Amazon Prime Day is the most popular e-commerce shopping event year in and year out. After 7.1 billion worldwide sales in 2019 and 10.4 billion in 2020, coupled with exponential growth throughout the pandemic, 2021 was unsurprisingly the largest grossing year yet with 11.19 billion in sales. Amazon is the top destination for online product searches, making it even more important that you get your product portfolio and advertising campaigns prepared for Amazon Prime Day this year.
You may be wondering:
This article will answer those questions and more. Even though Amazon has not officially released the date for 2022, we know it is sometime in July, so we will give you all the information you need to ensure you are fully prepared by the time Prime Day is here. Amazon Prime day is a day for shoppers to benefit from special deals and discounts with their favorite brands and products. After a year of uncertainty, many shoppers have turned to online shopping and especially taken a special interest in saving money.
Not only does Prime Day benefit Amazon’s worldwide network of shoppers, but also all of its vendors and sellers. Shoppers who may not otherwise shop on Amazon tend to flock to the site for this big day to find deals and discounts. Therefore, brands are able to reach up to 5x more new-to-brand shoppers and gain exposure on a scale that would otherwise be impossible. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to get your brand and products in front of millions of shoppers.
Aside from the exponential increase in sales that many brands experience during Prime Day, there are also four other major benefits:
Marketing – Amazon takes great steps, both on and off the site to increase traffic during this special day.
Discoverability – The Deals page features the discounts available to shoppers, therefore helping them discover your brand and making it easier for shoppers to find your products.
Sales Potential – Shoppers are drawn to discounts and more likely to purchase during a temporary price reduction, so offering special promotions will increase your sales during Prime Day.
Visibility – Products with deals during Prime Day are marked with special badges in the search results, making them very easy for shoppers to find.
Preparation for Prime Day needs to start weeks in advance. The event will be taking place a bit earlier than usual this year, but with a timeline set for sometime in (most likely late) June, now is the perfect time to start getting ready.
First and foremost, it is important that you stay aware of your stock situation. In a time where campaigns are key, ensuring that you have the stock to support them is vital. It is important to keep an eye on your stock level not only before and during Prime Day, but also during the time after to measure how it affected your sales and to take full advantage of the high rankings that have been achieved during the event.
Next, be sure you select the right ASINs to feature in your prime day deals. Think about which products can actually assert themselves against the competition in terms of pricing, ratings and reviews. Keep in mind that Amazon has restrictions when it comes to setting up deals and promotes those with the best price, quantity and inventory. It is also key to make sure that the products you select have enough ratings to make them competitive.
Finally, it is a very good idea to audit your listings in the time leading up to Prime Day. Read through all your product content and check the titles, bullet points, product descriptions and product images to ensure that everything is correct and up-to-date. It would also be helpful to read through your customer reviews and questions to see what information they would like to know and what kind of language they are using. You can use this knowledge to create content that is tailored to your target audience and written in a way that appeals to them.
Coupons
What is it: Digital coupons that allow you to offer discounts for a single ASIN or a range of ASINs
Timing: Can last up to a year but require at least 3 weeks of advanced planning
Use: Optimal for the advertising of product groups and by repetition of advertising intervals
How and where it appears: Displayed on Amazon Deals page, coupon home page or product detail pages as a little green banner showing a percentage off or the amount of the coupon
Benefits: This is a highly visible option that can help you easily monitor campaign performance and track it in real time
Financing: Definable total budget
Lightning Deal
What is it: The classic Prime Day deal – a Lightning Deal is a promotion where an item is featured for several hours on Amazon’s “Today’s Deals” page.
Timing: Up to 6 hours and requires at least 4 weeks advanced planning
Use: Optimal for new products and short-term sales. There are only a limited number of discounts available, so it is necessary to get started as soon as possible (these offers will run out-of-stock) and only a limited number of discounts on an item can be offered for a short period. Offers will run until the stock is depleted or the campaign runs out.
How and where it appears: Placed directly on the Today’s Deals page.
Benefits: The placement of these deals generate much more traffic and gain much higher visibility than other offer
Financing: Per-Unit funding and rebates on Amazon orders (for vendors only)
Deal of the Day
What is it: 24-hour offers
Timing: Run for one day
Use: Optimal to increase visibility for new or declining products, NOT for best-performing ASINs
How and where it appears: Vendors can influence where ads are placed and on which day they are shown, whereas sellers have more restrictions (reach out to us for more information about how you can use these deals)
Benefits: Help to increase visibility of new products or products that are not performing as well as you would like them to
Price Discount
What is it: This is a much longer term deal with a shorter lead-in
Timing: Run for up to 12 months with only 24 hours required in advance
Use: Optimal for long-term advertising campaigns. Per-unit funding and manufacturers are responsible for all financing during the deal term
How and where it appears: As slashed price on any product on which the deal is active
Benefits: This is an option that can be used all year long and you have the ability to define your budget and choose the discount.
Financing: Per-Unit funding
Best Deals
What is it: Advertising of product groups
Timing: Can run up to 2 weeks and need at least 4 weeks in advance. These deals can be used a little before Prime Day and after Prime Week
Use: Similar to lightning deals, just a little less noticeable on the Deals Page and can run a bit longer
How and where it appears: Best Deals appear as an orange box at the bottom of a product
Benefits: Bring attention to your brand and products and increase sales
Financing: Per-Unit funding
Prime Day Spotlight Deals
What is it: This is a feature of the most popular products on Prime Day, offering huge savings
Timing: Run for 48 hours and last until Amazon runs out of stock
Use: Features all the biggest deals in one prominent spot
How and where it appears: These deals are promoted on the Amazon start page
Benefits: Makes it very easy for Amazon to feature the biggest deals and for shoppers to find the best discounts
Choose deal type – Sales is the overall goal, but the needs for each product line will differ, and this will help determine which deal type to use.
