#681 – Last Second Prime Day Tips + Amazon Pricing Strategies

Join us for an engaging conversation with our returning guest, Benjamin Webber, as we explore a spectrum of e-commerce strategies with a spotlight on Amazon Prime Day tactics. Known for his innovative and entertaining approach to Amazon listings, Ben shares insights from his journey of transitioning from managing his own Amazon businesses to becoming a strategic advisor at ClearAds Agency. We discuss his role in expanding their services beyond advertising to provide full-service Amazon solutions. Alongside his current ventures, including partnering with a friend to scale a business and launching a product with Matt Altman, we speculate on how the timing of Prime Day near the 4th of July and its extended duration could impact traffic and sales.

Listen in as we uncover effective strategies for optimizing Amazon Prime Day sales. We outline tactics such as leveraging frequently bought together deals, utilizing Prime exclusive discounts, and targeting deals of the day. Ben offers a unique perspective on capturing conversions from cautious shoppers by running deals on the fourth day of Prime. Post-Prime Day, we emphasize the importance of using DSP for retargeting and employing coupons to convert pending sales and engage customers beyond the Prime Day excitement.

We also discuss enhancing Amazon listings for conversions and sales optimization through diversification. With tools like Amazon Marketing Cloud, we examine how businesses can gain a competitive edge by refining audience targeting and adapting to new algorithms. We touch on the potential of international market expansion, particularly in high-barrier markets like Germany, and the importance of strategic pricing. Ben shares valuable insights into analyzing sales data for optimal bidding and recognizing different customer behaviors throughout the day. Lastly, we highlight the benefits of exploring other sales platforms like Walmart and TikTok, while focusing on core competencies to sustain growth.

In episode 681 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley and Benjamin discuss:

• 00:01 – Amazon Prime Day Strategies and More
• 00:54 – Discussing E-Commerce Strategies
• 04:22 – Impact of Extended Prime Day
• 10:53 – Optimizing Amazon Prime Day Sales
• 13:13 – Post-Prime Day Sales Strategy
• 16:07 – Enhancing Amazon Listings for Conversions
• 19:42 – Enhancing Product Listings With Emotional Connection
• 24:01 – Optimizing Images for Amazon Conversion
• 28:35 – Amazon Sales Optimization and Diversification
• 29:00 – Optimizing Dayparting Ad Bids for Peak Times
• 34:04 – Expanding Market Reach With Pricing Strategies
• 39:21 – Product Management Strategies for Conversion Rates

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Today, we bring back a popular guest on the show and he’s going to talk about a wide variety of topics, such as Prime Day strategies, AMC, audience listing, optimization, keyword research and more. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I’m your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that’s completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we’ve got somebody who’s half serious but then also half fun and games with his Amazon listings and everything else in life. We’ve got Ben back on the show. How’s it going, Ben?

Benjamin:

Good thanks for having me.

Bradley Sutton:

So that reference there was. If you guys saw his earlier episodes, he has talked about, uh, some of his old listing. You know strategies like making funny listings that are like all parody and puns and stuff like that and having great success with it. So if you guys want to get Ben’s backstory and some of those older or older strategies, go to h10.me/379. And then the other one would be h10.me/529. And he’s talked about things that come from the best hiring practices to listing optimization, to cool hacks. I want to talk, you know, to see what’s going on with that nowadays about being your own Amazon transportation company, taking your own time. He has come up with some of the most unique things that we’ve talked about on this podcast. So, it’s like every year I look forward to bringing him on the show to see what new thing he’s going to be talking about, but first of all, you’re there in Charlotte. New thing he’s going to be talking about, but first of all, you’re there in Charlotte. So that’s why I’m wearing my Buzz City Charlotte Hornets hat here. Are you a LaMelo Ball fan yourself?

Benjamin:

He’s super fun to watch. He just needs to get injured less.

Bradley Sutton:

Yes, yes, he has definitely a unique shooting style. It’s kind of amazing that he can get so much range on that. But we’re not here to talk about basketball. You’re like, since the last time you talked, we talked, you’re now working for one of the top advertising agencies. Uh, in in the world. Uh, how did that come to fruition?

Benjamin:

So, I met George, probably with ClearAds, eight years ago, I think, at the first Billion Dollar Seller Summit, and we’ve been

Bradley Sutton:

That was where I met him for the first time too.

