Amazon Marketing Webinar: Increase 2021 Prime Day Sales

Amazon Prime Day is one of the biggest events of the year for ecommerce.

It’s an ideal time to target shoppers who already have high buyer intent. After all, they aren’t browsing sales for nothing.

But don’t expect them to simply stumble across your shop. Instead, you need a strategy in place to capture their attention, promote your store, and maximize your sales.

Want to watch the webinar video instead? Head over to our YouTube for the webinars, part 1 and 2:

When is Amazon Prime Day 2021?

This year, Amazon Prime Day will be on June 21 and 22.

How to Best Manage Excess Inventory

Manage your inventory with a few key strategies. And keep in mind, these strategies stay relevant well beyond Prime Day.

• JIT: The Just in Time inventory strategy allows manufacturers and sellers to increase efficiency, reduce waste and storage costs, and keep products fresh on the shelf.
• FIFO: The First in First Out strategy says the oldest products on your shelf should be the first to go.
• Push/Pull: Do you preemptively order enough products to meet potential demand, or take a minimalistic approach to avoid creating loss and excess fees? This is a forecasting technique to help you decide where to weigh the risk.
• Time-based: Have a specific system that tracks how many units you’re selling over a given time period. This tends to be the most successful.
• Volume-based: Get a notification when you reach a set inventory level.
• Profit-based: Use sales reports to track whether items are profitable from one restock to the next.
• Eliminate dead stock: Stock that’s just languishing in your warehouse for an extended period of time means lost revenue, increased holding costs, and more.

You don’t want to run out of stock on one of the biggest sales days of the year. Maximize and allocate your inventory by using multiple fulfillment centers.

Use the auto-convert function for your shop to convert listings to a merchant-fulfilled listing if inventory at fulfillment centers runs out. As Amazon Prime Day 2021 rolls around, you want to avoid overselling and risking inventory levels.

Use product bundling to raise the average order value and lower shipping costs. This also reduces shelf life. Overall, create urgency and use a buffer system (like user-facing low inventory notices) that protects from overselling.

RELATED: Amazon IPI Inventory Score: What it Means and How to Leverage It

Understand Your Options with Repricing Pre & Post Event

You have options for your repricing strategy.

• Algorithmic vs. rule-based pricing: The algorithmic model is the most successful for not leaving money on the table. 82% of sales on Amazon happen on the Buy Box so you want to get the highest possible pricing there. Alternatively, you can price during set hours of the day or by fulfillment type. Just remember it’s not a race to the bottom.
• Velocity-based pricing: Alleviate dead stock and price by demand. You’re putting time intervals in the strategy to try to move the product within a certain time frame.

Which Promotions Can Yield the Best Return On Amazon Prime Day 2021?

Your deadlines for promotion submissions have already passed, but hopefully, you were able to take advantage of some degree of promotion for the event.

Here are the two most commonly used promotions:

Coupons

If your budget is tight or your margins are low, coupons are a great option. You can offer a coupon for the two-day event, discounted depending on your product’s price.

Amazon coupons are 15–25% off, or $5+ off.

Lightning Deals

The Deals page is great if you have extra budget and good product margins. Your customers get the deal for up to 6 hours, but you don’t get to choose the time frame.

The minimum discount is 15% and there’s an approximately $500 fee for Prime Day or Prime Day Week.

Easy Advertising Wins for the Event

Prime Day 2021 is coming up fast. You’ll want a few easy advertising wins that you can take with you to the event.

Sponsored Brands Ads

• Set up Sponsored Brands ads in advance to ensure your ad copy will get approved for the event. It’s the first thing a consumer will see on mobile or desktop. They’re the only ad type that allows you to dictate your ad copy, which means you can use sales-specific verbiage. You can use terms like “Save Now On…” or “…On Sale Today.”
• Send traffic from those Sponsored Brands ads to your store’s Prime Day Deals landing page.
• When you launch the ads that use deal verbiage, select a specific date range for approval.

This is a great way to increase engagement and visibility.

Other Quick Wins

• Create a Bulk Download sheet prior to the event to save all your budgets and bids. You can upload that sheet back into Amazon and reset budgets to the pre-Prime level. This means you don’t have to see an enormously high ACoS (advertising cost of sales) before the event.

• Set your budgets high the week prior and begin increasing bids several days before the event. This is a great opportunity for Display Advertising and definitely something we recommend.
• If necessary, you can set a daily maximum budget in Ad Console. This is not something we’d recommend, but it helps if your budget is super tight. Just know it can definitely stick a wrench in your advertising.
• BONUS: Drive traffic into Amazon from external sites like Google, social media or anywhere else you’re running ads. This helps improve your ranking, especially when you’re running promotions. Amazon rewards you for traffic as part of the new A10 algorithm. Those were consumers who would have not made it to Amazon.com and now you’re driving them in during and after the event. If your margins are there, we say go for it.

