Amazon Prime Day 2020 is October 13 and 14: Strategies to prepare your business and stand out from the crowd(ed marketplace)
Now that we (finally) know when Amazon Prime Day will be, make sure your online business is ready. Don’t know where to start? We’ve got you!
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Go Into Amazon Prime Day with Your Own Promotional Strategy
The promotional trifecta that will put you on the Amazon Prime day map is:
1) Set up deals
2) Create coupons
3) Have a clear pricing plan
How to execute your Amazon promotional strategy
1. Setting Up Deals
Identify what deals your products are eligible for, apply for them then decide what budget you can allocate to each product. Schedule for all the deals that you are eligible for or choose the ones you want to execute on based on which products you’re prioritizing.
How to do this in your Amazon store:
– Head to Seller Central > Advertising > Deals.
– Select the deals you want to run. The more deals you run, the more you’ll need to adjust your overall margins to ensure you remain profitable, breakeven, or lightly unprofitable. (Base this on your long term strategy.)
– Take note of when these deals are (DATE & TIME) and the amount that’s being discounted.
– Then, run external traffic to these listings during the time of the deal and advertise the offer (ex: Send an email blast that you’re having a 20% off deal for your Unicorn Slippers on Oct 13th from 4pm-7pm PST!)
2. Create Coupons
During this season of high traffic on Amazon, build Coupons into your product pricing strategy. Coupons help to differentiate your product since you’ll get an extra sticker/deal badge on your page compared to a brand not running coupons. You don’t have to give a deep discount, and it should be enough to increase conversions. Choose between: a percentage off (10%) or dollar amount off ($10.00).
X WAY
Our Amazon Coupon Tips:
You have to set the timing, length of time, amount, and budget of your coupons. You don’t have to add coupons to every listing and it’s a strong, competitive tactic.
Not every customer of your product will clip the coupon. 100% redemption rates are rare even though all that’s required is one click to “redeem this coupon at checkout”.
Be aware: there’s a coupon redemption fee of $0.60 for each customer that redeems the coupon. Factor this into your margin.
3. Have a Clear Pricing Plan
This year in particular the competitive landscape is going to be flooded. With Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Holiday Shopping all happening in a matter of months. Spend time now nailing down your pricing strategy.
Don’t make drastic changes to price all at once. Amazon will flag your listing more frequently which will cause a review to your listing and can result in suppressions, suspensions, and/or other listing issues. Instead, walk the price up or down over the course of a few weeks.
Stay competitive within your vertical. Keep tabs on what your competitors are doing. If you can do this: set the pace. Being the first mover with pricing can give you an advantage during this season.
Forecast, forecast, forecast. Don’t be overly ambitious and lose profitability unnecessarily. Do the proper forecasting to measure demand and price relationships for your products. Play your cards right throughout the holiday to have the perfect balance of profit and sales velocity.
Strategize with these tactics, and your product will stand out from the competition to capture more users and drive more sales.
Leverage Internal and External Advertising and Communications
When implementing your Amazon Prime Day tactics, engage with your audience and let them know about your offerings (and then let them know again).
It’s also important to leverage all channels for pushing your product deals and discounts. Assuming that all Prime members will be tuned into their Amazon accounts on Prime Day could hurt you.
Be sure to communicate with everyone in your community. In addition to an email strategy around your Prime Day promotions, you can run ads on other platforms like Google, display networks and social media. Target similar products in competitor targeting campaigns to be sure no one is left out.
We predict many sellers will be focused so closely on their Amazon store as an insular vertical that you can find opportunities to leverage external traffic.
Tip: You’ll need to be set up on Amazon Attribution in order to best analyze the success of ad traffic external of the Amazon marketplace.
Target New Audiences
Create excitement around the specific products that you’re promoting in the deals. Target new audiences that might be interested now that there’s an incentive to purchase at this special price.
Focus On The Customer
Amazon’s mantra is “be customer centric,” so be sure to put your users and customers at the center of all of the deals you’re creating—and that you have the inventory to support the promotions. Spending ad dollars on a deal that sends customers to a sold out product is certainly near the top of the list of things to avoid when creating an Amazon deal.
Don’t Stop At Prime Day
Engage after! For many retailers, Prime Day “kicks off” holiday shopping 2020. Keep your biggest fans and your new customers coming back for more with a promotional calendar you’ve set up now that will carry you through to Christmas.
Prime day, and the holiday season in general, is the time to scale your company. This absolutely includes the opportunity to take your Amazon business to the next level. This rings truer now more than ever as today’s consumer shifts their brand loyalty on a dime. You want to get your brand in front of more eyes to increase consideration to purchase. Especially if Amazon is going to start their Black Friday deals in mid October.
Finally, keep in mind that this is not the Amazon Prime Day of last year. This year is more competitive than ever. Yes, there will be a pond full of customers looking for products, but every seller will have their rods cast looking to catch the most fish. Be sure you have your trifecta on lock as bait!