Most brands think the holiday playbook starts on Black Friday. It doesn’t — it starts right now, in the two or three weeks before it, and if you get this window wrong, there’s no fixing it once Cyber Five hits. In part one of this two-part holiday series, Brett sits down with three OMG Commerce department leads — Nick Flint (retention), Bill Cover (Google/YouTube), and Trenton Bodenbach (Amazon) — to break down exactly what to do in the pre-peak window across email/SMS, paid media, and Amazon.

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Inside the episode:

• Nick’s “go broad, then suppress” play to win back lapsed subscribers and cut your Klaviyo bill at the same time
• The one landing page trick that turns email-only subscribers into SMS subscribers before Black Friday
• Bill’s budget pacing formula — normal spend in October, 2x ten days out, 4x during Cyber Five — backed by a $28M ad spend data set showing YouTube pulling almost 40% share of spend in October alone
• Why Trenton calls it “death by stockout,” and what analyzing 35 brands across Prime Day and Big Deal Days revealed about forecasting Cyber Five growth
• How Groove Life cut its Amazon ad budget, shifted the money to YouTube and Meta — and watched Amazon sales go up anyway
• The low-cost checkout tweak (hint: it’s not a discount) that got customers ordering more during the holidays

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Sponsored by OMG Commerce - go to https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact and request your FREE strategy session today!

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Chapters:

[00:00] Intro: Pre-Cyber Five plays with Nick Flint (retention), Bill Cover (Google), and Trenton Bodenbach (Amazon)

[01:13] Email & SMS: Why retention is one of the biggest holiday profit levers, plus a quick caffeine detour

[02:13] Dialing in your audience: Win back lapsed subscribers with a broad send, then suppress bots and dead profiles to cut Klaviyo costs

[03:31] Growing your SMS list: Collect phone numbers through an early-access landing page, and set expectations for new subscribers

[05:05] Prepping popups & flows: Match the welcome, abandoned cart, and abandoned checkout flows to your Black Friday offer, then move customers from “zero to one” and “one to two”

[06:32] Amazon & Fall Big Deal Days: Why October’s deal event works as a bellwether for the “holiday 60”

[08:42] Death by stockout: What data from 35 brands shows about Prime Day vs. Big Deal Days vs. Cyber Five, and why giftable brands see 7–8x growth

[11:03] Forecasting inventory & profitability: Using deal-day data and last year’s numbers to plan Cyber Five margins

[13:52] Building a brand on Amazon: Sponsored Brand Video, new-to-brand customers, and why some brands cut Amazon ads and saw sales rise

[18:59] Google promos & Merchant Center: Getting promo dates, discounts, and codes exactly right so your listings show deal annotations

[21:06] Budget & campaign structure: Normal spend in October, then about 2x budget in the 10 days before your promo starts

[25:12] Media mix data from $28M in Google spend: YouTube’s share of spend peaks in October and bottoms out during Cyber Five

[27:49] Reading the 10-day lead-up: Comparing Shopping, PMax, and Demand Gen before Cyber Five, since Google can’t be adjusted on a dime

[30:16] Final tips & wrap-up: Offering gift wrapping at checkout, and a preview of part two on the during and after periods

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Connect With Brett: 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/ 
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQmbMwBW8LYDfFAqNqlgTGw
Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/
Request a Free Strategy Session: https://www.omgcommerce.com/contact

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Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, JC Hite, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D'Allessandro, Stephane Colleu, Jeff Oxford, Bryan Porter and more

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Transcript: 

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Brett Curry (00:12):

Welcome back to the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today I've got not one, not two, but three special guests from OMG. I've got none other than Nick Flint, our director of retention, here to talk email and SMS. I've got Bill Cover, Google director here to talk all things Google, including YouTube and demand gen. And then I've got Trenton Bodenbach, growth strategist, strategist in the Amazon department. And so this is the first part of a two part series where we're breaking down the most wonderful time of the year, holiday for e-commerce. So this first episode, we're going to break down what to do pre-Cyber five, and then the next episode we'll break down what to do during and after. Now, this is going to be extremely tactical, practical. This will be a shorter episode than most on the podcast.

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(01:13):

And I will give a caveat, you should have been prepping way, way, way before now, but we're going to give you some last minute tips in that pre period and then next episode will be during and after. And so with that, we're going to get right into it. One of the most critical things we get right and the biggest levers to pull that really determines profitability and overall impact for holiday is our retention efforts, email and SMS. So Nick Flint, what do you got for the pre-Cyber five period to maximize holiday?