Benjamin:

Yeah, exactly that was the first real event that I went to. We’ve been friends for a while and continue to stay in touch and talk and communicate outside of the events. I was looking at exiting the current company that I built with my friends. I just needed to focus on different things. We had different priorities so it was time to move on. We talked about this, I think, a little bit last time. George was like hey, we’re trying to move into the full-service sphere where we’re doing listing, optimization, images, managing inventory, whatever people need outside of the advertising side, and we’re looking to build that team out. Can you help us with that? So, I came in as a strategic advisor with ClearAds to help with training the team on that, helping with building in the systems, building in the automations and getting them moved forward from just an advertising agency to somebody who can literally do everything in the Amazon space. From just an advertising agency to somebody who can literally do everything in the Amazon space.

Bradley Sutton:

I didn’t even realize that they were kind of like an all-in-one kind of thing. Now, that’s pretty cool. So then, have you completely exited your old Amazon businesses? You still involved with them, you still running any that are your own, or you just work in other people’s accounts.

Benjamin:

So I’ve exited those. I’m working. I’ve partnered up with a friend of mine who had a business that was just him by himself that he’d scaled up to doing like one and a half million and he didn’t know how to scale past that, wanted to figure out how to launch new products. So, I came on as a partner with that company. So, I’ve been helping to build and scale that company on the side and then I’m in the middle of launching a product with Matt Altman, who I think you’ve had on here a few times before as well.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool, cool now, real quick, just because of the timing of this episode. Um, we can actually talk a little bit about Prime Day. Depending on when this airs, you know, might be like day one of Prime Day for some people, or day two or something like that. Now I just want to get your general thoughts, first of all, on two things. Number one the timing of it being closer to 4th of July like do you think that matters or it’s going to have any effect and number two, it’s twice as long now. So those are the two big changes this year. What are your thoughts on if that’s going to change anything.  

Benjamin:

So, I think, if anything, there should be more traffic coming out of the 4th of July, because people wouldn’t have been searching, like usually after a holiday. You’ll see that little bit of a spike as people get back to buying the things that they needed they took a break from doing while they were traveling or spending time with family or not focused on it. So, honestly, I think the traffic level should be even higher than what you would expect, at least on the first day or two of Prime Day, which I think could be interesting, just because the slow sales of the holiday, combining with the usually slower three, four days before Prime Day that you typically see as people are waiting for those deals, it could lead to the first couple days being very, very big as far as traffic. Uh, then, as far as four days, I think that’s too long. Uh, I think it’s taking away from what kind of made Prime Day special, which was the quick deals you get them fast.

Benjamin:

People are running bigger discounts and now, because of the, I mean it’s clever for Amazon because people are going to have to be on Amazon more to see. Okay, during these eight hours or these 12 hours, what deals are running, what am I missing? So, they’re going to have to keep looking and checking. But that means that some of your deals are going to be missed by people who would have otherwise bought it and it also means that customers may think, oh, I’ll wait on this, I’ll buy it later, and then that deal passes and then they don’t buy it at all. So, I think that because of the, the way that it’s set up in structure over four days and the way that deals and things are going to break out, it’s going to probably end up hurting how the value of the deals and how efficient they are.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, uh, I think that’s going to be an impact as well. Um, now, what are some mistakes that you see, either your clients or you see out there on social media of some people with this year’s Prime Day that they’re making that you’re like correcting right away? Like what you’re planning to do this? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That’s not good. You got to go this route. You were talking a little bit offline about that.

Benjamin:

Yeah, I mean, I think people are just not looking at it strategically. They just hear prime day and think I have to run a deal and they think they have to do it across everything. But if there’s not a strategy for what you’re doing, if you don’t have reason behind whatever deal you’re running like, I think that I need to rank up on these. Like this will help me rank up on these terms, because my competitors won’t be running a deal. So, I’ll be able to pass them and get into this spot, and that’s great. But if you can’t stick in that spot, then how are you actually going to make money from it? And this is something I think I’ve talked to you about before. But the idea of deserve ranking where, if there’s a product that’s legitimately better than mine is a better offer and they’re in the top spot how much money do I want to pay to get into that top spot to then fall back. And if you’re doing that with deals, it’s the same structure. Let’s say that you’re currently making $10 a unit in profit on a product and you run a $5 discount on that product. So, let’s say it’s a $20 product, you make $10 or $25. I don’t know how math works. $25 product that you’re making $10 on, you run a 20% off discount on that. That’s $5. You’re now making, say, $5 on that. You have to sell literally double the units in order to justify it from a value perspective. And if that’s not going to help you coming out of Prime Day with a long-term ranking boost, then what’s the point of doing that Just running a deal to run a deal if it doesn’t help you in the long run?

