7 Ways Online Retailers Can Prepare For Amazon Prime Day 2022
Amazon Prime Day 2022 has been officially announced for July 12-13 of this year. The event can have a huge impact on your business, so online sellers should prepare as soon as possible.
To know how much this year’s Prime Day could affect your business, consider the following:
- Amazon has approximately 300 million active users.
- In 2021, Amazon Prime Day saw approximately $11.2 billion worth of sales with an average order value of $47.
- During last year’s Prime Day, smaller retailers generating less than $10 million in annual revenue saw a 21% increase in sales.
This year is expected to be no different in terms of the boon Amazon Prime Day will have for online retailers everywhere. In order to prepare for Prime Day, we’ll give you some background on the event as well as areas to focus on before the big day.
What is Amazon Prime Day?
Amazon Prime Day is one of the largest online shopping days of the year, rivaling Black Friday and Cyber Monday. E-commerce sellers that list products on Amazon along with Amazon itself run promotions and deals to entice customers to buy before, during, and after the day.
Some deals are run for Amazon Prime members specifically but there are plenty of sales offered for non-Prime members as well. Though its beginnings are rooted in the Prime program, today some online sellers without listings on Amazon also use the buzz of the holiday to run promotions on their own sites.
With so many people in buying mode, Amazon Prime Day is often seen as a way to boost sales, gain new customers, and empty out slow-moving stock before reloading for peak season.
When is Amazon Prime Day?
Amazon Prime Day 2022 was first reported for a July launch during Amazon’s first earnings call of the year. It has since been confirmed for July 12-13, 2022. This time of the year often sees the lowest amount of online shopping industry-wide, so it helps create a significant boon in traffic when there normally isn’t one.
Even though Amazon Prime subscriptions began in 2005, Prime Day itself has only been around for 8 years. The past two Prime Days have veered off the normal schedule of holding the event in July due to the disruptions the Covid-19 pandemic had on the e-commerce industry. However, with supply chains slowly returning to normal, Amazon is looking to resume its traditional schedule.
There are also reports of Amazon inviting certain sellers to a Prime Day-like event this Fall. However, details are still emerging on how exactly that event would work.
Prime Day Tips For E-commerce Sellers With or Without Amazon Listings
While there is no secret formula for conquering Prime Day, there are certain steps you can take to give you the best shot of leaving the event satisfied with your business’ performance. Whether or not you list on Amazon, these tips should help you set up Amazon-level logistics for your business.
Check Inventory Levels
The first thing you’ll want to do is check how much inventory you have of each product you sell on Amazon or otherwise. For the products that sell well and sell constantly throughout the year, you’ll most likely want to order more in the months leading up to Prime Day.
Selling out too early means your competitors can get a greater share of sales for the totality of the event. Being out of stock for too long can also hurt your organic rankings on Amazon. With many supply chains still recovering from Covid-19 disruptions, this could be a reality for some.
However, there is also danger in ordering too much inventory and anticipating more sales than you’ll actually have. Overstocking can also put you at a disadvantage and require you to sell for less than optimal margins in the future.
In order to find the right balance be sure to study past data from previous inventory levels leading up to Prime Days in order to make the most educated decision.
Identify Which Products To Feature
In order to pick the products to discount for Prime Day, you’ll want to ask yourself a few questions.
- Are you trying to get rid of old inventory?
- Are you trying to acquire new customers?
- Are you trying to promote a new product?
- Are you trying to compete with a certain other business?
In any scenario, you’ll need to inspect past sales data to see which products you’ve been selling most and least leading up to Prime Day. For the best-selling products, you may not want to discount them too steeply since sellers tend to see an increase in sales on average during Prime Day. Putting a large discount on those particular products could put you at risk of stocking out.
On the other hand, for products that have been slow to move off the shelves, you can discount those more aggressively.
If you’re trying to acquire new customers, looking up trends and consumer-focused blogs leading up to Prime Day could give you insight into what’s on the minds of consumers.
Run a Listing Audit
For the products you’re choosing to promote during Prime Day, you’ll want to ensure that all relevant information can be found on the product listing page. This means:
- Ensuring quality photos and videos are uploaded to the product page.
- Product listing and descriptions touch on keywords people are searching for and use SEO best practices.
- Product descriptions are digestible, using bullet points and starting with the most important information first.
- Positive customer reviews are front and center while negative reviews have been addressed.
- Return policy and shipping policy are readily available.
Even though visitors of your listing are already more inclined to buy, you don’t want to give them any reason to go to a competitor if they can’t find the information they are looking for. This is true for any type of e-commerce business at any point in the year.
Specifically, for online merchants listing products on Amazon, using the Listing Quality Dashboard within Seller Central is an effective way to see the health of your listings. From there you can develop a strategy to create A+ content for that listing.
