Amazon Prime Day 2019 Guide

What Is Amazon Prime Day?

This highly anticipated annual sales event began in 2015 as a celebration for Amazon’s 20th birthday and has grown exponentially each year since. In 2018, it was Amazon’s biggest sales day ever, until that record was broken by Cyber Monday. (The same pattern occurred in 2017 as well, so let’s not forget about Cyber Monday 2019 either—it’s going to be even bigger!)

Will Amazon Prime Day Be The Biggest Shopping Day of 2019?

The Amazon Prime program has grown to more than 100 million members worldwide. In 2017, Prime Day was made available to countries outside of the US: Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, and Spain. In 2018, it was extended to also include Australia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Singapore.

Similar to Cyber Monday and other events, Amazon Sellers report an increase in sales in the days leading up to and following Prime Day. You should be prepared for higher demand in the weeks leading up to Prime Day in addition to the day of the event. Also remember, Prime Day is technically more than a day—in 2017, Prime Day ran deals for over 30 hours. In 2018, Amazon Prime Day ran for 36 hours and broke records despite a few technical glitches to the system. Be prepared for the long haul of monitoring your sales, advertisements, and inventory as Amazon Prime Day 2019 is shaping up to be a marathon.

“Amazon Prime Day has continued to grow year over year. With there being over 100 million Prime customers in the U.S. alone and with Amazon opening up more and more markets globally, Amazon Prime Day 2019 is shaping up to be the biggest year yet for brands and sellers.“

—Shelby Rothenberg, Amazon Business Development Associate, Blue Wheel Media

This corporate-created holiday, Amazon Prime Day, represents a pivotal moment for e-commerce businesses and marketplace sellers. With $4.19B in sales in 2018, and 2019 projected to be even bigger, it’s important to get your Amazon Prime Day strategy dialed in and ready to go.

Before we start speculating about Prime Day 2019, it’s important to look back on Amazon’s past Prime Day’s as indicators of what to expect this year.

Amazon Prime Day 2018—A Year in Review:

Amazon’s Prime Day in 2018 is estimated to have generated over 4.19 billion dollars in sales during the 36-hour event, and if history repeats itself, this year will be even bigger.

Every year, we continue to see an increase in sales on the platform during Prime Day. We see more deals being run, increased advertising budgets, and more instances of brands leveraging external traffic, like social media, to let customers know about their deals on Amazon during Prime Day.

Sellers need to keep these 3 things in mind:

1. You need to have an active deal or coupon. Without it, your conversion rates will tank on Prime Day.
2. Make sure your advertising campaigns and budgets are optimized. The increased search traffic on Prime Day will cause you to spend through your budget faster than normal.
3. Make sure your campaign bids are optimized. A lot of sellers increase bids and budgets for Prime Day which means CPCs will go up.

On Prime Day, more people shop on Amazon than on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so you will want to adjust for the increases in traffic. On top of running Prime Day lightning deals, I would increase your usual advertising budgets by at least 25–50%, especially if you are running deals. Without increasing your advertising budgets, you risk your ads getting shut off due to lack of budget, and you don’t want to risk losing sales

For sellers, BE PREPARED. Have a dedicated budget set for advertising during Prime Day, increase bids and focus on top-selling ASINs. If not already in place, I would also suggest utilizing the Dynamic Bidding Strategies and Placement modifiers, though this could be pretty pricey. Have Lightning Deals in place, but if you’re too late to the game for a Lightning Deal or are ineligible, coupons will be a seller’s best friend especially with the influx of customers that we typically see for this event.

I think it will either be a huge hit or a miss for Sellers. If you are just relying on the Prime Day lightning deal slot itself, then you aren’t truly capitalizing on the opportunity.

Use some social media, email, and other marketing hype in the mix and it will be truly beneficial as long as your deal runs at a decent time (you know, not at 4 am).

Creating some SBA’s for the broadest high traffic terms might be a great way to gain extra visibility and capitalize on the increased traffic, even if just for a short time.

If the newly implemented push for 1-day shipping is a success, I predict Prime Day will be even bigger this year. I’m very interested to see how Walmart, Target, and eBay will try to compete this year.

With everything that we learned in 2018, our team of Amazon experts, along with our friends at Rank N’ Bank, have put together our comprehensive guide to succeeding on Prime Day in 2019.

The Don’ts of Amazon Prime Day 2019:

1. Don’t increase your bids too soon.
2. Don’t increase budgets on poor performing campaigns.
3. Don’t advertise products that aren’t on sale.

The Do’s of Amazon Prime Day 2019:

1. Do watch your bids and budgets on Prime Day and increase campaigns that have historically performed well.
2. Do use Search Term Isolation to make sure you’re bidding only on relevant, converting keywords for your products.
3. Do keep your bids and budgets higher than normal in the days following Prime Day, as this is when other advertisers tend to overreact and lower bids/budgets substantially.

