This year Prime Day is falling on the 11th – 12th of July! Now is the time to start thinking ahead and planning your marketing strategy for the deals you want to present to shoppers this Prime Day.
With the current economy, it wouldn’t be surprising if there were hundreds of consumers excited about the offers, especially since it’s so close to the summer holidays and back to school.
Even though the event isn’t for a couple of months, Amazon says sellers should submit their deals by April 28 2023 if they want to participate in the Prime Day Sales.
The sooner you are ready the more you can prepare and make the most of the event.
What Is Amazon Prime Day?
Amazon Prime Day is an exclusive event for Prime members. It takes place over two days in mid-July, with many sellers offering exclusive deals and promotions on various products.
It was first introduced in 2015 as a celebration of Amazon’s 20th anniversary. The event is now considered one of the most significant shopping events of the year, comparable to Cyber Monday or Black Friday.
The Prime Day event sees many shoppers eagerly awaiting for the deals to drop so it is important to have a marketing strategy to highlight your brilliant offers.
Using Amazon Ads for Prime Day
Amazon has supplied you with key ways of advertising your Prime Day deals through display ads and videos. You can utilize the tools given to you to spread awareness and direct people to your store on and off Amazon. This way, people preemptively search for your offers on the day!
Leading up to Prime Day, sellers may want to discuss with their account managers what the best marketing strategy would be for their PPC campaigns. It is always a good idea to have a clear strategy before you start for the most Prime Day success.
With that, you may want to increase your budget for Prime Day to compete with other sellers, but do so with intention rather than blindly spending.
Marketing Strategies For a Successful Prime Day
As a seller you would be using marketing strategies throughout the year but here are some to focus on this Prime Day.
1. Leverage Existing Customers
As an Amazon seller you will have both new customers and existing customers to target. Loyalty can begin from the first time someone purchases our product. For improved Prime Day performance you can utilize your pre-existing customers by offering them exclusive deals and Prime Day promotions to drive sales. This is why you should ensure a positive customer experience from their very first purchase so they have a positive experience with your product.
By advertising to customers who have already bought from your brand, you give yourself a higher chance of a sale, as you are marketing to already interested customers.
2. Raise Bids
The event will see a busier marketplace with an increase in quick purchasing so you want to be at the top of the search results to have a better chance of conversions. You will want to strategically raise your bids on relevant terms to do this. This will place you above or at level with your competition to give you the best chance to increase sales.
3. Offer Promotions & Deals
47% of people are more likely to buy if there is a promotion/ discount. You will be competing with other sellers who are all cutting their prices, so it goes without saying that you should be doing the same on Prime Day.
This doesn’t mean you have to lower your prices to the extent of running at a loss, but you want to at least match your competition with your pricing. You will find that your luxury $20 item is just as desirable being cut to $15 in comparison to other mid-range products. Consumers want to purchase the quality products they can’t usually afford, especially in our current economy.
You may also want to think about using this time to reward loyalty by offering exclusive discounts or deals. This will improve your customer’s shopping experience and keep them engaged and buying from your brand in the future. This way you can sustain your current audience during these two days as well as build your brand awareness.
Important Reminders for Prime Day Deals
- Remember you need to submit your Prime Day deals by 28th April!
- The fees for running deals will be greater on Prime Day since the traffic on Amazon is significantly higher.
- Use deals that consider your shopper’s intent! You could even create your own Prime Day deals, which could be used throughout the year!
4. Display Campaigns
It would be useful to run different display campaigns before Prime Day. This way you can test which ads your consumers respond well to and gather as much awareness about your deals as possible leading up to it.
- It is important to have high-quality display ads leading up to Prime Day – These ads represent your brand and are what encourage customers to seek and purchase from you during the event. Have clear, high-quality campaigns to showcase your deals, whilst running your usual campaigns.
- Run split testing on creatives – You have time from now to develop an effective strategy for engaging your audience. Run various tests to compare different creatives and placement choices to identify what has the best engagement.
- Start before you think you should – The earlier you start reminding consumers of the event and deals; the longer time period you have to manipulate their shopping experience.
- Use other channels – The beauty of display ads is the ability to advertise your Amazon store off of Amazon. Why not take advantage of this leading up to Prime Day to direct your off-market audiences to your deals on Amazon? Make the most of your Facebook and Instagram following to build up your brand awareness.
5. Optimize Product Listings
Your product pages are the defining place for customers. Here is where they choose whether to progress with a sale, explore your store or choose one of your competitors. How will you prevent the latter? Optimize your listings as much as you can!
You want clear titles and descriptions with current keyword optimization; including good-quality images on your PDPs, and think about including an informative video.