Benjamin:

I focus everything on profitability, both short and long-term. But I think people can be very short-sighted in thinking I can get so many sales during Prime Day. I usually sell 50 a day. I usually sell 50 a day. I can sell 200 a day and that’s fantastic. But if you sell 200 a day and then that leads to you not having enough inventory to sell at full price later on, or you not selling 200 and not making your money back on it, there’s just a lot of things that can go into play from a strategic perspective where you’re not going to be successful or not as successful as you can be. Like you can put up huge numbers on Prime Day. But if you put up huge numbers on Prime Day and then July 20th through 30th, you’re terrible. Is it really worth it? And so, figuring out the math between the short-term and long-term benefit of when the product sells.

Bradley Sutton:

You mentioned deals. I think this is the first year that all the new kind of price structures and deal structures are in place, whether it’s like the coupon, the difference in now coupons instead of whatever it was, you know. It’s like per redemption, this and that and percentages, and then the deals of the day, prime day deals and price discounts. You got to have it all in one and you got to be minimum 20 percent of the median price or whatever the lowest price. You know, like there’s all these new things this year. Are you have? Has that affected how you approach this year’s prime day as far as what you’re suggesting to people they should do? As far as the deals, are you steering them towards price discounts, towards coupons, towards prime day deals? None of the above, just doing a sale price like what are you doing?

Benjamin:

Yeah. So I mean, if you can get the deal of the day, it’s always going to be the best for traffic. So if your goal is to get like, if you have a, if you’re a lifetime value seller, where you have a repeat commodity someone’s going to buy over and over and over and over again, that’s where I think Prime Day can be really useful and that’s where I do push deals on those type of products where if you can get somebody in and sure it’s cheap for the first one, but you know that the average buyer is going to come back three, four, five, six, seven times, then it justifies the discount. For one thing, with Prime Day, as far as deals go with non-commodities, what I’ve been kind of talking to people about doing are three different things. One, running frequently bought together deals. So deals to try and get frequently bought together tags, because you have extra traffic, people are going to be buying things. So if you’re launching a product, combining that with a existing product that already is selling well and already has traffic.

Benjamin:

Two, running the Prime exclusive price discounts, just because that’s typically with Prime Day, of the more normal deals it’s been the most successful.

Benjamin:

And then I mean the third, if you can get a deal of the day and you have the inventory and you have the margin to sustain it, that is a single best-selling thing that I’ve seen over the last few years on Prime Day. Outside of that, I think one of the things that I’ve been testing out or will be testing out is I have a lot of deals that I’ve been talking to people about running on the fourth day, because my theory and this obviously could be very wrong and people will get mad at me but my current theory is that there’s going to be a lot of traffic and a lot of deals that people are pushing on the first couple of days, and I think it’s the same thing as if you look at ad spend during that first like 12 hours. There’s going to be a ton of advertising spend and a lot of people aren’t going to have updated their budgets to where they can sustain that and I think there’s going to be a lot of cheap bids in certain categories that you can get from 5 pm to midnight, uh, each day, because people are going to be so focused on that front.

Benjamin:

The advertising spend is going to be so front loaded, but I think it’s going to be the same thing with deals, where that’s going to be very front loaded as well, because people are going to want to hit when there’s the most traffic but, for me if there are only deals running, if deals are not running for the full four days for people and if I can run mine on the last day, the people who went in and they looked at it and they said I want to buy this, but what other deals might come through, because Prime is running so long. You don’t know what’s still to come.

Bradley Sutton:

It’s kind of like you being the only one at the end of a day like 11 pm, 10 pm who still has a budget in your advertising just on a normal day, right? And then all of a sudden, you’re getting better bang for the buck because everybody’s out of budget and then you’re all of a sudden, the only deal in town, right? Kind of a similar concept.

