to talk about. It's sponsored display as like a very retail focused ad type. So if you do have a coupon that shows up, if you have a lightning deal, it shows off it's dynamic, right?
Just like we're used to with rec and DEA ads with, with DSP. Um, it's the same, the same technology just use there. And that, that head spot actually, I forget what it's called, but, um, you have to use custom creative and a logo to get there. If you don't [00:29:00] use those, your ad and sponsored display is not eligible and show up there.
George: Oh, so it is available for display ads then supposed to display. Great.
Brent: Yeah. Yeah. If you go through the sponsor display builder, it's the 10th of 10 placements. And it's called Amazon
George: head
Brent: page or something. So on desktop, it shows up. Um, and another thing, uh, about that I learned yesterday from this presentation I was on with Amazon.
They are opening up, um, sponsored display to what they call the gateway, which means Amazon homepage. So you can actually have an ad from your responsive display campaigns appear on, uh, amazon.com homepage. If the, you know, if the slot, if you're bidding high enough, I guess. And if the product is correct first, when someone logs in, so that's a new placement, but you also need to have the logo and the creative, uh, unlock to, to get that,
George: that much, you don't have to.
I must be paying $20,000 per click.
Brent: And I just saw faceless is giving $10 billion to, uh, um, um, environmental causes. So [00:30:00] you're paying for new trees apparently is what you're doing there. You're saving the world. Okay. It's our clients that we know it's $10 bid, but trust me. A lot of trees,
Lazar: it's definitely worth it. We have one question. How do you get the access to DSP? So I know that all three of us have agencies and we are offering DSP, but if somebody is a seller, how to get to DSP, I know that, uh, the requirement is dispenser to 5,000 per month. If you want to, to have your own VSP. And like, apart from that, I didn't know, like what else can be important for, for seller to get the SB from Amazon?
It's a tricky one. Definitely like to get directly without,
Brent: I know, I know this guy. Um, he, uh, he has a, I believe he does consulting and agency work. In addition to having software. I know he leads a group of [00:31:00] Russian language speakers that do, uh, PPC stuff.
Lazar: Um,
Brent: yeah. Um, yeah. Hi there, by the way,
George: Alexander
Brent: he's in Prague.
Um,
George: anyway, uh,
Brent: yeah, I mean, to get access as an agency, you can do what we do, which is we work through, um, a partner that like is a bigger agency that basically we have access to. But I think George both you and Lasar have direct access at this point. Is that right? Cause I know you work with another company, I'm not sure if you're willing to say who or how, but.
Uh, that's how we did it and that's how we currently do it. Although I would like to move to our own direct manager thing. I don't know how to do it.
George: Yeah. So in order to get your own direct, um, DSP with Amazon, um, they used to just give it away in the past, um, to its agencies, but they're, they're, they're increasing.
The bar. So previously, uh, in the UK, they were just kind of just giving them away. Um, now they put restrictions in [00:32:00] where I think you need to commit to spending a hundred thousand across a year. And it's the same of Germany to Germany. You have to spend a hundred thousand and within a year, and then in us, it was, you have to do a hundred thousand a month in spend.
Right and DSP spend, but now they've changed it. So it's half a million in spend over six months. So I think they're seeing that the demand for agencies to get access is, is, is, is growing at a crazy rate, but what's going to happen in the next year or two. And this is something I really do see happening is sellers themselves are going to get direct access.
To the DSP. Um, I don't know what that looks like,
Brent: but that's where your question is about that. Constantly people are always saying like, okay, we have someone in the team who knows display or they've worked at other DSPs. Can we just run it through your account? And you know, I have to say no because that's not how it works.
Um, but I [00:33:00] think that that demand is huge and I hope Amazon's listening. They, they understand that. Of course. Yeah. But yeah,
Lazar: I can confirm, I can confirm coffee a million, the George mission as well. So yeah, that's. That's something that's do you need to spend basically,
Brent: okay.
Lazar: Well obviously enough, like true on plan, but like cumulative that's
Brent: aggregate spend over the course of six months.
Okay.
Lazar: So like it does a bar, but you can still reach it. It's basically like having, like when you're a Google agency and I know that George, did you do Alto a little now as well? Or like, I know, I know that you're super experienced when it comes to Google ads and.
George: To avoid them now. So we've just partnered up with someone else and outsource them because, uh, uh, it's it's um, yeah, it's saturated market for us as an agency.