The Most Effective Amazon Advertising Strategy for Amazon Prime Day 2019:

Over the years, our team of Amazon experts have crafted the most effective Amazon Advertising Strategy to date. It has been tested and proven successful across many different product categories. It works by identifying your relevant and highly-converting keywords and isolating them with the optimal bid to maximize your efficiency and ACoS.

What is Search Term Isolation?

Search term isolation combines a strict campaign structure with a specific bidding philosophy of isolating search terms. Search Term Isolation is focused on the idea of isolating the search terms that drive conversions and managing the bid exclusively on that search term alone. At the same time, if you have search terms that don’t convert, you can isolate them as negatives or simply keep the bid really low. Together, this creates a flywheel that keeps your campaigns (and Ad Dollars) targeting only towards the best keywords, with the best bids.

How to Set Up Campaigns for Search Term Isolation

First, create one Auto and two Manual campaigns for each group of products. In one of your manual campaigns, bid on solely broad match keywords—let’s refer to this as our Research Campaign. Since these keywords are a broad match type, as we spend money, the campaign will show for many new search terms that might drive sales—hence the name, research.

In your other manual campaign, bid only on exact match keywords—we’ll refer this as our Performance Campaign. We only add search terms to this campaign if they’ve made a sale in the Auto or Research campaign. It’s important to negate search terms from your Auto and Manual Research campaigns after adding them to your Manual Performance campaign to accelerate the Search Term Isolation process.

Post-Prime Day 2019 Maintenance

When you first start a Search Term Isolation strategy, it can sometimes take a while before you’ve harvested enough keywords & bids to really take advantage of its benefits. If you incorporate a Search Term Isolation campaign structure before Prime Day, you’ll accumulate all of this information much faster because of the added sales and traffic leading up to the event.

When a search term from your Auto or Research Campaign makes a sale, you’ll want to pull it out and add it to your Performance Campaign as an Exact Match Keyword. At the same time, negate it from your Auto & Research Campaigns. This isolates that search term and ensures the next time this search is made by a consumer, your Performance Campaign will pick it up—at your desired bid—and make the sale. You can do this by manually reviewing the search term query report or using a technology that has the capability to auto-search-term harvest Isolated Search Terms, ultimately allow you to manage the bid on exactly that search term, rather than the entire group of search terms related to that keyword. This is the most effective Amazon advertising campaign strategy you can utilize to scale while truly managing ACoS and profitability.

Additional Amazon Advertising Tips and Tricks for Amazon Prime Day 2019:

Branded Storefront Prime Day Deals Page

If you’re a brand registered seller or vendor on Amazon, you have the ability to create and launch your own Branded Storefront for free. We’ve covered Amazon Brand Stores in the past, but for Prime Day, a good idea is to create a specific Deals page on your storefront.

On this deals page, feature your Lightning Deals and other best-selling products that have coupons, and share the link to your Store on your social media/email channels for maximum visibility.

Coupons/Deals/Promotions

The window to submit Lightning Deals for Prime Day is long gone, but if you’re interested in submitting coupons or other price promotions, you may still have time. We definitely recommend running some kind of discount or sale during Prime Day to ensure you don’t lose the customers who are only looking for deals.

You can read more about how Promotions and Badges affect your product’s performance on Amazon, here, but just remember: customers have come to expect deals on Prime Day. Without a discount or deal of some kind, your conversion rates will take a hit.

There’s a lot more to Prime Day than promotions and ensuring your ads are running properly. The first step to a successful Prime Day is making sure your listings are well-written and optimized. The increased traffic and orders you will experience on Prime Day are also a great opportunity to evaluate your seller feedback and product review generation strategy.

Seller Feedback and Product Reviews affect on Amazon Prime Day 2019

In a video interview with Jeff Bezos in the early 1990s, he firmly states that above all, Amazon’s mission is to provide the highest quality customer service possible—even above and beyond controlling a dominant internet presence.

Pretty powerful coming from a guy whose entire business depends on the internet, right?

As the business of selling on Amazon has developed, so has the sophistication of 3rd party sellers. We are moving into times where sellers are becoming more sophisticated and their focus is coming into alignment with Amazon, rather than relying on loopholes and ways to exploit the system for short-term gains.

A major area of this is Brand Reputation Management, a.k.a seller feedback and product reviews.

As Prime Day approaches, it’s important to understand this area of your business and have a plan that allows you to capture as much as you can from the increase in traffic and sales velocity during Prime Day, week, and month.

Although many dream of blasting through their sales goals, selling out of inventory, and receiving their largest payment from Amazon ever…

The top 1% of Amazon sellers are not focused on that. They know with the increase in traffic, the competition of millions of deals, and a mad rush of 1-Click purchases, the limits of Amazon’s marketplace and servers will be tested, as well as their own systems and processes.

