How DTC Brands Should Prep for Amazon Black Friday After Prime Day

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“year for year, but average order value would actually drop. I think what consumers are looking for is”

value for money right now. It isn't necessarily the cheapest product. If you sell a premium product, that consumer knows it, they're just waiting for that deal. They need to get it at a better price than they can today. The biggest concern for consumers right now, no matter how much you want your customer to purchase where you want them to purchase, they're going to purchase where they want to purchase. The AI operating system for e-commerce. Just a quick gut check for brand owners and media buyers. Have you started your Black Friday Cyber Monday planning yet?

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Cyber Monday today. It's all killer, no filler. I'm Eric, and I'm back with Tyler, who leads the Amazon team over at Pilot House. Talk a little bit about Prime Day, October Prime Day, as well as past Prime days, and what they're sort of portending for this year's Black Friday Cyber Monday on

“Amazon. Welcome back to the show Tyler. How are you? Thanks Eric. Doing well? How are you doing?”

Real good. Have it a great fall here. Got a big D to C Dines event coming up in Vancouver at the end of the month that we just got a new venue for because it's filling up so much, which is great. We're going to have like 50-year-old time. Yeah, awesome. So talk to me about, I was just asking you previously about like Prime Day, and I remember because Amazon's constantly like experimenting with how they roll out, how many Prime days they do, what's been the story

with Prime Day this year? Yeah, so Amazon did a four-day event in June. They have historically done it in July. They moved it to June. This year, and they've also been expanding the window at the Prime Deal, like it started with one day, two days, and now it's four days in the summer, and then they also have the October by Fall Prime, which is a two-day event as well. And obviously

“got Black Friday Cyber Monday, but that's everywhere, but I think, you know, Amazon spreading out”

their deal days into Summer and Fall, and there's some really cool insights that I think line up with some wider economic trends that are happening right now. That can maybe help us prep for Black Friday Cyber Monday. Love that. In treating, tell me more, what are these trends,

and what did you when did you first see them? So right now, especially in June Prime, so Summer Prime,

we saw that a lot of consumable type products had really large increases year over year, but average order value actually dropped. So the larger, more classic, like, big ticket items, didn't perform as well during these deal days. It was actually consumables, like paper products, toiletries, these products that people are buying consistently and commonly, and they stock up on those deal days. And you're starting to almost see like a more savvy consumer,

piling during a deal day. Super interest. So not like conspicuous consumption. It's things that

they're, they're just trying to plan ahead financially for the years, stocking up on things, smart. That's that's an interesting finding. What does it mean? So first of all, we saw this for both Summer Prime and Fall Prime. So you saw both of, like, all these categories that are commonly purchased throughout the year. So huge increases on these deal days. The brands that we manage, they, the ones that perform the best were consumable type products. So these products that you would

get a subscription for or purchase throughout the year. Some of them did triple digit percentage

increases. So we were looking at 150 percent plus year over year on this October Prime event.

And some of those brands actually did better in the two days for the Fall Prime event than the four days in the June event. So what that could suggest is that even from that Summer event, those customers are becoming even more savvy and prepping doubling down doubling down in October.

“So that is a really interesting insight. And I think that'll likely continue going into Black”

Friday and Cyber Monday. What does that do to a company, if they get, what does that do to a company's bottom line over time, right? It just means that their discount, it's the ultimate example of, like,

discounting things that a brand was going to sell anyway. Potentially, right? I think they are

conditioning the consumer right now to expect these deal days and wait for it. It doesn't mean they're not buying it throughout the gap periods in between, right? But you might, you actually do see it tailor off prior to deal day events in like that month, month and a half prior and then post as well. So my question is, what does that mean? Because I'm sure we probably had some clients that are in the other category of that aren't, you know, disposable consumables. What are any thoughts on

how brands like that who might be listening can think about trying to break through? Is it really honing in on, you know, problem solving of your product or like really driving home the value,

“really cutting deeper, what do you think? Yeah, so I think what consumers are looking for is value”

from money right now. Isn't necessarily the cheapest product? So if you sell a premium product, that consumer knows it, they're just waiting for that deal day to get it at a better price than they can today. And what you're seeing with these big ticket items is they're not growing as much year over year. But there's also a theory that I have that these consumers also know that Black Friday, Sapper Monday are the biggest discounts of the year. So they might be waiting for that period,

knowing that we have a more savvy consumer these days, for that period to get those big ticket items. That makes sense. I hope you're right for the sake of our big ticket advertiser's out there. Yeah. And for the consumers that couldn't wait, they probably did buy it in October Prime, but I think majority of them that are willing to wait. The theory is that they'll probably purchase in that window. And consumers who are on the consumable side may triple down this

Black Friday, Sapper Monday. Yeah. Yeah. Because if you saw that from June to October, whatever you're going to see from October to Black Friday, Sapper Monday. And I do have some stats about some of these category laggards that I think are interesting, like headwelling,

“category laggards. So that's what I might call the podcast. Headphones were down, tablets were down,”

and wearable tech was down and televisions were down. So a lot of these types of products that you would expect to see up during that period, didn't necessarily see that big of an increase in October Prime, like consumable categories like household cleaning, paper products, personal hygiene, pet food, also major increases here. It's the savvy consumer, but it's also the squeeze consumer, right? Like that's what it is more than it's like having to be savvy about this kind of thing.