Benjamin:

Exactly. yeah, and I do think that there’s. You’re also going to get the customer who’s like I’m going to wait and see what deals come through, and so if they don’t buy it on the first day, they don’t buy on the second day, they don’t buy on the third day, but on the fourth day they’re going. No other deals. You’re going to get sales versus on the first couple of days. People may want to see what’s coming next. So, I could see a lot of like the add to cart and cart abandonment for the first couple of days versus. I think the fourth day is going to be the best day for conversion.

Bradley Sutton:

Uh, what about a post prime day? Um, do you preach any techniques as far as, like, trying to maintain momentum? Uh, like you know, you playing with pricing at all, playing with your advertising budgets, etc. Or just going back to 100, back to as if it was last month.

Benjamin:

Oh, no, definitely playing, definitely playing with those. I mean one if you’re using DSP, there’s so much traffic from Prime Day that you can be retargeting. That’s very, very helpful and, with the AMC audiences and things that you can build out now like, you can get some really, really useful information, some really actionable traffic, I think, coming out of it. The other thing that I’m going to be doing is, for the first week after, I’m going to be running coupons on a number of products for the exact reason that we were just talking about, where I think they’re going to be people who miss things on Prime Day, or they added them to their cart and then they forgot about it, and then they go back and like, oh, the deal’s over, okay, well, there’s still a coupon, I’ll just buy it anyway. So, I want to clean up those sales that are still pending. That didn’t happen. So, between running potentially a higher brand tailored promotion discount for card abandoners and then running those coupons, I’m trying to clean up the sales that I guess I’ll say are pending.

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Bradley Sutton:

All right, you mentioned AMC. I think that’s something that in the last year or so has really come on, even for just regular sellers who might not have had access to audiences and things like that. For the average Joe and Sally out there six, seven-figure sellers who might not have had exposure to this because maybe they weren’t doing DSP or they didn’t have an agency working for them. Some of the stuff that’s just available for anybody in Seller Central advertising console. Now, as far as AMC and audiences go, what is your top two things that is going to bring people instant value that they should be looking into, that they probably didn’t even know was there if they haven’t heard about this.

Benjamin:

I mean converting audiences to category ads is one thing. They’re going to show you the audiences that are buying and you can move that into a category targeting ad. And getting into your category and finding because you can niche that down so much In a lot of the major categories where it’s like, let’s say, you’re in some kind of supplement, if you aren’t narrowing that down, you’re going to waste a bunch of money. AMC lets you figure out how to narrow that down profitably and where you’re not missing out on things. Uh, the other piece that I would say is not necessarily AMC relevant, but I think it’s still relevant to advertising is just business pricing or not business pricing, uh, business advertising, uh, and the placement bidding, because the number of people whose accounts I’ve looked at, that are selling to businesses and don’t realize it or selling to business buyers and aren’t pushing advertising on that is crazy because the results from B2b advertising have been unbelievable for the majority of the clients that we push them on. Uh, we have one client who their uh typical ACOS for a regular ad was around 36 percent uh, b2b it was 7%. Because they’re getting so many multiple purchasers but also or multiple units in one purchase, but also just because on the Amazon business pages there’s just not the same amount of people advertising, and so you can rank up in ads for cheaper than you could other places.

Bradley Sutton:

Now, you know, there’s so much talk about, oh, the sky is falling for keyword research, or blah, blah, blah, blah, and I’m like no, the same stuff that I’ve done for years is still working. Now, every time algorithms shift and there’s new things, of course you have to take into consideration, like three years ago I couldn’t you know there was no such thing as Rufus. Now, you know, Rufus is not a huge thing, like barely anybody uses it because it sucks, you know, from the consumer side. But it’s going to get more popular and so I’m getting ahead of it and I look at my listings and I’m like all right, this question that’s auto-complete here is not even answered to my list. I better go answer it to make sure, Rufus, you know so. So of course, there’s going to be new stuff, that, that that we do here or there.

Bradley Sutton:

But what about you? Like, what is different in 2025 for you and all the clients you advise as far as the general structure of listings, whether we’re talking about, uh, you know, are you doing your, your, your keywords differently? Are you doing um, are you doing your titles differently? Your, your image strategy has anything, or are there any major shifts that you’ve made? Uh, uh, in this day and age, compared to what you’ve been doing the last couple of years.

