How to Apply Amazon Prime Day Strategy to Your Product-Based Businesses

Good morning. Happy Monday, everybody. So glad to be back. I missed you all last week. I've been traveling. I've been traveling a lot over the last few months and it feels good to be home, back into my normal routines. I work better when there's less chaos in my life. And I think that a lot of us would agree that we're more productive when we have our routines. I'm very much a systems and process person. So when I get back into my processes and my systems, even though I'm a creative, I think that helps calm the chaos for me. So I'm glad to be back home. Today we're going to talk about Amazon Prime Days and I want to talk about it with you because I'm such a marketing nerd. Like I am like a geek out over watching what other people are doing, especially successful people. I will buy something just to get in somebody's sales funnel. I will opt in just to be in someone's sales funnel. So I was watching Amazon Prime Day and I was Prime Days and I was just taking mental notes as I was seeing stuff and I want to share that with you because there's a lot of lessons that we can learn from what just happened last week with Amazon Prime Days and how we can apply that to our own businesses. So if you're joining me this morning, let me know in the chat. I would love to say hi to all of you. I can see our YouTubers are here this morning, a few Facebook people. Let me just pull this up really quickly. I want to remind you that if you want to get the Monday morning text from me, all you have to do is text me the word Monday. It's going to put you into the Monday morning text group, and I will send you a text before I go live on Monday mornings. I just don't want to text you if you don't want that text because it's early on the West Coast. If you're joining me on the West Coast, let me know because it's 7:00 AM over there and I'm excited that you're up and going this morning. So let's get into it. Let's talk a little bit about Amazon Prime Days. Let me say good morning to everybody in the chat real quick and then we will get going. Andrea's here. Good morning, Andrea. You can see Andrea is watching me on YouTube. So I stream live on Monday mornings from my public page, my public Facebook page, How to Start a Subscription Box. And I also stream live on YouTube on Sarah Williams Subscription Box Coach YouTube channel. So you can watch me either place. Good morning, Amy. Good to see you. Good morning, Lexi. Hey, Rebecca. Good morning, Susie. Hi, Lisa. Good morning, everybody. Stephanie's here. Stephanie and Stephanie. Sammy, Dawn, Sarah. Good morning, Joe. Good morning, Becky. Hey, Lori, Chris. Good morning, everybody. Everybody's here ready to rock their Monday morning. We got a lot to do this week. Like, July is coming to an end, and I want you to think about what you can do over the next kind of week and a half before the month ends to make progress. But let's start with Amazon Prime. Now let me know in the chat, did you buy something during Amazon Prime Days? Let me know yes or no. Like, I bought stuff, I didn't buy a thing, like I bought too many things. You know, I was gone last week at my family reunion and I came back to a ton of packages because I bought a lot of stuff and I got to thinking about what I bought, why I bought it, and I started to analyze some things. I also saw this, um, article a couple days ago and it really had me thinking about a few things. But this Amazon Prime Day, which if you don't know was 16th and 17th last week, it was their highest revenue Amazon Prime Days ever. Ever in the history of Prime Days. Okay. They did a record-setting $14.2 billion last week during their 2-day event, which was up 11% from the previous year. So I want you— I want you to just take that in. They did $14.2 billion. And I'm such a marketing nerd that I really was just analyzing everything that we were doing. And I always analyze stuff in a way that I can apply it to my own business. So when you, when you hear things like that, you're like, oh, I'm not Amazon. I will never be Amazon. I don't want to be Amazon. True. That's all true for me. But how, what, what are they doing that I could take away from my business? And I've got about 8 takeaways for you today. Okay. So here's takeaway number 1. $14.2 billion record-setting Prime Day, up 11% from last year. Takeaway number 1: people are buying. People are buying. I've said it during my last couple launches. People are buying. Using the excuse that the economy is bad is no longer a viable excuse. If you keep telling yourself that people aren't buying your things because the economy is bad, it's an excuse you're giving yourself. You're giving yourself a way out to do anything. So we got to remove that from our daily talk. You are what you say to yourself. You are what you say to yourself. You're telling