Yeah. I looked into the larger economic backdrop just to see how is the behavior that we're seeing on these deal days, matching up with what's happening in the water market right now. So there was on the Kinsey study and survey. And the biggest concern for consumers right now is inflation,

they did a survey, and those consumers said they're planning on money saving behaviors,

going into the holiday season. So I think both of those things together are likely contributing to what we're seeing, and they're being a more savvy consumer these days. This episode is brought to you by Focal, the AI asset management platform for creative teams. Everyone working in D to C uses an LLM now, but almost everyone uses it in their own silo. Your media buyer and your creative strategists each have their own chats, and neither knows what the

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that last and really stand the test of time. Like if you're one of those type of products, I just hit a podcast with Viper, you know, automotive, the workshop stool company, and I'm like, if you're, if you've got a really great story around being a really high quality product, like it feels like that's, that's the play this year. Yeah, and I think that's actually a really good call-o because consumers aren't necessarily buying the cheapest product. They just want to get the

product that they already like at a better price than what they could buy it for today. So I think going into these deal days, it's not about necessarily undercutting the lowest competitor, out there if you feel like you have a better differentiator. So just make sure that you're communicating that in your content, and also make sure that you're leading into those deal days or building awareness or underproduct because retargeting is very much a thing during those deal days. These consumers

are doing a research ahead of the deal day. So you can get in front of them before Black Friday Cyber Monday or these October and Summer Prime events, and then retarget them on the day of,

“but I think what matters is you're messaging and you're positioning of your product,”

so that that consumer thinks and knows they're getting value with your product, they're just not buying it at the price that it is today. So what's the best, and give me an example of messaging strategy you'd use now to prime customers for Black Friday, pardon the pun? I know. So I think it really matters about, like, what does your ICP or target customer actually care about? Why are they choosing your product over any other competitor if you eliminate price

from the picture? And it's just making sure that you're able to get that story across then quickly, right? And I think the harder it is for them to find it on your product page, or if you explain it in a convoluted way, they're likely going to not understand that full value. So if you can still get the value across, they're still behavior that's suggesting that they'll purchase the higher product, higher price product. It just needs to be at a value that

they deem to be great for the value that they're getting back based on the differentiators that you've highlighted for them. Is there anything you could do in your listing now to be like, and we do killer Black Friday sales, or something just to like really, you know, prime them to come back and make sure you said you can't do that. You can't add that in there.

images. Like, we're going to do that with some brands. But you definitely can't run that in like a brand

“banner, or like an add on Amazon. But I think leading up to the deal day, you can try things like that.”

Even with the product images or something like that, you can have a little like count down to prime day. I don't know. That's probably crazy, but I will say there's like definite gray area, and you just have to be willing to take that risk leading into the deal day to try things like that.

And what I always say is that one point Amazon told vendors that and sellers that they couldn't

include anything on their listing images, they all had to be white backgrounds. And now you have annotation and lifestyle images today. It's because sellers kept pushing the envelope there, and it actually drove better conversion rate for Amazon. So they're like, oh, there's actually beneficial for us. So I think you can always push the envelope. That's from the marketing baby. Exactly. That's long as it's marketing. As long as you're not getting your listing taken down.

“And then you just to see what they entirely. Like that's what you don't want that.”

So anything else going into prep for black like at this stage, we are it's October 20th.

What else is on your mind prepping for a black Friday cyber money in this environment?

