Podcast transcript
James Dihardjo
Will, thanks so much for staying up late man to do this interview with me. I just wanted to go straight to you and if you can just tell us who you are, what you do, and a bit about your business.
Will Haire
Excellent. Yeah, James. Thanks for having me. So BellaVIX is a premier Amazon Marketing Agency, and we specialize in helping brands scale their presence on Amazon and Walmart.
James Dihardjo
Awesome. And just for clarity, you are based on the East Coast of the US right? Is that, is that correct?
Will Haire
That's correct. I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina, so Eastern Standard Time, and yeah, enjoying East Coast USA life.
James Dihardjo
Awesome. All right. Straight into it. So recently Amazon has released a whole lot more data points query performance, mobile traffic, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Everyone's talking about this. What do you think are the implications, and benefits, or what are your thoughts on this latest development?
Will Haire
I mean, Amazon has consistently been in making improvements to the platform and given us access to more data. At first, it came through their representatives when you invested in programs like DSP, but now they're making it more open to the general market. So more data's great that allows for more precision and our advertising campaigns, our marketing messaging, understanding who our clients are, and I'd say one of the biggest takeaways for us at BellaVIX, what we love is being able to measure, share a voice now.
Understanding how big that marketplace, that market is in a specific niche, in a specific category, and understanding who the players are and kind of where we line up. So it's a great opportunity to get baseline data. And then kind of observed fluctuations in the market, which previously we had to rely on third-party tools like your Helium 10 and your Jungle Scout. So this is data directly from Amazon and it's a really exciting time to be a seller.
James Dihardjo
Yeah, for sure. And do you think that we're going down this path where there's got to be too much data and people won't know what to do with it. Is that something that's creeping into your mind as well?
Will Haire
Yeah, I mean, not as much. I mean, if, if anybody has read Lean Analytics, I think it's a Ryan Croll book. It kind of goes into discovering the metrics that matter and depending on what your strategy is, whether you're trying to grow brand awareness and work on that upper funnel experience or just have a presence when somebody's in the market for your products. It's important to understand the KPIs that matter most to you while they may not all be relevant, each Seller will find it useful for their data set that needs the most of them.
James Dihardjo
Yeah, fair enough. That's a very pragmatic view.
Will Haire
Yeah.
James Dihardjo
Walmart, right? A lot of people talk about it. Obviously, you and I have talked about it. I haven't asked your opinion, but what is your opinion of it and where do you think it's heading Will?
Will Haire
Yeah. Walmart is going to catch up to Amazon. They have the payroll or the ability to do that financially. To give you some perspective, Walmart has like 4,700 stores in the US. They're pretty much in every near, every major city, in the United States. And Amazon has like 500 fulfillment centers scattered a hundred miles from every major city, which is much different.
So they already have a lot of the infrastructure in place which is really interesting. But right now, you know, we know based on two different studies, that the number of Walmart plus subscribers similar to your Amazon Prime subscribers is about 11 to 32 million is kind of the third-party projections of how many subscribers there are. And Amazon has about 200 million. So right now in its current state, it's a very small marketplace. The opportunity now is to be your first mover to mature your listings and navigate the landscape, but understanding it's got to be anywhere from you know, 5-30% of what your Amazon is. Just because it's not there yet.
And if I could elaborate on that a little bit. Right now, the objective or the ideal online user experience from a Walmart, the customer is to shop online, make the purchase, the pickup in store. So a lot of the preferential treatment, a lot of the algorithm. Favors vendors right now. And from reliable sources, we hear that that's got to change here in the near future. But as of now, that's kind of the user experience that they've adapted their eCommerce platform to, and rightfully so, because it's not large enough yet.
James Dihardjo
Yeah, interesting. Interesting point about essentially driving more foot traffic into stores to spend money as they go and collect their online order.
Will Haire
Yeah.
James Dihardjo
I kind of want to get the gist from that. But where do you think it's heading? As you mentioned the 10-30 million kind of Walmart plus, that was the kind of metric you mentioned. Do you think that that's got to grow, like, in your opinion, do you think that you know that American households will have a Prime subscription and a Walmart subscription? What's your thinking on that?
Will Haire
Yeah, I think that's what'll come down to, I think they will cater to a certain socioeconomic demographic and that will be the primary subscriber and whatever percentage that makes up of the general population is where I think Walmart will peak out similar to their retail stores. I think it's a large opportunity and I think that in due time, there’ll be as many Walmart plus subscribers as there are Prime.
James Dihardjo
Interesting. Very interesting Will. I'm definitely liking this narrative. But yeah, give us your top predictions for 2022. Like, we're in, what is it, June now we've still got six-ish months. Like what, what, how do you think the year will play out from here out?
Will Haire
Yeah, I mean, for the remainder of the year, I think, it's kind of interesting. So for now, for example, right now we know Amazon Prime Day is right around the corner. However, in lieu of this holiday, they've increased their fees.
I think in January, they did the FBA increase. In April, they hit us with a 5% surcharge. They just announced the remote FBA fulfillment to orders that you fulfill in Canada and Mexico. The FBA fees for that are going up as well. And across the board, it has to do with inflation. So with that being said, I expect Prime to be still a strong holiday. Definitely worth participating in lightning deals and deals in the day, as well as running general coupons and participating. Providing your products, a product that makes sense.
So, what I will expect is that the discounts won't be as great on the consumer end because a lot of the increase in feeds is got to spill over to that experience. So what that means is maybe, possibly there'll be less participants. So, it may not be as large as in 2021 or the years prior. So it'll be really interesting to see how it shakes out. For the brands that we manage at BellaVIX, provided it's relevant, we're participating at the minimum running some type of promotion, but at the maxim obviously Amazon live events and different promotional activities on and off the platform.
James Dihardjo
Okay. Interesting. Just to sum up, Will. It's Thursday here in Australia, but you are midweek. What is the number one thing your agency is doing this week to drive sales for your clients? I'm interested to see what's in your brain there.
Will Haire
Yeah, I mean, our advantage in something we do is full-funnel Marketing and Advertising. So what we find is in our experience, a lot of Brands are missing the opportunity of driving awareness and build brand equity on the platform, leveraging all the tools on Amazon.
So some of the tools we're taken advantage of this week include DSP. We're big advocates of the programmatic advertising platform, as well as some of the new tools. The customer engagement tool allows us to send emails to our storefront for followers. This allows us to build up lifetime value and participate in Amazon Post as well as leverage some of their traditional assets. So your post-purchase email sequence or request to review features. So, we're keeping on top of these things by testing the latest and greatest tools and making sure at the end of the day we're driving value. So the brands that choose to work with us.
James Dihardjo
Cool. All right, awesome Will. Look, I'll give you back your evening. But look it was great to chat and I certainly loved your opinion about Walmart that's really my favorite. But yeah, thanks man, and I hope we can meet, in face to face. And if we can do this again, another interview, that'll be awesome too.
Will Haire
Definitely. Game. James, thanks so much for having me.