yourself the economy is bad, my business sucks. I'm not doing anything, uh, it's because the economy is bad. That gives you an excuse to not do anything in your business, and we got to stop that. Yeah, the economy is wonky, but Amazon just sold $14.2 billion worth of things in 2 days. People are buying, so why aren't they buying your thing? Okay, number 1, people are buying. Takeaway number 2: you've got to get visible. How many people knew that Amazon Prime Days was last week? I knew it was last week. I knew it because I saw TV commercials, I heard radio spots, I got emails, social media posts, Every time I went on Amazon to buy something for the business, like shipping labels or things like that, there was a big banner, Prime Days are coming. You have to get visible. If we didn't know Amazon Prime Days were last week, we wouldn't have purchased anything. They made it very, very clear that it was Amazon Prime Days. They said in a statement that TikTok was their number one social for Amazon Prime Days. They had Amazon Prime Days everywhere, okay? So we have to get visible. They announced Amazon Prime Days 3 weeks— I went back and looked because I'm, you know, I'm the marketing nerd. I'm analyzing everything. 3 weeks before Amazon Prime Days, they made a big announcement. So they did this huge announcement. Amazon Prime Days are 3 weeks from now. It prepped everybody and that started their marketing engines 3 weeks out. So think about that for your own launches. Think about that for your own promotions. They announced it 3 weeks out, okay? And then they went heavy. I was gonna say hot and heavy. They went hot and heavy for 3 weeks. Everywhere I looked, I saw Amazon Prime Days. TV, radio, socials, emails, the banner on their website. Even when I went and bought like something for the business, I was like, ooh, Prime Days are coming. And I could see that. All right. If we didn't know about it, we wouldn't be shopping. If people don't know about your product or your subscription, How are they going to buy? We have to get visible in every way possible. Yeah, we don't have Amazon Prime. We don't have Amazon ad budgets. We don't. But what can we stretch in our own business to get in front of people? Okay, I want you to think about that. What am I currently doing and what could I do to stretch myself? Am I currently running Facebook ads? If the answer is no, that's how we stretch ourselves to the next level. If I am running ads, am I spending enough? Can I stretch that $10 a day to $30 a day and see if that'll make a difference in my business? We have to get visible. So many of you that joined Launch Your Box last month told me the only reason they knew I existed was from my Facebook ads. I had to get visible, and y'all know how much money I spent to get visible. But if we don't know that that product's out there, we can't buy it. So I want you to think about that, and I want you to stretch that in your own business. Number 3, this is my third takeaway from Amazon Prime Days. They made it easy for us to find the deals and shop. Okay, they made it easy for us. They had it on their home page, click here to shop Prime Days. They had it special tabs, they had links on all their social. They made it easy for us to find the deals. I was shopping on a wholesale website a couple weeks ago and they were having these deals like they were having something Maybe it was on Fair even, because that's the link that they dropped. But they were like, we have special Friday promotions, blah, blah, blah, half off. I went to the link that they posted and I had to sift through every product in their lineup on their Fair account to even find the discount ones. I was so over it. It wasn't even worth my time. I have such— we have— I'm not just me, but we have such a small attention span. We have to serve it on a platter in front of people. When I was commenting on one of our members in Launch Your Box last week about, you know, her launch and, you know, things weren't going well. And I went to look at her website and I made the post on her. I made a comment on her post, but I couldn't even find her subscription when I went to her website. It was there, but I didn't know what it was called and nothing said subscription. And it was buried at the bottom of her dropdown menu. Nothing about it was on the homepage. No links anywhere, no images anywhere. I couldn't find it unless I knew the name of her subscription. We've got to make it easy for people to find what we want to sell to them. Don't bury your discount through product page after product page after product page like the wholesaler did. I gave up after I surfed through about 6 different pages. Looking for the discounts. That should have been a collection set up with a link and here's our sale items. When we're selling and launching our subscriptions, that should be front and center. If