All about Prime Day - 06.29.2024

Since Amazon just announced Prime Day will be July 16th and 17th, today's edition is all Prime Day - how to prep, execute, and learn from the results.

Prime Day 2024 for CPG brands?

Amazon’s biggest self-made holiday of Prime Day is set for July 16th and 17th this year.?

Amazon likes to go big with this event. Last year Prime members purchased over 375 million items and saved more than $2.5 billion, making it the biggest Prime Day in history.

2024 will be Prime Day 10th anniversary. And Amazon will pull all the stops to make it yet another record year for its anniversary.?

Amazon even brought in musician Megan Thee Stallion to create a new original song, “It’s Prime Day.” (If you don’t know who Megan Thee Stallion is, don’t feel bad. I had to look her up).

I did not want to limit Prime Day recommendations in a generic type of ‘do this’ 5 bullet points.??My 8 years of Prime Day experience just don’t allow that.

With minimal effort on few things I lay out below you should expect at least 3x of daily sales during Prime Day.

With??more effort and involvement of off-Amazon traffic generation, you can expect 10x+ daily amount of sales during Prime Day.

And if you need help to strategize and get ready quickly, connect with me this coming week.?

Ways to leverage Prime Day?

1. Sales boost. Biggest and obvious purpose
2. New product launch - getting your new products through discounts, advertising, and by prominent featuring them on your Storefront?
3. Sellthrough excess inventory - monthly and long term storage fees often outweigh the cost of discounting your excess inventory to sell through. Look through your FBA Analytics to assess what may be worth moving?
4. Move up organic rankings on focused keyword(s) - going hard on few keywords in your PPC campaigns, when there is so much traffic, can you give organic boost in key search results, in a compressed period of time. This does require a knowledgeable PPC oversight, but can be very effective?

Inventory Management?

FBA?

1. ?Assume that whatever inventory you have as active at FBA and potentially in transit, is what will be available for Prime Day. Note, there are delays at times with receiving inventory, but Prime Day being still 2 weeks away I would be somewhat optimistic about anything you have in transit be??available before July 15th
2. Send new shipment for inventory that has less than 30 days of usual volume. Running out of stock thanks to great Prime Day sales is a good problem to have, yet, it is a missed opportunity for post-Prime Day sales
3. If possible, have FBM as a backup for the OOS scenarios?

FBM?

Prime Day Promotions and Marketing resources typically focus on FBA. But:?

Subscribe and Save just became available for FBM sellers as of June 27th. I recommend reviewing Settings for it and add a minimum 5% S&S discount for enrolled items. Items with Subscribe and Save typically get an edge in visibility.

Need help with DTC and ecommerce marketplaces? I help brands with business planning, strategy, channel management, revenue optimization, and operational buildouts for DTC and ecommerce marketplaces. Schedule an intro conversation here

Advertising and Marketing

On Amazon marketing

Running some type of promotion, in addition to advertising, is a must if you want to bring more sales.

One of the reasons is all your competitors will be running deals, so if you don’t, your sales opportunities will be less.

Ad bids do go up in ALL categories for Prime Day, and those bid increases can range anywhere from 20% - 100%+ per bid, depending on a keyword.?

Do plan to increase the ad budget, but be mindful of what keywords you increase your budget. The more focused your keyword strategy is, the higher your ROAS will be in relation to higher ad budget

Here are some on-Amazon tools to promote:

• PPC advertising - both targetting and retargeting/re-marketing?
• Prime Day Exclusive discount - very effective because it’s event specific?
• Regular Coupon -??steady and solid promotion for CPG, in any season
• Virtual Bundle - a discount for buying 2+ items
• Brand-Tailored Promotions - will help you capture some demand after the event?
• Subscribe and Save coupon - customers get additional discount if they sign up for S&S. Great option for CPG categories
• Amazon Posts - share your Prime Day deals to your Amazon Store followers
• Creator Connections - connect with influencers to promote your products with their audiences?

Off Amazon marketing

Amazon LOVES off Amazon traffic, and Prime Day is one time you should definitely send all traffic to your Amazon store.?

