Last Updated June 2nd, 2021
Edit: Prime Day 2021 will be June 21st and 22nd.
Prime Day, which started in 2015, is Amazon’s own Cyber Monday. This “holiday” has seen continued growth year over year in sales and revenue, which is great for Amazon retailers. Unfortunately, this added success comes with a price: more and more sellers are flocking to Amazon in droves. That drives up competition and, as a result, advertising spend.
Watch the video below to get a quick run down on Prime Day prep from the pros, then read the rest of the blog to get more in-depth:
How to Plan for Prime Day
Do you have a plan? Amazon experts estimate that Prime Day generated more than $7 billion USD in 2019, up from $4.19 billion USD the year prior, and there are countless other statistics that make Prime Day important for retailers. If you do not have a strategy in place here are a few tips to get you ready to sell.
1. Get Ready for Early Prime Day Deals
It’s not just about the actual day—Prime Day starts early! Consumers often conduct research before they purchase items and Amazon usually offers some early deals. For instance, in 2018 they offered significant discounts on their Amazon Echo devices leading up to Prime Day. You may see increased traffic, but a lower conversion rate. Your ads may begin to falter if your competitors are ramping up spending.
How To Prepare: Increase spend where appropriate and make sure you have ad adequate coverage for products. Expect heightened traffic roughly a week before as a result, but don’t be alarmed by a lower conversion rate! Those customers may return to you on Prime Day.
2. Attract New Amazon Shoppers
There are four times as many unique Prime Day shoppers than any other day, meaning you have the ability to reach new customers now more than ever. This is a good time to consider your current customer base. Do you customers tend to be brand loyal? Do you know your average customer lifetime value?
How to Prepare: If your customers do tend to return to your Amazon store to purchase, you should allocate additional spend to acquire them (assuming their lifetime value will be high.) New customers are out there — and so are your future customers.
3. Building Prime Day Campaigns
Know which campaigns you’re running and adjust your strategy accordingly. Various campaign types offer distinct value to businesses and have vastly different targeting, so it’s important to strategize for each type individually. This is true for Amazon Ads all year round, but with the added traffic and spend associated with Prime Day small optimizations make a big difference.
How to Prepare: For Sponsored Products, make sure your budgets and bids are optimized for maximum impressions, clicks, and conversions. If you’re running Sponsored Brand campaigns, have a clear goal in mind, like new customer acquisition. Lastly, if you’re running Display campaigns make sure your audiences are built correctly to target the ideal customer.
4. Setting Advertising Budgets
Budgets are the final, but in many cases the most important, consideration for Prime Day. For some retailers, spending and revenue figures in Amazon are not updated in real-time, so making sure you have enough available budget can be a tricky process.
How to Prepare: As a rule of thumb (depending on your tolerance for extra spend) we recommend adjusting your budgets by at least 200% to account for the increased search demand. In most cases the additional investment does pay off, provided you have put in the work ahead of time and correctly structured your Prime Day ad campaigns.
Are you ready for Prime Day 2021?
This is just the beginning—there are a lot of other things to take into account when setting up for Prime Day. Ideally you would also plan for adjustments after Prime Day and determine how you plan to use this data going forward.
Not all retailers have the same goals, and cookie cutter solutions rarely work as well as customized plans. So it’s important to plan your strategy early and take into account any and all promotions you’ll be running as a retailer.
If you need help putting a plan together, Omnitail is happy to help you figure out how to leverage Prime Day to grow your business. Reach out to an analyst here to talk about your Prime Day Plan!
