We Tracked 5 Years of Prime Day Data… Here's What Actually Works

We Tracked 5 Years of Prime Day Data… Here's What Actually Works Unknown Speaker: So first up, I want to talk a little bit with you guys just about conversion rates. As you've probably heard us talk about before, the monthly average of conversion rates is around 9.8%. It kind of fluctuates anywhere between 9% to 10% based on the day of the week. And even when we're looking at July's stats for 2018, it was averaging about a 9.6%, 9.8% for the month. And then boom, Prime Day happens on July 16th and conversion rates suddenly jump up to 15.5%. It nearly doubles on that day. Speaker 1: So yeah, so again, foundational learning, how do you prepare an account that's about to experience Huge conversion rate jumps, increase in spend, and a dramatic rise in sales, but it's worth knowing just how the behavior changes on Prime Days, I guess we have to say. So on Prime Day, CTRs are going to fall in half. For example, the average CTR of the month of July last year was 0.37. And then on Prime Day, it was 0.19. So that's actually almost half of what it normally is. So again, going into Prime Day, and it's especially true on Prime Day, you want to be sure that your account is as tight as possible, meaning you are always sort of I'm trying to say like locked, stocked, and full of negative keywords. You should always be sure that your account has as many negative keywords as it should, if not more. It has gotten longer over the last few years. It did not get longer this year. In 2018, it lasted 36 hours, was on July 16th. Normally, it's like a Christmas in July celebration, come buy stuff halfway through the year. And then in 2019, it was on July 15th. And 16th, it lasted 48 hours. In 2020, instead of Christmas in July, it's sort of like Christmas in October, lasting 48 hours, October 13th to October 14th. So Amazon is snuck in there. I feel like they were deciding until the very last moment because they just announced it and it's in like two weeks. So here it is. Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it sort of makes sense, especially in, like you said, the crazy year. You know, if you rewind to June or July, that's when a lot of people were having problems with shipping times on Amazon. You know, they were bumped up to like three weeks or something like that. And a lot of people didn't know it was going to happen. So it makes sense they wouldn't hold it then. And now it sort of makes for a super interesting quarter four, because back to back to back, you have three months with huge sales, Prime Day, Black Friday, November, and then Christmas in December. So it'll be a fun three months. Speaker 1: Here we go. So what we are doing, this is the How many years have we been doing this? We reported it on it in 2018, 2019. Now it's 2020. This is the third piece of Prime Day content that AdVadr has put out. And it gets better every single year because we have a whole bunch more data to talk about. So what we're going to do is talk about the big data points and how to prepare and capitalize on this opportunity. So that is the name of the game, preparation and capitalizing on the opportunity of Prime Day. And with that, let's jump in to the main segment. Alrighty, so the first thing, and we're gonna go fast because you have plenty to do in your campaigns, you have plenty to prepare for. Amazon says they have worked out a lot of their inventory management, shipping time, all of those things. Fingers crossed. So the surge of activity. So for every metric that we are going to talk about today, we've done three things with it. We've taken a look at the normal activity for July. So like July's averages without Prime Days. So just what a normal July looks like. I know we're in October, but the reason we're comparing the past Prime Days to this Prime Day is to try to get as close to as possible. It wouldn't make sense for us to go back and look at last October because last October did not have a Prime Day. So for every metric, we looked at normal July without Prime Day. And then we looked at just the Prime Day specifically so we can compare what actually happens on Prime Day. And of course, as always, this data comes from customers on our software platform. So this is where we're getting a lot of this data. The first metric I want to talk about is clicks. There is a surge of activity. There's a surge of clicks. A normal day for clicks in July is about 258 clicks per day for the average Amazon advertiser. Bobby, that spikes a lot on Prime Day, doesn't it? Speaker 2: Absolutely. If you look at the last Prime Days on average, it jumped up about close to 70%, so that's something like 1.6 times on Prime Day. Speaker 1: Yes, it jumped all the way up to 431 clicks. So we jumped from 258 on a normal day in a normal month, and then when Prime Day strikes, It's like we're multiplying it by 1.67, 431 clicks. So there is a surge of activity. And the good news is there is a surge of sales too. So a normal July, an average advertiser on Amazon is generating $718 a day in revenue. On Prime Day, it jumps a lot. Speaker 2: Not just a lot, over double. The average on prime days is just above $1,600, it's about $1,651. So it's a 130% increase, so 2.3 