Amazon Prime Day – Amazon’s annual shopping fiesta is here! It’s the best time for sellers to make their mark and ride the momentum that comes from it. This time, Amazon announced that Prime Day will last 48 hours (15 – 16 July). While it might be too late to make major changes, here are a few things to keep in mind during the 48 hours and after.
Past and predictions
According to Greg Mercer, founder of Jungle Scout, the best performing category in past Prime Days was kitchen & dining which saw a 193% increase in sales with sports & outdoors seeing a spike with 181% and beauty & personal care seeing a similar spike with 179%. You can expect similar spikes this coming Prime Day so that’s great news for sellers targeting these categories.
While you can definitely expect Amazon to discount their own popular products such as Echo and other Smart products, sellers who applied to participate in Amazon Prime will be able to run lightning deals with their products. In a recent survey Jungle Scout conducted with Amazon sellers, 24.5% of sellers ran lightning deals on their products. However, with increasing number of sellers applying to do lightning deals, Amazon has started charging a minimum fee and increased its requirements for sellers to qualify for it.
Act now
Although Amazon Prime Day means seeing a spike in sales, it doesn’t mean you’re taking full advantage of the event. If you have historical data on your customers and their shopping behaviour, now is the time to use it! Find out what attracts people to buy your product, when they’re looking for it, and where they’re from. Now is not the time to get complacent about your promotional strategies but rather to take this platform you’ve been given and use it as a jumping point to get ahead of your competitors.
As mentioned in Part 1, you have to be willing to adjust your PPC campaigns and increase your budget. However, that doesn’t mean you leave it as is and let it run automatically for the two days. Make sure you keep an eye on it so you perform as accurately as possible. If your ads still run the risk of running dry despite increasing your budget, you should consider increasing it even more. Alternately, if your campaigns don’t seem to be working, double check your primary and backend keywords and whether your product listing is optimized.
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Looking ahead
If you haven’t done it yet, make sure you start keeping track of your Prime Day performance. Use it as a yardstick to measure year-on-year growth. If your business is growing, the spike in your Amazon sales during Prime Day should also grow. You can also use it as a measure for other big Amazon events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
It’s also great to note how much discrepancy you’re facing between Prime Day sales and normal day sales. If you’re discrepancy is large, you should consider the following:
- Your product is seasonal and mainly sells well during events or holidays. You should consider diversifying into other products that have a more consistent purchasing behaviour to tackle this.
- Your current strategies in place are not effective. It is possible that your sales only picked up because of Amazon Prime Day and not because of your efforts. Double check your product listing, PPC campaigns and all promotions you’re running.
- Go back to your reviews. If your products aren’t performing well, you can probably find the answers in your reviews, particularly the negative ones. Look through and find out what’s going wrong.
You also need to track your performance so you’re better prepared for future Amazon Prime Days to come. You are now better equipped to know how much budget you need to spend on your PPCs and ads AND how much stock you need to maintain. Do not aim to sell out all your inventory with Prime Days. There will be bargain hunters post Amazon Prime Days as well. Capture these customers with your own deals while the competition cools down.
Also note that you need to stock up on your best products. Do NOT use Prime Day as a clearance sale to get rid of your slower selling products. You will not be able to use it to push your business up in the future once the sale is done. Take note of what customers are most likely to buy and stock up on it.
If you missed out on Amazon Prime Day this time, you can start preparing for the next big events. Apply to do lightning deals for Black Friday and Cyber Monday now and make sure you never miss out on the big moments or essential strategies by following Amazon experts.
Learn and mingle with Amazon experts from around the world with a bountiful knowledge base at Global Sources Summit and source your next big Prime Day seller for 2020 and onwards.
What is Global Sources Summit
Global Sources Summit is a 3-day conference for online and Amazon sellers sourcing private label products from China. The conference will be held 27-29 October 2019 in Hong Kong.
The Summit is co-located with Global Sources Fashion and Lifestyle trade show so you can also meet thousands of China suppliers at the same time.
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