you went to my launcherbox.com website during my launch last month, you're hit immediately with an offer to join. I didn't make you go find that. I didn't make you dig around and look for my sales page. We have to make it easy for people to find what we want to sell them and shop. They made it easy. So I want you to go back and look at your own website. Can people find what you want to sell to them? Number 4, they had deals. People were highly motivated by the deals. Okay. For me, here's some things that I bought. I'm just going to give you a little insight in my consumer shopping habits. I bought things I didn't necessarily need, but I wanted to replace. Example, 5-year-old vacuum cleaner. You know, you have, you have dogs, animals, pets. Your vacuum cleaner starts to smell funky every time you turn it on at some point. And I was vacuuming the other day and I was like, oh, this smells terrible. I need a new vacuum cleaner. Right? And so it's something I've had for 5 years. I didn't need to go replace it last week. I could have waited another 6 months before I replaced it. It was just something that was on my mind. Also, I'd been traveling. My luggage is beat up like it looks like it's been thrown out of an airplane and drug behind it. It is beat up. I wanted some new luggage. Did I need it in that moment? No, but it was something I wanted to replace. This gave me a reason to replace my vacuum cleaner and my luggage. I bought both things on Amazon Prime Days. I was expecting discounts for Prime Days. Everyone was expecting discounts, and that influenced my buying decisions. Now, do I want you to go mark your whole shop off? No. I don't love discounts for our subscription, but if you have product left over, let's liquidate it. Let's go. Okay, let's get, let's get a deal out there. Giving something 10% off doesn't move people anymore. Number 5, reviews mattered. Reviews mattered more than the discount. When I was looking at my vacuum cleaners, I was looking for one— here's, here's how my consumer behavior was. I was looking for a well-known brand name. I don't want a cheap vacuum cleaner that's going to fall apart in a few weeks. Okay, so number one importance to me was brand name, and it didn't matter. I just needed that brand to be recognizable, whether it was Shark or Bissell or Dyson or one of the top players. I needed a good vacuum. Okay, number 2, the price is what I was looking at. Price was next after the brand, and then reviews. And here's how the reviews influenced my buying decision. There was a vacuum cleaner that was a bigger discount, but the reviews were terrible. So I bought a less discounted vacuum cleaner because the reviews were better. So the reviews mattered. What people say about your products matter. And that's important and it influences buying decisions. How many of you bought on Amazon this weekend and you never looked at the reviews? Or put never or always. I either never look at the reviews or I always look at the reviews. Stephanie says she, she used the same process. When she was buying? Yeah. Use the same process. I want to know what people are saying, and we can see that in various ways throughout our business. Social media is a great place for one. When something is served up in my feed, maybe it's a product. I'm like, oh, I like that. I'm a shopper on Facebook, by the way. I look at ads, I analyze everything. I look at ads, I see what caught my attention about that ad. So that's the first thing I'm processing. Then I'm like, oh, I like that. I might want that. I immediately go to the comments. What are people saying? Are there any real live customers to the shop and what are they saying about this product? Whether that's reviews on Amazon or on your website or comments about your product on Facebook, we need social proof to help us make a buying decision. Okay, so those reviews on your website, on social media. They matter. People want to know what other people think about that product. I don't know those people, but I, I'm reading those reviews and I'm considering that in my buying decision. Number 6. So I want you to think about that. How can we pull out positive reviews from our audience whether that be on our website with maybe a review app, or whether that's on social media where we're posting and we're asking our subscribers about the box this month. How do we get them to comment in a positive way about our products, about our business, about our subscriptions? We need that because that, that helps other people make buying decisions. So I want you to think about how you can do that in your own business. Okay, takeaway number 6. I've got 8 of them for you. Something I say a lot, and Amazon proved me right: you've got to create urgency. They created urgency. You had 2 days. There was a reason that I replaced my 5-year-old vacuum cleaner in those 2 days. I had a reason to buy