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Nick Flint (01:46):

First thing I do before any Black Friday is I stock up on caffeine, energy drinks, coffee, gets everything down for me so that way I can hit the ground running.

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Brett Curry (01:54):

Neuro gum, maybe we go some neuro gum, potentially some supplements. We'll see. Yeah.

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Nick Flint (01:59):

Just get it all in there so you can power through. We got a couple of things we want to -

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Brett Curry (02:03):

We did have a call with a client yesterday in the first 15 minutes. We were all talking about the stimulants we use to stay focused. So this is the time of year to do that.

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Nick Flint (02:13):

Might as well get them all in the system before you start typing out your emails and SMSs. So we got a couple things for you. We're going to rapid fire here. As we get closer to the Black Friday period, we like to dial in your audience. And this means two things and they're kind of contradictory. First, we want to branch out to as many people as possible to try to see, all right, who can we win back in? So a lot of times as you have your segmentation set up and you're setting to the right audiences, people can kind of fall off after a while. So try some broader sense to like 500-day purchasers, 365 day opens, try to get them back into your ecosystem before you get closer to Black Friday, so that way your deliverability will be in the right place. On top of that, after you do this broader branch out, you can kind of clean up all the bots and all the bum profiles hanging around because you went broad and now they're still not interacting with you.

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(03:05):

Use that as a chance to cut down your Klaviyo bills, press those profiles. Now you have a bigger engaged audience because you branched out and you're not paying as much because you suppressed them afterwards, the ones who didn't interact with you.

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Brett Curry (03:18):

Love that. So there's never really a better time to win back those customers that haven't done anything in a while. So go broad first, like now, now's the time to do that. But then anybody that doesn't really interact with that, then you want to clean them up.

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Nick Flint (03:31):

Exactly. And while you're at it, you can even snag some extra SMSs. So all of your email subscribers who signed up at some point and never gave you their phone number, find a reason to reach out to them to snag their SMS. The easiest way to do this is we set up a landing page collecting SMSs. We send it to our email subscribers who we don't have their phone number yet and we say, "Hey, Black Friday's coming. If you want early access, give us your phone number and you'll be good to go." Boom, you just grab more customer information and you can text them from that point moving forward.

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Brett Curry (04:02):

Love it. Love it. It's amazing. Are we thinking any differently between our email and SMS strategies from a broader sense as we're leading into this period or in terms of we're thinking ratios of sends between email and SMS? Does that shift at all right now in this pre-period or does that stay pretty much consistent?

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Nick Flint (04:24):

It stays pretty consistent as far as emails and SMSs, but one thing I like to do is affirm to them that, "Hey, you're in the right spot because you're here, you're getting this." So hey, you're on the email list, so you're going to be getting first dibs on it. Or if you want first dibs, make sure you join the SMS list. So keeping that clear upfront to help reinforce why that person subscribed to you around longer.

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Brett Curry (04:48):

So the why actually should increase the number of people subscribing, but then that also preps them for here's what you should expect. Now that you're on the SMS list, here's what you're going to be receiving from us. That's awesome. What else? What about even popups and flows and what else are we doing right now to prep?

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Nick Flint (05:05):

This is your chance to prep those popups and those flows. So we like to shift them to the Black Friday wording. This can be tricky if you're managing it in-house and it's just you running your email. It's a lot of flows to update and change. So you can always just focus on some of the crucial ones like the welcome flow, the abandoned cart, the abandoned checkout, but basically match the messaging to your Black Friday offer. So that way when you get your regular 10% off up to 20% for Black Friday, they're seeing that on the initial pop-up. They're seeing that on the abandoned cart and the abandoned checkout. So start tweaking all that now so you can just turn it live by the time Black Friday rolls around.

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Brett Curry (05:43):

Amazing. And then if any of that is like, we're not going to get to that. There's no way we can get that done. Reach out to Nick Flint and team at OMG Commerce would love to help you maximize what you're doing with retention. Anything else, Nick? Anything else? Any tips, advice for this pre-period?

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Nick Flint (06:00):

Yeah, last thing I got for you here is look at your audience in a couple different segments obviously. So you want to get them from zero to one and one to two is what I call it. So how can you get all those people who never placed their first order to place it now and people who placed one order, how can you get them to place their second? We like to kind of move them along this funnel. So think strategically now, get creative with it. All right, what can I do to get them to place their first order? So that way coming into Black Friday, they've already experienced your brand, they know how amazing your products are and they're more likely to buy even.

