Amazon Prime Day 2019 is set to bring a wave of discounts in less than three weeks, creating a post-Prime day halo effect of increased shopping activity. The pressure is on for sellers to sustain the peak and post-peak period. That is, commit shoppers to purchase in the 48-hour race for the bargains.
The longest yet Amazon Prime Day 2019 will test merchants’ stamina for converting first-time visitors into lifetime value customers. The promotional quest will set apart peak-ready merchants who took the time to ‘train’ and develop their storefronts.
Dani Nadel, president and chief operations officer of Feedvisor considers five approaches to Amazon Prime Day 2019 success.
1.Don’t experiment, optimise instead
Sellers should not use Prime Day as a time to launch new products or test new ad campaigns. Instead, they should optimise the most popular items in their inventory to drive the highest possible sales volume and establish their advertising strategy in advance of the shopping event. According to Amazon, advertisers have historically seen a 5 fold lift in sales for Sponsored ad campaigns on Prime Day. They should ensure all product descriptions and images are in line with Amazon’s best practices and incorporate relevant keywords whenever possible, to help drive visibility through search.
2.Tap into the loyalty of Prime members
Prime members make up Amazon’s most loyal and valuable audience. Some 89% of the consumers who make a purchase on Amazon daily or almost daily are Prime members. Sellers should focus on promoting their Prime-eligible items so that Prime members who filter for these specific items can easily find their products — an essential strategy since nearly half of Prime members (48%) plan to purchase during Prime Day 2019.
3.Align ad campaigns with Prime Day business objectives
Amazon’s expanded advertising suite provides a myriad of ad opportunities and targeting options, so sellers should build their campaigns with a particular business objective in mind. If accelerating sales is their top priority, sellers can optimise campaigns for clicks, conversions, advertising cost of sales (ACoS), and new-to-brand metrics. If generating brand awareness is their goal, they should focus on ad formats that favour impressions such as product display ads.
4.Make real-time ad adjustments
Sellers can adjust their advertising bids to be more competitive throughout Prime Day. Doing so will help them gain and maintain visibility in prominent ad placements during peak traffic times and capture a lift in impressions. After seeing how ads perform, sellers can also add negative keywords to prevent irrelevant traffic and wasted ad spend.
5.Leverage the post-Prime Day halo effect
According to Amazon, category search volumes were higher in the 14 days post-Prime Day 2018 compared to the 14 days before. Both product searches and sales volumes will be elevated for days and even weeks past the official Prime Day period, so sellers can also run cost-effective ad campaigns during this period of time immediately following the holiday to re-engage with their existing audience and drive upsells and cross-sells.
