This Issue's TLDR...

• Either the worst, or best, advice to take to crush it on Prime Day
• Actual data on the spillover effects from your off-Amazon marketing
• Time-tested frameworks to improve your sales copy

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BEST From Me

It's the most wonderful time of the year for the Amazon service providers, gurus, and content marketers: Prime Day!

They get to post about the event date as if they are breaking news!

They get to push out surface-level strategies and tips to win on Prime Day (which were probably recycled from last year) and solidify their status as Amazon thought leaders!

What a wonderful time.

Anyway, I'm not here to offer my Prime Day strategies for success.

Instead, I want to share some anti-advice. Or, maybe, my "contrarian tips" for winning on Prime Day.

You see, for many of us that have actually sold on Amazon, and are NOT big, massive, omni-channel brands, Prime Day can often be a let down.

Sales might only spike a little.

Or, sales may spike, but you lost money, and the "halo" of post Prime Day sales at higher margins that everyone promised didn't appear.

I get it. I've been there.

It turns out, Prime Day *is* a bit of a middle finger to the average Amazon seller.

But, be that as it may, I still want to arm you with some unconventional, perhaps contrarian, advice for Prime Day.

Tip 1: Prioritize Inventory Management Over Marketing Spend

Some brands and sellers aim to sell-through most, or all, of their stock in the days leading up to Prime Day, and on Prime Day.

My approach is to throttle my sales. I want to participate in Prime Day, but in a more measured way such that: 1) I'm generally holding my BSR relative to key competitors, 2) I'm winning some NTB customers, and 3) I'm not making too many sales to pure discount shoppers, who are unlikely to repeat as my customers.

Every brand and product will be different, but I try to cap my Prime Day sell-through to 30% of my on-hand stock, so I have 70% to sell in the post-Prime Day period at higher margin, and to give me a buffer for the FC receiving delays that always happen following an event period. (I've talked about this before on social media, but Amazon FCs balance inbound

"But, Jon, how can you throttle your sales when you have stock at FBA?"

Well, for the past two Prime Day events, I've throttled my sales by intentionally price suppressing my own listings.

(If you don't know how to do this, you set a max_price guardrail in Manage Your Inventory below your current price.)

In doing so, I've been able to capture sales post-Prime Day that are 1) higher margin and 2) available to me simply because my competitors stocked out.

Tip 2: Prioritize AOV Over Sales Volume

The game changed with virtual bundles earlier this year when Amazon moved them above-the-fold on detail pages.

Because of that, here's a strategy that you can employ with them for Prime Day:

1. Discount the "main component" (i.e., the ASIN PDP on which the virtual bundle will live) by a moderate discount of 10-15%.
2. Discount the virtual bundles -- which should feature 1-2 additional products -- by a higher discount of 25-30%.

Tip 3: Protect Your Downside

In this case, I'm talking about a few downsides:

1. Black Hat attacks that seek to tie up your inventory by purchasing large order quantities.
   • ACTION: Set maximum quantity limits. I generally like to look back at my order history, and adopt a pareto approach -- that is, set a quantity limit that allows for 80% of my largest orders to still be fulfilled.
2. Discount stacking that leads to your products being sold for well-below the expected promo price.
   • ACTION: As soon as your promos go live, buy your product yourself, as a customer. As of mid-2021ish, Seller Support will no longer cancel FBA orders that were incorrectly priced (and could mean BIG losses for you). So, the only way to *really* know if there's potential promo/discount stacking when in cart, is to go through check-out yourself.

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BEST From Me BONUSES

I've been feeling a bit snarky lately.

Or, rather, exhausted from a lot of the disinformation and posturing that happens in the Amazon ecosystem.

Some of which is from Amazon directly (see my tweet about the potential customer impact of Amazon's gating of Clinique); some of which is from various service providers in the space.

​ Bearded Egg FBA 🛠️ @guyfosel Amazon quietly started gating Clinique in January of this year. Then, at the end of March, Amazon excitedly sent out multiple emails celebrating Clinique's official launch on Amazon. Let's see how this Amazon exclusive is working out for all parties 👇 11:1 AM • Jun 21, 2024 3 Retweets 21 Likes Read 7 replies ​

​ Bearded Egg FBA 🛠️ @guyfosel Live look at what’s going on in the Amazon FBA reimbursement space right now, for the 10 of you that care: GetIDA: “Someone farted in the elevator!” Carbon 6: “It wasn’t us!” GetIDA: “We know who it is, but we won’t say. Everyone should check their own pants and the person… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1805959391591686595 8:40 AM • Jun 26, 2024 0 Retweets 9 Likes Read 2 replies ​

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BEST from Everyone Else

Best From X

This thread is SUPER important if you're building your brand off-Amazon and/or looking to leverage off-Amazon marketing to gain an edge on Amazon.

I'm not going to waste your time commenting on this here, because I want you to spend time reading this thread.

Go.Do.It.Now.

Olivia Kory @oliviaakory We’ve run hundreds of incrementality tests for brands selling across DTC and Amazon - here is what we’ve found. 1. 97% OF EXPERIMENTS SHOWED POSITIVE LIFT ON AMAZON. You’re not reading this wrong. Across a myriad of media channels and formats, nearly every experiment in our… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1806143264329814410 8:51 PM • Jun 26, 2024 11 Retweets 75 Likes Read 13 replies

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Best From LinkedIn

A lot of Prime Day advice is some variant of "optimize your product listings."

It's not bad advice, per se, it's just...more of a "what to do" vs "how to do it."

I hate that kind of advice.

So, I'll give you (some of) the "how"...

Use these time-tested copywriting frameworks from Neal O'Grady to make your product listing copy more compelling.

NOTE: I wouldn't touch the bullets or descriptions, so as to avoid indexing issues before Prime Day; instead, build out your sales copy in your images using these frameworks.

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Updates to Amazon Private Label Pathway

No updates this week.

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Back Story on the Amazon Private Label Pathway, ICYMI...

A few months back, I had a small group of coaching clients that were at the same point in their Amazon seller journeys.

I found myself answering the same questions, and pointing them to the same resources, so, in true Amazon fashion, I asked myself "What's the 1-to-Many solution here?" and built a Notion page of helpful resources, which I've called "Amazon Private Label Pathway."

You can get access to it here: https://auxo.gumroad.com/l/amazonpathway (it's free; but if you want to buy me a beer, I won't object)​

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