Helium 10 Buzz 6/29/22: 2nd Prime Day – Sponsored Display – Sales Down?

We’re back with another episode of the Weekly Buzz with Helium 10’s Chief Brand Evangelist, Bradley Sutton. Every week, we cover the latest breaking news in the Amazon, Walmart, and E-commerce space, interview someone you need to hear from and provide a training tip for the week.

Amazon plans to hold a second shopping event for Prime members, this one in the fourth quarter, according to a notice viewed by CNBC, marking the first time the company will hold two such events in the same year. Amazon gears up for Prime Day on July 12 and 13, its big annual sale designed to attract new subscribers.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/27/amazon-plans-second-prime-shopping-event-in-q4.html

On September 1, 2022, Send to Amazon will replace the Send/replenish inventory workflow as part of our ongoing efforts to make shipment creation simpler and more flexible.
https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/headlines.html?id=GQCECB64ZVW37TXM&ref=nslp_at_6_GQCECB64ZVW37TXM_en-US_ttl_rf_recent_news_7

Amazon is evolving Sponsored Display’s product targeting into contextual targeting, allowing advertisers to reach more of their audiences at more points in their shopping and entertainment journey. The contextual targeting strategy will now allow advertisers to reach audiences both in the Amazon store and outside the Amazon store when customers view content related to targeting strategies.
https://advertising.amazon.com/en-us/resources/whats-new/sponsored-display-contextual-targeting/?ref_=a20m_us_wn_gw

Bradley closes out the episode with the Pro Training tip of the week on different strategies and ways on how you can confirm and know that your sales are down using Helium 10’s tools.

In this episode of the Weekly Buzz, Bradley talks about:

• 01:00 – Fall Prime Day
• 02:10 – Send To Amazon
• 03:40 – Sponsored Display
• 05:15 – An Elite Member Shares His Amazon Journey And Tips
• 11:30 – Pro Training Tip: How To Check If Your Sales Are Down
• 16:25 – Listen to the AM/PM Podcast Hosted By Kevin King

Transcript

Bradley Sutton:

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Helium 10 Weekly Buzz. My name is Bradley Sutton, and this is the show where we get you familiar with the latest news in the Amazon and e-commerce space. We interview people in the industry you need to hear from and provide a training tip of the week that will give you serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. Let’s see, what’s buzzing this week. First of all, overall, what are we gonna be talking about? We’re gonna talk about a second prime day. We’re gonna have an interview with a Helium 10 Elite member, and we’re also gonna talk about what do you do if your sales are down or you think your sales are down? How many of you guys out there see that question like 17 times a day in like a Facebook group or something.

Bradley Sutton:

We’re gonna talk about some easy ways to kind of be able to know if your sales are down without actually having to be looking in Facebook groups and things like that. So to get started, let’s go ahead and start with the news. So the first article we’re gonna talk about today was actually dropped by CNBC and it’s about a second prime day that is coming. So if you guys noticed we talked about this in the Facebook group as well. If you look at the lightning deals page in your Amazon Seller Central account, you might have noticed a blurb on the top saying, Hey guys, submit deals now for this second Fall Prime Day. All right. And you have until July 22nd to submit them. So the CNBC article talked about how it looks like, you know, there might be a second prime day in Q4 this year to boost sales.

Bradley Sutton:

And so this is something to look out for. I don’t think in recent memory, nothing that I know of, I’ve never seen two Prime Days in one year. Obviously, the first Prime Day is coming up on July 12th of this year. So what do you guys think of that? Second Prime Day. So I think for sellers out there, the important thing to do is to make sure that you have enough inventory. And if you are gonna run a lighting deal, you know, try and really gauge your inventory because you know, this Prime Day might come up right before the key holiday shopping season. And you obviously, you don’t wanna run out you know, by Black Friday or things like that. So second Prime Day, what do you guys think? The second news article of the day that we’re gonna talk about is actually from Seller Central.

Bradley Sutton:

This came out last week and saw some buzz about it in the Helium 10 Facebook groups because a lot of people we don’t like change a lot and this is about the Send to Amazon. All right, now, now you guys know when you send and rep replenishment orders that there’s this flow that we’ve been kind of using for years, right? And for the last few months, there’s been this kind of like optional flow you could take, but most of us have been opting out. But the news article that came out last weekend, Seller Central said Send to Amazon, which is the new flow is gonna replace the send replenish inventory. And you’re not gonna have a chance to revert. And this is on September 1st. So I’m just curious, most of the sellers I talk to, they switch back to the old flow, we’re creatures of habit, right?

