April 17th, 2023
Prime Day 2023 | It's Time to Get Ready!
Did you know that Prime Day 2022 marked the biggest event in Prime Day history for Amazon’s selling partners? More small and medium-sized businesses saw their sales outpace Amazon’s retail business.
Prime Day has been leaked by news sources but not Amazon. While the date hasn’t yet been confirmed, sellers should expect Prime Day to happen on or around Tuesday, July 11 - Wednesday, July 12, 2023.
At this time, these are the dates/deadlines are:
- Submit Prime Day Lightning Deals by Friday, April 28, 2023.
- Make sure your inventory arrives at US fulfillment centers by June 15, 2023. Ship inventory early to allow for potential logistics, weather, customs, or carrier issues.
Even though the date of the big event isn't set in stone, preparations need to start now so you don't miss early deadlines. After all, customers purchased more than 100 million products from small businesses in the three weeks leading up to Prime Day. That means there’s no time like the present to get it in gear.
It's important for your success on this monumental shopping day to have your PPC advertising, inventory and other promotions set early (plus, we don't know how much notice you'll receive from Amazon as to the actual date of Prime Day 2023). Prepare early to reap the benefits.
Grab your Prime Day Prep guide
A one-pager with all the information you need to get ready for 2023 Prime Day.
History and Successes of Prime Day
Since its inception in 2015, Prime Day has been a huge moneymaker for brands across a wide variety of products and industries. To help give you an idea of just how lucrative this day is, let’s take a look at a few of the many wins from Prime Day 2022.
- Prime Day 2022 sales reached a new record high, amounting to an epic total of 12 billion U.S. dollars.
- Prime members purchased more than 300 million items worldwide.
- Prime members worldwide purchased more than 100,000 items per minute during this year's Prime Day event.
Clearly, Prime Day brings in some major revenue, but it is so much more than just a “deals event.” There are three primary ways in which Prime Day can help support your brand beyond the limited-time deals.
- It gives sellers a reason and opportunity to engage with shoppers before, during and after Prime Day.
- Prime Day can even drive sales outside of Amazon, causing an uptick in orders on all of your sales channels.
- It helps increase new-to-brand shoppers in a wide variety of product categories.
Selecting Products to Promote for Prime Day
While it might be tempting to promote everything in your catalog, that is not the most lucrative approach. Instead, focus on your top-selling products.
You’ll want to make sure that the products you're going to promote are in stock and easy for you to replenish. In addition, make sure your product listings are fully optimized and include:
- Reviews on Your Product - Amazon has become stricter about reviews and that does work to your benefit as a reputable Amazon seller. It’s important to note that consumers can spot a fake review and that will jeopardize your credibility as a seller. We do have some tips on how to garner more reviews in this blog, How to Get Amazon Reviews - The Right Way.
- Images That Are Optimized - Online shopping is here to stay but with that, we have to overcome some obstacles. For instance, shoppers have to rely heavily on the images you share. Make sure your images speak to the product and help answer common customer questions. Also, make sure to utilize all of the image slots available on your listing. If you need help coming up with more images and content for those slots, reach out to our team of experts and they can help align your images with your brand to convert shoppers.
- Keywords Within Your Content - Keywords can drive shoppers to your listing but you also want to keep them there. Make sure that you are using relevant keywords in your content but also ensure that your content (title, bullet points, and description) is written to inform the shopper about your product. You want to assure them that this is the right product for them and to do that you need to provide them with information so they can make an informed decision.
Amazon’s Prime Day Strategy
You simply can’t ignore the power Prime Day 2023 has to help boost your business - before, during and after the event. If you’re one of the many sellers looking to participate in this year's Prime Day, Amazon recommends a three-phased strategy to help you prepare.
Lead-up: Start promoting your deals and brands to interested shoppers
Prime Day: Engage audiences that are 1) aware of your brand, and 2) more likely to purchase your products
Lead-out: Re-engage your audiences at scale
Leading Up to Prime Day
Order inventory, determine which deals, promotions, and discounts you want to offer, and start promoting your products, deals and brands to interested shoppers.
Not sure which items to discount or promote? Here’s what Amazon recommends:
- Use the Prime Day seller social tool kit to get followers excited to shop with you on Prime Day.
- Use social media to promote Prime Day Small Business Sweepstakes where shoppers can win prizes.
- Promote best-sellers with coupons.
- Fine-tune your advertising strategy.