times higher, which stands to reason that makes sense when you're multiplying clicks like they are, sales should go up too. Speaker 1: Yes, and also we're big math fans. So we're giving you the percent increase as well as the multiple. So going from 718 to 1651 in sales is 130% increase. It's also 2.3X more if you wanted to use the multiple. So whatever is your fancy, we've got you covered. So we've got way more clicks. We've got way more sales. This comes down to budgets. So the average day in July, an average advertiser is spending about 234 bucks a day. This is all US bucks, USB bucks. But on Prime Day, surprise, surprise, we've got a bump, don't we, Bobby? Speaker 2: Absolutely. You can't just up your bids without upping your budget. You know, a lot of people, they might make that mistake, like, I want to pump up my bids. Get that seller's box, something like that. But if you don't up your budgetary on the whole, you're gonna be in trouble. So the average bump we saw on the software users last Prime Day was 78%. $418 more per day, about 1.7X more. Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. So we'll get into some recommendations on what to do with this data. But just right now, basically 78% increase in ad spend or 1.7 times more ad spend. So now the question becomes, well, what does that actually do to my ACoS? Does your ACoS go through the roof for Prime Day? Because we're talking about basically doubling clicks, more than doubling sales. We're talking about almost doubling total amount of ad spend. But does ACoS jump up? Well, the good news is no. Historically, in 2018 and 2019, ACoS goes down on Prime Day. Normal July is 31%. Prime Day ACoS? Speaker 2: Only 25. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were handing it over. Speaker 1: My bad. I got so excited. I wanted to tell people. Speaker 2: No, I wanted to be the one to deliver the good news. Speaker 1: Okay. So it goes from 31% to 25%. Yes, that is the average advertiser that we have in our data set. Their ACoS went down six points from 31 to 25. Big math fans, sometimes I hear people say, Bobby, that a change from 31% to 25% is 6% change. Uh-uh, that is incorrect. When percentages move, we call them points, so it moved 6 points. It was actually 20% lower during those days. FYI. Speaker 2: That's right. Speaker 1: Yes. The thing that's interesting about ACoS, and we have seen this in 2018 and 2019, and it also rears its head in Black Friday, Cyber Monday, is that the two days before the big sales day, the two days before, so this year it will be October 11th and 12th, the two days before we see an ACoS jump. It is not a lot, but it's above the average. So it went from about 31% up a few points in the days leading up. And for that, I always just think Prime Day is happening. People are getting bombarded with notifications. They're starting to see the deals. They don't want to miss out. And they're at their computer poking around on Amazon to see what's going to be on sale and what should I be buying in the next 48 hours. Do you do this, Bobby? Speaker 2: Yeah, it actually reminds me a lot of, you know, if you're around our age, you probably had parents that used to get to magazines either every week there every Sunday, for sure. But especially when the holidays came around, you'd open the catalogs and you'd look because the sales are coming, you know, it's going to be there. It's the same thing on Amazon. And I'm doing the same thing, too. I hope I'm not causing anyone's ACoS to spike. Yes. Speaker 1: History repeats. We like to think we're so different. History repeats. We're just scrolling through the catalog. Now the catalog's online. The great news about conversion rates, a normal July conversion rate on a normal day is 9.62. Prime Day, it jumps up. Speaker 2: 33% increase in conversion rate which leaves it about 12.6%. Speaker 1: Exactly. So the last metric we want to touch on before we summarize everything is that CPC. You know, we might be thinking CPC going to go crazy during this time. And it actually doesn't go that crazy. A normal July CPC is 88 cents. Prime CPCs are, survey says, 94 cents. Yes. Only six cents. Yes. So that's a slight increase in CPCs. Prime Day. Prime Day happens. You do not want to be missing out. On 33% higher conversion rates. That would be like spending the entire year optimizing your campaigns and then you've optimized it and now it's time. You don't want to be missing out on sales. So really simple 2x your budgets. It's a really simple recommendation in certain cases in certain campaigns that do really well. Think about 3x'ing them. Now, there's some interesting thoughts on the days leading up to Prime Day. What are your thoughts for that, Bobby? Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of people will jump right to, well, I'll just 2 or 3x my budget, you know, 2 or 3 or 4 days before and just make sure we're all So you use the term primed and ready for Prime Day. But that may not be the best tactic because of what we talked about earlier where people are starting to quote unquote window shop and browse around at what they might want to look for on Prime Day. So we recommend that in the couple days before leading up to it, only add a little bit. If you're going to do it, one and a half Maybe two and a half, but that will be up to you and kind of how much you're selling already. But don't jump right in from zero to 100. Don't double or triple your budget a few days before, because we have found that the ACoS does spike a couple of days before. So sort of taper it up, but really make sure that on Prime Day, just sort of open the floodgates two or three X. Speaker 1: Right, so the recommendation there is on Prime Day, be at 2 to 3x. Days leading up, like the 48 hours before that, 1.5 to maybe 2.5x that. And use your judgment for slower campaigns, probably 1.5x it, for campaigns that you know are gonna do really well on Prime Day, 2.5x those in the days leading up. And what the data says is that if you invest to actually get that You know, early click volume, slightly higher ACoS, you will get more out of it. Because don't forget, Prime Day you are going to 2.3x your sales. So you're going to take your normal sales and multiply it by 2.3x. If you're getting a slightly higher ACoS in the days leading up to it, it is worth it. So that's the sort of first recommendation. And it's a super easy, super quick one. We make it every year with your budgets and the data continues to support that. Now, bids. When it comes to bids, there's a few things to think about. The first thing, just increase your bids 10% across the board. Get found easier. It's pretty straightforward. We talk a lot about bids on this show. Increase your bids 10% across the board. Get found a little easier. Speaker 2: So if you're increasing 10% across the board on all your products, manual bids for items that you know convert very, very well, Don't be afraid to bump them up to 50 or even 100% bid increase. That's not unheard of. The longer you've been doing this, if you've done it last Prime Day, you already kind of have a sneak peek at which products sold more for you last Prime Day. So you can feel more confident in jumping right into a 50 or 100% bid increase on those products. The longer you've been an Amazon seller, the more prepared you'll be, but definitely 10% across the board for every product. The ones that you know have historical data that sell well, 50 or 100 I think is the way to go. Speaker 1: For sure. And if you're using a tool that manages your bids and you're punching in instead of bids, you're punching in like a target ACoS or something like that, And what you wanna do there is increase your target ACoS because that will make your bids more aggressive. It basically says you're willing to get more aggressive and you're willing to have a higher target ACoS. So instead of managing the bid, you manage the optimizer. So for those things, one way to approach is just basically tell the tool to increase your target ACoS about 10 points across the board. So if you're normally targeting 30%, go in there and set it to 40% targeted cost. So that's 10 points. For the items that converted very well, increase it 20 to 30 points over it. And those budgets and bid recommendations These are definitely a must-have. And this assumes that people have good keyword strategy across the board already. So that you're already, you know, you're doing your research-based campaigns and you have your exact match winners and, you know, you have your broadened phrase locked in, ready to go so that as people are searching for these things, you're already primed, there's that word again, for good visibility. And we talk plenty about that on this show. For the last few years, we've been doing this show since 2017. And this is true for Cyber Weekend, and it's true for Prime Day, about 48 hours before Prime Day kicks off. We see something. What is it that happens 48 hours before Prime Day actually drops again? So we're talking Prime Day is June 21st, 22nd. So what happens about June 19th this year? Unknown Speaker: Well, typically we see a bunch of traffic, so it's not traffic that's looking to buy, it's traffic that's looking to shop. So you're going to see a bunch of impression increases, a lot more clicks that are going to come through because they're interested in your product and finding out a little bit more, but they're not ready to pull the trigger because they know Prime Day is right around the corner and you're probably going to offer a better price. A lot more impressions. Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. More impressions, more clicks before, which means a spike in ACoS because these people are just kicking the tires. However, it is almost always worth it to have your hat in the ring Ahead of time, because once Prime Day happens, boom, you will see crazy increases in your conversion rate. Conversion rate increases of about 35%. So it usually ends up being about three points. So like if you had a 10% conversion rate on your ads going into Prime Day, you will see probably like a 13.5 conversion rate increase. I'm sorry, you will see 13.5% conversion rate on Prime Day, which is a 35% increase. So that means if you were getting one order for every 10 clicks on average, now you should see 3.5 orders per 10 clicks. Because of that increase in conversion rate, your ACoS is going to drop a ton. We'll talk about that later in the show. Your clicks go through the