What Is Prime Day?

Prime Day dates have officially been announced: July 12th and July 13th. If you are thinking to yourself, “now what?”, let us help! Here is your Amazon Prime Day guide to help you prepare for the event on and off Amazon. 

First let’s start the most important question: What is Prime Day? 

Prime Day is an annual shopping event created by Amazon and has historically outperformed Black Friday and Cyber Monday in total sales volume on Amazon. Last year, sales were over $11billion over the two day event, up 7.7% from last year.  Now if you are thinking, that’s likely due to all the large businesses that sell on the platform, think again! Small and midsize businesses made an estimated $2 billion last year which shows that every business no matter how big or small should be Prime Day ready.  

Why participate in Prime Day?

The benefit that participating in prime day has on your brand extends much further that the 2 day event as it is a great opportunity to acquire new customers and get those considering your products to convert.  In fact in 2020, there was a 3.1x median increase in new to brand shoppers in the US compared to prior weeks. 

What steps should you take to be Prime Day ready? 

To prepare for this event, at Power Digital Marketing, we  recommend you take a full funnel on and off Amazon Prime Day marketing approach. As Amazon has stated, “75% of shoppers are likely to purchase a product during Prime Day that they discovered during the lead-up to the event” so it is crucial to be anywhere and everywhere leading up to the event.

On Amazon: 

• First look to your inventory to dictate which products should be promoted. The worst thing that can happen is running out of stock and losing all the momentum and sales velocity you have put time and money into building. 

• Once you have determined what products you want to focus on, set up a coupon or promotion. For Prime Day you can run a variety of Prime Day deals but with strict cut off dates in late May and early June, those are no longer an option. The best plan of action is to get a coupon created and submitted as this can be done on both Vendor Central and Seller Central.  The Amazon marketing team here at PDM recommends discounting your products at least 25% as it separates you from the competition and allows for significant performance bumps above the “normal” Prime Day Buffer.  

• Establish an advertising strategy using Sponsored Product, Sponsored Brand, and Sponsored Display ads. Also if you are running DSP, prepare to run prime day specific campaigns before, during, and after the even. Keep reading to see what we recommend for strategy on both the search and display side. 

• Update creatives on your brand store, A+ content, SB ads, and posts. Amazon is allowing brands the ability to establish more of a presence on the platform so take full advantage of that.  

Off Amazon:

• Preparing for prime day on Amazon is crucial but establishing your off Amazon strategy is arguably just as important to take full advantage of the event. In fact, in 2020: advertisers using multi-channel vs. single-channel marketing campaigns saw 250% higher purchase rates.  To get started, utilize Amazon Attribution, a tool that allows you to see how the multi-channel traffic you drive to Amazon impacts your total performance on the platform. When using the attribution tool, set it up in advance to properly measure the effectiveness of your cross-channel to Amazon campaigns.
• To promote Prime Day deals on these various channels (social media, email, sms messaging, ect) make them clickable and add a “Shop this product on Amazon” or Amazon Add to Cart button on the ad to the marketplace.  As all ads should lead to Amazon so with the copy you want to reference both Amazon and Prime Day. With the creative, ideally you should feature lifestyle images with your product in use or use any video assets and add an Amazon logo on the image. This makes your ads eye catching and helps your shoppers understand where they will be directed when clicking on the ad.  
• Power Digital also recommends matching any deals you’re putting on Amazon to your website or at least running a small discount as Prime Day has historically had a halo effect on brands main websites.  One thing to keep in mind, Amazon will price match across the web, so anything you put on the Amazon site must be matched on your website. 
• When looking at budgets, if you have finite spend to leverage during the Prime Day lead-up and event, shift incremental dollars to your Amazon ad spend as traffic will be most concentrated on the site. With that being said, even just allocating a small portion of spend to external traffic campaigns has the potential to make a noticeable difference over the 2 day event.

• With Search ads, plan in advance! We recommend you start launching campaigns 2-3 weeks before Prime Day to allow them to ramp up before the event.  Pay close attention to the few days leading up to Prime Day, as CPCs/CPMs will likely increase while conversions decreases as users start planning for their Prime Day shopping and hold off on any purchases until the event.  

Looking specifically at advertising on Amazon, here are our recommendations to properly prepare for Prime Day:

Search Advertising – Preparation:

Plan in advance! Start launching campaigns 2-3 weeks before Prime Day to allow your ads to ramp up and run with optimizations. It is also important to pay close attention to the few days leading up to Prime Day, as CPCs/CPMs will likely increase while conversions decreases. This is a result of users planning for their Prime Day shopping which leads to them holding off on any purchases until the event.  

Search Advertising – During Event

Be prepared to raise bids & budgets on campaigns both leading up to Prime Day (to get in front of the increased “planning” traffic) and during the event (when traffic, costs, and sales are likely to skyrocket). Campaign budgets should be closely monitored throughout the two day event, with additional allocated budget on standby as you should never want to run out of budget during Prime Day and lose sales because of it! 

Search Advertising – Post Prime Day

After the event, closely monitor your bids and budgets as well in preparation for the “Prime Day hangover”.  If you aren’t careful, costs can remain high from the aggressive Prime Day bidding, but user conversion is likely to drop significantly as Amazon Prime Day deals end & users have made their purchases. Historically, search ads conversion rate drops and ACOS increases in the first few days following the event so it is important to adjust your advertising strategy accordingly. If you are able to prepare for this decrease in traffic, you can minimize wasted spend.

DSP 

• Display campaigns should have a much longer lead time than Search campaigns.  Since almost ¾ of users are planning their Prime Day purchases in advance, prospecting campaigns should be launching 2-3 weeks ahead of the holiday to position your brand in front of new users. We have seen that utilizing expanded In-Market and Lifestyle targeting campaigns allow you to capture new audiences & introduce them to your brand
• In the days leading up to Prime Day & the event itself, retargeting campaigns should be launched to continue nurturing new users planning to take advantage of the holiday. During the massive influx of traffic on Prime Day, these retargeting campaigns will start to capture viewers from the planning phase.  

DSP – Post Prime Day

• The lead-out from Prime Day is just as important as the day of! Your retargeting pools coming out of the event will be some of the largest of the year, allowing you to capitalize on any users who didn’t convert during the holiday.  Continue nurturing your lapsed purchasers post-Prime day through retargeting, or even by implementing past purchaser targeting for brands like consumables & CPG -new Prime Day users are a great market for increasing your brand loyalty pool. 

While Prime Day may end on July 13th, the benefits the event has for your brand do not.  According to Amazon, 31% of shoppers surveyed are likely or highly likely to buy the same product after Prime Day even if there’s not a deal and 52% of shoppers surveyed are likely or highly likely to rely on ads to remind them to purchase products after Prime Day. That is why it is crucial to implement the search and DSP strategies to your Prime Day and beyond plan. It is never too late to prepare for Amazon’s biggest shopping event of the year!