in that moment. I knew the deal was going away. And here's the thing. I was shopping one night. I was laying in bed shopping one night, looking at vacuum cleaners. I found a vacuum cleaner and then I wanted to go back and look to see what else they had on Prime Days for sale. But I thought, nope, I'm going to go check out. Because one, I don't want this deal to be gone when I come back to check out, or two, I don't want to fall asleep and forget to check out because the deal will be gone. They created urgency. I checked out 5 different times in 2 days. They created urgency for us to buy. We have to create urgency for people to buy. There has to be a deadline. And it wasn't 3 weeks. They didn't say, oh, you have 3 weeks to shop. You had 2 days to shop and people spent $14.2 billion in 2 days because they gave us a reason to buy, to replace that 5-year-old vacuum, to replace that beat-up luggage that I want to replace but I don't need to replace, to buy some things around the house that I've been thinking about but just haven't made the purchase. We have to create the urgency in our business, whether that's a one-time product, whether that's a subscription box, whether that's a membership. We have to create the urgency or people don't have a reason to buy. They'll put it off. If I had 3 weeks, I would've put that off and I probably would've forgotten about it. The shorter the window, the more the urgency. That's why I love a 4 or 5 day launch. We get our message out there. We can put it out there hot and heavy for, for that time period. And then we sell, sell, sell, sell, sell for 4 or 5 days and we're done. We've worked hard. We could do anything for 4 or 5 days. We've gotten visible. We concentrate our ad dollars into that time window and we get people to buy in that moment. We have to create urgency. It is a high conversion point for you. And if you don't have any urgency in your offer, it's gonna fall flat. I'm gonna give you an example. Right now, I'm working on a couple things. One has urgency in it, the other one doesn't. And I'm gonna tell you my results. So I have, I'm working on my teacher subscription right now. My goal is to increase it by 100 subscribers. It's my little baby subscription. I have about 150 members right now, and I want to, I want to increase it by 100, which is a big goal for that little subscription. It's my little baby subscription. But the goal is that they have until Friday to get the free item, and we've already seen over 20, 20 to 25 subscribers join in just a couple of days. Okay, so this is an example. I have another business. I have a blow dry bar. If you don't know, it's a newer business. I bought it in the spring and I'm working on a membership drive for the blow dry bar. Okay. And my goal there is to get 100 members, 100 memberships going. Okay. I have 3. I've gotten 3 since we started promoting, which was just a couple of days ago. But the difference is I don't have a deadline on that. And I was thinking about it last night, like it's, it's like watching grass grow and I'm doing the same thing over here with my teacher subscription, but there's a deadline on it. I've created urgency to get in now. I haven't created any urgency here. So I've gotten 3 members in the blow dry bar over the weekend. And that should be as many as I have with my teacher subscription. But the difference is I have created urgency. So I need to go back and work on my marketing strategy for the blow dry bar and create some urgency to get some members. And so that's what I'll be working on. You have to give people a reason to buy right now. Okay, great little tip from Lexi. We have a blow dry bar that did a founder member price for one week. The problem is I already have members, so I have about 20 members already. So they are the founding members and they're actually— it's a whole thing that I won't get into here, but I've got to create some urgency and I have some ideas around that, which I'm going to work on and I'll share with you the results because it's not different. Amazon Prime Days, subscription box launches, blow dry bar memberships. It's really all the same, and all we have to do is apply the same strategy and tactic into our business. Number 7, I think this is important for you to hear. My takeaway number 7 is don't worry what everyone else is doing. Stay in your lane. Walmart and Target tried to compete with Amazon, and I don't know how successful they were, but they created their own discount days the same days that Amazon Prime was. Even Temu got into this action when they did Deals for Days. On top, they're trying to compete with Amazon Prime Days, and that's fine. But Amazon is focused. They don't care what Walmart and Target are doing. They don't care if Temu is trying to undercut them on prices and have their Deals for Day. They're Amazon. And they're focused and they have this