roof. I think for the most part, you should, you know, in previous years, it was like, oh, there'll be a 60% increase in clicks. And there was like a 70-ish percent increase in clicks. Just think doubling of clicks, like 100% bump in clicks. In terms of budgets, so generally seeing that clicks, you know, essentially almost double On that, on like Prime Day. So, you know, in previous years, I think I said something like, you know, you should probably double your budget or 2.5x your budget. I am now leaning towards your best campaigns, like the things that are big revenue drivers, Those budgets should probably go up 3x and then maybe some of your lagging campaigns, some of the ones where it's been a little bit tougher to hit a good ACoS should go up anywhere from 2 to 2.5x. Unknown Speaker: I think the most impactful A-B test is your image. This is one that To your point of doing throughout the year, I think it's so valuable. It's the, in my opinion, the number one way to impact your business is if you can slightly improve your click-through rate. And of course, your conversion rate will hopefully be a side effect of that as well. So I think if your main image can be slightly improved before Prime Day, I mean, that's going to have ripple effects on your business. Not just on Prime Day, but after that. So to me, even if it's just like a week test, run the test. Maybe it's a slightly different angle. Maybe it's a very subtle prop in your main image, something that would be passed through the Amazon algorithm, something not too over the top there. But just the main image to me, I think, is the most impactful. Of course, you can optimize your title as well. One, I think, sneaky And the way to think about A-B testing too is marrying your title and images together, thinking about the keywords you're gonna be bidding on on Prime Day. So if your top keyword is waterproof, for example, but it's a little bit further down your title, maybe bring that up and have that You probably can't show this in your main image, but you potentially could, depending on what niche you are, having show that waterproof visually in your main image, marrying those together would be a really great strategy. So I think those two, marrying together the title and image, would be a great thing to test right now before Prime Day. Speaker 1: I ran some numbers from AdBadger customers for 2022's Prime Day. So this is last year. I'm just going to throw some stats at you for Last year, so basically what I did was I compared Prime Days. It's a 48-hour period last year, July 12th and July 13th. And by the way, in case you don't know, Prime Day this year is just one day different. It's the 11th and 12th. That's right, right? Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: And here's some quick data. Total impressions on the 48-hour time frame for Prime Day versus the rest of July, 58% more impressions. The split there was 58 more impressions on sponsored products, 64% more impressions on sponsored brands, and 52% more impressions on sponsored display. Total clicks was up 47%. Total orders per marketplace up 66%, which is really cool. The split there was 66% more orders on sponsored products, 62% more orders on sponsored brands, 76% more orders on sponsored display, The caveat there being that number is way lower per marketplace, so it's easier to get a lift, a percentage-based lift there. Total spend up 60%, total sales up 64%, total CPCs, average CPC up 23%, and then average ACoS down 13%. Which is pretty cool. The average ACoS for the month of July last year was 32% and then just on Prime Day was 28%. So I know I just threw a whole bunch of numbers at you, but I'm curious what your sort of reaction is of those numbers and how you inform your sort of PPC strategy, sort of like thinking about the past and thinking about what you want to accomplish here. Unknown Speaker: Yeah, I really love the correlation there between the rising cost per click and a decrease in ACoS. I think that's obviously counterintuitive, but a lot of sellers are a little bit nervous when they go to switch their bids from a regular suggested bid to the Prime Day suggested bid that Amazon gives out. It's significantly higher for a lot of keywords I've seen. And I usually actually go a little bit higher than that. I assume everybody else is clicking that suggested bid button. And it makes you feel a lot better hearing that data that you just mentioned. Always a concern is rising cost per clicks on Amazon. It's becoming more competitive. They're coming up with more placements. There's more testing going on. Consumers are seeing ads in different spots. It's totally different now and I think I feel a lot better hearing that from you. It sounds like that's, you know, you have that data from a lot of different marketplaces and that's great to see that because that's what I see on my side as well. Cost per clicks go up, ACoS goes down, but conversions as a whole increase. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I don't think I mentioned it, but yeah, CPCs went up 23%, conversion rates went up 35%. Speaker 2: That's awesome. Speaker 1: So that's why ACoS goes down because conversion rate goes up faster than CPC. So that's awesome. With that in mind, I always like to use that to inform where my normal CPC should be increased and where my normal spend should be increased. And I also think, too, when you dig into specific campaigns, that's not always linear, meaning not every keyword in your account will go up 35% conversion rate. Some, that is the average, which means some keywords are going to go up 40, 50% conversion rate. So imagine a keyword where you normally get a 10% conversion rate now jumps up to 15% conversion rate. That can change how you view things. I always like to say you can 80-20 that. Your very best campaigns with your very best keywords, you probably want to give them almost a 2x bump in things. And then maybe the weaker side of things, you give them an average increase to give them room to grow so you don't miss out on any of the opportunity. Unknown Speaker: Looking at my search term reports and my campaign data from last year, and I didn't organize it as good as I'm doing this year. And I'm really kicking myself because you can't get that data unless you downloaded it through Amazon. What, takes away the search term report after 90 days or something? Speaker 1: Yeah, for sponsored products. For sponsored products, yeah. So did that exact thing happen to you? Did you get budget capped within a campaign and then you had like some of these great keywords get limited almost? Unknown Speaker: Exactly. I did segment them pretty well, as I mentioned. We had a campaign for washable and we had 20 or 30 keywords in there that mentioned washable and in some different way. What I didn't realize and what I should have done is take a few of those out that I know are our top keywords, whether that be the search volume is very high for it or our keyword rankings are very strong for it. We have a tool at Jungle Scout. It's called Rank Tracker that helps you actually see the organic versus sponsored search rankings for any product. I should have looked at that and said, okay, there's like these five keywords that were within the top five, and let me take those out, put them in their own campaign, because on Prime Day, I want to be number one in that spot, and I will spend anything to get there, and my bids will be way higher just to try to do that. But what happened is, I think what we just mentioned earlier is halfway through the other day, I'm seeing keywords that I didn't want to spend that much on spending. Because I had the bids enabled to spend to do that. So yeah, I should have, in hindsight, separated some campaigns and thought about my structure better for both Prime Day performance and reviewing it post Prime Day. Speaker 1: I think that's very brave of you. Not many people talk about their misses, only their hits. Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm full of them. Speaker 1: Yeah, I could do a full podcast on it. So I think some interesting things too, I would say in general, if you have two options, one is to go more aggressive and two is to go more conservative and like sort of shrink budgets and shrink bids. I would almost always say whatever business is pushing harder, it's probably going to be better off in the short term and long term, both getting the sales in the short term because you're in better positions. Better paid positions, but also better in the long term because those better paid positions with more sales will eventually translate to better organic positions. So I'm fascinated by your approach to sort of go more aggressive before and after Prime Day. Talk to us a little bit about your perspective on that. And did you do this last year on Prime Day too? Unknown Speaker: Yes, so I had a slightly different approach than what I'm doing this year, but the overarching strategy was still the same of, to your point, go aggressive early and after. So my philosophy there is to collect as much data as you can early on. So pre-Prime Day, you just want people to heart your product, get it in their shopping list, interact with them in some way so that you can retarget them either on Prime Day or post-Prime Day. And that's powerful for converting better on Prime Day, but then also When any product is in your shopping cart as a shopper and you have a lightning deal on, it's a limited time deal, post Prime Day, if someone didn't pick up your product because certainly they can't buy every single product that they want to revisit on Prime Day, then they'll get a notification on their mobile phone, usually most shoppers have those enabled, that says your product is on a limited time deal. And I think that's super powerful because you used pre-Prime Day marketing to just get that data, to get that customer, interacting with your product. And then post-Prime Day, you still have them to potentially convert into a customer. So I'm always thinking about what I can do outside of Prime Day with the pre-Prime Day buildup. Post Prime Day, it's the same story of you using that retargeting data. But also, if your product is a summer product, this is an early fall product, then to your point, Mike, you want to be in a better organic position come that peak season. So I like to use Prime Day as a reason to just increase my rankings. Speaker 1: Springboard. Speaker 2: Exactly. Unknown Speaker: A springboard. And