Benjamin:

Uh, yes and no. So I think that the way that I’ve always done listings is a little and we’ve talked about this but it’s a little bit different, where a lot of the listing copy that I put was focused on the emotions of the buyer and why they’re trying to, why they’re purchasing the product, which gets into the semantic SEO that people are talking about now. That’s the big buzzword, Yep.

Bradley Sutton:

That’s one of the interesting things. Like all that stuff is not new, like it’s not like. Oh, all you had to do is keyword stuff for listings in 2020. No, you’ve never only had to keyword stuff. You always should be making a emotional connection, but it’s just maybe more, even more important nowadays.

Benjamin:

Exactly, and I think that’s where the like getting more hooks into it and into the listings. So, like instead of just saying now to find a product in my house that a bowl will hold soup, saying that it’s double pleaded to handle hot soup without breaking, or things like that, that like it’s looking for those differentiators even more now than you were before, where you have to have a. When people are asking questions and this is going into Rufus a little bit and into semantic a little bit but when they’re asking questions like what is the best this, what is the best for this? Like if you’re answering those questions in a way like, instead of saying I’m the best for this, you’re answering those questions in a way like, instead of saying I’m the best for this, you’re saying this is the solution for this, so I’m the best because I have this. So, it’s just making sure that you have the best parts about your product, and one of the things that we’re doing a lot more now is focusing in on who we’re actually competing against when we’re coming up with those features. So, if I am selling a bowl, my listing is going to be talking about why my bowl is better than other bowls. It’s not going to be talking about why a bowl is better than a plate for holding food. Why a bowl is better than a plate for holding food, and I think a lot of people at least back in the day, because it was very easy to stuff keywords into like this bowl is great for holding x, y, like this and this and this, and it’s good for dinner and all these other things. It’s like okay. yes.

Bradley Sutton:

no crap Sherlock.

Benjamin:

But why is your bowl better than the other bowl? Why should someone buy my bowl over yours? Uh, I think I. I think I’ve used this example before, but we sold uh straws a lot back in the day, uh, before we figured out that they were probably bad for the environment. We shouldn’t do that, uh, but we were at one point the ranked number one on plastic straws and we got there by putting BPA free in front of our listing, and this is creating a differentiation that didn’t really exist, but other people weren’t marketing it, that theirs were BPA free. Literally every single straw in the world is BPA free. There’s plastic but people would go in they’d see it and say, oh, this is BPA free and that that isn’t. I should buy this one. And we let off our title, like the opening uh 10 characters, or eight characters, whatever. BPA, we’re BPA free, and so that’s what people see when they’re going through and they’re looking at the in search. So, instead of just this wall of 100 pack plastic straws, 100 pack plastic straws, 100 pack plastic straws is the BPA free.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh, this is the one that’s friendly to the environment. Even though all of them are

Benjamin:

right, why would I not buy it’s like if all of them are the same price and this one is this and the others aren’t, why wouldn’t I buy this?

Bradley Sutton:

Yep uh, it has nothing to do with keywords, because it’s not like people are that that keyword would probably not show up in Helium 10 or brand analytics or search group reference, because nobody’s typing in BPA free and thinking they’re going to get straws. But it’s these trigger words, that that that you know, like you talk about what people, what’s important to people, that that’s what’s going to help the conversion rate for sure.

Benjamin:

Exactly, and it’s not just conversion right now, like, like, I think keywords are great for getting people to find your product, but you have to convert twice. The way that I look, you have to convert on the click through and you have to convert on the sale. And if you’re so focused on keywords and this is something that I think people are pivoting more and more away from keywords and getting to this but keywords are obviously still incredibly relevant because how else are they going to find you.

Bradley Sutton:

Exactly?

Benjamin:

But it’s taking it to the next level of kind of structure where it’s okay, I have my keywords and I have my everything dialed in, from using Magnet, Cerebro, the variety of tools, and now I have them on my search page. Why are they picking me over somebody else and that’s what I’ve been pushing with people a lot lately is having that. Why, in the first 55 characters, having a uh, don’t uh black bomb amazon, but having a uh, fake uh tag hanging off of your product in the main image that has the big keyword that you want people to see or has a feature that you want people to see and be aware of? Uh, because that their ai won’t pick up the fact that it’s not real. If you do a proper Photoshop on it. Things like that that are pushing the envelope a little bit but really help with the conversion rate and the click-through rate and aren’t actually your product could easily have a tag on it.