Keep in mind that A+ content can take up to seven days to finally get approved on average. This could take longer leading up to Prime Day so be sure to work on this as soon as possible.
Compare Your Featured Product Against Competitors
There are a couple of different ways in which you can compare your product against the same product sold by a competitor. First, you’ll want to do a price comparison.
Along with simply navigating to their Amazon listing and looking at the price, you can also use tools like Honey to see how the price of this product has fluctuated over time. From there you’ll be able to tell if your competitor has been raising the price before Prime Day just to drop it, or if they’ve consistently sold at that price and are possibly going to sell even lower for Prime Day, if at all.
The other method of comparison is to get an estimate of their stock levels. One simple trick is to navigate to their product listing page on Amazon, type in 999 in the quantity section, and then click update. If they have less than that amount in stock, Amazon will show you the exact number of items on file.
There is a chance they can restock before Prime Day, but using tools like Import Genius can help show you how many international shipments they have coming and allow you to make an educated guess.
Choose a Discount Strategy
Buyers expect to get a bargain during Prime Day. In order to make the most of the event, you’ll need to meet those customer expectations. But, before you start slashing prices you’ll want to take into account what strategy would work best for your business. Some examples include:
Coupons/Promo Codes
For online sellers with listings on Amazon, you can advertise coupons on your product listings for up to a year. But, Amazon requires that you have your product content up for a minimum of three weeks before Prime Day. Coupons appear on product listings even before customers click on your product page making them highly visible. However, in order for customers to be truly enticed, a coupon of 30% or more is recommended. Coupons and promo codes also work for sites without Amazon listings and you’ll have the ability to implement these whenever you can.
Deal of the Day
Amazon sellers who have used this method before know that these deals last for 24 hours. They are usually used for promoting your newest products or pushing out your oldest ones. You have control over when these promotions start/end and where ads for this offer are placed.
Lightning Deals
These deals only last for a few hours at a time but come with a couple of major benefits for Amazon sellers. The first is that these deals are presented first to your potential customers. The second is that the limited time creates a sense of urgency for the customer and may motivate them to purchase then rather than wait. Amazon also shows potential customers how fast the product is selling, creating an even greater sense of urgency.
Price Match Guarantees
If you’re worried about selling at too steep a discount and potentially running out of stock too soon, you may want to try a price match guarantee as an alternative discount method. Buyers may stray off of Amazon to compare prices elsewhere and if you can provide an equally low price they may be more inclined to shop with you instead.
Get Your Digital Advertising Tactics Ready
You can have the best deal in the world, but if no one knows about it then you risk not maximizing the potential of Prime Day. Some advertising strategies you can take leading up to as well as during Prime Day include:
- Improving SEO: You’ll want to make sure keywords like Prime Day are on your site so that you can potentially rank for products organically.
- Create content: Writing blogs, landing pages, and even creating video content as part of the promotion can also help spread the word.
- Staying active on social media: Announcing your sales multiple times on multiple social media outlets leading up to Prime Day can help make sure your followers don’t forget to buy once the time comes.
- Incorporating SEM and paid ads: If you have additional funds in your marketing budget you may want to consider running search engine ads for your products while incorporating key terms like Prime Day within those ads.
You’ll want to make sure you start promoting sooner rather than later and do so consistently. You don’t want to leave any room for customers potentially not knowing what you’re going to offer for the big day.
Prepare Your Fulfillment and Shipping Processes
There are two ways you can go about handling fulfillment and shipping for Amazon Prime Day, that’s FBA or FBM.
FBA stands for Fulfillment by Amazon. With this method, you send inventory to Amazon’s fulfillment centers. From there they will pick, pack, and ship on your behalf. There are fees for doing this, however. Overstocking can also have a negative effect on your account with Amazon in the long run. But, if you don’t have a big enough team to keep up with orders, this can be your best bet.
FBM stands for Fulfillment by Merchant. This means that you’re responsible for packing and shipping out orders placed from Amazon. While this can get overwhelming during Prime Day, connecting your Amazon store to a multi-carrier shipping solution like Shippo can help keep your team organized while also automating tasks like selecting the ideal shipping labels for your orders. You can also schedule pickups from carriers so your team can focus more on packing orders rather than shipping them.
As for e-commerce businesses that don’t have listings on Amazon, getting your shipping and fulfillment processes will be more vital than ever. Amazon Prime members expect free two-day delivery which is one of the biggest factors why they continually shop at Amazon.
In order for you to win over online shoppers, you’ll need to be able to offer expedited shipping while also putting systems in place so that you can get orders out to your carriers as quickly as possible. With tools such as manifests, Shippo users can take a large group of orders and put them all under one barcode so that carriers simply have to scan once and start moving packages faster.
If done properly, the steps needed to prepare for Prime Day can be translated to other major events and everyday business operations.