So we decided to just [00:34:00] go fully into Amazon. Um, but yeah, so with Google and, and this is where I see it go in on Amazon with Google, you can become a partner very easily. Uh, you can get a partner's badge. You can have your list. You can have your company on a Google partner, page, Amazon name there yet of y'all go in there.
This is, I've been personally told this by someone in Amazon. Uh, it's already shown it's already been shown in the U S. It's just slow to be brought here.
Lazar: Yeah. For, for Google is difficult to get to the rise. One premier, one that does the trick you on, you need to have like study spend for a year or so.
Yeah.
George: It's weird though. Cause we had it for years and then we lost it and I was like, what's that about? And then it came back.
Yeah, but he's working. So is that okay? We'll just keep that.
Brent: That's a great point, George. And this is maybe getting a little bit agency talk for people who are listening, but, uh, [00:35:00] yeah, I mean, getting those certifications for everyone on the team is super key because then when that rolls out, we're going to be able to say, we've got 17 individuals all certified and you know, everyone's ready to go.
And that looks really good. And they'll put us on the listing and tests are actually good. You know, those tests are useful. Like the DSP one. You learned so much going through that, uh, so much it's really quite useful. So I, them,
George: yeah.
Lazar: I know, kind of like his team, like taking those tests and, and I, I, I think when it was introduced, I ignored it for a couple of months.
And after that, like whole team of ours, like needs to, to pass the test, like, what does, that's one of the requirements that you need.
George: Yeah. And just so people know about that in terms of the test, I think anyone can take the Amazon sponsored ads, fundamental exam. So if you go to the app, if you Google Amazon learning console, you have access to it.
However there's other exams. So the one that Brent's talking about, [00:36:00] this there's about four other exams right now. I haven't checked in a few weeks, but it's for other exams that you can take, but it's locked. It's locked to agencies that have. Access correct me if I'm wrong, Brent. But that's what my Amazon agent said to me.
Maybe she's trying to make me feel special, but
Brent: this is here's another layer to that. They have a different link that they send out every quarter and it allows you to get the tests so you can see them. Cause I had someone on my team who like, had not clicked the link. And so she was not able to see the test, but then like I was like, here's the secret?
Like, and uh, she, she clicked it and now she's able to take the tests and pass them and everything. So.
George: Yeah. So
Brent: they change it quarterly as far as I'm aware.
Lazar: Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is so good information for prime day, black Friday and cyber Monday kind of stuff. I really like when we talk about brands and stuff.
Brent: Well, the original conceit, the original conceit of this was how do you retain customers? After after black Friday, right. Is how [00:37:00] do you keep them coming back to the fold? You know, and, and I guess my first question was, well, it depends because a lot of our clients, they have durable products. They're not CPG consumable stuff.
So people don't want to make purchases every 30, 60 days. They want to buy at once and be sorted. Right. They don't want to go back and say, Oh, I have to buy it again. Like, you know, but if you are in that consumable arena, then what kind of customer retention tactics. Are we, are we thinking of here? I was thinking about, you know, sponsored display, retargeting.
Loyalty efforts. Um, and I don't think you have the ability to set a customizable time. Window is sponsored display yet. I think they're, they're going to release that at some point.
George: Yeah.
Lazar: Do you think if, if, if, if you send some traffic to Amazon, like to your product listing from external sources, like from Facebook or Google, uh, like.
A week before black Friday, do you think that Amazon would do their own retargeting of those [00:38:00] potential customers?
George: I, I, I don't know. I have a theory on this and I think my theory on this is that they're pushing back. So, so Amazon are pushing back, especially the Google ads. And this is why they introduced.
Amazon attribution, which is powered by Amazon DSP, um, to, to allow you to be able to track sales through your own Google ads activities. Um, so that's kind of what we've.
Lazar: Yeah, it makes sense. The only problem, like the solved with attribution. We went super current on attribution. At one point, then we slowed it down only because sellers are expecting the same amount of sales. From spend going from, from external traffic comparing to the one that, that you spend on director and platform, because it's not the same thing.
And also like, et cetera, [00:39:00] distribution window. And like, there used to last fleet conversion, like this is the click and this is a sale. And like, this is the attribution is basically just parts of the funnel. And like, it might resulted with sales, but not directly. Like might be parts of the process. Like when you compare a UTM and stuff that you can create from, from storefront analytics, comparing to sellers that are, that are doing get the Confucian, like there's a huge difference.