- A/B test product detail pages.
- Promote your products and deals outside of Amazon.
- Create a Prime Day version of your Brand Store.
Every year, Amazon builds awareness for its upcoming Prime Day by hosting live concerts and events that are streamed by millions of people around the world. As Amazon prepares for Prime Day, you should do the same by increasing awareness and showcasing your products and brand. Here are a few PPC ad types we recommend:
- Sponsored Ads help engage shoppers searching for products within your category, as well as other similar categories
- Display Ads can help drive visibility for specific product deals, as well as your overarching brand, to help build your Prime Day audiences
- Sponsored Brands are a great way to drive shoppers to your Store and push sales. Brands that link Sponsored Brands to their Store, not individual product pages, tend to see a 22% RoAS increase.
In the days and weeks leading up to Prime Day 2023, we recommend that you implement a variety of tests and learn strategies across these various ad types. This will help you optimize your ads as Prime Day draws closer.
Try testing your audience and product strategies to determine the best way products are displayed in your ads and Brand Store. This includes sequencing, featuring and groupings.
Similarly, you can test Sponsored Brands, Stores and Display Ads for different featured images, Store layouts and headlines. Exploring several variations across your different ad types will help you optimize your ads most effectively.
This is also a good time to revisit your campaign budgets and increase spending where you can. Prime Day is one of the most competitive shopping days of the year. If your budget can’t compete, you’ll get beat out quickly by those who can. As a general rule of thumb, we recommend at least a 200% increase in your daily campaign spend.
The Main Event: Prime Day
Having a well-crafted strategy can ensure you take full advantage of this momentous day. Who is your target audience? Which deals and promotions motivate them to buy? When figuring out your plan of attack, make sure to engage audiences that are:
- Aware of your brand
- Most likely to purchase your products
The big day is here. Your deals are live and customers are ready to shop. On Prime Day, you can turn on Sponsored and Display Ads to drive shoppers to product sales and deals.
Sponsored Ads are a great way to target shoppers who have a general idea of what they want, but are still undecided on brand, ASIN, etc. This is your chance to capture their attention at the category level. We recommend utilizing both branded and category keywords to reach shoppers looking for specific products, as well as those who are undecided and can still be swayed.
At the same time, Display Ads are good for expanding your reach both on and off Amazon. On Prime Day, use Display Ads to remarket to those that are already considering your brand. These are people who have viewed the detail pages of your promoted products or searched keywords related to your products. You can further expand your audience by including those who have viewed detail pages for any of your products, not just those with a Prime Day deal.
Post-Prime Day Activations
Prime Day gives you the opportunity to study your shopper’s behaviors and shopping habits. Don’t let this valuable sales data go to waste. Once Prime Day has passed, be sure to reevaluate:
- What are my customers' preferences?
- Which products are most successful?
- Who is my customer demographic?
Re-engage your audiences at scale. The weeks following Prime Day are considered the “Lead-Out” phase. During this time, focus on reselling, upselling, and cross-selling other popular or compatible products.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make during Prime Day 2023 is to slow down your marketing efforts once the event has passed. Your brand and products are still top of mind as consumers continue to shop at high volumes, even after the event is over. In fact, there is higher category search volume in the two weeks after Prime Day than in the two weeks before.
At this point, it’s your job to re-engage your audiences at scale to drive loyalty and convert those who did not purchase your products during Prime Day. Sponsored Ads should be used to re-sell, upsell and cross-sell to those who have already made a purchase from you, while Display Ads retarget those who still have yet to make a purchase.
Since the competition has likely gone down after Prime Day, you can now remove your bidding multipliers.
How to Measure Your Success
After taking all the necessary steps to market your brand before, during and after Prime Day, it’s important to assess your campaigns and determine what ads and strategies were most successful. These are crucial findings you should use to inform your marketing efforts when Prime Day 2023 comes around. Amazon advertising will report the following data to help you do just that:
- Branded search metrics give you insights into how your Prime Day campaigns contributed to searches for your brand
- New-to-brand metrics help you assess which Prime Day campaigns brought in the highest volume of new customers
- Retail insights give you a more comprehensive assessment of consumer shopping activities before, during and after Prime Day
Are you ready to take advantage of Amazon Prime Day 2023 but don't know where to start? Let our team of Amazon selling experts and advertising specialists help guide you. To get started, simply schedule a 30-minute consult.