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Brett Curry (06:32):

Love it. Love it. Nick, Flint. Ladies and gentlemen, hang out Nick. We may have some opportunities for you to chime in here as we go. Let's pivot though and talk Amazon. I know for a lot of shoppers, a lot of people in my family included, holiday shopping equals Amazon. We're spending tons of money and tons of time shopping on the platform. And so Trenton.

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Trenton Bodenbach (06:55):

Yes sir.

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Brett Curry (06:55):

What should we be thinking as brands who sell on Amazon? Or if you don't, you need to reach out and talk to Trenton and team. But if we're selling on Amazon, I mean it's too late now probably for Black Friday, but for the future.

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Trenton Bodenbach (07:07):

We can make it happen. It'd be hard, but we can probably -

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Brett Curry (07:09):

We can make it happen. It'd be a little gnarly. It needs to be today. You need to call today. So we just came out of a big Amazon event that's a good bellwether, a good precursor to prime holiday. And so talk us through that a little bit and then let's talk through tips on this pre-peak holiday period.

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Trenton Bodenbach (07:30):

Yeah. Amazon, it's always just a strange platform. And they decided also to, as you're coming in into November, they're like, "We should do a giant deal day a month before that." And so we have our fall big deal -

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Brett Curry (07:44):

Which actually makes sense if you can tap into that consumer's wallet and be the very first person to do it. Less wallet for the... Yeah, it's smart.

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Trenton Bodenbach (07:51):

And it's also right after you got out of the back to school, people are not really thinking yet for buying Christmas gifts. And so it's kind of the perfect timing for it.

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Brett Curry (08:02):

Dude, my house, people are thinking about Christmas gifts. Not everybody, but my wife starts planning in July for that.

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Trenton Bodenbach (08:06):

For me, it's like December 22nd and I'm like, no, no, I got to start.

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Brett Curry (08:09):

Totally.

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Trenton Bodenbach (08:12):

But what I was going to say is it just came off a big deal/holiday for what they've basically pushed for two days, the sixth and the seventh. And that gives you a lot of good information to help prepare for the, I still say Cyber Five, but we're talking honestly the all of November, December.

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Brett Curry (08:29):

It's all of holiday. I think officially Amazon calls the Cyber 12 or something or the Turkey 12 or the... Yeah, there's a million different names.

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Trenton Bodenbach (08:37):

It's now basically the holiday 60 is where I'm at at this point.

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Brett Curry (08:40):

Yeah. It's like the whole thing basically.

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Trenton Bodenbach (08:42):

But what we just got is a ton of good information that you should be using to help prep for this next season coming up. And our biggest issue we've always ran into on Amazon is stockouts. And if you're not prepped to have the inventory in, that you're just going to run into the biggest issue you can. And I call it death by stockout because at that point, I mean, one, you're going to lose a lot of momentum when it comes to all of your keywords, all of everything you've been ranking for and pushing for so long to prep. If that stockout happens, you're done.

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Brett Curry (09:17):

It goes away. It goes away.

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Trenton Bodenbach (09:19):

But more than that is a lot of our... I mean, we looked at about 35 brands across both of these holiday cyber five is what I'm going to call it, Cyber 12, Cyber whatever, in the Prime deal days. And we're looking for correlation of like, "Hey, do you know what? What's the growth for this holiday compared to the Cyber five?" And what we saw is actually the Prime Day and the big deal days were slightly larger than your average of your holiday season, but that's because it's all condensed into usually two days. Your total income's going to be way bigger because you're running over day over day over day of growth. But what we'd like to do is we'd like to take our comparison of like, okay, especially for Prime or the big deal days and say -

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Brett Curry (10:02):

Just back up really quickly there. So you're saying that, so Prime Day, which is in July, typically a big deal day, the total of those was bigger or the daily run rate was bigger?

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Trenton Bodenbach (10:13):

Each growth, the percentage. Let's say I was looking, it was like 2.5 average growth for on, let's say a normal day for Prime. It was like 1.8 for big deal days and then 1.7 for the Cyber five, growth across 35. Now there's a caveat to that.

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Brett Curry (10:30):

So growth above a normal day,

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Trenton Bodenbach (10:33):

That's what

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Brett Curry (10:33):

You expect.