Bradley Sutton:

Like I, myself, when I send my inventory in, I couldn’t figure out that new flow. So I switched back to the old flow. I’m wondering how many of you guys out there are actually already using the new flow? One thing that I saw in the Facebook groups that people are having issues with is like being able to send LTL on one shipment to one location and like a palletized one to another. Like I heard that the new flow doesn’t allow that now me personally, that doesn’t affect me, cuz I always just pretty much send LTL everything. But let me what are the main issues, if any, that you guys have with the new Send to Amazon flow and how many are already switched to it? The last article is actually from Amazon advertising.

Bradley Sutton:

They launched this news article last week saying Sponsor Display Product Targeting has evolved to Contextual Targeting. So let me just read from the article here, cuz you might not understand what that means. Basically, it says our evolving Sponsored Display Product Targeting to Contextual Targeting, allowing advertisers to reach more of their audiences at more points in their shopping and entertainment journey. The contextual targeting strategy will now allow advertisers to reach audiences both in the Amazon store and outside the Amazon store. When customers view content related to targeting strategies, advertisers do not need to change or targeted products or categories to enable a new feature sponsor display and will find the right opportunities to expand advertiser reach beyond the store to webpages and mobile pages. Now it’s interesting, I highly suggest going to advertising.amazon.com or checking in YouTube, the link that we’re gonna put for this in the advertising blog.

Bradley Sutton:

But it’s kind of interesting now and it raises some questions like should we be monitoring more closely our bids and budgets on Sponsored Display Ads, you know, maybe this is gonna give it more exposure, more clicks and that, and thus, we might run out of budget more, but instead of just showing up maybe on product pages, now there’s gonna be more placements for our Sponsored Display Ads. So definitely check that article out and let me know what you guys think of that. Is this help? Is this something that you think is going to hurt you in any way, like in your ACoS or things like that, your TACoS let us know in the comments below. All right. That’s it for the news for this week. So let’s go ahead and now have an interview with one of our Helium 10 Elite members. Let’s go ahead and bring him up. Anton, there we go. Anton, how’s it going?

Anton:

Good. Good. I’m doing well. Thanks.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Where are you located?

Anton:

Toronto area, Canada.

Bradley Sutton:

Toronto. Have we ever met in person, you and I?

Anton:

Oh, I don’t think so. Not yet, but in Vegas, I think.

Bradley Sutton:

You could have said anything and I would’ve had to go with it cuz my memory’s so bad. The one I could meet yesterday and be–

Anton:

Like, yeah, I’m pretty sure you met so many people like your own.

Bradley Sutton:

No, it’s not that, it’s just my memory anyways. How long have you been selling on Amazon?

Anton:

So it’s been around four years. Yeah, something like that start–

Bradley Sutton:

How did you get started? Like how did you find out about the opportunity of selling on Amazon?

Anton:

Yeah, so it was kind of a random story. I used to do construction work, like most of the Canadians like I came in Canada like nine years ago used to do construction for about four or five years. Then one of my buddy, like he moved to where was like Hollywood in the Miami area. Right?

Bradley Sutton:

Do you have a Hollywood in Canada?

Anton:

In Miami, Hollywood.

Bradley Sutton:

Oh the Miami Hollywood Okay. Okay. That I know.

Anton:

Yeah. So he invited me to visit him. So I showed up, like I saw him back in the small bags, in the like huge amounts in the huge amount of boxes. And he’s like, “oh, I gotta go to ups, drop this box off.” Like, “what are you doing like buddy?” “He’s like, oh, you know, I started some Amazon stuff” that’s weird. I’m like half year later, I’m like, “how are you doing your business?” He’s like “pretty good.” I thought it was a kinda scam, you know, joke, like selling stupid, like money belts for travelers. The quality was bad. And maybe I should start thinking differently, you know, like definitely I doing the hard job and low amount of money and that guy just sitting there, you know, making some profits like every day for, you know, just waiting. And it was back in 18. Amazon was much more than these days.

