Key learnings from Prime Day 2022

Prime Day 2022 was one of the biggest to date, and there are some key learnings from it that will almost certainly be useful for this upcoming event.

Last year, one-third of products were bought from small businesses with $3 billion generated in sales for small businesses. Prime members purchased 100,000 items per minute during the event!

Here are some of our key learnings from last year that can help you with your July Prime Day 2023 strategy:

• Brands with the strongest results were those that utilised promotions, over those that didn’t. Discounted pricing promotions such as Lightning Deals and coupons or vouchers performed best.
• Front-loading campaign budget into Day 1 pays off: ad spending and overall revenue were higher on the first day than on the second. Customers gear up and race to purchase items as soon as the event goes live, so there tends to be more demand on Day 1 of Prime Day. Front-loading budget can also support increased visibility on Day 2 of the event so performance is better across the board.
• Prime Day works for new products as well as best sellers: promotions on best-selling ASINs have a strong chance of performing well, but we also saw strong performance for newly launched ASINs.
• Customers had a preference towards discounts on higher-priced products: we noticed that Prime Day seemed to be more impactful for accounts with higher-priced products, likely because these discounts were larger and more appealing to consumers.

Optimise your Amazon Advertising Strategy for Prime Day 2023

Advertising is a key strategy when it comes to Amazon’s sales event, and should be a crucial part of your July Prime Day strategy. We have curated some of these top insights from the recent Prime Day 2023 Summit for you to use in your ads strategy.

Amazon Advertising

Prime Day 1 has the strongest sales efficiency and volumes. This makes sense as customers rush to bounce on the newly released promotions before they run out. Here are some expert tips on how to optimise your ad strategy

• You should distribute your Ad budgets accordingly across the two days: allocate the bulk of your budget on Day 1 as it has significantly higher volumes and efficiency!
• Day 1: sales peaked between 7 am – 1 pm, Day 2: sales softened and spread across the day.
• Day 1 & 2: 5 pm – 7 pm is a second sales peak! CPC is relatively low, it’s at its highest in the morning and purchase intent remains high in the after-work hours
• Shopping behaviour varies heavily across categories. For example, the Tech category peaks in the morning, and apparel in the evening. The first thing people look for in the morning is high-priced products hoping to get a good deal

Cross-Product Amazon Ads Strategy. Your ads strategy should change in the lead-up to, during, and after Prime Day.

Before Prime Day

• We recommend focusing on building brand awareness using Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display ads. Use video or display ads to expose potential customers to your brand, and remember to use high-quality ads that clearly showcase your product to catch the customer’s attention.
• Ramp up your ad spend in the days prior to enhance relevancy
• Advertise complementary products before Prime Day to help get the conversion on Prime Day

During Prime Day

• Allocate your budget towards Sponsored Products and Sponsored Display adverts.
• Consider bidding on relevant “prime day” terms if you have deal ASINs as customers are using “prime” in their search terms to find deals faster
• Defensive strategy is key: Use Sponsored Products and Sponsored Display ads to target your own ASINs and therefore protect your branded ad space
  1. Make sure other ASINs are present on your Deal ASIN’s listing page
  2. If you have high-volume branded Search Terms make sure your best-selling ASINs are appearing Top of Search (and not lower-selling ones)
  3. Harness your defensive strategy as a cross-sell opportunity to effectively increase cart value

Post Prime Day

• Keep your budget high during and the day after Prime Day as Cost-Per-Click will decrease the day after.
• Use Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display ads to continue to promote your product and maintain momentum
• Utilize remarketing to unlock the second purchase for customers. We recommend setting up remarketing to serve ads around 5-10 days after you expect them to have used the product to make sure they make a second purchase (which in the future enables additional purchases)

Strategic Tips

1. Consider creating a coupon after a deal has ended. Some customers might not have been ready to buy during Prime Day or competitors won the sale but you may be able to recapture them and entice them to buy with another offer after Prime Day!

2. Evaluate your deals; which performs best for you? Prime exclusive or lightning deals? And implement these for the July Prime Day event.

3. Utilize the Subscribe & Save programme! Amazon has recently introduced the ability to create deals that are exclusive to Subscribe and Save customers on Seller Central, having only been available on Vendor before.

Our thoughts

This is always an exciting time of year for us as we gear up to help our clients win over the July Prime Day event. Inflation has seen a change in behaviour in the way customers buy as they prioritize deals and savings over splurging, which is why we expect to see 2023 July Prime Day break records again this year.

We also have so many resources to help you get ready. Here are some tips on how to prepare for Prime Day, how to optimise your store ahead of Prime Day, and insights from Prime Day 2022 so you can use the learnings from last year to rock this upcoming event.

Need some help?

Looking at the tips above and wondering how to work them into your current strategy and implement them? Ask our team of experts for some advice, we’re happy to help!

Simply, send us a message or give us a call, and get ready to light a fire under your July Prime Day 2023 strategy! 🔥