Podcast transcript
James Dihardjo
Hey everyone James from MerchantSpring here for another episode of Marketplace Masters, where we bring new insights from industry leaders around the world.
So Destaney, thank you so much for making time in your evening to meet with me. I know I'm in Australia, so the time gap is pretty big. I just wanted to hand it straight over to you and get you to kick off by telling us about who you are and what you do in the Amazon space.
Destaney Wishon
Awesome. Well, thank you again so much, James, for having me. My name is Destaney Wishon and I'm co-founder and CEO of BetterAMS. And we are an Amazon Advertising agency focusing on scaling everything from Sponsored Ads to DSP.
James Dihardjo
Fantastic. So just for clarity, because I know a lot of people who watch this are all around the world, you actually can work with anybody anywhere, right? that's on Amazon?
Destaney Wishon
Yes. It's definitely the beauty of what we do is being able to work internationally and, you know, time zones are something of the past. At this point you just, you're on working.
James Dihardjo
Yeah. That's it. Cool. All right. Let's get straight into question one. So I've got this, a couple of questions here, but the first one, Black Friday and Cyber Monday and all that, is just around the corner, it's peak season. How do you think it'll play out? And, are there any last-minute tips? Is that even a thing?
Destaney Wishon
A hundred percent, I'm really excited for this Black Friday, Cyber Monday, because I think we're going to start seeing kind of e-commerce stabilizing a little bit. I feel like last year, you know, COVID was a catalyst for everyone really transitioning onto the e-commerce platform, maybe moving away from brick and mortar a little bit, and then we're seeing a lot of that consumer base hold steady. They realize that e-commerce is amazing. Amazon's two-day shipping is amazing.
So I think we're definitely going to see really, really strong numbers. I am a little bit concerned with the supply chain, again, holding up container costs and things like that are causing a lot of complexities for our brands. But all in all, I think it's going to be another really strong Q4. Some of the things that we're doing are proactively creating campaigns right now that we're going to be running for Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.
On the DSP side, we're wanting to run really strong remarketing campaigns so that way everyone who's going to be window shopping over the next 30, 60, 90 days, we're going to keep them in our Amazon funnel. We're going to continue to retarget them with Ads and really kind of show them that our products, the product they're going to want to buy when it's discounted on Black Friday, Cyber Monday. Other things we're doing is we're really just weighing our ranking. You know, that's probably been one of the hottest topics on Amazon, is I'm running out of inventory, my rankings, my velocity's dropped. How do I get back to page one? If you can't get up there quickly, you better pay for those placements in order to take advantage of all traffic. So we're really building out campaigns to help with that.
James Dihardjo
That is fantastic. I love that answer because some of the interviewees have said, look, it's too late. The only thing you should do is plan your holiday. But I love the fact that you've actually said, you know what, it's never too late to do something. And actually you yourself are planning, learning, and stuff right now in terms of campaign, so that's awesome.
Onto the next question, though, the day this video comes out, it'll be exactly a year since Prime Day 2020. As you know, prime Day 2020 was, the timing was all kind of screwed up. It's got, I guess is what I'm saying, right? Yes. So what we thought was Prime Day 2020 actually wasn't, and then all this kind of stuff. So how do you think sellers are tracking without prime day at this time of year? Like, if that makes sense. What do you think they can do to fill that promotional gap if you think there even is one.
Destaney Wishon
I am hundred percent have seen it across almost all of our brands. Now, I'll got to preface this by saying I've been in the industry, specifically Amazon for five years now. So, back in the old days, you almost always saw this lag after Prime day, schools back in session, all the back-to-school craze is over and you have this almost like dead period between now and the holidays. Numbers were almost always down historically. Everyone was focusing on margin cause they're having to reorder inventory. So, we got lucky last year that Amazon wanted to cushion some of their numbers I think.
