While the holiday season always requires advertisers to be on their toes, the COVID-19 market shake-up has taken this and expanded upon the necessity exponentially. Amazon announced this year’s Prime Day will be held on October 13th and 14th, 2020, three months later than usual and one month before the kickoff of the biggest shopping season of the year. eMarketer made a bold prediction that Amazon Prime Day ecommerce sales will reach almost 10 billion dollars in sales, and despite the global pandemic, Amazon has amassed double net profit since the year prior.
Since their announcement, Amazon has updated their website to include “Tips and Tricks” to get the most out of Prime Day, encouraging subscribers to sign up for text alerts and download the app for more offers, and prompts consumers to “Just Ask Alexa” for the best deals. The accessibility to personalized Prime deals—coupled with a promise that some Prime purchases will be delivered on the same day as ordering—might have brands revising their holiday strategy.
The Holiday Season will begin with Prime Day. So, here are a few ways to utilize Prime Day to your advantage—instead of being eaten up by the monolithic company.
Like it to or not, consumers will flock to the Prime Day Deals. Think of these two days as an extended Cyber Weekend. Companies must capitalize on Prime Day and offer comparable sales and offers. For example, our client Bliss created exclusive discounts and campaigns for Prime members and further promoted their listings with a Prime Day badge. This helped them reach a 674% spike in traffic during Prime Day. Of course, like any major buying holiday, creative messaging needs to be tailored to the event or specific products that are being featured in the event. Combined with Prime Day exclusives denoted by the badge, this helps to create a greater sense of urgency that could potentially offer the largest savings of the year.
Make sure to treat bread winners differently than other products during this time frame and for the rest of the holiday season. These are products that win out, no matter what. They get sales organically without advertising support and often have high-starred and recent reviews. Brands can create a Prime Day sub-page to showcase their products that are being promoted across Amazon. If retailers choose to advertise these products, they can expect higher than usual conversion rates which will, in turn, allow for more aggressive bid levels to increase exposure and produce even more sales.
We also suggest submitting or applying for “Lightning Deals” that occur during Prime Day. These deals last less than 24 hours and create an uptick in consumer demand by only allowing a limited number of products to be sold. While it’s a little pricey to be a part of this, sellers do see a large increase in the amount of sales. There are alternatives to Lightning Deals that don’t require a fee but still give the added benefit of signaling to the consumer that a brand’s products are currently on sale. This is especially relevant during Prime Day when most consumers are only willing to purchase products with a discount.
Remember that consumers may feel more comfortable making holiday purchases on a marketplace over a .com due to pricing and consistency so don’t forget to drive awareness through other channels and tactics. Remember our client Bliss, last year, they saw a +3,200% increase in sales thanks in part to help from their Affiliate program. With Prime Day occurring so close to Black Friday & Cyber Week, it is very likely that a good chunk of consumers will be doing holiday purchasing during October, therefore it’ll set the pace for your brand’s year-end goals.
While Amazon continues to see revenue success during a year that has created stress for so many companies and consumers, you can use their Prime Day offerings to your advantage with a well-thought-out strategy that lasts through holiday 2020 and beyond. Drop us a line if you’d like to talk further about Amazon and Marketplace strategies. Or, check out our Home for the Holidays resources for more marketing tips this holiday season.
