In this episode of the Ecomm Breakthrough podcast, host Josh Hadley shares his strategic framework for approaching major sales events like Amazon Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. Rather than chasing short-term profits, Josh advocates using these events for customer acquisition through aggressive discounts on front-end products. Using Athletic Greens (AG1) as a prime example, he illustrates how maintaining a cohesive brand promise drives long-term success. Josh also emphasizes the importance of the 3:1 lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio as the key metric for sustainable e-commerce growth.

Bullet Points:

Strategic approach to major sales events (Amazon Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday)
Importance of customer acquisition over short-term profits
Use of aggressive discounts on front-end products to attract new customers
Case study of Athletic Greens (AG1) as a successful brand example
Focus on maintaining a cohesive brand identity and promise
Emphasis on understanding and optimizing customer lifetime value (LTV)
Recommended LTV to customer acquisition cost (CAC) ratio for scalable growth
Importance of thoughtful product packaging and messaging for customer engagement
Caution against short-term gimmicks that can damage brand trust
Strategies for using sales events to clear excess inventory and enhance brand equity

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Approaching Major Sales Events
The host discusses different strategies for sales events like Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday for e-commerce brands.

00:00:52 Introduction to the Host
Josh Hadley introduces himself, his e-commerce experience, and the focus of the podcast on building a true brand.

00:01:48 Defining a Real Brand
A real brand sells a promise to a customer, not just products. The host uses Athletic Greens (AG1) as an example.

00:02:52 AG1's Brand Promise Strategy
How AG1 uses a starter kit to introduce customers to their brand promise of convenient health and wellness.

00:03:54 Prime Day as Customer Acquisition
The primary goal of Prime Day should be front-end customer acquisition, not short-term profitability, to build an ecosystem.

00:05:57 The Importance of Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
Focusing on the long-term LTV of a customer and the 3-to-1 CAC to LTV ratio for sustainable scaling.

00:07:51 AG1's Customer Onboarding
AG1's starter kit includes materials to onboard customers into their ecosystem and encourage repeat purchases, building long-term trust.

00:09:04 Long-Term Brand Building vs. Short-Term Tactics
The best brands focus on a 3-5 year time horizon, building trust through repetition and delivering on their promise.

00:11:06 Creating a Cohesive Brand Ecosystem
Brands should have a lead offer that introduces customers to an entire ecosystem of products delivering on a single promise.

00:13:22 The Two-Pronged Strategy for Sales Events
Use aggressive discounts on acquisition products to attract new customers and use the event for liquidating excess inventory.

Links and Mentions:

Tools and Websites
"AG1 (Athletic Greens)": "00:01:48"
"Expandify": "00:07:00"

General Concepts
"Lifetime Value (LTV) Ratio": "00:05:57"

Recommendations
"Front End Acquisition Offers": "00:13:22"
"Liquidation Offers": "00:13:22"

Transcript:

Josh Hadley 00:00:00 One of the biggest topics that's always up for debate this time of year is, hey, how should I approach Prime Day? Should I be aggressive giving out a bunch of discounts? Should I turn off my PPC campaigns and just maximize profitability? Should I actually increase my prices and not decrease them? So I just ride the high of all the traffic that's going to Amazon? Well, today I'm going to be diving into how I'm going to be approaching Prime Day moving forward. And this also includes Black Friday, Cyber Monday as well. Welcome to the Econ Breakthrough podcast I'm Josh Hadley. I've scaled my own ecommerce brand from 0 to 8 figures, and I'm actively building towards nine figures in sales. This podcast is where I document that journey and share the systems, the strategies, and the lessons learned in real time so that you can learn what actually matters and scale your own business. Who am I? My name is Josh Hadley. First and foremost, I'm a man of faith. I'm a husband to a beautiful wife and the father of four children.

Josh Hadley 00:00:52 I've been selling in the e-commerce space for over a decade, doing over $20 million in annual revenue, doing multi-millionaire on other sales channels such as Amazon, TikTok, Shop and Shopify, and also the host of the number one e-commerce podcast for business strategy. And that is Ecomm breakthrough. Today, I want to share with you our mindset of how we're approaching Prime Days moving forward. This also includes how we're going to be approaching, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and what some of the best brands out there in the e-commerce space are doing. I think that this is game changing because this kind of piggybacks off of what I've talked about in the past, which is, are you actually building a true brand, or are you just trying to sell products on Amazon, or are you just a product brand that's just slapping their brand name on a bunch of different random products that don't have a whole lot of cohesion? If that's the case, you probably don't want to listen to the rest of this podcast episode because it's not going to be relevant for you.

Josh Hadley 00:01:48 This is going to be for those sellers that are actually trying to build a real brand. And what does a real brand mean? It means you're not just selling products, it means you're selling a promise to a customer, and then you're actually able to deliver on that promise to a customer. Now, one of the best examples that I want to dive into is aji one. And aji one does an excellent job of this on Amazon because they know exactly who they are as a brand. You don't just see Aegon all of a sudden coming out with, hey, now they're selling socks. Aegon supplements is not coming out with, you know, iPad covers or cell phone cases or anything like that. They're not an opportunistic, you know, product business. Instead, they are actually a brand trying to serve a very specific target market and customer delivering on the promise of, hey, if you come to us, we will provide you with the fastest, easiest way to get all of your vitamins and minerals in a very efficient way so that you are living your best life, that you are living, you know, in an optimal health environment.

Josh Hadley 00:02:52 Okay. That's their brand promise. Now, are they actually able to deliver on this promise. And so ultimately, I share with you this example because this is what's going to be kind of set the foundation for why you're going to execute prime days and all of the big deal days like Black Friday, Cyber Monday in a new framework. So with AG one, one of the things that they do knowing their brand promise is how do I introduce people to our products to let them know, hey, they're tasty, they're easy, they're convenient, and hopefully you feel better while you use these. That's their brand promise. Okay, so how do they do that? Well, they have a seven day starter kit that they sell on Amazon. Now. They also sell some of their other SKUs on Amazon as well. But one of their key things and I just pulled it up. They're doing over 2000 units a month just on their one supplement, ...