It’s that time of the year again! The biggest online shopping event of the year is due to return this summer and the deadline to submit your lightning deals is 13th May.
This Amazon Prime Day promises to as big as ever, so how can you prepare your store and deals for Amazon Prime Day 2022?
To help you get ready, here are our top tips to help ensure you smash your targets and make the most of the event.
Why should you focus on Prime Day?
Amazon Prime Day is an annual shopping event exclusively for Amazon Prime members. Over the course of 48 hours, members can benefit from huge deals and discounts across a whole range of products.
The event was first introduced in 2015 as a way to celebrate Amazon’s 20th birthday. It’s since grown to become one of the most important dates in the ecommerce calendar.
Last year, Prime Day was delayed from June until October, and resulted in yet another record breaking year for the marketplace. According to Statistica, Prime Day Sales generated an estimated $10.4 billion in 2020, up from $7.16 billion in 2019.
Amazon Inventory
It goes without saying that if you want to take part in Prime Day, you need to have products to sell.
#1 – Replenish Your FBA Inventory
If you use FBA, evaluate your current stock and consider arranging another FBA shipment. It’s important to do this sooner rather than later, as Amazon’s inventory handling processes are slower than usual in the run up to Prime Day.
Do you have enough stock to satisfy an uptake in demand?
Be mindful that Amazon has ASIN-level quantity limits for all FBA products, so be careful not to overstock as this will negatively impact your account in the long run.
#2 – Back up FBA using FBM
If you’ve left it too late to replenish your FBA stock or you’re unsure how well a product will sell, consider utilising both FBA and FBM. In any case, allowing a product to go out of stock can considerably lower your product ranking. But prematurely going out of stock on Prime Day means you’ll hinder your potential. With FBM, if your FBA inventory reaches 0, you’ll have to start fulfilling orders through your own means.
#3 – Increase your Capacity
With this year’s Prime Day promising to smash records again, you should get more hands on deck to cope with demand. The customer journey doesn’t end once a purchase has been made – it’s equally important to provide timely delivery and good customer service.
Many physical retailers hire temporary staff over the busy period, so it makes sense that online retailers do the same. After all, happy customers are more likely to be repeat customers.
Pricing
On Prime Day, the price of your products is make or break. The trick is to price your products competitively, without wreaking havoc on your margins. Of course, this is easier said than done.
#4 – Price Old Stock to Sell
If you have items that have been sitting in your inventory for months, now’s your time to get rid of them. Work out your breakeven price and go from there.
This is particularly salient considering the new limits that Amazon has placed on IPI thresholds. Since July 2020, sellers with an IPI score less than 500 have been subject to storage limits. Essentially, this means it’s crucial to ensure you don’t have excess inventory laying around.
#5 – Submit Lightning Deals
On Prime Day there are three basic types of deals: Spotlight deals, Lightning deals, and Prime savings. Lightning Deals are promotional discounts that are available for limited periods of time. They must offer customers a discount of 20% or more from the average listed price in the last 90 days.
If you want to create a Prime Day Lightning Deal, you’ll need to submit it in advance. Our top tip is to submit several variations of the deal to speed up the process should one get disapproved.
#6 – Create Coupons
Another easy way to showcase your product is by creating a coupon (voucher). Coupons allow you to offer a % off or £ off discount. If your coupon meets the eligibility criteria, a green banner will be displayed under your product in Amazon search results.
This is different to Lightning Deals, which are typically distinguished by an orange progress banner. This distinction means coupons are a sure-fire way to get your product noticed!
#7 – Don’t Artificially Inflate Your Price
Our next tip is controversial. If you’re a regular shopper on fast-fashion websites, you’ll have seen this tactic in action.
A lot of businesses artificially hike their prices in the lead up to a big event like Prime Day. Once the event arrives, they revert to their original prices. This causes shoppers to believe they’re getting a good deal, when they’re actually no better off than before.
The legality of this tactic is questionable. But beyond that, modern consumers are smarter than ever. Using browser extensions such as CamelCamelCamel and Honey, shoppers can see the complete history of a product’s price, so they know when they’re being cheated.
Using such illicit pricing strategies can have dire and long-lasting effects on your brand’s reputation. That is, customers may be permanently dissuaded from shopping with you, so proceed with caution.
Listing Optimisation
As the ecommerce industry continues to grow; so too do customer expectations. To put it bluntly, if you don’t dedicate time and resources to your Amazon listings, you’ll quickly falter.
#8 – Audit Your Listings and Fill Any Gaps
You can’t afford to have vital information missing from your listings. If customers cannot quickly find answers to their questions, they will take their custom elsewhere.
Before Prime Day, audit your listings, paying particular attention to any gaps. Do you have unanswered questions? Are your listings missing key attributes? How many high-quality images does your listing have?
You don’t need to be a 5* copywriter to do this – the Listing Quality Dashboard within Seller Central is a quick and easy way to identify listings that could benefit from some improvements.
#9 – Create A+ Content
Until recently, A+ content was only available for Vendors. Now, if you’re brand Registered on Amazon you can create A+ content for your products to enhance your product content. Your competitors are aware of this and here at Fluid Commerce we consider it a must before starting to advertise.
However, please remember that A+ content can take seven days to be approved in a normal period, so work fast or it may be too late for Prime Day.
#10 – Promote Your Store
The days before Prime Day are the perfect period to attract traffic to your products in amazon. On Prime Day, you need the Amazon algorithm on your side. One of the best ways to do this is to redirect your social media to your Amazon store.
Although we understand that usually it is more profitable to redirect your traffic to your own store, the impact from Prime Day is hard to compete with. Also, your Amazon store is the only place in Amazon free of your competitor’s ads.
One important factor when you do this is to track the impact of this strategy. You can do this by using store source tags.
An Important Date
Amazon Prime Day is an important date in any Amazon retailer’s calendar. It can be a massive source of opportunity, and can boost your sales significantly in a short period.
If you need extra tips for Amazon advertising, then get in touch and we’ll be happy to review your strategy for the upcoming Prime Day and peak trading period.