Bradley Sutton:

So then did you start in Amazon Canada or Amazon USA?

Anton:

No. He asked me to help him out with that business. Oh,

Bradley Sutton:

On his business?

Anton:

Yeah. And I really get to Miami for a few months, started learning, and then yeah, I go back to Canada and yeah, the company and doing my own stuff.

Bradley Sutton:

So, is that in Canada or only in Amazon USA?

Anton:

Yeah. he used to be there, but later on the government didn’t give him another visa. He was on a tourist visa there. He’s not a citizen he had, so he has to come, come back to Canada and then he moved back to Russia.

Bradley Sutton:

So, and then you stole his business and took it over for yourself, huh?

Anton:

Kinda, yes. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay. Do what you gotta do. I dunno about that example we’re sitting here for everybody watching this show, but Hey being the right place.

Anton:

No, I didn’t stole it. We’re still partners.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay.

Anton:

Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

So how much with your account with your partner, like how much in gross sales did you do last, last year?

Anton:

So last year was pretty good. Like it was around 1 Million in the US? Yeah, just the US market. This year–

Bradley Sutton:

How long have you been a Helium 10 Elite member?

Anton:

I’ve been an Elite member for like few months already, like maybe half a year, but yesterday I was approved, to the Facebook group. Cause I dunno, I missed that somehow.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. That’s one of the big benefits is to be in the Facebook group. So have you just been like attending the virtual workshops with Kevin King and watching the replays?

Anton:

Yeah. Watching replays.

Bradley Sutton:

What’s one of the like benefits you’ve seen, like what, like kind of like strategy or something. Did you get, can you remember from like Elite that really has helped you

Anton:

It’s about like social media? Yeah, I was, I’m still kind of bad on this and I definitely applied some strategies from the Elite members, so yeah. Social media and outsourcing. Yeah.

Bradley Sutton:

Okay, cool. Well, how about you yourself? Just your own strategy, your own Anton strategy here. So what is something you can share with the listeners out there of something that’s worked for you that you think maybe not every Amazon seller knows about or uses?

Anton:

So yeah, definitely. You know, not drop your hands and when you see the slow down on sales, that’s what happened to me, you know, be more focus that’s for sure. Have to be staying focused and just searching and doing your thing. You knowing own don’t look much on the competitors. Don’t look much on the other niches, just stay focused for a while and that will bring you benefits for sure. Like, just have to be patient. That’s my main concern, you know what I’m trying to do myself. I seen everybody else seen the drops in sales. And I was like in panic for months, maybe.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Stick to it and don’t get discouraged, and be focused.

Anton:

Stick to the plan.

Bradley Sutton:

All right. Anton, will I be seeing you in September Sell and Scale Summit?

Anton:

Yes, I’ll meet you in person.

Bradley Sutton:

Yeah. Okay. All right. I’ll see you there. And you gotta make sure to come to my Zumba class over there as well. All right. I’ll play a Russian song. We’ll dance to a Russian song for you. All right.

Anton:

All right. Sounds great.

Bradley Sutton:

All Right, we’ll talk to you later.

Anton:

Thanks a lot.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, guys. Now that actually brings us to our tip of the day and I didn’t, I had no idea what he was gonna talk about. You know, we didn’t practice this as first time I met him, but he talked about, you know, Hey, a lot of us think by, you know, maybe our sales are down. And so for our tip of the day, I wanted to just give some, some kind of like easier, you know, strategies here to know like, are your sales down? You know, how many times have we heard this in Facebook groups where somebody says, “Hey, my sales are down today.” “Anybody else?” Or “I’m down this quarter, anybody else?” Like, come on guys, like if I had a dollar for every time, I’ve seen that. Like maybe I wouldn’t have to have a salary here at Helium 10.

Bradley Sutton:

Like we literally see that like 5 to 10 times a day in different Facebook groups. So what are some different ways where that you don’t, you don’t have to go and wonder are your sales down, you know, those actual ways that you can see? Well, I’m gonna share my screen here for those of you watching this on YouTube. And if you’re following along on the podcast, I’ll try and describe it as well as I can. But like, for example here’s our coffin shelf, you know, our Project X and actually, you know, the sales this quarter is kind of just up and down day by day, but it’s, it’s fairly steady. It’s not like it’s just we see some big declining thing, but let’s say you do see a declining thing just one day. Like here on May 16th, we had zero sales, you know, or maybe there is a week where it seems our sales are down.