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Trenton Bodenbach (10:33):

There's a huge caveat. Those are looking at 35 different brands. That could be consumables, that could be clothing, that could be... When you get into giftable items, that completely inverses and your growth looks usually about seven to eight times bigger during the holidays compared. And so we were talking to a brand -

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Brett Curry (10:50):

We have some toy brands and things like that and they just explode during this time.

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Trenton Bodenbach (10:53):

Brett and I were on a call last week, I think it was about two weeks ago, and they were talking 70% of their yearly income comes in the 60 days of November and December.

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Brett Curry (11:02):

Just terrifying.

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Trenton Bodenbach (11:03):

The pressure to get that right is huge. And so one of the biggest things that I want you to be looking at is you need to take all of the information from big deal days and you need to find out, okay, one, how can I forecast my inventory? If you don't know how to do that, we can help you. Number two is you need to find out what your profitability per product sold is during that deal. So whatever deal you ran for big deal days, you need to find out, okay, hey, what was I profitable? Because what we'll find is a lot of people will run a 20% discount without really thinking through, okay, what is that going to do to my overall profitability on Amazon? And then they realize, oh my gosh, I only made 20, 30 cents per unit because I didn't really stop to think through this.

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(11:44):

So you have that information now. So use it to prepare for the big deal day or sorry, for the Cyber five, Cyber 12, and make sure that you have your profitability really dialed in so that way you are understanding what you're running and what that's going to do to your overall margins.

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Brett Curry (12:01):

Yeah, it's so important because now is really the time you want to acquire customers profitably, especially this time of year. We'll kind of break that down later this episode and next episode where our return on ad spend for anything that's Google or YouTube or Meta or Amazon, that goes way, way up during the holidays. But if you're not careful, you could still spend so much on ads and give away so much with discounts that you are just trashing all of your profitability when you didn't need to do that. And so understanding that is really, really important. Now Trent, what else did we see that if you compare, because a lot of people look at the July Prime Day, look at big deal day and use both of those as the precursor to holiday, but really we find that the big deal day that we just came out of, that is the closest correlation to holiday.

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(12:51):

Makes sense. Closer.

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Trenton Bodenbach (12:53):

The easiest way to do this is look at last year's information is how I would do it. I would look at my product and I' say, "Okay, Dina, what was my average growth from a September day to my big deal day?" And then I would look at my whatever stretch you're looking at, Cyber five, Cyber 12, I would get the average probably there across the median and say, "Okay, you know what?" And then I would compare that to last year's big deal day and see what the growth is. It might be 1.5, might be 2x, and I would use that to help forecast. And so I would say the big deal day is... Prime Day is just this blip of huge, massive growth, and that's usually the biggest across all our brands. And so definitely use the big deal day's information from this year to help compare and really forecast for what you're going to do during the holidays.

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Brett Curry (13:39):

Love it. Love it. Other thoughts on what we're doing right now in these kind of pre-days, either mistakes to avoid, tips to lean into, and anything else of note?

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Trenton Bodenbach (13:52):

Yeah, I would say if you have the assets, be running sponsor brand video, be running any video assets that can talk towards really your brand as a whole. And if you're only selling one product, get more products because if you're not building a brand, Amazon's great, but the longevity of these companies are building brands and it's not just me wanting one specific product, it's me wanting a specific brand. I want this item, but it's because it's made by baseball lifestyle. It's made by whatever thing that you love. If you're not thinking long term, start now, use your assets, create some good sponsored brand. You can use those across many different platforms if you can, and then start pushing those through sponsor brand video ads.

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Brett Curry (14:41):

Yeah, it's really powerful. I love anything right now that skews more net new customer. If you look at sponsor brand video, the way that shows up, used to be called video in search, so that creates a better picture I think for people. It definitely over-indexes for new customers. Now, depending on your category, maybe I don't get new customers. Everybody's a new customer. You sell a mattress, you sell something like that. I only buy one of those once every three or four years or seven years. But for a lot of brands, repeat customers, that's a thing. I would lean more right now into what channels give me the best lift to net new customers. Sponsor brand video as far as Amazon ads is definitely where that's at.