you can do that on the product level if you have a ton of different products. You don't have to do that from the whole account. But I think that's really important is to use Prime Day as, I guess, think of your goals before Prime Day on the product level. Do you need to get more reviews? Because Prime Day is going to give you a ton of reviews in the long run. Do you need keyword rankings to go up? Or I'm sorry, customer data to retarget them later on. So I'm always thinking about what can happen before and after Prime Day, as opposed to what's going to happen just on Prime Day. Speaker 1: You know, I want to shine light on this other strategy, which I don't think gets talked about a lot. And in fact, the person who mentioned it to me last year was almost like whispering it to me, like, hey, like, is this about it? Like, should I feel ashamed for what I did? And basically what they did was nothing, meaning they didn't touch any other PPC campaigns. And they're just like, you know what? I'm going to be in some position on Prime Day. I'm setting up my deals, all that stuff, and I'm not going to change my CPCs. I'm not going to change my budgets. I just want lower ACoSs on those days. I'm going to use that as a profitability day. Speaker 2: That's great. Speaker 1: It's interesting too. Number one, I always say different businesses have different goals. It's so hard when, I'm sure you feel this too, whenever you make content, it's like, You're trying to see as many sides as possible for people and give people lots of different perspectives. But in reality, businesses have different needs and different goals. And I think for some companies, using it as a day to maximize profit by basically saying, hey, conversion rates are going to go up and I don't necessarily need to Go all the way to the top. Maybe I'll keep my CPCs where they were, you know, and I'll get still a conversion rate bump. I'm going to turn this into really nice profitability days. And then, you know, they have different strategies. You know, maybe there's a business need for that increased profitability or maybe they're going to use that increased profitability and to launch new products. And like, eventually they did the calculus that if I get more profit on Prime Day and then launch another product, I'll end up with more profit in the future. Like all these different scenarios. I just think that's really interesting. I just want to shine some light on it because I think it's worth a bigger conversation. What is the business doing? How are we doing? What are the business's goals? I'm curious if you've ever heard of people just like, I'm just going to slide through. I'm just going to slide through Prime Day with better conversion rates and maybe not go crazy with increased spending. Unknown Speaker: Is that story from last year or is this a previous year? Speaker 1: It was somebody from last year, yeah. Unknown Speaker: I don't know if it's just me or not, but I feel like a lot of people were thinking the same thing and I did as well. I tested this out on a Prime Day. Speaker 1: They were like, another Prime Day? Are you serious? Yeah, exactly. Unknown Speaker: They know something else is around the corner, even before Q4. And I tested this out. So I actually had a Prime Day deal on, I set it up for just the first day. And the second day I didn't have a deal, but what I did is I had a list price cross off. So my listing still looked like it had a deal. It just didn't say Prime Day deal. And it was essentially the same amount off. And what was crazy is I definitely lost money on Prime Day last year, the first day as a whole. I was just launching my product. I think it was like a three or four month old product at the time. I lost some money on the first day. On the second day, I recouped it all back because I just stopped. I turned off ads, like you said, and I did just everything. I didn't do anything other than that cross price, which I was still selling at that price before Prime Day. I like that strategy. I don't know if I'm not going to do it this year, but last year it worked. I think if you're in that way, if you want to go towards profit this year, that's a great approach and see what happens. Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. I'm happy that you shared that because it's true. I think so much of Amazon marketing is sort of like business dependent. What are the business goals? And I think sometimes people sometimes try to mash their business goals into like good marketing strategy. Like what do I have to do on Amazon? But I don't think it necessarily needs to be that way. Like you could sort of sculpt your strategy around what the business needs. So I think that's really It's worth talking about more. Unknown Speaker: Yeah. And speaking of like those ancillary benefits, like we talked about increased keyword rankings, but increased reviews, increased subscribe and save customers, connecting with people off of Amazon. So if you have a product insert in your product, you can use Prime Day as a way to just connect with more people off of Amazon if it's directing them to your social media or website. So I think, yeah, those ancillary benefits is a great thing to consider outside of just sales.