Bradley Sutton:

Sure.

Benjamin:

Or putting a I know people who do fake boxes like whatever you want to do, but something to differentiate your picture from just. Here’s a wall of the same picture.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, we talked about both click-through rate and conversion rate. Now we have great data points that are available in Amazon and now with Helium 10, like search, create performance right, where you can see at the keyword level, your click-through rate and conversion rate compared to competitors. But instead of just blindly saying, oh, my conversion rate is worse, I’m going to go ahead and lower my bids in advertising you got to understand why or I’m going to block. You know my conversion rate’s not great, so let me just go ahead and stop advertising because I’m not going to gain organic rank. You better ask yourself why, if that’s an important keyword, why are people clicking through to your competitors?

Benjamin:

at a better rate than you?

Bradley Sutton:

Why are they converting?

Benjamin:

100%. You have to be looking at the why behind it. And it also may be like maybe you’re not bidding enough to get to the people who are buying. Like if you’re let’s say you’re bidding 30 cents and top of search is a dollar and top of search is converting at three to one against the placement that you’re at the bottom, if you test top of search that may actually spending more on the ad may improve your sure your cost per conversion because you’re in a better place than the people. Like you’re showing up in front of buyers instead of lookers.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, people don’t realize. When you get an impression in search career performance or in an ad console, you know it’s not. Uh, you know obviously there’s top of search, you know you can see that, but still, it’s like, uh, in search group performance it’s one impression, whether you’re a page one position one or page one position 23 or something. It’s very well possible that that 23 is not even seen. It still counts as an impression. It’s not like Amazon can read the buyer’s. Why in Helium 10, we’ve got the keyword tracker rank right next to it so you can see oh, this is the conversion rate at this rank. What’s going to happen if I go up?

Bradley Sutton:

So, like some people, I think they don’t go deep enough into the. There’s so many amazing data points that Amazon is giving. They don’t go deep enough into it. They just look at the kind of like outside of it and make decisions based on not enough information. Um, speaking of data points that Amazon has made available in the last few years, I know you guys, uh, I believe, or at least you were, you know, using Pacvue for a lot of your advertising software and obviously Pacvue same as Helium 10 and uh, both tools, have day partying. What is your day partying strategy? Like, like when you look at somebody who didn’t have day partying and you’re like are you looking at you know days of the week? Are you looking at times of day? Are you pausing campaigns? Are you decreasing bids by a certain percentage on the unprofitable? Are you increasing bids depending on what you see? How do you guys utilize a day partying?

Benjamin:

So it honestly depends on the client, which obviously I think everyone would say. But we look at it from a hour to hour perspective for each day. So, we’re looking to see how many sales are coming through each hour and what those cost. And if on Sunday at 6 pm sales are really good but on Monday at 6 pm sales are really bad, then we would be using day parting to cut the bids on Monday but leave them up on Sunday. So, it’s not just a strict day by day or hour by hour. It is combining the two together to look at where there’s the most traction or the least traction.

The other thing that we’ve been testing out is with some products that we’re doing poorly late at night, like in the I guess what would it be Eastern time from like 9pm to 3am Eastern? We’ve actually been bumping up some bids on those because we noticed that we are just by going in and in some cases manually looking, but adjusting around, we were able to see that we weren’t getting top of search as much during those time periods, and so looking at where we’re placing during those time periods has been a big push lately to try and figure out what impact that has and why we’re dropping down.

Benjamin:

The other thing is when a lot of people are using day partying themselves and you can figure out when your competitors are using it, which is one of the things we’re looking at as far as, like, the average cost per click during those time periods to figure out. Okay, so the competitors aren’t pushing during these time periods to try and take advantage of when they are backing off. If we can push and the ones that are going to convert, we’ll take all of those sales, uh, as opposed to having to compete for them and the others where, like, let’s say, on an average time, we’re bidding a dollar 50 and they’re bidding a dollar 50, we’re competing for that spot and splitting it. But if they drop to a dollar, sure, and we go to a dollar 50, then any sale that comes through that time weekend. Not any, but you know the concept.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, yeah, alright, that’s good to know. I just started getting into it myself. I haven’t had the time to really look at the numbers and I was just kind of shocked when I actually looked into the.

Benjamin:

It’s crazy.

