Strategy

Prime Day 2022: The Complete Guide for Sellers

It’s official: Amazon Prime Day is coming July 12th and 13th. 

Prime Day is one of the biggest events in ecommerce each year. Amazon says more than 250 million items were purchased by Prime members over the two days in 2021, and sales across our client list grew by 50%. We’ve helped our brands successfully navigate – and take advantage of – this annual, mid-Summer influx of shoppers on Amazon for years. To make the most of it in 2022, you need to have a fully optimized presence on Amazon. Keep reading to learn where to focus your time and budget, important deadlines to keep in mind, and how to go above and beyond to really stand out in the crowd on Prime Day.  

What is Amazon Prime Day?

Prime Day is a two-day savings event for Amazon Prime Members. Shoppers love it because they feel they’re getting deep discounts on products they would buy anyway, particularly on Amazon brands. For brands, it means a lot more eyes on products – but also a lot more competition to win those views. 

What kind of deals are offered on Prime Day?

Amazon leads with deep discounts on its own tech products. For other sellers, Spotlight Deals offer discounts on products over the course of Prime Day. Lightning Deals offer a discount on a product for a limited time and in limited quantity. And, of course, you may offer your own discounts or coupons on Prime Day, just don’t refer to them as Prime Day Deals!

How do I sign up for Prime Day?

For Lightning Deals, the deadline for submissions has already passed. If you want to join next year, submissions usually open three months in advance. For other deals, you need to meet these criteria:

• The item must be in new condition, nationally available, Prime shipping eligible FBA product.
• The Prime Exclusive Discount must meet all regular eligibility criteria.
• The product must have at least 3.5-star rating or be a launch product with no rating.
• The discount must be at least 20% and no more than 80% off the non-prime member, non-promotional price. The discounted price must be the lowest price in the last 30 days including all deal, promotional and sales pricing.
• Your Seller Feedback Rating for the last year must be at least 4, where available. If you don’t have enough recent feedback, this will be aggregated from all your sales.

Is Prime Day right for me?

With the increase in organic traffic on Prime Day, there’s almost certainly a way to use the event to help grow your business. But it’s possible that signing up to participate in one of the “official” deals is not in your best interest. For example, you may be able to ride the wave of increased organic traffic while providing a minimal discount. By increasing investment in your sponsored brand ads and expanding competitor keyword targeting in the two weeks leading up to Prime Day, you may have just as much success. Additionally, instead of participating in a Lightning Deal, you might try launching coupons and redirecting the fees you would have spent on the Lightning Deal to advertising those instead. 

With any promotion, on Prime Day or otherwise, it’s important to go in with realistic expectations of what you might get out of it. Not everybody has margins wide enough to endure a 20% discount. Small- and medium-sized sellers should carefully weigh all options before deciding on a course of action. Consulting with an Amazon partner like Amify can also help you navigate these strategy and advertising decisions to ensure you’ve thought through every angle.

How can I make the most of Prime Day?

4-6 weeks prior to Prime Day

Have an inventory plan ready. 

Remember you can only sell what you have in stock, so getting your inventory right is hugely important. The Prime Day inventory inbound shipping cut off is tentatively set for 6/2/22, so anything you hope to sell on Prime Day must be checked in to Amazon by then. As always, there’s a careful balance to strike between having a surplus of product you then need to get rid of over the summer and not enough product to meet Prime Day demand, thereby  losing sales. Now is the time to assess your current inventory levels, calculate a forecast and build your ship plans.

2 weeks before Prime Day 

Concentrate on building awareness and driving brand consideration 

The more eyes on your product the more likely your Prime Day is a success. Increase investment in Sponsored Brand Ads, expand competitor conquesting, drive listing views for re-marketing and consider activating DSP retargeting campaigns to take advantage of the increased traffic. 

At the same time, consider whether your listings and advertising creative could be better supporting this brand awareness drive. Posts allow your brand to broadcast short, social media style snippets to followers (and as of this post, they’re still free to use!). Amazon says Posts delivered 14.4 billion impressions to advertisers between April 2020 and July 2021. Consider creating a batch and scheduling them to go live at least a couple of weeks before Prime Day. Just remember that any explicit mention of a promotion, Prime Day or a numerical discount will violate Amazon’s moderation policy. As a bonus, if you have 10 live posts, the content will show on Posts placement on your Product Detail Pages. 

1 week before Prime Day 

Submit a special Prime Day version of your Brand Store

Or at least build a promotions page. As with Posts, don’t explicitly call this a Prime Day page or feature numerical discounts. Don’t leave this until the last minute or your new creative almost certainly won’t make it through the approvals process in time. Schedule it to publish a day before Prime Day with an end date that reverts your store to normal within 24 hours of Prime Day finishing.

On Prime Day

Focus on maximizing conversions and supporting high volume products

You might invest in high-converting category terms against high-volume and/or promoted products. Launch your pre-planned coupons as needed to offer discounts.

Bottom Line: What does it take to win on Prime Day?

On Prime Day, and on any other day on Amazon, you need to make sure that every function of your Amazon sales process is working together holistically. To succeed means your inventory & logistics, strategy, and media & advertising functions are all working hand-in-hand, that your product detail pages are up-to-date and looking their creative best, and your account is in good standing. At Amify, we work as an extension of your business, partnering with you at every step of your Amazon sales journey, including on Prime Day and in the weeks leading up to it.

Sound like the kind of support your business needs? Let’s talk!