Prime Day (Post PPC Review)

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Brian Johnson and Sean Smith talk Prime Day

Sean’s Setup for Prime Day

Tripled the campaign budgets for any that are at or below Target ACoS for that SKU
Increased the keyword bids by 30% for any keywords that were at or below breakeven ACoS at SKU level
Increased ad groups by 15-20% if they were at or below Target ACoS at the SKU level
Daily Budget caps at 2.5 to 3 times of normal spend

Similar focus on keywords that have had good conversion and ACoS and increase bids
Tripled ad-budgets that knew had the ROI
Brian talks about doing the opposite of what Amazon does – double or triple spend 2-3 weeks in advance
Amazon created automatic campaigns for you in pause mode and all you had to do was turn them on
Amazon had taken a pool of products and throw them into the same automatic campaign and ad group with $500-600 daily budget with $3.5 to $18 dollars with $8-15 per bid range mostly being recommended
Mostly they were in the Lightning Deal ad for Prime Day table
Problem was the ROI would never be there – $30 dollar items and you’re paying $15 per click
You might sell a ton but you’re paying money to Amazon and not getting anything in your pocket
Amazon were even calling sellers on the phone and saying ‘we noticed you haven’t started up your campaigns’!!
This is like price-gouging – who is accountable for this kind of tactic?

You’ll probably get a lot more sales on Prime Day but lose money on it
Must be internal management in Amazon and their targets pushing this
To get a high ad position can be a loss and poor ROI
Amazon are key about their own customers but they treat Sellers like this – are Sellers not their customers?

It was a good Prime Day
The accounts that were Monsters were in a minority
The 1.5 to 3x were the majority
Prime Day is more about control and fending off poor methodologies
Sean had the email about the Auto-campaigns from Amazon – the email was super-general and there was no info about the auto-campaign methodology
Sean focussed on a solid methodology
They had a 24hr setup and reverted everything back after the day – it worked well
Overall saw an increase

Look at last year’s data and saw where the lift was
Amazon said start two weeks in advance and that was not supported by the sales data that Sean saw

July 17th was when Brian had forecast in his Masterminds before Prime Day
The seasonality and the distracted buyer – on 4th July with family
And those holding off but still clicking around – but won’t make the sales until Prime Day
Two weeks before Prime Day or Black Friday your conversion rates will be lower as people are holding off for Prime Day or Black Friday
This all depends on the category it is in

Waterfall campaigns
Automatic campaigns, one set with high bid low budget
A second is medium bid low budget
Third is low bid high budget
First two run out through the day and then the third one kicks in later in the afternoon
Like day-parting technique
Figured there would be a lot of sellers that tripled their bids and ran out mid -day – the 3rd tier campaigns then kicked in for clients whose products would meet this strategy
Netted a 3-4% ACoS with massive ad impressions – spent $100 for $4,000 sales
Use this tiered methodology for Black Friday
Sean loves the Waterfall too for Product Launches and a great Strategy – advanced as it takes a lot of time to do it through campaign manager