Prime Day comes once a year and is your opportunity to fully test the systems and processes you have set up in your business. Specifically, Prime Day will test your:

1. Listing Optimization
2. Amazon Advertising
3. Seller Feedback and Product Reviews

This in-depth guide from Blue Wheel Media and Rank N Bank will break down each one of these core pieces of your business, and give you the advice to ensure this is your best Prime Day ever.

What is Seller Feedback?

Seller Feedback is a rating customers leave regarding their experience with placing and receiving an order from a seller.

Seller Feedback is critical for the health of your seller account on Amazon. It influences your ability to win the buy box, compete for the Amazon Choice badge and gain credibility as a seller in the marketplace.

What are Product Reviews?

Product Reviews are feedback on a product bought by customers. Customers leave feedback on what they like or dislike and what they used the product for.

Amazon uses product reviews to determine the category the product should be sold in, as well as match your product listing sales copy, back-end search terms, and category information.

Your Brand Reputation Management System

Asking customers for seller feedback and product reviews is something you must do in this ever-increasing competitive landscape of selling on Amazon.

Especially when you are preparing for Prime Day, you need to take a second look at your process for requesting this information. If you already have a system set up, great! It’s time to review, enhance, and make it even better.

If you don’t have a system set up, it’s time to get one up and running ASAP! Here at Rank N Bank, we’ve developed a complete system for generating verified seller feedback and product reviews on a consistent basis, and want to share it with you.

Our system is simple yet powerful, and if done right, it can have a huge impact on your credibility in the marketplace and the conversion rate of your products.

The Rank n’ Bank System

This “system” is a 3-part email sequence that you set up in the auto-responder of your choice. There are many on the market, but we choose to use FeedbackFive because of their high deliverability rates and their long-time good standing with Amazon.

1. MSG-1: Order Details (immediately after item ships)
2. MSG-2: Seller Feedback request (7 days after item ships)
3. MSG-3: Product Review request (12 days after item ships)

In each one of these messages, remember that your goal is to provide excellent customer service. You want to make sure the customer has received their order, that it arrived in good condition, and that if they have any issues, you provide multiple ways for them to contact you or your team. You also need something unique to make your messages stand out. For us, we make them personal.

Amazon allows you to use images in these messages, so we make sure to brand each message with our logo banner, an image of the product they purchased, and a profile picture and signature from someone in the brand that they can recognize from marketing or customer support.

We make sure to drip these messages out over a two week period so that we do not overwhelm the customer. We want these messages to be an extension of their experience while buying from us. The goal is for them to think, “Wow… This product and this seller are great!”

Lastly, we make leaving seller feedback and product reviews easy by giving them a big yellow button to click on (FeedbackFive-only feature). This way there is no doubt where to click when they are ready to leave the seller feedback and product reviews.

Our Results

The average Amazon seller who has no Brand Reputation Management system in place receives a 1% conversion rate for seller feedback and product reviews on all of their orders.

We’ve seen that sellers who use our system on average receive 3.5% seller feedback and product reviews. With the increase in seller feedback and product reviews, these sellers learn more about their customers, what they like and dislike about the products, what they use the products for, and gain additional eligibility to Amazon programs like subscribe and save.

If you are interested in learning more, would like to see the templates we use with our sellers, or want us to completely build or transform your Brand Reputation Management System, click the link below and get in touch with us.

We can help you get up and running before Prime Day, and make it your best one yet!

Keyword Research

Where do you even start?

You start with the end in mind. Start by asking, “How do people search for my product?”

The best way to figure this out is by building a mind map with all the keywords that describe your product including functionality, intended use, ingredients, specific attributes, and even competitor brand names.

Start by finding keywords using a 3rd party platform, such as Helium 10, Merchant Words, or Jungle Scout, which provides users with an in-depth analysis on keyword search, search volume, and competition and sales history.

Implementing Research into Title, Bullets, Description, Search Terms

When it comes to implementing the keyword research into the four main areas of a product listing, it’s not as hard as it sounds. But there are a few rules you must follow to achieve the best organic rank and long-term results.

When it comes to implementing the keyword research into the four main areas of a product listing, it’s not as hard as it sounds. But there are a few rules you must follow to achieve the best organic rank and long-term results.

• Rule #1: To boost relevancy, add the highest search volume keyword that you want to rank for in the first three words in the title.
• Rule #2: The initial keywords in your first three bullet points are the most important because those keywords are given more ranking juice and stand out which help increase your search relevancy.
• Rule #3: Use different variations of keyword phrases and search terms to boost your listing for a variety of long-tail searches.
• Rule #4: Descriptions need to include highest traffic keywords towards the beginning of the listing to boost search relevancy much like the title and bullets. It’s important to note that you need to write a description which maximizes all 2000 bytes allowed.
• Rule #5: Backend search terms should include product synonyms and keywords that help give Amazon a holistic view of what your product is all about.

