Ah, Amazon’s Prime Day — one of the biggest sales days for both buyers and sellers. Millions and millions of people flock to Amazon to find the best deal on a wide variety of products. And, for most brands, this is one of the largest sales days all year.
With Prime Day quickly approaching this summer, many brands are looking to finalize their 2021 Prime Day strategies to set them up for success this year. The experts at Blue Wheel have provided some of their top tips to help you see great success this Prime Day.
Pre–Prime Day Advertising Strategies
In the past, Prime Day spans over the course of two days — but a successful Prime Day started months in advance but shoppers tend to begin window shopping a few days before and your strategy should reflect this.
Think about how many consumers prepare for Prime Day. They head to Amazon, browse around for some products they’re interested in, and add them to their cart or wishlist.
To take advantage of this, begin boosting your advertising bids 2–3 days before Prime Day to ensure you’re winning the ad placement, so when people are searching for deals a few days later, your products will already be in their cart. Additionally, this helps keep your brand top of mind even a few days before.
By lifting your bids a few days before, you won’t see high conversions during those few days — but you will see conversions on Prime Day which will be later attributed to the placements from before Prime Day.
Take advantage of this shopping window for Prime Day to set your brand up for success during the actual two-day event.
Participate (AKA Don’t Help Your Competition)
Prime Day is a staple, and every brand must participate. The last Prime Day was less than a year ago in October 2020, but that doesn’t exclude you from participating. If anything, it should motivate you to take advantage of another high sales day!
But the truth is, participating in Prime Day is about taking advantage of the increased traffic and sales. And, most importantly, it’s about not losing traction.
If you don’t participate with at least maintaining your relevancy, you could lose it later to a competitor who spent more on Prime Day. Your baseline participation should be to maintain your relevancy, but of course there are many other Prime Day strategies that would help grow your business (more on that later).
Because the last Prime Day was less than a year ago, you might think that this year’s total sales won’t be as high. But Amazon saw incredible growth throughout 2020 as people shifted their shopping habits to primarily be online versus in store — so our experts predict that this Prime Day will be just as successful as last year.
Kyle Slunick, Amazon Advertising Account Manager at Blue Wheel, believes that this Prime Day will be no different than past years. “Year over year, Amazon breaks records every single Prime Day for sales and traffic. This year will be just as strong.”
Melissa Ardavany, Director of Amazon at Blue Wheel, echoes Slunick: “I originally thought this year’s Prime Day might be just okay, but now I’m more optimistic that it will be more solid sales-wise. With the surge in traffic and increase in conversion rates, and with proper preparation, Prime Day can set up a brand for increased growth for 2021.”
Focus on Placement
During Prime Day, you want to obviously make sure you have the Buy Box and a low or competitive price to help increase conversion, but just as important you want to focus on where your ads are showing up.
It has been estimated that 95% of consumers don’t look past page 1 of search results, and 75% purchase from the top half of page 1. With that, the placement of your ads is incredibly important.
Raise your bids and utilize top-of-search modifiers, and pay that extra percentage to get at the top of page 1. We suggest raising bids across the catalogue to capture all of those search terms, especially ones you’re not ranking organically for.
This strategy will help you maximize high-traffic, high-purchase days like this to gain a larger portion of the market share on each SERP. If you’re past the bottom of page 2, you’re losing out on sales.
Accomplish Strategies in Less Time
Not only is there increased traffic during Prime Day, but everyone is looking to make a purchase — so brands can accomplish a lot in a shorter amount of time.
Any strategies brands had planned to accomplish over the course of 4 weeks or so might now only take 1–2 weeks with Prime Day. Most tactics are easy to accomplish if you leverage your advertising during this high-converting period.
In addition, all ecommerce sees a lift during Prime Day, as other online retailers like such as Wal-Mart, Target, Ulta, Sephora, and Best Buy also run sitewide deals during this time period. So if your brand is on Amazon and available at other retailers, you can really leverage the traffic over the course of these two days to have great success in a shorter amount of time. But, keep in mind that if you’re running discounts off Amazon at the same time, Amazon will often suppress your Buy Box for price parity, which will result in Sponsored Product Ads not being able to run
Other Prime Day Strategies
Promotions & Discounts: Use Discounts Wisely
Deals, discounts, coupons — however you refer to it, it’s a huge part of Prime Day. Every consumer is looking for the next best deal, and if your products don’t have some sort of discount, conversion rates can be negatively impacted.
However, that doesn’t mean you should just run discounts willy nilly over the course of Prime Day. Whether you choose to utilize coupons, lightning deals, or Prime Day exclusives, there are some crucial strategies to keep in mind.
Coupons
Coupons are best for conversions. We typically recommend using coupons if clients want to offer some sort of discount on Prime Day. Even discounting by just $1 puts that little green badge on your listing on the SERP, positively affecting CTR and conversions! Coupons are also displayed in all search results, so customers glancing at the SERP will see the discount without having to click into the detail page.
Lightning Deals
Lightning Deals are kind of a mixed bag. They can be great for exposure if you get a good placement. Getting a 1:30 AM placement probably won’t result in many conversions; but a 1:30 PM placement will likely convert really well. It’s just hard to ensure you get that ideal placement.
In addition, in 2019, Amazon extended the window of Lightning Deals to a week before Prime Day, so a lot of brands got burned because they paid the fee, had their inventory set, and then got no exposure because their deal ran at 8am on a random Tuesday — not on Prime Day. No one can verify that Amazon won’t do that again in 2021.
The most successful Lightning Deals are items that are retail ready, with built-out PDPs with relevant keywords, compelling images with infographics, video, reviews, and strong inventory position. Because the minimum discounts need to be at least 30%, you won’t be making your usual profit margins, even if you get high exposure.
Prime Day Exclusive Deals
We’ve seen the greatest success using Prime Day Exclusive Deals. You do have to schedule them ahead of time at a set due date before Prime Day. We typically recommend a minimum discount of 20–25% to get that little green badge on your listing. We’ve seen consistent increased conversions with Prime Day Exclusive Deals!
Brand Halo: Post–Prime Day Strategies
Your Prime Day Strategies shouldn’t end after the two-day sale. By allocating additional budget for retargeting campaigns (such as DSP, ASIN retargeting, and retargeting based on impressions), you’ll be able to capture new to brand customers resulting in a higher lifetime value of a customer.
This Prime Day Strategy pairs well with the Pre–Prime Day strategy you’ll hopefully enact! With all of this gained exposure and conversions, you’ll find an entire new audience that is in the market for products you offer.
Utilizing a 30-day lookback window, you’ll be able to effectively retarget to customers who didn’t purchase your products on Prime Day. By putting your product in front of their faces on and off Amazon, you’ll be able to convert more customers.
Preview of Black Friday & Cyber Monday
Prime Day is a bit of a “dress rehearsal” for Q4, so brands should also review their Prime Day performance to determine if there are areas of improvement. Did products run out of stock? Did conversion rates drop due to not having a coupon or promotion? Brands should use Prime Day as a way to identify processes that need to be improved. If a brand succeeds on Prime Day, they should feel confident going into Q4!
Want an expert to enact your Prime Day Strategies? Reach out to the team at Blue Wheel today!