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Trenton Bodenbach (15:24):

I would also say, and as the Amazon guy here, this is going to be kind of not plugging Amazon, but also think about where that net new customer's coming from. If that money is better spent on Google, Bill's above me in my video, or pushing towards through email and SMS is Amazon is a great demand capture and we're seeing more and more brands use Amazon only for that. If that ad dollar, if you compare them and you're like, man, I get more awareness through a campaign on Google and we see the growth on Amazon, then take that sponsor brand video money and this is someone who has ran Amazon ads for a long time, plug it where it needs to go. Think about your brand holistically across all your channels and use each channel for its strongest ability. Amazon, that's demand capture.

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Brett Curry (16:20):

It really is. Now's the time, we'll talk about this here in a minute with Bill and the Google and YouTube side of things, but now's the time to be investing in Meta and Google and YouTube and TikTok and anything that's going to be filling the funnel. We've seen with a number of brands, a number of brands who they've built a real brand to your point, Trenton, they're not necessarily super price competitive on Amazon, so they may not win a head-to-head battle on Amazon between the lowest cost provider for a shopper who doesn't know what's what in that category, but you are likely convincing people through your top of funnel efforts that my product is the one to lean into, and so then they're going to just buy from you on Amazon when the time comes. I saw a post from Groove Life, longtime friend of the pod and personal friend, Peter Goodwin and the gang there.

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(17:08):

They actually slashed their Amazon ad budget, shifted that all to YouTube and to Meta, and guess what? Amazon sales went up. It's where people transact. You got to be there. You want to think about brand defense and merchandising. There's lots of important stuff to think about with Amazon. But for some categories and some brands, it's where people transact. You're building the demand elsewhere, capturing it on Amazon. So love that. Hey, thanks again for tuning into the Commerce Evolution podcast. I want to take just a minute and talk about my agency, OMG Commerce. We've been helping e-commerce brands for 15 years, and that's like a hundred e-commerce years. Our specialty is finding opportunities for growth that other people miss and unlocking channels that you're not currently maximizing. For example, YouTube. Most brands are sleeping on YouTube, and my belief is it's the biggest untapped opportunity for your brand.

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(18:02):

We're also good at adding up to eight figures in growth for Amazon brands. And so if you are looking for scale and growth profitably, that's what we do. We'd love to chat with you. We'd love to review your current marketing efforts, show you where there's missed opportunities and craft a specific plan for you. So visit us at omgcommerce.com, click the let's talk button, and we'd love to schedule a complimentary strategic review with you. With that, back to the show. All right, perfect segue into talking about Google and YouTube. I've got some good data that I want to share here as well, but Bill Cover, Google department director at OMG Commerce, longtime team member. Actually, all of you guys are longtime team members. But Bill, what do you got in terms of tips, thoughts, tactics in this pre-holiday period?

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Bill Cover (18:59):

Yeah, for sure. And by the way, I'm wearing Groove Life right now, so shout out to Groove Life. Yep, yep,

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Brett Curry (19:04):

Yep.

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Bill Cover (19:04):

So yeah, we've got for the pre-lead up to Black Friday, you're a few weeks out, so what can you really still change? You need to consider that. Definitely be dialing in your promos, your discounts. You should really know what that is by now. Just one small nuance when it comes to Google Ads, make sure that when you're running ads or promos on Google, that this is something that's going to last a couple days at least. When we set promos up in the shopping feed and that stuff, it takes a few days to approve. If your style this year is some kind of rotating discount, 12 days of Christmas, fine, great, whatever works for you, that's not going to work really well with your shopping PLAs. So maybe think about that. Maybe you could have some other type of discount, and then also make sure that when it comes to your website, your store, your cart, that perfectly and accurately matches what we're saying in Google because Google does check.

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(20:03):

So we need complete accuracy there and we need good information and it has to be when you say it starts, when you say it ends, but also the discount, whether or not you're using a promo code, all that stuff matters. So be sure to dial that in.

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Brett Curry (20:16):

Because the last thing you want is to do all this work to get your promos laid out, get them uploaded to Google Merchant Center, because during the holidays, someone's searching for your category and then they see all your competitors with little deal stickers or slash-through prices or however Google decides to do it in the moment, they're always testing that, but yours doesn't have one. You just stand alone, no discount, no offer, no nothing. It could be a big bummer, but yeah, you've got to have a strategy there, otherwise you'll be disappointed. Google shopping will break down percentages of spend slightly on this call, but more on this pop and more on the next. This is the time for Google shopping to shine, and if you get this wrong, it won't shine as much. So really great call out.