Any off Amazon traffic will not only generate more sales (since your off Amazon audience will be warm), but will boost your visibility on Amazon. Which will bring new customers?

Off-Amazon traffic generation options:

• Promotion to your email list with the discount - your email list is one of your biggest ‘soft’ assets
• Social media audience - you can give them their own social media promo code, similar to email list, or simply promote the fact that you will be running Prime day deals
• TikTok or Meta ads - TikTok especially has been phenomenal in helping reach new customers for brands that really zoom into that social media platform? ?
• After Prime Day - match your Prime Day deal discount for your website. Customers that did not take advantage of Prime Day, can still get similar deal off your website. And you will probably have better margins?

Bonus tip:

?Use subject lines and social media posts opening line with language similar to Amazon’s own promotion of Prime Day. Ex: ‘Prime Day Deal’.?

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?Account Health?

Any seller account health 'dings' add risk to your ability to sell on Amazon, and during the biggest shopping even on the platform, you want to minimize that risk.

• Address any unresolved ASIN specific issues -??Ensure all policy violations, complaints, and performance flags are resolved to avoid unexpected suspensions
• Monitor Policy Violations - Pay attention to warnings and address them promptly
• 72-Hour warning - Be ready to respond to warnings indicating potential account deactivation

Your seller Prime Day routine?

Check Amazon account 2-3 times a day to ensure:

• Advertising campaigns not running out of budget
• Product pages notifications - anything suppressed, made unavailable, address promptly
• Account health notifications?
• FBA inventory notifications?
• Marketing notifications - any changes to your coupons, deals/promotions availability?
• Watch your emails from Amazon with words like ‘restricted’, ‘unavailable’, ‘removed’, ‘suppressed’, ‘violation’. Those are quick clues to issues that need to be addressed fast
• After Prime Day - document. I have said this already, but your/your team next year will appreciate written down observations, key numbers, any issues and learnings.??

Measuring Success

How do you know you had a great Prime Day? A lot depends on your expectations and level of preparation. But here are some specific recommendations to consider.

Qualitative:

Observations from your category and competitors on Prime Day - spend some time on July 16th and 17th to browse through your category. What type of deals you see? Any ideas for future? Visuals? Copy? Inspiration often comes from observation. Make sure to write down your observations, don’t rely on your memory.

Quantitative

• Total Sales
• Order volume
• Items per order
• Average order value
• Conversion rate?
• Repeat customer rate (available at least one week after)
• Subscribe and Save rate (available month+ after)
• Add to Cart (Brand Analytics)
• Brand Share Ratio Brand Analytics)
• Store visits and purchases
• Coupons redeemed?
• Social media promo codes redeemed

Timing

While the event itself is July 16th and July 17th it is important to treat it as a two week period: one week before and one week after

One week before:?

• Start advertising your upcoming deals at least a week prior to the event.
• You can use social media and email list teasers to build up awareness and excitement that you will be doing great Prime Day deals.
• Ramp up and tune in your PPC campaigns??

One week after:

• Keep PPC campaigns with higher bids for at least few days after the event??
• ?Retargeting campaigns are key during this time
• Cart abandoners are also great opportunity to still bring in sales even without the Prime Day discount

If this is your brand's first Prime Day??

• Participate. In other words, being in stock across the board is already a win.
• In addition to the principles I laid out above, plan to be more vigilant. Since you don’t have experience yet, observing your category, checking within your Seller account, ensuring the advertising budget does not run out would be the most critical items.
• Document - it does not have to be an extensive analysis, but record top numbers, observations, what you think worked, what maybe broke on Amazon during Prime Day. Did you run out of stock? Ran out of ad budget? Anything else??

For your DTC website?

Give your email list the same Prime Day discount right after July 17th.??

‘Prime day is over, but you are still our prime customer’ - this is a cheesy line (don’t use it), but to give you an idea of the approach?

Need help with Amazon marketplace???We help brands with business planning, strategy, channel management, revenue optimization, and operational buildouts for Amazon. Schedule an intro conversation here

Saludos,

Irina?