One thing and stat that I didn't call out was that more consumers look off platform as well. So they were looking at omnichannel deals. So they weren't just looking at Amazon. They were looking at Walmart target DTC sites. So I think not only is that consumer getting more savvy on Amazon. They're also getting savvy with looking at the best deal off Amazon as well. During that same deal period, knowing that these other competitors that they're on are also

loving deals. And then those channels are trying to switch those customers over by giving like money back guarantees and things like that. So I don't know if there's like a specific or explicit action that comes out of that. But if you are more than just Amazon, keep that in mind during these deal days. Is that that customer is looking elsewhere? Yeah. And then so the consumer, the consumable product owners maybe that have seen this big spike

through the past primed days or primed for a new one on black Friday cyber money. What's your stance on whether they should be in all of these marketplaces? In our advertiser ecosystem on the news under there's marketplaces are trying to make a bigger and bigger splash. There'd be coming, you know, brand owners are becoming more and more aware of their options there. What's your

take on how omnipresent they should be? So, you know, I've always been at the mindset that you

no matter how much you want your customer, let's say to purchase where you want them to purchase,

“they're going to purchase where they want to purchase and you should be accessible anywhere”

and everywhere knowing that you want to still pick up that customer who's still maybe your ICP that prefers to purchase from Amazon, from Walmart, from Target. So I think it's actually like the distribution and access answer. It's like you just want to be available because if you're not, they might go and grab your competitor who is listed there. Yeah. Do we offer services at pilot hosts across all marketplaces or is it just Amazon? Right now it's just Amazon, but it's something

that we would like to expand into because we're starting to see this behavior. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense and the ad environment too, right? Like just the ad environment adds a whole other dimension to it. I know it's Amazon's fastest growing part of their business, I think it was sort of announced this past year and most profitable exactly. Yeah, it's advertising baby. Anything on that advertising side that's changed or that you're excited about to leverage or use

headed into Black Friday? So at the end of October, Amazon has been trialling they put this through a beta where you can advertise to get reviews. This is a very new thing for Amazon and they said they're going to make this available at the end of October. So what this means is maybe this isn't relevant going into Black Friday, Cyber Monday, but with this ad type, you can retarget customers that purchase your product

with this advertising or advertising to get a review from them. So selling to more customers

leave a review, which actually could be a worthwhile investment for you afterwards. The one thing

is I'm giving this advice without us actually having access to the tool yet and being able to advertise yet to know what that cost is to actually get someone to review your product and what I do know is that you're not paying per review, you're paying for the click. Yeah, so there's an opportunity that they review your product. Well that's one to keep an eye on for sure. Yeah, so I think I think that is one to watch for sure, but I think pairing that with Black Friday, Cyber Monday could be

really good retargeting effort afterwards to try and build a new review, especially if that's

“something that you need to do very similar call. And then the other thing is going into Black”

Friday and Cyber Monday, if there's terms that you want to win on that day, it's not about winning

it a week before. It's building your rank today starting your round now. Yeah, right? Probably quarters before to build and maintain your rank because one thing that is certain is that the top brands in that category perform the best. So you need during these deal days, right? So you need to build your rank, especially for the keywords that you're deemed to be important for your brand. What real quick, like what you mentioned, like you should be doing it now, obviously you should

be doing it all the time, you should be doing it before, but if a brand really was, you know, they have traction, but maybe they don't have the traction on the exact keywords they want.

If they started now, like what would a quick protocol look like to actually start

“ranking for a keyword that you're not super competitive in right now? So I think you have to”

make sure that you're aligning your advertising strategy with your content strategy. Do you have that keyword in your title, your item highly in your bullets, product description, a plus, and then how are you building out your campaigns? Is it a worthwhile keyword for you to actually build specific campaigns to target that keyword? And then you can manage your placement modifiers on that to specifically make sure that you're top of search and all your

ads for that keyword leading up to the deal day. So there's things like that from the tactical side that you can do, you can't do it for every keyword, especially if it's like medium to long tail. So there's different strategies there, but I would say if there's one that you know you can win on and it has decent volume and can lead to a lot of purchases, definitely build out those individual campaigns around it. Then you can rank up based on that. Nice. And no good

base that we like. I usually like to end with Bayzo's gossip. There's no good Bayzo's gossip is there? They're probably, I swear it's something. I'm just searching. Is there something? Lordan Sanchez, Bayzo's has her eye on the White House according to Pop Crush. We'll see divorce rumors. No, nothing good. Nothing juicy. We're talking about on this podcast. Well, thanks for coming back on the DC podcast. I know this is such a crazy time of year for you guys and I know you have a lot

“on the go. As always, if you want to work with Tyler, you want to work with Tyler,”

let us go to pilothouse.co and sign up and then yeah, otherwise, man. We're going to have to have you back on our rundown format where we'll have you and it's someone else and it will, it's like I'm slight like a talk show debate style format. Who would I be debating against? Who do you think? I don't know. Maybe we like, yeah, I don't, we'd have to think. It's not really a debate. It's more of just like you're both usually agreeing on things. But we could pick another traffic source

like Google or someone from the Meta team or, you know, okay, yeah, let's do it. Let's try it out. All right. Thanks a lot, man. Okay, thanks there. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you're not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now at Direct to ConsumerAllWornWord.co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been The Deities He podcast. We'll see you next time.

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