There is a really big one. Like four, four assets are coming from, uh, from external traffic using UTM that was built from analytics on, on, on storefront you're track. Totally for loss click, uh, and the opposite is going through retribution. And that's something that that's, that you should definitely be aware of.
Like, if you're combining those two and it's really hard to [00:40:00] like one of the biggest issues that we're having with that revision is. Basically sometimes we are becoming like core tile software where like you've built bunch of campaigns with like single keyword campaigns, just because UTM that you're using can track only one campaign.
And it cannot track keywords inside of the campaign and like that, that's why you build like, campaign that has like single keyword. And that's, that's how you basically know what's going on outside the family home. When you're redirecting traffic back to Amazon. And like, that's the only way how we can see it at this
Brent: point.
George: Yes. But you can, you could also, I guess, put that, that, um, unique, unique attribution code, uh, it kind of URL through a kind of a keyword level. So it would bypass the ad level when you can put a keyword level. In order to go in through the right campaigns and track those sales and it does become messy. [00:41:00] Um, but we have seen one or two accounts where it's working, where they are getting, uh, kind of a role as a free or four through Google ads through Google ads.
Um, and then, and then they're coupling it with remarketing through display ads, right? So it might not necessarily be getting the sales at that point because it is. At the end of the day, Google is a search engine. It's not like Amazon where people are going on there for the sole intent of purchasing or window shopping.
Um, so you do have that to bear in mind and just another kind of extra benefit to add to that as well, is that the, um, attribution data is now available. To people who haven't registered that are not vendors are not Brian registered, so,
Lazar: okay. Brand registry 2.0, has a contribution on like it's open for them.
I, I'm not really sure about
George: there was, I [00:42:00] got an email. I'd need to confirm it. My brain's fires right now, but there wasn't. I think if I, it's not, it's not just for vendors now, sellers could just get access to, um, Attribution,
Brent: but it's unclear to me, is it, does it, do you need brand registry 2.0 or not?
Because, um, some things you don't like sponsored display. Uh, I had an email with someone who saw the webinar was on last night and asked about this, but you, as far as I'm aware, you don't need brand registry for sponsored display. I started sponsored display and accounts with no brand registry brand new products.
Uh, as, as recently, as a few weeks ago, But my kind of like feeling is if we're going to work with an account, they should have brand registry because sponsored brands is so key and opens up so many other doors for them.
George: So actually I just confirmed, I just checked the email. Amazon attribution is now available for celebrant owners as well as vendors.
I think the issue before was, it was only available for vendors and this is across Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, [00:43:00] and Spain.
Lazar: Okay. Okay, cool. Cool.
Brent: That's great.
Lazar: That's really good to know for other countries as well, when I was going to USF was like, primarily.
George: Okay. Can I ask you guys a quick question? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
There are some sellers that we have dealt with in the past, who basically a few weeks before black Friday and cyber Monday, they increased their prices. Right? So then, then that way you can put a diff and to make their offering look good for. Black Friday, cyber Monday. What would you both say to that?
Lazar: Are there from Serbia?
That's something that usually happens here and will like conserve it. That's a common thing. Increase the prices and then place a discount. So yeah, like it happens and like he never was the funniest part of that. They saw. Somebody increased the price and just kept it that way because like people use [00:44:00] your body, everything drink, um, Q4, especially November and December.
Like, it doesn't matter if you increase your price for like $3, they're still going to buy it. I don't think it's like highly ethical to do it, but still it's working.
Brent: There's two ways to look at it. Cause we definitely have clients that will increase prices based on the demand they're seeing, because they don't want to stock out.
Um, and then that's, I think it's very, very common in the Amazon world, but keep in mind, Amazon knows your historical price and how it's fluctuated and there's all of these extensions. I can think of what camel, camel, camel, helium 10, all these things. Uh, you can definitely, uh, you know, be kind of, I don't want to say cot, but people who are shopping or like savvy with extensions on Chrome, they know that, uh, you know, your price was $10 lower, like last week.
Cause they can see it based on historical data, along with the BSR and everything. Um, so if you're going to say $10 up and then [00:45:00] like say $10 coupon. I don't know. I mean, Hey, it's, it's, it's pro pricing is a, is a thing that's in flux. It is not always going to be solid. And it also depends on sourcing costs and time of year demand.
Uh, I think there is like a supply and demand aspect to pricing, and that's why these repricing software's exists too for them.
Lazar: I do really think that that like regular customers on Amazon, are you using tools like. Keep power or something like that to double check the pricing and VSL.