You don’t need every single deal for every ASIN, so evaluate each and plan a strategy.
Tip: Some need up to 4 weeks of preparation so be sure to keep a timeline of when you need to plan each item – organization is key!
Tip: Keep an eye on your financing and margins and consider the lead time required.
Pre-Prime Day Phase
This is the phase in which you want to make sure you have a good balance of marketing and deal management. People are searching for special deals, so if they are searching and find your deals, they will likely also explore the rest of your product portfolio.
1) Start your campaigns weeks before – this will help you gain learnings beforehand, especially if you plan on advertising newly listed products (this allows the algorithm to get to know how your campaign performs best in terms of search terms, placements, etc.)
2) Increase the visibility of your most important/ relevant keywords beforehand- consider bidding aggressively on your product’s most important keywords now in order to increase organic ranking in time for Prime Day
3) Optimize campaigns in advance- do your keyword research before and make sure the campaigns are optimized by Prime Day
Brand Store
Brand Awareness can be very expensive on Prime Day, so a focus on product deals is much more strategic. Check out all our tips for building a successful Brand Store.
Tip: Pause your non-deal ASINs on Prime Day because advertising non-deal ASINs on generic keywords could get expensive.
1) You can set up a deal store page so customers can find your ASINs that have deals and then discover all of your available ASINs
2) Amazon takes several days to activate your store page, so set it up at least one week before you would like it to be active
Sponsored Brands
Take advantage of promotional tools with AMS.
1) Shows three deal ASINs at a time with deal badges
2) Link your Sponsored Brands to your Brand Store and Special Deal Page. Make sure you communicate your deal through your creatives (logo & claim) but make sure not to mention specific numbers (i.e. 25% off). However, you can say things like “Save Now!”
Note: If you have deal claims, your ad can only run in the specific time range of your deal. You can set up campaigns with a general claim and then change the claim when Prime Day comes closer.
3) Add long-tail keywords and seasonal terms (i.e. Prime Day or deal-related search terms)
4) Make sure that you are winning the top of search placements in order to bring awareness to deals. Those with placements at the end of the search results page do NOT show a deal badge
Note: Sponsored Brands with custom images and Store Spotlights will not show the deal badge.
5) Choose a deliberate and precise product targeting strategy. Consider whether you want to target your own ASINs or competitor ASINs and create a deliberate strategy around the price segments, categories, etc. you are focusing on
Sponsored Brands Video Ads
Video ads are a new form of Sponsored Brands Ads available on mobile and desktop to bring awareness to your brand and products and drive high click-through rates. Select a single product to feature and when customers click the video, they will be redirected to the product detail page.
Sponsored Products
Strongest performing ad type when it comes to sales and especially beneficial when it comes to price discounts or coupons. Make sure your Sponsored Products campaigns are done right, so you can access their full potential.
Sponsored Display Ads
Show discounts and deal claims on your product detail pages- same rules apply. Check out everything you need to know about Sponsored Display Ads.
1) Use these ads to drive more traffic to your deals
2) Because they are displayed on the PDP, you can reach customers at the end of the sales funnel, just one click away from adding something to their carts
Budgets & Bidding
1) Bid high enough on your most relevant keywords. Bids will be high, but so will the conversion rate, so you will see a large benefit.
2) Evening hours tend to be the highest time of purchase, so it is important to ensure your budget is high enough that your campaign runs until the end of the day (increase your daily budget at least one day before)
3) In the AMS console, always look at the column that says status rather than the filter. The higher the budget, the higher the sales (keep in mind that the workload for maximizing your sales on that day is relatively low, so have a high enough budget to promote your deals).
Tip: Don’t launch new products on Prime Day, but rather a few days before (make sure your Brand Store is up and your ASINs are already launched well in advance)
Pre-Prime Day Phase
1) Landing Page: make sure your Brand Store is up and ready to go (keep in mind that banner ads can take 1-3 days to be processed and published)
2) Start your campaigns at least a week before. Take the time before Prime Day to gain learnings about bidding and placements so you can ensure that everything is optimized before Prime Day
Note: Audiences can be tricky because you have to work to find the right combination of segments and make sure campaigns are optimized with the best CPM (cost per thousand impressions). If you don’t achieve your desired visibility or CTR, make sure to adjust these aspects before Prime Day. Keep in mind also that keywords are a bit easier to add in and switch out.
3) Take the whole-funnel approach for campaign setup by increasing new-to-brand customer rate through consideration campaigns. It is important to take a look at the big picture, making sure you are getting as many new-to-brand and new-to-category customers as possible with broader in-market targeting.
Convert customers by running retargeting campaigns during Prime Day (i.e. send customers to brand stores / pages with Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands or Sponsored Display ads) and target those customers again.
Retargeting tips:
Keep in mind: Setting up extra campaigns through DSP to drive traffic to your Brand Store, optimizing current campaigns and making sure all ASINs are included so you can run retargeting are all VERY important steps to ultimate Prime Day success.
Tip: Make sure that you are able to take advantage of your higher rankings and higher product detail page histories by ensuring you have enough stock AFTER Prime Day in order to keep up with the increased demand.
If you follow our tips and prepare fully, after Prime Day you will likely see higher sales, ratings and reviews (higher client engagement), more queries, returns and refunds. You can benefit not only from the increased sales and visibility, but also from the performance of your products during Prime Day.
Evaluate your performance and learn from it to help you perform stronger in the next Prime Day as well as throughout the entire year. We want to help you succeed – reach out to our experts now and let us help you optimize your Prime Day performance.