Josh Neblett, founder and CEO, etailz
After its wild success in 2015, Amazon made its 20th anniversary celebration into an annual event. Each year, Prime Day has witnessed staggering growth, with 2017’s Prime Day growing more than 60% over the same 30-hour window in 2016. Scheduled for 36 hours on July 16-17, Prime Day 2018 is on track to be the largest online summer shopping event to date, and the biggest players in online retail are planning accordingly.
So, the question is, how does your brand make the most of it? Here are my top recommendations to prepare for Prime Day.
1) Protect
- Make sure top selling products are in stock
Prime Day can be a two-edged sword: Running out of inventory can not only result in missed revenue, but it will also negatively impact your Amazon rank, reducing your products’ visibility on Prime Day and the following weeks after. Study last year’s sales to make sure you have ample inventory, and try to identify trends that might help you refine your marketing strategy this year.
- Use Prime Day to avoid long-term storage fees
With long-term storage fees coming in August, Prime Day is the perfect opportunity to sell through large inventory items stored in Amazon warehouses. Price your products competitively so you can sell through lingering inventory, maximizing profits and minimizing storage fees.
- Enroll in Brand Registry
This goes for year-round, but if you can, enroll in Amazon’s Brand Registry program. It provides you tools that make it easier to control your product listings and brand presence on Amazon. Don’t be vulnerable to violations that harm your brand’s integrity, especially on Prime Day.
2) Position
- Optimize listings for discoverability
No matter how many shoppers come to Amazon, if your products aren’t indexed for relevant search terms, shoppers will find—and buy—your competitors’ products before yours. Your listings need keyword-rich, detailed titles, bullet points, and descriptions, along with five to seven professional photographs, in order to maximize traction with Amazon’s search algorithm. You’ve got to be discoverable before you can be buyable.
- Price your products competitively
Prime Day witnesses some of the most aggressive discounts of the year, and even with the influx of shoppers, your sales won’t see a significant boost if your products are not competitively priced. Position your products’ to attract shoppers by offering the best prices.
- Condense listings into product variations
Review your products to see if you can condense multiple listings into a single listing with product variations. This drives traffic to one listing and aggregates customer reviews, which helps your listings populate higher on the search results page organically.
3) Promote
- Draw outside customers onto Amazon through Influencers
Even with the staggering number of shoppers on Amazon for Prime Day, they represent only a fraction of potential customers. By working with influencers who are relevant to your brand, you can drive additional traffic to your listings. Influencers tend to have loyal followings, so their promotions for Prime Day can also help cultivate long-term growth by encouraging brand loyalty.
- Increase your visibility on Amazon with ads
Visibility is the name of the game in online retail. Given how competitive Amazon products are during Prime Day and Prime Week, you’ll likely need to run ads in order to populate on the first page of search results. We recommend running Sponsored Product campaigns to make sure your products are seen.
- Run Amazon Promotions to increase conversions
Amazon offers a number of ways to promote your products, such as Amazon Giveaways, coupon codes, and BOGO {buy one, get one free] sales. Amazon Promotions help you edge out the competition, and are a great way to increase conversions without violating pricing policies.
If you do your homework and plan accordingly, Prime Day can be your brand’s most profitable day of the year. Your competitors are preparing a marketing strategy. Are you?
Etailz specializes in working with brands to sell on Amazon and other online marketplaces. In 2016, Trans World Entertainment, a retailer of videos, music, toys and pop culture products, acquired etailz. Trans World Entertainment is No. 234 in the 2018 Internet Retailer Top 1000 ranking of North America’s leading online retailers.
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