Brent: I keep it because they're not interested in that, but there's, there's an extension, camel, camel, camel.
Are you familiar with that one? It's a hilarious name to say. Um, but there's also honey, you know, that,
Lazar: that,
Brent: yeah. These things, like, they give you an idea of historical price on things like Amazon, because I can scrape that data. So, you know, millions of people are using those. Uh, those tools. It's not like those are some niche thing for nerds only it's, you know, it takes two clicks to set up in Chrome.
Um, so, you know, people are aware of that stuff. Uh, so, so I would, I would, I would say, you know, be cautious with that.
[00:46:00] Lazar: Yeah. That makes all sense. Hmm.
George: For Friday. Okay.
Lazar: Yup. Yup. Yup. Okay. So you guys do like, we don't have tiled and time limits here. Do want to continue talking about this. Like we are going to free hours.
That's the target for now? Um, like if, if you are still like, okay, not to go to toilets and stuff, we can, we can pull on your fuel, like six hours.
George: You mean we're not going to do this crazy. How many, how many days did you before? Was it a seven days nonstop. Liza, how many
Lazar: days? It was 48 hours. Yeah. And inside the 40th tower, I slept for four hours.
So I worked for 44 hours straight. So this is like absolutely crazy. And like in Serbian time it was like from 9:00 AM on Tuesday and we finished on like, Thursday at 9:00 AM.
Brent: That's a heck of an effort.
Lazar: I [00:47:00] had still much, so many schedules, Thursday, or like around noon or all of them. And I felt
Brent: black Friday is like a marathon for me.
Lazar: Yeah, it's totally, it's crazy. Yeah. And this year, like for black Friday, like I know like every year when you go to Facebook or like Kennedy social network, like one of the things that you usually see is a video from some of the big stores, or like, I dunno something like best buy or whichever with a lots of people fighting around.
For a DV or they're unlikely, likely, surely five thing I don't like. Is that something that, do you think that people are going to do this year or they're just going to move to Amazon?
Brent: Good question.
George: I guess it depends on where you are in the world, because legally, if you're doing that in the UK, [00:48:00] you probably would.
Yeah, we can, the shops are closed, so you shouldn't be going into, uh, by any TV. So, um, I guess that's, um, it's gonna move all of that traffic over to Amazon, but I guess, I guess there's an element of that urgency isn't there. When you see other people running for TVs and trying to buy something, it kind of is going to urge a lot more people to do that.
And with Amazon, you don't really see that. So you're not going to really see a big panic buy because it's going to be there unless he sees Logan stock. So, um, I don't know. That's a big question.
Brent: I mean, I would hope not, but I know that in the U S we're going to see videos for sure. Yeah. Someplace in a state that doesn't observe any kind of distancing or any kind of like lockdown or, you know, Uh, I don't want to get into politics of it, but you know, we're going to see one or two of those videos for sure.
Here in France. I don't think so. I mean, there's a lot less of a consumer bent in general, but I think the [00:49:00] messaging from a lot of these stores has been, um, get your shopping done early, you know, come this week, not next week. Uh, don't do it three days before Christmas. You know, people are still gonna order, you know, heaps of stuff, uh, the two days before Christmas, but at that point, Um, there may be a real logistical issue with Amazon and other fulfillment from other, other, um, online businesses, not just Amazon.
I mean, everything is all the works are going to be gummed up. I think. Um, and you're not going to have a, that tour for a little Jimmy Christmas morning because you ordered it two days before. It's like, that's a big mistake. Uh, yeah, everyone will remember. Um, Casey Goss made that, that post, uh, I don't know, two months ago about like the coming quarter for, uh, inventory disaster.
I think that was precious. And I'm, and I'm curious to see how that plays out,
Lazar: Mike.
I'm not really sure if I should share like all this
[00:50:00] Brent: suffice to say we're being harassed in chat.
Lazar: It's terrible. When you have other. Members of wild PPC been sending messages.
Yeah. So definitely I think this year is going to be a bit different when it comes to online purchases, but like, uh, the other thing, like what. What we used to see last year, like we had like old prep, um, about calling the products that Oprah would buy and then pretty sure that this year they're going to have somebody else.
Uh, Michael is asking like, because he doesn't know how to leverage DSP for black Friday.
