Amazon’s 2020 Prime Day hit 10.4 billion in sales. For online sellers, Prime Day is the biggest sales event of the year, and it’s prime time to win more customers for your eCommerce venture.
We’re in the final countdown. If you haven’t already, mark your calendar for 2021 Prime Day on June 21. Taking advantage of Prime Day will boost your organic ranking and set you up for massive success the rest of the year.
But, anything worth doing is going to take some effort. Our 10-year Amazon expert, Mrs. Joan Xiao, has a few last-minute pointers for you to win more customers on Prime Day and generate recurring revenue year-round.
There’s no time to waste. Let’s dive right in.
2 Week Before Prime Day
Deal review and finalize
Generally speaking, you want to submit your deals to Amazon three months before Prime Day:
- Lighting Deals (LD)
- Prime Exclusive Discount (PED)
- Deal of the Day (DOTD)
But remember, Amazon owns Prime Day. The company can change deal submissions at any time.
For example, some deals require sellers to have a particular star rating or inventory level. If your store were to lose a review star or experience a drop in inventory, Amazon might revoke your deal.
Always have a plan B
Since there’s a risk of Amazon revoking your deal approval, you must have a plan B for your Prime Day campaign. Here’s an example of what I mean:
You’ve chosen five products for lightning deals, and two get rejected two weeks later. Maybe Amazon doesn’t set your lightning deal for the hours you want, or the required deal price needs to decrease by a dollar. In these cases, you’ll have to reconsider your options.
Calculate the latest assumption of price, quantity, spend, period, and additional actions you’ll need to take. You may find that you’ll have to go with a plan B. Check your plan B to make sure you’ll still meet your sales goal when Prime Day ends.
Double-check and optimize your key listings
Like deals, Amazon can also change key listings before Prime Day kickoff. In rare cases, you might have to deal with a last-minute technical glitch.
But even a tiny mistake on your part could result in huge losses on Prime Day. So be sure to double-check and optimize all your listings and make sure they’re aligned with your plan.
Make any necessary brand page updates and optimize your page.
Don’t skip out on this part! Even though Amazon is a product-focused platform, you might think few people will visit your brand page. But on Prime Day, traffic is huge. Your brand page can get far more customers on Prime Day than at any other time of the year.
My advice? You want to include a separate section on your brand page explicitly dedicated to Prime Day deals. Before the big day, make sure your brand page clearly shows all your discounts and highlights your key listings.
Troubleshoot and double-check your inventory
Before Amazon Prime Day, you’ve got to approve and ship all of your products to FBA before the cutoff date. Usually, the cutoff date is one month before Prime Day.
In general, Prime Day sales are typically at least ten times higher than on regular sales days.
Since your inventory frequently changes in real-time, you’ll need to watch it like a hawk in the lead-up to Prime Day. If it dips and puts your deal approval in jeopardy, you can contact Amazon and get something worked out.
Finalize your Amazon DSP Advertising budget
Running Amazon Ads will drive more traffic and revenue to your offerings, especially leading up to Prime Day. But, the Prime Day competition can be fierce. I suggest you double or even triple your ad budget just to be safe.
To better execute your plan and reach your sales goals, make your budget plan as detailed as possible. Remember to allocate funds to products, hours, dates, etc.
Advertise off Amazon and finalize a detailed budget
Driving external traffic to your Amazon Prime Day deals will significantly enhance your sales performance. Since the cost of running ads during Prime Day can get expensive quickly, you must have a clear, detailed budget and plan to protect your ad spend.
In my experience, early morning (8 to 9 am) and late-night hours (8 to 9 pm) will get you the most traffic. Focus your limited resources on this most effective period.
On Amazon Prime Day Itself
Monitor competitors’ activities
Before Prime Day, you probably won’t have much information on your competitors’ discount plans. Keep tracking your competitors’ performance when the war starts. At the same time, Prime Day is a good opportunity to learn something new from your competitors.
If you find some are offering significant discounts on certain products that lead to excellent sales performance, you can still adjust your strategy.
When you see competitors’ products are ‘out of stock’, congratulations, that means you can spend less budget to reach your sales goal.
Watch all indicators
Monitoring all your sales indicators and listings in the early morning on Prime Day. You should have a rough sense of your sales performance for each hour. Start early, and you can quickly put out any potential fires if something unusual happens.
Simultaneously, run some tests to optimize your sales performance. Keep tracking the indicators and adjust your plan accordingly. Here’s what I mean by that:
On Prime Day last year, we helped a client run a split test for two different discounts. One was a coupon, and the other one was a Prime Membership Discount. After the first two hours, we saw a huge performance gap between these two discounts.
We set the higher-performing discount across the client’s offerings for the remainder of the day. As a result of our efforts, the client successfully met their sales target for Prime Day 2020.
What if winning customers on Prime Day doesn’t fit the budget?
For many of our clients, running ads on Prime Day can be too pricey for their budgets. But there’s a way around that so you can still win customers through the Prime Day shopping frenzy.
You can run an after Prime Day campaign. The traffic to Amazon and other discount sites is typically very high for the entire Prime Day week. With an after Prime Day campaign, you can take advantage of that and win more customers for your brand.
At Oceanwing, our Amazon experts wish you a successful Prime Day! Do a bit of hard work upfront, and you can win big during one of the biggest online sales events of the entire year.
Ready to get started on your Prime Day campaign? Hit us up (services-us@oceanwing.com) for a free consultation. We’ll be happy to discuss your Prime Day and Amazon-focused sales goals you have for your eCommerce business.