Surfing with Sharks - Making the Most of Shark Tank & Other TV Appearances as a Consumer Brand.

Swimming in the Shark Tank

At Cartograph, we have helped nearly a dozen brands through their first airing on Shark Tank, follow-on media, and reruns of the show. Through this experience, we've developed a playbook for maximizing Amazon sales from Shark Tank exposure. There are a number of things brands can do to leverage the media exposure and ensure they're capturing eCommerce sales. These can also be used for major PR events such as mega-influencer posts, morning show appearances, or gifting lists like Oprah’s Favorite Things.

What is Shark Tank

What is Shark Tank? Since premiering in 2009, Shark Tank has become a household name. The extremely popular TV show, with 3-4 million viewers per episode, gives aspiring entrepreneurs a platform to pitch their products to a group of celebrity investors. The brand’s pitch with the sharks can last hours, but gets cut to a 10 minute segment.

"Are you on Amazon?"

In recent seasons, the sharks have noticeably increased their eCommerce-related vetting questions: “How are people finding your product? What are your DTC sales? Are you on Amazon?" These can drive more demand on the day of the episode. It’s important to note that brands do not get to see what makes the cut before the airing. If there are specific flavors or use-cases presented, we have to be ready to adjust on-the-fly to capture traffic.

Before the Show

Inventory

If your brand is new to Amazon or has smaller sales volume, restock limits can create a challenge. Brands should lean on all Amazon contacts to request increases. Ideally, we want as much inventory as possible in FBA which will display with Prime shipping. We recommend having FBM as a backup in case you run out of FBA inventory to avoid appearing fully out of stock.

Demand from the show can vary greatly. We tell brands to expect a 10X daily sales lift for the first airing of the episode. This lift generally lasts up to two weeks. Consider your key demographic when setting goals; for example, baby products may see a smaller lift since they are not applicable to all viewers.

Marketing

Consider how your brand presents in Amazon search results. Do you need to create variations to combine reviews, or break variations to take up more branded search result placements? We want to make sure your hero products and any products/flavors discussed on Shark Tank are visible.

Implement content best practices that will foster conversion. Do not mention Shark Tank just yet – the show restricts using “shark tank” until the air date. Ensure your content is mobile optimized, as more than 60% of Amazon checkouts happen on mobile devices.

Utilize social platforms and email marketing to let your fanbase know you will be on the show. If eligible, opt-in to funding Subscribe and Save discounts. This helps turn a portion of our new Shark Tank customers into recurring monthly subscribers.

Reviews

If you have time to prepare for the airing, send in FBA inventory and utilize Vine reviews for an initial 30 reviews per SKU. Ideally, you want your reviews to be at least 100 per item by the time you air. A word of caution: Your brand will be exposed to a mass market audience on Shark Tank. Especially if you're a food product: consider the negative feedback you will potentially receive. Proactively combat any of these potential negatives with infographics, the Q&A section of the Detail Page, or adding ingredients/instructional information.

Morning of the show

This is it folks, GO TIME! Crank up your advertising budgets to capture all the additional traffic and add content callouts. For most brands, the Shark Tank spike will be the biggest sales day ever: more than Prime Day, more than Black Friday/Cyber Monday. For this reason we focus our ad budgets in two big areas:

1) Branded traffic - conversion will be very high. It’s worth defending your space or making sure the product discussed on the show is the first sponsored result. In particular, own your Sponsored Brand branded and video space.

2) Category terms that are extremely obvious, layman's terms descriptors of your product. Put on your thinking cap and say, "If I was watching the show — seeing 4 brands present in one hour — and couldn’t remember the brand name, what would I be searching for in plain English?" Examples of this might be “car seat gap filler” or “hair clip to cut bangs." Consider quotes or flavors mentioned by the sharks, and any phrases they use to describe your product. Focus less on competitors during this time.

If you aren’t running display ads yet, we recommend turning on at least Sponsored Display – Branded. This allows a customer on your detail page to see other flavors or product lines, and prevents the competition from advertising in those slots.

What should my budget be?

It depends on how established your brand already is, but we recommend going BIG (more than 10x per day / flexibility to spend up to 20% of daily sales). Because intent to purchase is high, you will have highly efficient returns. Also, this is your “digital first impression”! Make it a beautiful landing page experience by coating the search results with your best ad creative.

After the airing

Ride the high for that weekend. You will likely experience a halo effect for up to two weeks due to the Amazon flywheel rewarding your high search relevance and conversion rate. After that, expect sales to drop off. What we hope for is a new, higher baseline than before the airing. Here are some tactics we recommend:

• Use your newfound Sales Ranking and Shark Tank creative to hold ground on category keywords
• Run Remarketing ads to past purchasers, or purchasers of broader shark tank products
• Run Retargeting ads to the spike in viewership that visit your page on the days around the episode
• Measure stickiness of separate shark tank purchases: create a cohort of purchasers that bought that day to track repeat purchases
• Run a coupon/deal 30-days (consumption time) post-airing to incentivize repurchase or trying another flavor. Create a consumer habit by incentivizing this repurchase.

Things to consider

Reruns: Episodes will re-air every few months. Brands typically don’t get advance warning - so keep an eye out if you see a spike in sales. Sometimes you can get evidence by looking at a TV guide for upcoming episodes. Your biggest concern will be ensuring you have sufficient inventory, and flexing your advertising budgets so you capture all the traffic. We’ve observed that reruns give more of a sales spike than story updates (“where are they now?” segments).

International: Shark tank is an international show, so brands will experience some folks abroad trying to purchase the product. Depending upon your product, international shipping may or may not make sense. It’s important to make a decision and have a strategy on whether or not you’ll fulfill those orders.

How it differs from other shows: We’ve had brands on the Today Show, Morning Show, Oprah’s Favorite Things list, and other news segments. Generally speaking, Shark Tank tends to be the best performer: simply showing up on screen or having someone say they like your product seems to be much less of a “call to action” vs. hearing the brand story from the founder.

Questions you’ll likely get: Does it matter if I got a deal? No. Most deals don’t close contractually even if you get to a handshake deal on the show.

About Cartograph

Cartograph is an eCommerce focused agency that helps food brands sell their products on Amazon. Their mission is to help brands grow products that are better for people and the planet. They support brands with strategy, pricing, SEO, advertising, and operations and logistics. Cartograph is based in Austin, TX.

If you’d like more information, please reach out at contact@gocartograph.com.