How can sellers seize the opportunity during the upcoming Autumn Prime Day?

The hype of July's Prime Day seems to have not completely faded away, and the autumn promotion in October is coming again.

During the two-day Prime Day in July, Amazon Prime members globally bought over 375 million items, with sales reaching $6.4 billion on the first day, setting a new record. The average order amount reached $56.26, representing an 8% increase compared to the same period last year. Third-party seller sales grew significantly beyond their expectations.

Recently, Amazon announced that it will continue the autumn promotion this year.

The Amazon Prime Autumn Promotion is a promotional activity for Prime members officially launched last year, which was also held in October last year. This autumn promotion is named "Prime Big Deal Days" and will be held in 19 countries and regions, including the United States, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden, Australia, Brazil, China, and Singapore.

Data from the American Retail Association shows that the peak consumption season has been advancing earlier each year in the past decade. This promotion can be considered a warm-up for the year-end promotion. Although the scale and intensity may not be as large as Prime Day in July, it is still not to be missed.

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At this time, it is crucial for sellers to prepare for the autumn promotion and develop a series of plans. Lecross-border has summarized some key points for your reference:

1. Product Marketing

Products are the foundation for all marketing activities. Sellers need to pay attention to optimizing product listings, including descriptions and keywords, to improve product rankings in search results. Evaluate which of the current store products are selling well and which ones can be further optimized in terms of features, quality, and packaging based on past data. In addition to these basic operations, sellers should also pay attention to avoiding infringement risks, especially trademark and common word infringement. When launching new products, sellers can search for relevant patents. If there are no relevant patents yet, they can apply for one to prevent future problems. If there are similar patents, sellers need to avoid using unauthorized elements and images in product pictures and packaging and avoid using popular cartoon characters and IPs without authorization.

2. Discount Strategies

In recent years, due to the impact of overseas inflation, consumers are more price-sensitive than before. Sellers can set product prices slightly lower than usual and increase the discount intensity to obtain more orders. Combination discounts, limited-time offers, and coupons can be set up, but the discount intensity should be adjusted according to profitability and product popularity.

3. Advertising Plans Familiar sellers on the platform may have noticed that advertising costs have been increasing year by year, sometimes even exceeding the budget. This is not surprising since Amazon's advertising business contributed $10.7 billion in revenue in the second quarter. However, on August 2nd, Amazon announced the launch of a free advertising feature called Brand Tailored Promotions (BTP). This feature aims to help sellers reduce advertising costs and improve promotional effectiveness.

Before the introduction of this tool, sellers could only provide customized discounts and deal promotions to existing Amazon member groups (such as Amazon Prime members, Amazon Family, Amazon Health, Amazon Student members, etc.).

Brand Tailored Promotion (BTP) allows sellers to create exclusive discount offers in the form of promotional codes to attract high-intention customers within the segmented audience of brand customization, such as brand fans, repeat customers, recent purchasers, high spenders, and unpaid customers. Sellers can also acquire new customers through the newly launched "potential new customers" group. An effective budget should cover the cost of buyer demand generated during the promotion period. We recommend referring to the following formula to estimate and set your minimum budget amount: Minimum budget amount = Average order value of the brand x Discount percentage x Number of buyers in the selected audience group x Promotion redemption rate.

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4. Stocking Strategy Amazon's peak season promotion is a great test for supply chain and inventory management capabilities. In operations, you can develop a reasonable replenishment plan by carefully analyzing the sales data and performance of past products in the store, predicting demand, and adjusting inventory in a timely manner to meet consumer purchase demands. In terms of supply, sellers need to actively and frequently communicate with suppliers to reduce order processing time. In terms of channels, you can choose a multi-channel stocking strategy and be willing to increase costs to fulfill orders. Some sellers may also choose to stock in public overseas warehouses to avoid the risks of Amazon FBA stockout and high warehousing costs during the peak season.

5. Logistics Strategy Sellers hope to have sufficient inventory, timely delivery, and completed transactions. However, the logistics situation in the second half of the year is not optimistic from various perspectives. Recently, ocean freight prices have soared, and the freight rates are no longer as low as in the first half of the year. Container availability is also slightly tight, and there is a possibility of a further increase in the short term. Due to restrictions on dry goods, the Panama Canal on the US East-East route has affected logistics efficiency. In the first week of August, the average delay time for each ship reached 15 to 19 days. In terms of last-mile delivery, although the negotiations between UPS and labor unions have ended, labor costs have also increased correspondingly, and local delivery costs in the United States are likely to increase before the peak season. Therefore, sellers should choose service providers with strong capabilities at this time to ensure the stability of the transportation process.