What Kind of Custom Creative Sees the Best Results On Amazon Prime Day 2021?

Here’s how to position your creative content for Prime Day.

As you all know, Amazon focuses on a positive shopping experience, so custom creative is a great way to enhance that experience while also drawing attention to the ads. It also improves your organic ranking as a seller.

As for what kind of custom creative sees the best results, you should focus on:

• Shoppable images
• Lifestyle imagery
• Attention-grabbing captions
• A/B testing leading up to Prime Day

We want to emphasize the importance of video. A few marketing studies done by WiseOwl found that 84% of customers have been convinced to buy a product or service from a video.

Sponsored Brands videos help you engage buyers at all stages of the funnel. Amazon says these campaigns generate 20-40% higher ROAS (return on ad spend) than regular sponsored ads.

RELATED: How To Use Creative to Gain Market Share

How to Leverage Amazon Posts for Prime Day

Amazon Posts are a new feature currently in beta. They’re only available on the app or mobile.

Shops can create posts to help boost organic traffic, but because it’s in beta, you can expect to see a lot of changes as it rolls out to the wider Amazon community.

Keep in mind, it’s against Amazon’s policies to use discounts or promos in the post caption. Instead, use short captions and a single captivating lifestyle image. Don’t drive any traffic off Amazon.

 

Here are some tips for using Amazon Posts:

• Post daily through June. You can schedule posts in advance, so you can do a full month’s post in a single sitting.
• Take advantage of A/B testing and see what captions and images get the most clicks and engagement. Once you figure out what works, scale it up.
• Be sure to showcase a variety of products from your catalog. Don’t just feature your best sellers.
• Build a brand following and use that following to interact with customers. Use Amazon’s new Customer Engagement Tool to connect with followers. You have to be brand-registered to use this tool since it’s still in beta.

How to Use Amazon’s DSP to Build Your Funnel Pre-Event

Amazon’s Demand-Side Platform (DSP) is an impression-based display marketing platform that delivers ads in different formats. It allows you to reach consumers at different stages of the buying process.

Through DSP, advertisers can programmatically reach audiences, both on the Amazon site/apps as well as through their publishing networks and third-party exchanges.

What is programmatic display advertising?

Programmatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of online ads where computers and algos work together to make the ad buying, placement, and optimization process more efficient.

CTRs are 10x higher when adding DSP retargeting to your ad strategy. Plus, when you run in-market and retargeting, 70% of consumers are more likely to purchase your products.

Now let’s talk about the pre-Prime day use of DSP:

• Use in-market segment targeting to grow brand awareness and drive more eyes to Prime Day promotions and/or brand storefronts.
• Drive traffic to your store to take advantage of the new Customer Engagement tool.
• Use RECs (responsive e-commerce creatives) for child variations to help you determine which products sell best.
• If your products fall under a less likely-to-sell category during Prime Day, use retargeting ads.

Capture Non-Buyers Using Amazon’s DSP Post-Event

After Prime Day, data is your friend.

Amazon’s DSP has tons of data for you to take advantage of. Some ways you can use this data to build your base throughout the year include:

• Use a shorter lookback window (like 14 days or 30 days) to capitalize on Prime Day special traffic. People are still consistently shopping during that window of time.
• Run a small coupon on products you’re running retargeting ads on when competition is lowered. This will help increase your sales.
• More and more marketplaces are understanding that Prime Day is a big event. That’s why you’ll see Amazon’s DSP creates a halo effect of all your sales across multiple verticals online. Understanding where those customers came from is key.
• Take advantage of Prime Day data to inform your strategy for Q4 and the holiday season.

PRO TIP: For every $5 you spend on AdCon ads, invest at list $1 on DSP. There’s no right answer for budget, but this is a good average to strive for.

Maximize Product Reviews Post-Prime Day

Amazon Prime Day 2021 is the perfect time to increase your reviews. Last year, in the week following Prime Day, we saw a 32% increase in positive reviews (not just total reviews).

For Prime Day, many people are buying things for themselves to use right away. This is different from the holiday season when people are getting gifts for others. This increases the rate of reviews.

With various types of Amazon review programs, it is essential to make sure you have a strategy in place to ask for reviews on every order.

RELATED: The Right Way to Ask for Customer Reviews

Tips from An Expert On Avoiding Account Restrictions from Wrongful Product Review Requests

There are guidelines you need to follow to ask for reviews on Amazon. If you breach any of these review guidelines, Amazon will restrict you from buyer-seller messaging.

Amazon does allow you to request reviews from customers. Here are the guidelines for things you cannot do:

• Never offer incentives for reviews.
• Avoid marketing messages or promotions, especially in return for a positive review.
• Make sure your language in your email is neutral.
• Don’t review your own product.
• Don’t manipulate reviews.
• Never ask for a positive review.
• No URLs or attachments unless necessary (e.g. warranties)
• No repeat requests (per order) for reviews.