Bradley Sutton:

The variance with performance People. I think we just get in this mindset sometimes that oh yeah, this is my ACOS and this is all. My campaigns are the same and throughout the day. It’s like you know there’s different, just like there’s different buyer kinds of buyers at different spots of the page. There’s different buyers at different times, and what works for you might work something completely be the opposite for me. Like, like, imagine if it’s, if it’s like a product. That is something that’s really based on the time of day. Somebody who, a professional, is probably working. They’re the ones who buy this product, maybe eight to five. They’re not really shopping for it, but they’re heavy. They’re the ones who are shopping at nine o’clock at night for this product when they get home from a long day at work. But then you can have a complete opposite situation. So, guys, check out whether you have Pacvue or Helium 10. It’s no extra charge, just start using. Look at that information about where your performance is. Uh, um, is that? Are you doing anything? You as in you personally, or you know, uh, ClearAds as far as TikTok shop or other platforms, or are you guys mainly Amazon?

Benjamin:

Mainly Amazon. I’ll be honest, I am not done much with social media just because I don’t like it personally. So I just actually last week, started working with TikTok shop. So the next time we talk I’ll have some things for you. But ClearAds we support people with suggestions, but we are not currently running it for anybody. We did for about a year for a couple of clients and then we just moved away from it to focus on one thing versus trying to be what is it? The Jack of all-trades master of none. So we wanted to stay focused on what we were very, very good at and prioritize that.

Bradley Sutton:

Do you suggest to people who are only selling in Amazon USA or only selling in Amazon Europe to diversify at least across Amazon, like, hey, go to UK, go to Germany, et cetera?

Benjamin:

Oh, absolutely.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, any trends you’re seeing there, like there’s a country that’s really coming up, or man, I’ve seen people that they got more profit margin from Germany compared to US, or just any general things you can talk about. Diversification of countries in the Amazon ecosystem.

Benjamin:

So, one I see diversification as a route to work around tariffs. If you’re going to be tariffed heavily in the US but you can sell in the UK and Germany and EU, like moving to different marketplaces for those Chinese suppliers is a way to potentially combat that a little bit and can get you to larger order sizes, which means that your cost per unit should go down, which would help offset some of the tariffs. So that’s one aspect of it, and I do think people should be on Walmart and TikTok and everything else. Just because I have avoided TikTok doesn’t mean that other people should tuck test. I mean that other people should, uh. But as far as specific marketplaces, I think that, uh, the German marketplace for products that have testing and qualifications required can be really, really good because it’s so hard to get in. So, if you have, if you’ve done your products correctly and you have the, you can pass that barrier of entry. Then I think that that’s a marketplace that’s really open because it requires such high-quality products in order to get in. So, if you look at it and there’s going to be less competition because there’s higher, a higher barrier of entry. So, if you can get in, I think that’s really, really helpful.

Benjamin:

I also think that it’s easier to launch in some of the other countries. So, I have a friend who uh launched a product in uh. Well, they’ve launched a lot of products, but uh launched a product in the UK that has 3 000 plus reviews now and they’re now bringing that into the US and they’re going to bring that product in with the backing of all these reviews that they otherwise wouldn’t have unless they did something sketchy. And so, I think using other marketplaces to launch and then getting some backing and some proof for customers is a way that you can potentially get into some more competitive markets in the US if they haven’t been tapped into in the other marketplaces yet.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah, that’s a good point. Sure, now might be kind of quiet on the Terra front, but it doesn’t matter who the president is. These kinds of things can change on the daily basis, so you can never be too complacent. But if all your eggs are not in the US bucket, or if you’re just selling in Germany and all of a sudden there’s a strike in Germany, a transportation strike, well, all of your income goes to zero because you’re only in one marketplace. That’s very good. Uh, good points. Now, before we get to your um, your 60 second tip of the week uh, how can people find you guys? Uh on the interwebs, uh out there these days?

Benjamin:

Uh, so, uh, clearadsagency.com uh is the easiest way to, I do free audits for anybody who’s looking for one for their account. If you want to reach me directly, you can email me at ben at clearads.co.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, awesome. All right, what’s your 60 second strategy of the week you’d like to share with the audience?

