Amazon has announced that the Prime Day will happen in July 2022. Like always, there is no exact day for the event. But if it helps in any way, here are the dates from the last few years:
2015 — July 15
2016 — July 12
2017 — July 10
2018 — July 16
2019 — July 15
Amazon Prime Day is a great time to get your products visible to a larger audience and sell more on Amazon and it is essential to prepare for it in advance. There are certain important things to consider while strategising the entire Prime Day sale plan.
This should be the first thing sellers should review to effectively plan for Amazon Prime Day. Historical data gives sellers a great amount of information and insights to feed off and have a watertight plan to maximize their sales. Identify the products and campaigns which did well during the holidays and make a note of any deals that stood out during the holiday season. This step paves way for the second one where sellers plan their inventory accordingly.
Once the products are identified that are going to bring in the sales, it is very important to plan inventory. The seller should plan their inventory to meet the kind of demand that’s going to be generated by doing a sell-through analysis and should ship their products to Amazon warehouses well in advance.
Amazon Seller Central Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) Sellers should always keep an eye out for their IPI score and keep moving out their aged inventory. This could be the best time to remove the aged inventory out of Amazon warehouses to make room for products that need more Warehouse space. During these times, sellers should utilize their Amazon FBA stock limits to the maximum and stock up with products that they plan to sell during Amazon Prime Day.
For brands that are purely running out of Vendor Central / In-Network (Purchase Order Model) — it would be prudent to do a sell through analysis and plan for aback up strategy via Vendor Central / Dropship OR Seller Central / Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA)
Now that the products have been identified to sell during the holidays and stocked upon them, it’s important to list down various strategies to bring traffic/potential customers to these listings.
This is a proven method for great conversion. The holiday season is the best time to give the brand page a special theme while featuring all the top products the seller intends to move.
Amazon Prime Day specific themed brands pages align with the customer’s mood and aid in increasing sales conversion and a great brand outreach.
While these happen to be some of the tried and tested methods to champion the holiday season on Amazon, it is always important to take this opportunity to refresh the descriptions and bullet points of a product to incorporate some holiday-specific keywords that will help the products get some organic traffic through SEO and also serve as a great platform for Amazon Advertising to work over.
It is time to optimise the current AMS campaigns for the products with additional Prime Day keywords and higher bids. Holiday-specific keywords and optimized bids help the Amazon ad campaigns perform effectively and bring in the much-needed traffic to the listings.
Promotions on Amazon help the sellers to sell their products at a price lower than normal. These reduced prices maximize the sales and give the seller’s brand a wider reach. Customers during Amazon Prime Day look for the best promotions.
Different kinds of promotions that can be planned:
Coupons:
Coupons are a way to attract customers when they visit any product detail page. Coupons are easy to use and make the seller’s products stand out from their competitors during the peak shopping season. However, a base amount of $500 to $1000 is required as the budget for running coupons. Sellers can set a start, an end date, and a budget cap for their coupons.
Coupons also follow a Pay Per Click model like Amazon ads and they will cost the seller a certain amount for every coupon that is redeemed by shoppers. A $0.60 fee will be collected from the seller every time a customer purchases a product by redeeming their coupon.
Deals:
Deals are the best way to get a great amount of traffic because these deals are promoted by Amazon not only onsite but offsite as well via social media channels and email promotions. Deals aren’t open for all ASINs. Sellers should check if their products are eligible for deals first and then move forward. Sellers are liable to pay a fee for running deals. The Deal dashboard will give sellers all the information they need for ASIN qualification and fees for 7 days and lightning deals.
While Amazon ads do bring in the traffic, it is essential to explore social media to bring in traffic from the outside world to Amazon listings during the holidays. Instagram has become a great tool for both display ads and influencer marketing. If rightly planned this could prove to be one of the greatest and the most effective ways to drive traffic to the seller’s Amazon listings.
Since we have laid out multiple strategies to bring in the traffic, it is also very important to follow certain rules to make sure the sellers get the best conversion rate out of this generated traffic.
Sellers must run Ads only on the products which have an ample amount of inventory to meet the demand during the holiday season. This ties back to the inventory planning sections and does explain how inventory planning and the Ad management go hand in hand to get maximum traffic, conversion, and eventually sales.
It is important to keep a keen eye on how the stock is moving during the season and the moment sellers notice a certain product is going out of stock, they immediately need to stop the campaigns on those products until the stock is replenished to retain customer experience.