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Bill Cover (21:06):

Yeah, exactly. So let's talk a little bit about budget and campaign structure. So in October, you should be building awareness in general. You should be filling the funnel, as you mentioned earlier, Brett. And as you mentioned, Nick, get them onto that SMS list because that's going to be a really great tool once you get into the Cyber five. In terms of budget itself, I would say probably during October, run a normal budget, maybe lift it a little bit, but for the most part, our clients are running fairly normal budget levels through October. Once you get into November, now you want to start looking at where does your promo start and probably about 10 days ahead of that you want to start increasing your budget. So I would say in the 10-day lead up to your promo, if that's Black Friday that it starts, then you want to be about a 2X budget in that lead up to Black Friday.

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(22:04):

So be ready for that.

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Brett Curry (22:05):

Why are you suggesting that lead up, Bill? Why do we want to have a little bit of runway there to lift our budgets?

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Bill Cover (22:11):

Yeah, you want to be building awareness, you want to be inspiring that sale, and then when it comes time for Black Friday and the Cyber five, that's when you go to harvest all of that awareness level marketing that you had been putting out there. So you're helping people understand and decide what they're looking at, what they want, you're getting into the consideration set. And then when the discount, when the promo is there, then they're ready to make a decision to buy. So then I don't know if we want to go into budget levels for the CyberFive itself, but if so, I'd say during that period, we'd want to be about a 4X our normal budget during CyberFive in general.

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Brett Curry (22:50):

Versus the normal daily budget type of thing.

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Bill Cover (22:53):

Right. And I'm talking rule of thumb. I mean, every single account, every single niche is going to be different, have their own nuances to adjust for. And I also think something to consider is you know where you fit as a merchant. Are you somebody who has a higher AOV, a lower AOV? Are you sought after kitchen appliances, televisions, that sort of thing, mattresses you brought up earlier, or are you kind of like toiletries and supplements? I mean, those are all great. I love to get discounts on those things, but I probably want to take advantage of that ahead of CyberFive.

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Brett Curry (23:29):

Yeah, and exactly. And then going back to the client that Trenton referenced earlier when we were chatting, some brands are so giftable and everything hinges on this time period. 70% of their sales happen during peak holiday, and so then it's like, "Yeah, my budget is going through the roof. I'm spending 70% of my budget during this time period as well and really thinking about how that is structured." Or you could be someone like our buddy, Brett Haney, longtime client of OMG Commerce, friend of the pod, microfiber wholesale. He sells microfiber cloths and mops and things like that. Although his best holiday ad ever was an ad that said, "The worst Christmas gift you could give." It was a picture of a mop, and then he's done videos of that where like, "Don't get her a mop, but if you do, it's this one." But still, maybe there's a lift or whatever, but that's not their time to shine.

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(24:24):

They shine in other times of the year. And so yeah, it really does vary, but you are watching Velocity, you're watching ROAS, all of those things, obviously very, very important. But you also got to be thinking about budget because the other thing you don't want to do, and we saw this with a client a number of years ago where something happened and they ended up kind of blowing through their budget on a couple different channels and we're like, "Hey, we just gave too much profit back to Google and back to Meta. Don't do that. Don't do that. Spend enough where you don't miss opportunities and spend enough now in this lead up so that you fill the funnel, but don't spend too much." That's really the key. It's totally connected to we talked about before with inventory, right? You can't sell what you don't have.

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(25:12):

The worst thing you can do is have no inventory, maybe the second worst or maybe just as bad is having the wrong inventory. And the same could be said about media mix, either spending the wrong budget or spending it on the wrong channels or spending at the wrong times, all really important to consider. And so one thing, I'll actually share this visual. Hopefully this will come through. We don't share a lot of visuals on the pod, but I'm going to share this because I think it's interesting. So this is a breakdown of, I think in this data set, we're looking at about $28 million worth of ad spend across all of Google for these peak periods here, so maybe a little bit more than that. But if we look at YouTube as an example, this will piggyback on your though, Bill, or your advice to fill the funnel in October.

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(26:01):

As we look at share of spend, and now this is going to skew a little bit because at OMG, we're known for YouTube, we're known for demand gen, that's why people come to us. So we're going to spend more than the average agency on YouTube and demand gen. But look at this share of spend. So in October, almost 40% of this data set's spend went to YouTube in one form or fashion. So YouTube demand gen or YouTube awareness, YouTube reviews, things like that. Then it steadily goes down early November. We're still cranking, but it's going down and then it bottoms out Cyber five because at that point you've made people aware, you've made them interested. We're harvesting. We're harvesting during the Cyber five. Don't spend too much there, you're just giving away margin and then it ramps back up after that. And so really important to think about what is our media mix search and shopping going to be important throughout the whole time period.