George: How to leverage DSP for black Friday. That's a really good question. Um, I guess it's the, it's the building of the audience that you have access [00:51:00] to. And the beautiful thing about it is there's no rush. So that spike in traffic that you're gonna, there's gonna, that you're gonna get to your. Your product, as well as other people's products, you can leverage that over the next few, uh, the next few weeks to ensure that you can serve ads to them to try and get them to, to, to, to purchase from you.
Because you know, they're interested in that product. And I think the one beautiful thing about DSP is you can target. Those who have viewed the product, but you can also exclude anyone who's purchased it on a day. So you know that there is an interest and they haven't purchased any of that particular product yet.
Lazar: Yeah, that, that makes all the sense. I like the point that you can target people that, that visited some other, uh, seller's product. So like you can retarget your competition there. That's really cool. And like, it's, it's a really good combination, especially like to do it after [00:52:00] black Friday. And like, I know that that like drinking the, the, the black Friday that you're trying to like, implement fear of missing out, like all the time.
But after that, like, you should definitely like. And like to, to do, do they call the traction that you've had during, uh, w what's Mike saying, uh, or that, yeah, we do ask showing black Friday special in the video with limited time deal. Would be another one we should have Mike, next time.
Oh, he's probably having fun summer. So
Brent: he's chilling on the beach.
Lazar: Yeah. Yeah. Um,
Brent: no, but like Friday and you think, I will say post post prime, we noticed, um, You know, if people are, people are using DSP and they're more ROAS focused, which I think is the wrong way to do it. It's a [00:53:00] consideration. That's not the right way to do it.
You're probably going to be upset if you're trying to spend a lot of money post black Friday because, um, people have typically bought the stuff they want them to buy already. And sure they're going to be on Amazon shopping, but I would, I would suppose that Amazon's traffic as far lower and more importantly, their conversion rate is also going to be far lower posts.
Um, the Turkey five black Friday period. Um, so there is opportunity in that. You've just got a whole crap ton of sessions on your products and also competitors products and similar ones. Um, so Amazon's audiences have never been bigger, you know, even there in market segments, I think, which are. You know, correct me if I'm wrong.
George has their 30 day time windows and the in market segments. I believe those are all going to be huge because they, Amazon just had a massive swells of, uh, traffic to those five, six, seven days. Um, but the conversion rates are, are probably going to suffer. So like, be, be aware of that, I would say.
Lazar: Yeah.
Yeah, [00:54:00] definitely. Uh, like one suggestion. Like for people that say, like, we all did everything and created literally every possible, like as variation, there is a huge chance that they missed it targets, um, other categories that they're highly relevant to the product that they're selling. So like things that can be like placed in a group, like frequently bought together.
Like if you're selling coffee, Maybe you would like to, to like, um, target coffee, canisters and that kind of stuff. Like something that really goes really well together. And like, can we have a really good experience with that? Like it's working pretty well for us. I always like to say it, like, it's not going to make you a millionaire.
But if you like do that kind of stuff, if you create posts, if you create videos, if you do DSP, if you do 10 different stuff that they're going to increase 5% each year, going to end up with like [00:55:00] growing your business for 50%, just because you did a lot of different stuff at the same time.
George: Yeah. And if you could also get some of that external traffic to come in at a lower cost, and you're engaging with people at a fraction of the price of what looks like a more and more expensive CPC bid that people keep getting with Amazon because it's competition increases.
You can then have a complete marketing communication structure in place. So you're re you're re-engaging with those who have engaged with your brand through display remarket, and you'll find them people who have considered your brand and you're re you're getting different groups of people and you're pushing traffic to them because that is something that.
I think sellers need to do more of now as well, because you're getting the bigger brands coming into this space on to Amazon and they come from that world. They [00:56:00] understand how. By a behavior work. They understand touch points. They understand, you know, so some products that are clearly impulsed, I've really cheap, easy to buy products you need at that point, you get it and you move on, but there are other ways to engage with the brand, but that's yeah.
Just wanting to add to your point.
Lazar: Yeah. It makes total sense, guys. I think we're talking like we're finishing our like third hour of our conversation. Should
Brent: we wrap
Lazar: it up? Sure. Because like, it's already an hour of talk. Like I know that you guys can talk for ages about this and I can like, definitely join the conversation, but I'm pretty sure that people are going to be bored about listening and both PPC for hours.
I know it's like wild PPC bunch podcast, but look, people want to do other stuff as well. Yeah. So thank you so much [00:57:00] for, for joining the call today and hopefully we're going to have lots of views.
George: Sounds good. My friend. Thank you.
Take care. Have fun. Bye guys. Bye.