Amazon just announced that Prime Day is on July 11th-12th, giving brands less than 3 weeks to prepare for one of the most anticipated ecommerce events of the year. Prime Day is a golden opportunity for brands to boost sales, attract new customers, and elevate their brand visibility. Even if you're not planning on having Prime Day sales due to the high fees and low margins that come with lightning or invite only deals, you'll still likely see an uptick in traffic to your listings that could lead to an uptick in sales if you’re fully optimized. In 2022, we saw a 54% increase in Amazon orders for the two Prime Days compared to the same two days a week prior.
I polled Amazon experts across Cart.com for tactics you can still deploy today to get Prime-Ready on your own, or with the help of Cart.com’s software products and expert Amazon services.
Analyze Past Performance
☑️ Analyze your past sales data, focusing on previous Prime Days, to understand which products have been successful and why. Are there certain products that outperformed others? Are there categories that garnered more interest?
A robust analytics tool like Cart.com Unified Analytics can ingest your historical Amazon sales and advertising data to provide an additional perspective (outside of Amazon) on what your sales might be by also factoring in other channels.
Manage Your Inventory
Stock shortages during Prime Day can lead to lost sales and unhappy customers. Monitor your inventory levels closely in the lead-up to the event, and ensure you have enough stock to meet the expected demand. While it may be too late to send in large shipments via LTL (less than truckload), it is still possible to send additional inventory with SPD (Small Parcel Delivery).
☑️ Double check that items are being received and if there are transfers that Amazon typically does for a brand's shipments, bake in that lead time.
☑️ If sales take off during Prime Day and you run out of stock, turn on the Head Start program and send in inventory.
☑️ Invest in a demand forecasting tool beyond Amazon’s native tools that can accurately predict demand across channels.
Cart.com has demand forecasting tools and a team of experts that can help you accurately predict demand and advise on how to prepare for the Prime Day surge. Cart.com’s Unified Analytics, which takes advertising into account, has shown a 10% increase in forecasting accuracy. While its too late to utilize our 3PL services to manage your Prime Day inventory, we can get you up and running for Black Friday / Holiday if you're unhappy with your in-house fulfillment or 3PL.
Optimize Product Listings
Successful product listings are a blend of engaging visuals, clear and descriptive product titles, and a wealth of relevant information in the product description. It’s best not to make changes on the front end this late in the game (titles and bullet points), however Product Descriptions, A+ content, and Backend keywords are still fair game to optimize.
☑️ Don't A/B test at the moment, unless it's to test tentpole events.
☑️ If all spots on the image carousel are not fully utilized, it's best to do it now with high-quality images and video.
☑️ For your branded products, you can update product keywords, descriptions and images to give products their best shot at selling.
You can try to do all of this manually, or tap into a partner like Cart.com for Marketplace Management tools and Marketplace Services to optimize your product listings.
Implement Competitive Pricing Strategy
Price is a major factor that drives purchasing decisions on Prime Day. Most consumers are looking for deals and even a small discount can have a dramatic impact. While it's not always about having the lowest price, it's essential to provide a perception of value. Strike through or sales pricing is just as effective as coupons- it varies as to which performs better so you may want to test with different SKUs.
☑️ Make sure you have Buy Box pricing strategies set up for items with competition to stay competitive and convert on the increased traffic as well as velocity pricing set up for items without competition to capitalize on any sudden increase in sales.
☑️ If your product is new and you can afford to lose margin on it, then consider coupon/sale pricing during Prime Day to get more product reviews, trials of the product and increase your new-to-brand customer metric.
☑️ If you are utilizing Lightning Deals/Best Deals, create storefront-specific pages to showcase those sales that end after the Prime Day (ensure the product pages are linked to storefronts).
☑️ Set a “minimum quantity available” for low stock, high volume items. You don’t want to oversell and impact your seller metrics.
If you’re currently managing your pricing in spreadsheets, reach out to us to see if we can help you save time and improve your chances of winning the BuyBox with our automated repricing engine. Cart.com customers win the Buy Box 72% of the time.
Fine tune your advertising
A comprehensive advertising strategy can help increase visibility and drive traffic to your listings. Expect lower ROI in the days leading up to Prime Day as shopping behavior increases, but conversion slows as customers wait for deals.
Before Prime Day
☑️ Increase budgets on campaigns performing within KPIs.
☑️ Shore up brand protection tactics by increasing bids and budgets on campaigns targeting branded keywords and products.
☑️ Ensure you are utilizing as many ad types as possible, with a focus on leveraging engaging placements through Sponsored Brands (lifestyle images and video) and Sponsored Display Video.
☑️ Focus on brand awareness and consideration tactics, as customers will be primed to convert over Prime Days.
☑️ Identify ASINs or brands with few or poor ratings, or that are priced above you and run conquesting campaigns against them over Prime Days.
During Prime Day
☑️ Make sure a team member is checking every hour or two to ensure ads doesn't go down because of a credit card issue.
☑️ Feature ASINs with promotions in Sponsored Brand ads, and add them to Sponsored Products campaigns targeting top of search.
☑️ Monitor budgets and bids and increase as needed to ensure you're staying competitive.
If you don’t have the expertise in house, tap a partner who does. Cart.com’s Marketplace Services and Growth Marketing experts help brands every day to promote their products with Amazon advertising tools like Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands.
Plan for After Prime Day
Lastly, have a plan in place for after Prime Day. This could involve retargeting customers who didn't purchase, email marketing to newly acquired customers, requesting reviews, and analyzing your Prime Day performance to learn and improve for next year. Be ready for returns post Prime Day, especially if Fulfilled by Merchant is involved.
☑️ Return requests and customer messages will be increasing, so staff up appropriately.
☑️ Make sure that after-purchase review/feedback requests are engaged to capitalize on Prime Day customer reviews.
☑️ Once Prime Day is over, start planning for Q4's Black Friday/Cyber Monday and Holidays as deals are already available in seller central for some brands.
Most brands aren’t able to sustain extra staffing year-round to account for peaks like Prime Day and Black Friday. Partners like Cart.com can provide Customer Engagement services that provide extra staffing to handle the surge of customer service needs and help turn them into repeat customers.
Getting ready for Amazon Prime Day may seem daunting, but with the right strategy, technology and partners, it can be a significant sales and marketing opportunity. Preparation is key - and its not too late to ensure your products, pricing, and promotions will capture the attention of eager Prime shoppers. Remember, the goal isn't just to increase sales during the event, but also to create lasting relationships with new customers you acquire during this shopping extravaganza.
Contact us today to get primed for Prime Day and make the most of the biggest ecommerce event of the year.