Your listings should quickly give your customer complete confidence in the product and your brand. Prime Day shoppers don’t want to be mellowing for an extended period of time or shocked when it comes. Good product listings are key to a positive customer experience, and by proxy, a good reputation for your brand.
Here are a few things to consider when optimizing your listings.
- Check your listing copy – This will look like checking your titles, descriptions, keywords, etc. Ensure that you have included everything that is needed for easy searchability and understanding of your product.
- Images/video – Are your images clear? Do they demonstrate your product clearly? You want your images to be varied, interesting, and informative, whilst staying within Amazon’s image guidelines.
- Split-test your listings- I would strongly consider split testing your listings with your account manager to develop the best Prime Day marketing strategy.
- Negate terms – As part of your listing optimization, it is recommended you negate any key terms that are irrelevant or underperforming. With the higher amount of traffic, Amazon will be receiving on this day you don’t want any unnecessary ad spend from wasted clicks.
6. Competitive Shipping Rates
Would you want to buy a product that won’t get shipped to you for 3-5 working days for a $3 delivery charge, over the same product being shipped tomorrow for $1? Probably not, unless you are very loyal to that specific company.
According to The Shopper Speaks, 70% of shoppers chose free shipping over other options.
This is why it can be important to stay competitive with your shipping rates as well as your usual prices! An easy way to do this is to offer next-day prime deals and keep your inventory well-stocked. You can even have inventory fulfilled by Amazon and merchants so you don’t run into any stock issues.
Think with intent, why are people shopping on Prime Day? To get quick bargains, make it easy for them to buy your product and have that instant gratification.
7. Use Amazon Attribution
Amazon attribution is a measurement and analytics tool that is available for sellers as part of the Amazon Brand Registry.
It is used to assess the performance of marketing campaigns by providing a unique tracking code for each campaign and can be helpful when developing a marketing strategy as you would use for Prime Day.
The data provided shows how customers interact with external channels like search ads, social media, display, and email advertisements. This makes it the perfect tool to your for cross-market campaigns and will give you a greater picture of where you could be targeted more aggressively. Likewise, it can identify your pain points, where you may think about spending less.
Omnichannel Amazon Marketing
Omnichannel marketing utilizes various channels across devices to produce a well-integrated and seamless customer experience. It can be used online and offline and is used to provide consistency for customers by reaching them where they are at. It can also help you create a holistic story of your brand.
This type of marketing should be part of your strategy leading up to Prime Day to meet and inform your audience wherever and however they use Amazon. It means that there is a higher chance of them seeing and interacting with your campaigns, especially if they use different devices.
Email Campaigns
If you don’t use email marketing already then now is the time to start as it has various benefits and is free to use!
- Use it to send out Prime Day reminders as early as you can to build up interest!
- Promote your exclusive deals and discounts for Prime Day and the nearby holidays.
- Send follow-up emails as review requests for a quick and easy way of improving your organic ranking.
Organic & Paid Social Media
Social media is a great way to reach consumers where they are on a day-to-day basis. It is easy to interact with and is the perfect environment for influencing a consumer to convert.
This type of channel ad can direct your already interested audience to your store and Prime Day deals. Using an already existing market significantly increases the probability of a sale and improves the visibility of your brand.
PR and Affiliate Marketing
How others view you and your brand
Gaining traffic from advertising through a third party like using an influencer
Optimised Content & SEO
You can ensure your Amazon ads are integrated into the omnichannel advertising by having consistent branding throughout all your ads. You will also get the most out of your content if it is optimized for SEO.
- Through your testing you can update your hero image to one that has the most engagement depending on where you are advertising.
- Use attractive announcements for your campaigns and emails to encourage intrigue and engagement.
- Use your keyword research throughout all your campaigns for the best results (Remember that different places may use keywords differently).
- Make sure all the content on your website and store are consistent and clear.
Cross-Channel Best Practices
Finally, here are our top 5 best practices to incorporate into your Prime Day marketing.
- The sooner you share the better to get the intrigue rolling.
- Discuss a marketing and operational strategy and stick to it.
- Use eye-catching Prime Day titles for emails and campaigns.
- Bundle up offers and promotions and exclusive deals to encourage loyalty.
- Create multiple touchpoints for a holistic customer experience, and increase conversions.
You may not have the time to invest in every nuance of Prime Day advertising, or advertising in general. However, it is crucial for the growth of your business to advertise, especially when you sell on a busy marketplace like Amazon.
This is why you should delegate to the professionals. Here at Clear Ads, we have dedicated our time to growing each business under our care, by individually understanding their specific digital advertising needs.
With over a decade of experience in digital advertising, Clear Ads have become a sought-after agency for Amazon advertising. We have helped hundreds of businesses achieve their potential because we are confident in what we do.
If you are a seller who wants to optimize their strategy for the upcoming Prime Day and every day after that why not request a callback today!