Here are the guidelines of things you should do:

• Send within 30 days of order completion (we call this the feedback frenzy).
• Include the 17-digit order ID.
• Use your buyer’s language of preference.
• Ask only once.

Tips for Getting More Amazon Reviews

The Request a Review button sends a review request directly from Amazon. It gives a bit more credibility and the results are great.

Keep in mind that it’s not just the number or quality of reviews that matter. It’s also the recency of reviews. In fact, 84% of shoppers believe that online reviews older than 3 months are not relevant, whereas only 3% of shoppers are influenced by reviews older than 1 year.

You’ll get 3–10x more reviews simply by asking for them.

Start with a great product, send a review request and utilize product inserts. Also, enroll in Amazon Vine and optimize listings. Provide detailed product instructions and use software found in the Amazon Appstore (that way you know it’s approved).

That’s what we call a recipe for review success.

What We Learned from Last Year’s Prime Day

For 2020 Prime Day, Amazon sold more than $10.4 billion worth of goods, up 45.2% from 2019. MarketPlace sellers sold more than $3.5 billion in total sales across 19 countries, up 60% from 2019. Here’s what we know:

• Deals drove results. Brands with special deals saw 3x the average daily volume in sales.
• Media support accelerated growth. More deals and competition required brands to invest in media to stand out and drive volume. Amazon DSP is an easy solution. Sponsored ads saw an average of 3x the average daily volume and DSP saw 4x average daily volume.

So what do we predict for Amazon Prime Day 2021?

First of all, the date is in June instead of July to get shoppers before summer vacation, which means we’ll potentially see a lift in some new categories.

Last year, we saw more holiday gifts being purchased. This year, we are predicting spikes in categories for products linked to the opening of the economy (e.g. sports & outdoors, weddings, events).

FAQs About Amazon Prime Day 2021

1. To set up a sale for Prime Day, would you suggest a coupon or the lowest price?

Given the nature of the event and the fact we know consumers are specifically looking for those coupon/lightning deal badges, we recommend using some sort of promotional tool. The consumer cannot see when or if you’ve changed your list price. It can also mess with any kind of Buy Box or offer.

2. How do I set an Amazon Post?

Go to post.amazon.com and sign in using your Ad Console/Seller Central login. Create a profile by uploading your brand name and logo. Go to Create Post, upload your image and add your copy.

3. How quickly does it take to go live with some of these inventory techniques?

It can take anywhere from a day to a few days. Sometimes, working with a professional inventory strategist can help you test out some tactics without swallowing up all your time.

4. If I missed the promotion deadlines, what other actions can I take?

Drive traffic into Amazon from your social media or Google Ads with the tagline of “shop our deals” or “shop our discounts.” Position it more in a creative way to further excitement over the discount. We recommend logging into your account anyway to see if there are any promotions that happen to be available.

5. Does switching from FBA to merchant-fulfilled impact the Buy Box?

It should not impact your Buy Box unless there are other offers competing with you. Buy Box is more of a price issue. Although, having the lowest price does not necessarily mean you’ll get the Buy Box. It depends on a number of issues, like how strong your seller history is.

6. When should I send the Request a Review after the product’s delivery?

If it’s something the consumer can use right away, send the review request about 2–3 days of delivery. If it’s a longer-term product, it may take a couple of weeks for them to know if the product works. Overall, a good blanket strategy is to do it within a matter of days.

7. When is the best time to launch a DSP campaign?

If it’s in regards to Prime Day, get started now. You want to get those going because it takes a bit to get good data. If it’s a normal time of the year and you’ve never used DSP before, we usually make sure everything is optimized in your Ad Console advertising. Are you seeing the returns you’re looking for? If so, it’s a smart thing to layer in retargeting.

8. How do you see the best return with DSP advertising?

It all depends on what your goals are. You can set a lot of goals, but retargeting tends to provide the quickest and strongest returns in the beginning.

9. What is the difference between feedback and reviews on Amazon?

Feedback is related to the seller itself. Reviews have to do with the product specifically. Product reviews are what consumers see when they look at the product. However, Amazon places an emphasis on seller feedback.

10. There was some speculation about another Prime Day later in the year. Is this happening?

We’ve heard some speculation, but it’s just speculation—nothing more. This is something that could happen, just because people are becoming accustomed to these Prime Day events. Only time will tell.

Getting Ready for Amazon Prime Day 2021

Wrap your shop up in a nice little bow this Prime Day.

You’ll want to invite consumers and prepare for a lot of sales. It takes work, but e-commerce sellers ought to take advantage of one of the biggest online sales days of the year.