Navazon Webinar April 2021- Preparing for a Successful Prime Day

 

Click here to download a pdf of the slides, Navazon Prime Day Webinar

 

Since it began in 2015, Prime Day has quickly become one of the most important promotional days of the year. This year, millions of brands will be vying for the attention of more than 150 million shoppers. For anyone wishing to make Amazon a major part of their business, taking advantage of Prime Day is critical.

 

 

Key Takeaways

• Prime Day has continued to grow for shoppers and vendors since its inception
• Don’t miss deadlines for submitting deals and boosting orders for Prime Day
• Amazon’s Prime Day deal types can help reach different goals
• Make sure your target products are Retail Ready before the event
• Effective advertising ramps up profits especially on Prime Day

 

Amazon Prime Day

 

There are several things that you will need to keep in mind if you are even thinking of boosting your Amazon business on Prime Day. From essential dates, critical steps, and the flow of your preparation, no part of preparing for Prime Day is inconsequential.

 

Deadlines for 2021 Prime Day – Don’t let these dates pass you by.

• April 16, 2021: Prime Day Lightning Deal submissions close and Prime Exclusive Discount Sourcing ends
• May 1 – 20, 2021: Amazon places purchase orders for promoted products
• May 20, 2021: Prime Day Vendor Inbound shipping cut-off
• May 28, 2021: Coupon submission closes for Prime Day date adjustment
• TBD: Prime Day!

 

Critical Steps – These are essential points to remember and apply for ideal performance on Prime Day. If you follow these steps, your sales and profits should skyrocket on Prime Day.

1. Anticipate Prime to be early this summer
2. Prepare in the next several weeks
3. Prime Day is more than a two-day event
4. It is critical to have inventory and to know your lead times
5. You must have an advertising plan and start in advance
6. Determine goals early, what does success look like for you?

 

Prime Day Preparation – You can’t just arrive on Prime Day and expect to get more sales. Preparing for the event properly will improve the potential growth of your Amazon business.

• Goal Setting – To know what you need to do for Prime Day, you need to first determine what you want to accomplish. What resources do you have to reach that goal?
• Planning – Make plans well in advance of the event so you can meet the deadline dates and have plenty of time for preparation and execution. Your products and presence on Amazon should be ready for the increased traffic and sales. Make decisions on steps to reach goals.
• Preparation – This step can take time, so investing work and effort into submitting promotions, testing your Amazon pages, building advertising content, and identifying keywords for ads cannot be understated.
• Execution – When the time comes, you will need to continually monitor the performance of your products, advertising, and more throughout Prime Day. You may need to adjust as the event proceeds so you can maximize sales and profits.

 

Prime Day Deals – All deals on Prime Day are exclusive to Prime members, which is why they love to come and buy during this event. Utilizing these deals can boost your presence and success even more on these days.

• Lightning Deal – This kind of promotion is quick deal that only runs for a few hours in high-traffic locations on Amazon. Allowing you to set a maximum quantity of units, creating this deal is self service.
  • • Eligibility requirements:
      • 20% discount
      • Strong sales history
      • Seasonally relevant
      • Positive ratings and reviews
      • Merchandising fee: $500
• Prime Member Promotion – This point-of-sale discount appears on the ‘Amazon Prime Day Deals’ page and the ‘Today’s Deals’ page. The Prime Day Deals badge will also appear in searches and on the product detail page.
  • • Eligibility requirements:
      • 20% off current price (5% off lowest price in last 30 days)
      • 4-star seller rating
      • 3 star or greater product reviews

• Prime Member Coupon – This digital discount with automatic merchandising appreas within the coupons page, search results, detail pages and other high-traffic areas. Once Prime Day dates are announced, Amazon will automatically update the start and end dates of your coupon to the correct dates. This is another self-service deal as well.
  • • Eligibility requirements:
      • Minimum 20% discount off current price
      • Products must be Prime eligible
      • Customer segment targeting must be set to Amazon Prime
      • Created by 5/28/2021
• Comparisons – Know the pros and cons of each deal type before you decide which ones will help your reach your Prime Day goals.

Prime Day Operations

 

Product Selection – Spreading your focus across an entire large catalog may be tempting, but it may not bring as much profit as you would think. Focusing on products that have a higher likelihood of selling well on Prime Day is usually more effective.

• Capitalize on products doing well to increase brand loyalty and recognition
• Look at profit margins and internal promotional budgeting
• Select items with sufficient stock
• Forecast internally for promotional lift

 

Are My Products Retail Ready? – If your products aren’t optimized to perform well in the first place, Prime Day will do little to boost their sales. A product that is Retail Ready has an optimized detail page in text, images, and enhanced content, as well as being highly rated, has sufficient reviews, and more.

Get Inventory to Amazon – Ensure that your products are in Amazon fulfillment centers or otherwise available to purchase or shoppers will be buying the product from someone else.

• Input Promotions Early: Input promotions in a timely manner for Amazon’s forecasting tools to recognize an increase in future demand
• Use Born-to-Run: Create offers 3-5 weeks prior to the event
• Utilize Dropship: Add units to direct fulfillment as an additional source of inventory

 

Prime Day Advertising

 

Why Advertise on Amazon Prime Day? – It may be tempting to think that Prime Day is advertising by itself that can boost the sales of your products, but with all the increased competition on the event, if you don’t keep up with effective advertising, your items will be buried under competing products.

Benefits of Prime Day Advertising:

• Capture high purchase-intent customers
• Increase market share
• Capture halo effect
• Drive brand awareness
• Receive customer feedback
• Optimize strategy for Q4
• Identify customer insights and analytics

 

Advertising Goals Around Prime Day? – Advertising can serve different purposes before, during and after Prime Day.

• Before Prime Day: Promote deals and research brand audience
• Prime Days: Attract and convert audiences
• After Prime Day Event: Re-engage audiences

 

Pitfalls to Avoid – With so much potential growth, there is also potential for failure

• Running out of budget: Not setting a high enough budget may limit the effectiveness of ads
• Waiting too late to advertise: Ads take 14 days to reach efficiency
• Not advertising during Prime Day: Losing out of extra traffic of high peak time period
• Bidding too low: Competition increases; To remain competitive you need to raise bidding
• Not choosing high quality products: Make sure your products have high-level content and you are the feature offer
• Running out of stock: Missing out on extra sales
• Stopping campaigns early: Potential audience and customers can arrive later in the event which you’ll miss

 

Prime Day Insights

 

Measuring the performance of your Prime Day sales can take many forms, and it will often depend on your original goals. Using metrics of sales, COGS, ordered revenue, purchase orders, glance views, conversion rate, and more, you can determine whether your preparation and execution was successful.

• Halo Effect Analysis: See the overall lasting growth for your brand long after the event is over
• YoY Comparison: Measure up to your Prime Day or the same dates of previous years
• Search Rank Tracking: Amazon takes success into account for search results; A successful event should increase your products ranking in searches

 

Preparing and executing a successful Prime Day is not a simple task for any size of business. Navazon’s experts have years of experience in making sure that businesses grow through the potential that Prime Day and other Amazon events provide. Contact us today to find out how we can help you make the most of your Amazon Prime Day.