big, you know, launch for Prime Days and they're staying in their lane and they're not worrying about what Walmart, Target, and Temu are doing. How many times do you worry about what somebody else is doing in your space? How many times do you let that give you negative energy in the middle of your launch? Somebody else is doing this. Stay focused. Don't worry about what everybody else is doing. Have your plan and implement it and stay focused. Put your blinders on if you have to. What I have to do sometimes when things get— bring me negative energy— click the unfollow button. Click snooze for 30 days on social media. We gotta quit letting people steal our joy, because here's the thing: we all have competitors out there. Big, small, it doesn't matter. We all do. And there's a couple things that you can, you can take away from that. Is one, you can learn from what they're doing, just like I'm learning from what Amazon is doing. They're not my competition. But I'm learning from what they're doing. You can learn from what they're doing or you can put your blinders on and not— if it's bringing you negative energy every time you see it, unfollow them today. Unfollow them today. It's not worth it. Focus on what you are doing and let everything else go. Takeaway number 8. This is the last one, but this is my final takeaway from Amazon Prime Days. This right here is the catalyst into holiday shopping. This right here shows me what holiday shopping is going to look like, and we need to get ahead of it. Holiday shopping could be very big for us this year, and some of us need it very badly. $14.2 billion were spent during Amazon Prime Days last week, up 11%. That gives me hope of what this fourth quarter could bring for me, and I'm going to stay focused, and I'm going to lock in, and I'm going to do what I know how to do in the fourth order. But this shows me that our economy is— can handle it. This also shows me that we need to get ahead of holiday shopping. Someone on my team, I don't know who's, who's with me this morning, but they said, I bought Christmas gifts on Prime Days. They're already holiday shopping. There was an article in Forbes that I read yesterday that said they're predicting that holiday shopping will will increase and start earlier than ever, and they're predicting it will start in October. And I'm going to tell you right now, let's get ahead of it. Let's start in October because we have an election going on and things are going to be wonky, right? Expect the unexpected. I've been watching Big Brother. Expect the unexpected. We don't know. Like, we just, we just watched one of our candidates drop out of the race this weekend. Expect the unexpected going into this election period. Okay, so let's get ahead of it. Let's not wait till the last minute. Let's not wait till Black Friday. Let's get ahead of it. This is your permission to start holiday shopping in October. Okay, which means we need to be planning right now. We need to be planning right now. Put on your to-do list for August that I need to plan my fourth quarter promotions. So that we can be ahead of it and not be reacting to it. Anytime we see something happening in the e-commerce space, I want you to pay attention to it, learn from it. I love watching things unfold, and I was waiting to see the results. I'm like, I wonder how these Prime Days— now I know the results because my porch is full of boxes, but But you know, I got a kid going off to college, so I need a few things. But what I want you to do is, is I want you to apply it to your own business. Number 1, people are buying. Number 2, you have to get visible and you need to get more visible than you are right now. So how can you stretch yourself to get more visible? Number 3, I need you to go back and analyze your own websites. Have you made it easy for people to join your subscription? Have you made it easy for them to find what they're looking for? Number 4, are we showing value? Are we giving deals? Do they understand the value that they're getting from being a subscriber or shopping with you? Number 5, reviews matter. What people are saying about your product, your offer, your business matters. Number 6, create urgency. We gotta give them a reason to buy right now, and we can't leave it open-ended. Number 7, put your blinders on and don't worry about what everybody else is doing. You are you, and that is your superpower. You have built an audience or you are building an audience because of who you are and what you offer. Stay in your lane. And number 8, the economy is thriving and let's get ready for fourth quarter. Get ahead of it and let's go. I want you to think about these and apply them to your own business this week. And let's get motivated. Let's build some momentum. Let's get going. Amazon showing us how to do it. Let's go. All right, y'all have a great day. I'll see you soon.