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(26:58):

But what's beautiful there, Bill, we run into a lot here, and I remember talking to clients years and years ago when this wasn't as clear to everybody, they were like, "Well, can't I just spend five times as much as I'm spending now on shopping?" And the answer is, "Well, maybe, but you got to remember shopping is a query-based source of traffic, so you're limited by the number of people searching, but the good news is during holiday, that number goes up two or three or four or five X or 10X depending on your category, and so you can ride that wave and tap into that as it grows. But search volume is probably pretty consistent in that October and early November time period. It spikes, so it's kind of the inverse of what we're seeing here with YouTube. Bill, what other tips, suggestions do you have for this pre-period?

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Bill Cover (27:49):

Yeah, so the other tips would just be in terms of looking at your media mix. So obviously when you get into Cyber five,

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Trenton Bodenbach (28:03):

It's

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Bill Cover (28:03):

Too late really to adjust. You've got to be making decisions ahead of that because with Google in particular, you can't adjust on a dime. Other platforms are conducive to waking up one day and deciding you're going to change it up a little bit. When it comes to Google, I would say what you want to be doing is looking at the lead up into Cyber five to understand what's working and what's not. Now, if you're looking between platform, obviously you need to be using something like a Northbeam or Triple Whale or Prescient to understand something that will settle the score on that attribution model between platforms. But if you're in platform on Google, how is standard shopping doing? How is PMax doing? How is demand gen doing? And look at the conversions and the success amongst that mix and making decisions. We've noticed a correlation in our own ads with the 10 days leading up to Black Friday.

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(28:58):

What you see in those 10 days is very deterministic of what you're going to see during the Cyber five. And so you can use that as kind of a guide, if you will, to understand if your media mix is right. However, I will say also it's possible that it has everything or nothing to do with your exact ad media. It could be the discount, the promo, what's going on on the site. So be open to anything that could be contributing to success or lack of that.

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Brett Curry (29:28):

Yeah, and certainly there's some game time adjustments and game time or in game adjustments. We'll talk about those in the next episode, but it is really helpful to come in with some pretty clear understandings of in general, this is where we want to be because it's really hard to completely upend or change things in the game, but certainly we can dial budgets up and down as we get into the Cyber five and we see that a lot, especially with search and shopping just because there's so much volume there, you can go up or down based on what you're seeing, but going in with an idea of here's how we're going to bucket this and some ranges we're shooting for, super helpful. Just like having a good game plan before you get on the field, you may tweak it a little bit as you go, but way better than coming in with no plan and winging it for sure.

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(30:16):

Awesome. Any final thoughts, gentlemen, on this pre-period? It's important, it's fun. It's really just getting started though, right? The Super Bowl is coming. Any other thoughts on final prep?

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Nick Flint (30:32):

I got one last little unique one, especially if your business is giftable, and we saw a huge uptick when one brand tested this out, but getting the ability to gift wrap the order. So letting them check that box and check out saying, "Hey, do you want to gift wrap this? Do you want to add a note?" And buying whatever wrapping paper and supplies you need for that. We saw a ton of people actually order without the extra discount just from the fact that it would show up gift wrapped and pretty. They were happy with that.

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Brett Curry (30:59):

Dude, dude, yeah. I mean, sometimes Trent mentioned shopping late, a lot of us do that. And if you can make it convenient and you can take something off my plate, I hate to wrap, I usually have to get one of my kids to wrap presents for me. Yeah, that's worth more than a discount for sure. Love it. Podcast two coming up soon for the during and after two critical periods. It's where things really happen, but we got to get the game plan right, right now. And so with that, until next time, thank you for listening. That'll do it for this week's episode. Hey, if you're serious about profitable scale for your brand, we would love to chat. Over the last 15 years, we'll work with some amazing brands like Native, Boom Beauty, Arctic, Organify, Crumble Cookie, True Earth, and many, many more. We want to help you unlock new channels, find profitable scale, have better creative, better campaign, better measurement strategies, and ultimately hope you have more fun and grow in all of your relevant channels.

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(32:00):

So take a look at omgcommerce.com and we can't wait to help you scale profitably.

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