If you follow These Prep Tips, you'll put yourself in a position to
see awesome midyear Sales Plus Get Your Q4 Strategy Wired.
Prime Day 2023 begins July 12 and lasts through July 13. For gourmet brands, now's a great time to start getting ready. Plan for two main selling windows – mid year and Holidays.
Use the same strategy here for the holidays. You'll anchor two selling seasons. After the dust settles for Prime Day, the learnings you get can boost your Q4 big one-hit days Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We've listed some areas to prep for.
11 Minute Read
Make Prime Day 2023 Your key
Midyear shopping event. Prep Now!
For Prime Day, in addition to discounts, there's launches and special promotions. All in all, exciting for shoppers ready to spend. But clearly a golden opportunity for you to bump your e-commerce big time.
Last year's Prime Day, Amazon members bought over 300M items worldwide – the biggest Prime Day event in Amazon's history. Amazon's 200M+ Prime members saved over $1.7 billion – more than any previous Prime Day event.
During the week of Prime Day in July 2022, Amazon customers made an average of almost three transactions. About the same for Prime Early Access Sale in October of 2022.
According to CommerceIQ, the group's data, which tracked discount levels in 2020 and 2021, showed discount levels for many items around 30% before and after Prime Day. So discount your top SKUs to Prime shoppers and offer your best deals with as much value as possible.
Prep Your Production Stock & Best-Sellers
Plan to have have enough inventory. Depending on what SKUs you want to focus on and limited time discounts you can offer, you may get huge sales spikes. FBA fulfillment centers must have product in "Available" status for on-time shipment. So get your logistics done well in advance.
By late June and early July, Amazon fulfillment centers will be insane! FBA shipments will take longer. So consider sending via Amazon's discounted UPS rates versus an LTL pallet shipment to Amazon's warehouses. It will arrive faster. And remember, after Prime Day, Amazon FBA Fulfillment Centers will also be very busy as sellers restock.
We've seen Sellers ship more of their whole line. But if you can't, just target your best-sellers – where you have decent margins and ample production.
Prep Your SKUs & Multipacks
Consider creating and testing more size variations up to 6-packs. If possible, go for a multipack priced from $25 - $55. And make sure you list them as a child size-variation listing under your base product parent. Don't just create a new SKU and list it separately.
Multipack SRP's should decrease in price as pack size increases. But for your Prime Day limited-time discounts, don't just lower the SRP and raise it back afterwards. Instead keep the main SRP intact and offer a specific discount off retail, or a coupon. You'll likely get better sales and profitability.
Variety Packs are awesome trial inducers. When Prime shoppers see them discounted, it'll peak interest. Now check your Amazon account health. Take action well before Prime Day to ensure you win the Buy Box throughout Prime Day.
If it's About Amazon, We Can Help!
Prep Product Listings & Stores Page
Capitalize On Prime Day's increased traffic with well-crafted product pages that include optimized Product Titles, benefit-driven About-The-Product Bullets, and well-presented Product Descriptions.
A high-quality main picture with a clean white background and additional thumbnail pictures with catchy infographics convert well. And video is also a must for your listing pages to connect with shoppers.
For brand registered sellers, get your A+ Content designed and uploaded well in advance. It'll convert at a higher rate and sing your brand story way better than a single blob of Product Description text.
Finally, your Stores page is the central place to bring people to which can connect shoppers to your company, mission, and products. Use your Store's URL to promote on your social pages.
Prep Your Prime Day Promos
Target SKUs you’re long on. Ones you can discount for a more aggressive limited-time promo, and ones that can handle the promotional bump and increased ad spend.
Amazon Promos
A nice tactic to build long-term RANKability for your products and brand.
Social Media Promo Codes
Do them if you have your own email list or active social media. This will help increase traffic to your listings and since the traffic will be highly relevant, it should lead to conversions, This will help rank your product higher for search results.
Amazon Coupons
They’ll be advertised on the Amazon Coupons Page and are visible in search results and in your Amazon ads. You also only pay for coupons actually redeemed instead of an upfront fee. Control how long and when coupons run – ideally up to a week pre and post event. Coupons are more visible than volume discounts and BOGO discounts – which aren’t as visible on the detail page. You can also track coupons results better than promos.
Prep Your PPC Ads
Try and go for a targeted ad spend instead of spreading money across all campaigns. Up daily budgets for the Prime Day selling window – prior, during, and after the event. Clicks will get pricier when your competition raises bidding on the primo keywords.
Audit auto & manual campaigns & ad groups
Raise budgets and bids for higher-converting SKUs with a lower ACoS. Double down on campaigns performing well – that can sustain lower conversion rates with Prime Day's frenzied traffic increases. Double, even triple daily budgets of top-performing campaigns. Some of your competitors can exhaust their budget by late afternoon which can be a huge opportunity to steal their customers at a lower bid.
Pull ad reports from the previous 30-60 days
See what search terms have been converting in Auto, Broad, and Phrase matches. Take those search terms and add them to your Exact match (winners) ad groups since they have a proven track record. Start advertising early and keep your eye on the needle.
You might see conversions going down when Prime Day is announced and Amazon starts promoting it. A brand-awareness campaign with low ROI still isn't a bad thing. In that case, wait for the actual day and then go full gas.
Prep Your Off-Amazon Marketing
What's your off-Amazon marketing support going to look like? Are you working with a NANO or MICRO Food Influencer to drive their audience to your Amazon Prime Day products? For Prime Day, an inexpensive campaign with a Food Influencer can be another huge boost to grow your audience.
Launched a couple years ago, via Amazon Attribution program, brand registered sellers can do Amazon's Brand Referral Bonus Program. Amazon says that on average, brands can earn 10% from qualifying sales.
By sending external traffic, from social media via Amazon Attribution, you'll get a credit back on referral fees you'd incur as your products sell. It's 5% for products with a total sales price of $15.00 or less, and 10% for products with a total sales price greater than $15.00. This can help offset your marketing costs and product discounting you do.
Use Prime Day To Prep Your Q4 Efforts
It's a perfect opportunity to get your products locked in, ratchet up your advertising, and optimize your SKUs & page listings. You'll be ready to promote the right way in Q4.
Drive your world to your Amazon Prime Day specials. Amazon loves this and will reward you with better overall RANKability. You'll build long-term relevance for your products via increased sales, improved branding, and stronger shopper engagement.
When it comes to specialty food and Amazon, we can help.
Happy Amazon Selling!
Lou
Lou Nicolaides
lou@ludwigmarketingandsales.com
(626) 703-4592