But this year, everyone who's kind of seeing that stress is seeing additionally because now we're also dealing again with the supply chain cost on top of it. So I would say that honestly, it's not anything unexpected because it's something we've dealt with the years prior to COVID ever happening, but, it's not easy. I've, for our brands, we've personally been making the shift of focusing on profitability, in all honesty, like cutting back on Ad costs, cutting back on things like that, but still balancing our positioning on Amazon to make sure we're still holding strong for when holiday season does hit.
James Dihardjo
Yeah. Awesome. That's, yeah, I think profitability is certainly something a lot of people I speak to are actually focusing on. I think it's a common theme. So, next question for you. You know, predictions for 2022, what changes do you foresee coming to Amazon, if any, at all?
Destaney Wishon
Ooh. One of my favorite topics. As we all know, the results becoming more and more paid-to-play, and I don't think they inherently meant for this to happen. But they realized that one, you know, advertising makes a ton of money. And two, the brands that can pay to play typically are your strong brands that have a lot of retail presence, have a lot of brand loyalty. So it is kind of benefiting both the consumer and their platform to have that kind of Ad spend being entered into their revenue.
So I think we're going to see a bigger, bigger focus on everything DSP. We're going to see more rollouts on the advertising side. We're already seeing creatives roll out to sponsored display, sponsored brand, pretty interesting, expanded video and search Ad inventory. So everything that benefits the brand rather than the kind of me too private label seller.
I think that's the direction they're going. Amazon no longer needs 300 of the same object to be. They need 30 of the same object to be sold, and it needs to be the 30 best objects. So we're really seeing that focus of instead of going, really wide and then Amazon's going a lot deeper and focusing on the best product for their customers. And then the second order consequence of that is a focus on brand for Amazon Ads. So that can be broken out to like 28 new rollouts that we're expecting. But that's kind of the overview.
James Dihardjo
Interesting. I think the pay-to-play theme is definitely on a lot of people's minds. Like it's definitely like a key component. Just a side question on that. I think a lot of people are talking about the IPI score and obviously, that drives your ability to kind of send stock to Amazon and all that. Do you think we'll see pay to play on in that aspect of Amazon as well? What would, what are your thoughts?
Destaney Wishon
So, to give a little bit of background, I personally came from the vendor side of the world. And at the time, vendors were always up against Amazon. They didn't work together well. Vendors typically enjoyed working with Walmart because it was a little bit more symbiotic relationship. And then Amazon was never that. Amazon used to do what they call crapping out products, which is, these products can't realize the profit. We're going to stop, you know, sending POS for them.
So, Yes. I think that in the old days, Amazon didn't love vendors, but now knowing the kind of volume that vendors does and that like brands or the direction it's going, I do see them opening up the opportunity for vendors who are willing to pay for that type of kind of premium, and sellers who can pay for that type of premium to have beneficial treatment in all shipping supply chain area. It was a long winded answer.
James Dihardjo
No, that's very interesting. I really, really wanted to run that past you, but yeah, thank you. And I guess final thoughts in the interest of time, Multi-Region Amazon Selling Distraction or True Value Add, or what's your thinking?
Destaney Wishon
Long-Term True Value Add? It's a hard question when you're looking at the day-to-day because any seller's managing brand, social off-platform, off-platform supply chain, PPC. All of these factors are required to make a brand successful these days. So when you also throw away localization, it's selling it every single marketplace.
It just becomes 10 times more complex. But I think Amazon's making really big moves in that area that are going to make it a little bit easier on the seller. And I think that it's an amazing opportunity as we discussed, we can manage in multiple times, modes because of technology. I think it's really cool that we're going to be able to sell products within that as well.
James Dihardjo
Interesting. Very, very interesting answer. So for everyone there, you heard it directly from Destaney yourself. Multi-region, Amazon selling is a true value add. So look, I'll I'll leave it there.
Destaney Wishon
(Laughs) If you have time.
James Dihardjo
No. Awesome, awesome. Look, thank you so much for making time in your evening, and look, we'd love to have you back and yeah, it was great having you. Thank you, Destaney.
Destaney Wishon
Awesome. Thank you so much, James.