Benjamin:

Price test your products to figure out what price you should actually be at. In a lot of cases, if you raise your price, you can potentially sell more units because you get into a different bracket as far as what the customer is looking at. So if there’s a certain buyer who buys at $9 and then the next tier of buyers wants to buy at $17, but you’re at $14, then you’re not hitting either of those markets, so you’re not in the right place for either of those to get sales, and so you’re just going to be getting clicks from both of them and one’s going to be like, oh, that’s a little too expensive, and the other is going to be like, oh, that’s too cheap, I don’t trust it. So, looking at what price point you need to be at to establish trust and to be in the market where you should be.

Benjamin:

We have a case study on our website from a client that I did price testing where I lowered some products and raised the price on other products. They do about $650,000 a month in revenue and from just that one month of price testing they made $18,000 more in actual profit from one month of price testing, and that maintained throughout the rest of it. So, if you’re not looking at where you should be, there are a lot of. Another one that I’ll say with pricing is if you’re priced between 9.99 and 11.99, you should probably be priced at 9.99 to get into what used to be small and light, but whatever the FBA I forgot what it’s called, yeah. I forget what it’s called now, but you save, I think, 74 cents a unit in fees. So, you’re offering your customer a significant discount without losing much from a profitability perspective. Yeah, discount without losing much from a profitability perspective? Um, yeah, so those are two things with pricing.

And the last thing I’ll say, uh, in regards to pricing, is always have a reason for why you’re doing it. Uh, it’s the same thing as if you’re running a Amazon prime day deal, like, if you’re dropping the price, it should be because you think you’re going to make more money in the long run. If you’re dropping the price, it should be because you think you’re going to make more money in the long run because of you dropping the price. If you’re raising the price, it should be because you think you’re going to make more money, whether that’s through ranking, whether that’s through increasing the profitability on the product, whether that’s through visibility, because you’re going to show up in other places now, or you’re trying to use that to launch something else, or whatever that case may be, make sure that you have a rationale behind what you’re doing super important, like I.

Bradley Sutton:

I do this one product, uh, that I manage for like a public case study, but it’s a real, you know somebody’s real product. It’s this hemp pain cream and it went out of stock for a couple months, months, but during that time I had them redo their creatives Like they hadn’t done that in like three, four or five years, and crazy conversion rate difference when, when it came back in stock. But then at another time I also raised the price like $2. I think at first it was on accident, at first, I was just trying to raise it, but then I did one of those things where I’m like, all right, I’m going to raise it up. You know, before I don’t know what, it was like a Black Friday or Prime Day or something, so I could do a, you know bigger discount off. And then I forgot to turn it back and then the sales drastically increased, increased after raising the price $2, you know, um and so, like you never know but, but, but, testing and that’s just, that’s just the general thing. What all the topics we talked about, guys, today is not set and forget it.

Bradley Sutton:

Your advertising strategy is going to change your keyword research strategy? Little bits of it. It’s going to change your, your listings, you know should not be stale. Year after year, your, your, your images, your, your creatives. You know bits of it. It’s going to change your, your listings, you know should not be stale. Year after year, your, your, your images, your, your creatives. You know like you gotta be flexible because, um, you know things, you know buyer behavior changes and so test things, uh, figure out what’s what works, what doesn’t work, and go from there. I think you’d be surprised at how you know the audience might be surprised about how many people don’t do these things. So, the fact that you’re doing it already puts you at a uh advantage. Well, uh, ben, when’s the next time we get to see you? You’re going to go to Accelerate, or where are you going to be?

Benjamin:

I’ll be, I’ll be on an Accelerate in September.

Bradley Sutton:

Awesome, Awesome! Well, I’ll be seeing you at Amazon Accelerate. And you guys having a booth there this year?

Benjamin:

No. I just go there as a seller.

Bradley Sutton:

And uh, okay, we’ll just look for somebody with a team with ClearAds shirts and they’ll be able to help you guys out with now not just advertising, but all in one. So thanks, Ben, and you’ve got to still teach me some pickleball and or tennis. Tennis, I’m scared of you a little bit. I think I might be only able to handle pickleball. He’s a former professional tennis player.

Benjamin:

Well, he’s an instructor. I played in college. I never played professionally. We can stretch the truth.

Bradley Sutton:

We can stretch it a little bit here. I’m at that age where I’m like alright, I think I might need to start considering pickleball, because basketball is too hard on my knees right now. But anyways, we’ll get that going soon too.

Benjamin:

Sounds good. Yeah, we definitely need to.

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