Implementing Keyword Research into your Title

Through your in-depth keyword research, you’ll identify search patterns, common reasons for purchasing, and keyword phrases that’ll help you design a title that uses your customer language and stands out to pull them into reading the bullet points and description.

We’ve found that adding your brand name into the title does not have a major impact on sales or rankings because the brand name is already present in the byline, which appears at the end of the product title as a blue hyperlink.

If you add the brand name into the title, it will take up valuable characters which leave less space to add important keywords that could help you rank. Your product will already rank for your brand name because it’s in Amazon’s backend.

Here’s an Example of our Title Framework

Top 3 Converting Search Terms or Keywords + Top 2 Benefits / Desires / Solutions + Statistical Information + Product Variation + Product Size

Here is an example of a winning title:

Boot Wax, Polish and Leather Conditioner – Protect & Seal Rugged Worn Leather – Formulated with Beeswax and Natural Oils for a Heavy Duty Protectant – Family-owned Since 1957, 8oz

Keto Collagen Fiber Bar – High Fiber, Low Carbs – Dairy Free, Soy Free, Gluten Free, Non-GMO & No Added Sugar – Perfect Keto & Paleo Snack with Creamy Coconut Inside Dipped in Dark Chocolate (12 Bars)

Here is an example of a bad title:

Clearance Sale! DEESEE(TM) Jump-Rope-Soft-Beaded-Segment-Jump-Rope-Fitness-for-Men-Women-and-Kid (Orange)

(Swiss quality Formula) 1x Phytoscience PhytoCellTec Apple Grape Double StemCell stem cell anti-aging by PhytoScience

How to Write Compelling Copy that Ranks & Converts

Now that we know how to implement our keyword research into our listing title, we need to examine how to write product listing bullets and descriptions that not only rank organically but will convert searchers into buyers.

Bullet Points

The bullet points should be thought of as your key product features or quick statements that describe your product and cover all areas of customer needs/desires. The more information you provide about your product within your product listing, the more discoverability you will have.

It’s recommended that you utilize all 500 character bytes that Amazon provides and use keywords synonyms to give additional context on what your product is and how it works when people are searching. But make sure you aren’t keyword stuffing your bullet points.

Here is a quick guide on what you should add to each bullet point for your Amazon Product Listing:

• Bullet point 1: Address your customer main pain points. Add your top 3 keywords in this section if possible.

• Bullet point 2: Describe your product’s unique selling proposition and why your product is different compared to other​ products in the same category.

• Bullet point 3: List instructions for how to use the product and include its benefits.

• Bullet point 4: Tell the brand story, be authentic & transparent. Give concise and qualitative reasons why you are different.​

• Bullet point 5: Provide a guarantee. Every good business can guarantee something about their​ products. Include your guarantee here and make it as clear as possible.

Product Description

With 2000 characters available to you, this is your chance to write a product description that is keyword rich, highly relevant to search intent, and speaks the customer’s language.

When positioning keywords in the description, follow the exact same format as you do for titles and bullets. Always repeat the most important keywords from your title in the bullets and description and position the most relevant and highest search volume keywords at the start of your listing.

Be sure to not rewrite word for word for what is already included in the bullets. Use different descriptive keywords and describe the product’s key features. It’s important to add in the brand name, size, product type, and model number to cover all the bases when ranking for what people are typing in.

Write your product descriptions in HTML, which will provide a better structure for the content and help break up the text copy making the content easier to read. We use paragraph tags, line break tags, and bolding tags. The HTML will help to make your listings stand out compared to many competitors who don’t use this pro tip.

Search Terms

Backend search terms are vital to the success of your optimized product listing. The backend search terms should be words that customers associate with your products that don’t make sense to have on the front-end or key search phrases from the Amazon SERP search bar.

Amazon provides five rows for you to fill in additional keywords such as search terms, subject keywords, style keywords, and relevant information that is not already captured by other fields such as product name, key product features, product description, and brand name.

Do not use the same keywords that are in your title. Your backend search-terms should include category unique keywords, misspellings, product adjectives, alternate names, abbreviations, and similar product descriptive keywords.

When you are adding these additional keywords in the back-end, all you need are spaces between your words. You do not need to use commas or any other separators.

If you follow the recommendations and best practices above for your Amazon Product Listing Optimization, seller feedback/reviews, and Amazon Advertising Strategy, you will be more likely to have a successful Prime Day on Amazon this year. Of course, don’t forget the basics! Make sure you have plenty of inventory, a solid advertising strategy, great product listings, and a robust seller feedback and reviews strategy to maximize your success before, during, and after the biggest ecommerce day of the year—Amazon Prime Day 2019.

Want to Make the Most of Your Amazon Advertising? Learn More.