Bradley Sutton:

And so normally what people would do is be like, “Hey guys, you know, is our sales down?” well, here are a couple of ways, even if you don’t have a paid Helium 10 account guys, if you have the free Helium 10 Chrome Extension, you know, you just go to helium10.com/extension and download it for free and then run Xray or run the BSR chart on any Amazon listing. Like for example, here is our BSR history chart, you know, BSR kind of like tells you where you are in relation to your competitor. So if you’re BSR chart like this for the last month, as you can see here is pretty steady. You know regardless of if your, you know, like gross sales are up or down, you know that you are pretty much steady with the rest of the market. Now, here’s the thing, your sales could go way up.

Bradley Sutton:

But if your BSR is also going up, the number is going up, which means that you are probably losing your market share. So we can’t just look at the gross sales are up or down to kind of like, know how our performance is overall. But what you do is you just go to these BSR charts with the free Helium 10 account and compare your BSR to the history of your competitor’s BSR. Like here’s a competitor’s BSR. And it looks like he’s been kind of going from 100,000 to 118,000. And now he’s at 98,000. So we would compare that to our BSR and we’re at 150,000 going to 200,000. And so, yeah, like we’re obviously not number one in this coffin shelf niche for the last month, but you would be looking at those charts to see how your number goes in comparison to your competitors.

Bradley Sutton:

Now here’s an easier way if you guys are running Market Tracker in helium 10, you don’t have to go through fancy charts or anything. This is super simple, if you are tracking in Market Tracker in Helium 10, your product, along with all your competitors, your direct competitors, look at this number right here. This is called the Market Volume. This is what is important, right? So Market Volume will tell you is the market as a whole, going up, as far as sales go, you know, you could see for like the last two weeks is fairly say, like there was a peak here where it went to like $23,000 overall estimated monthly sales for the whole coffin shelf niche. So if your sales are going way down, but the market volume is staying the same. That’s when you get worried. That’s when you’re like, yes, your sales are down, but not coffin shelf sales right? Now, if the market volume here in Market Tracker is going down and your sales are going down, there’s nothing much to worry about.

Bradley Sutton:

You just know that, Hey, it’s just a slow week for coffin shelves. The number here that you need to be worried about is the second graph, which is the Market Share. All right, you can actually track your Market Share in this third graph. And so you can see that it says here, my Market Share was 44%. And then there’s a dip here. Now it’s 35%. But look after that 35%, I’m just going from 30 to 33% every single day. So regardless of if my sales are down, that is not the key metric, I’m looking at my Market Share. All right, because that’s when I need to be worried. If my Market Share all of a sudden drops from like 30% to 15%, what does that mean? That means other competitors are taking up my chunk of the pie. And that’s when you really need to be worried there.

Bradley Sutton:

All right, so guys, no more posting please of, is “Are your guy’s sales down? My sales are down.” You don’t need to guess or ask people on Facebook who knows what somebody’s selling beach balls. Their sales are down. What does that mean to you who’s selling cell phone cases, no use the BSR charts, or if you’ve got Helium 10 Market Tracker, make sure you’re tracking your market share and the market volume. And you’re never gonna have to worry about, you know, are my sales down compared to my competitors, you’ll have that information handy. All right. Last thing I wanted to give you guys a heads up, AM/PM Podcast. You know, it’s not the Serious Sellers Podcast, the AM/PM Podcast is the original podcast. I want you guys to go give it a download.

Bradley Sutton:

We have a brand new host, the legend himself, Kevin King. All right. So you guys can, can just look for AM/PM Podcast on any podcast app and hit download, especially Spotify or Apple podcast, or you can go to ampmpodcast.com or look up AM/PM Podcast on YouTube. That’s all of these ways you can get all the episodes. He’s already done like two, three new episodes under the new format. So make sure to check it out, and give it a follow. You’re definitely gonna get some high-level information from the king himself Kevin. All right. All right guys, hope you guys enjoyed this edition of the Weekly Buzz. We’ll see you guys next week. Bye-Bye now.

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