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Amazon Prime Day 2018 – A Data-Driven Approach: What To Know and How To Prepare

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TRANSCRIPT:

CAMERON YODER:

You should really be kind of focusing on how can you take advantage of the moment.  Really, Prime Day is one of those levers, one of those easy levers that you as a seller can pull to increase your sales. 

Prime Day 2018, the longest Prime Day in history.  More time, more deals and more sales.  Prime Day is back and is expected to be bigger than ever.  With a subscriber base of more than 100 million Prime users globally, you can expect big things this year.  I’m Cameron Yoder, your host for Follow the Data: Your Journey to Amazon FBA Success.  In this show we leverage the data we’ve accumulated at Viral Launch from over 30,000 product launches and our experience working with more than 8,000 brands to help you understand the big picture when it comes to Amazon and the best practices for success as an Amazon seller. 

In this episode we’re going to walk through what you can expect for Prime Day this year.  We aggregated a lot of data from last year’s Prime Day.  We’ll run through what the data is pointing to this year and how you can best prepare for what is to come on the 16^th of July.  Let’s jump in. 

What’s up, everybody?  Cameron here.  Today, like I said in the intro, we’re talking through Prime Day 2018.  Now Prime Day 2018 is going to be, or it’s expected to be just a huge day, huge sales day.  Now not too long ago there was somewhat of a leak of the Prime Day date that was on the Amazon UK website.  I believe it was TechRadar that caught the unexpected date for everything going on, and the date on that banner was July 16^th.  Now since then Amazon has actually same day has released, kind of put out official information regarding Prime Day, so most people are awake of the day now, which is July 16^th starting at 3:00 p.m.  And this does make Prime Day, I believe, the longest Prime Day to date so far. 

So Prime Day is – Prime Day is a big deal.  Why is it a big deal?  A lot of people ask why is Prime Day so hype?  Why do people get so hype for Prime Day?  Now Prime Day as a whole does not guarantee that you as a seller are going to make more money.  That’s not the guarantee.  That’s not why people hype it up, even though that’s why a lot of people think, honestly.  Really, statistics point to increased sales across the board on Prime Day, just for Amazon and for people selling on Amazon in general.  So what can you expect?  Well, you can expect more people to be shopping on this day.  So if more people are shopping across just about every single category, being on Page 1 means that you’re putting yourself in front of all of those extra shoppers.  So why should you care as a seller about Prime Day?  Well, simply because more people are shopping on Prime Day, and if your goal is to simply make money, or if your goal is to make money with selling on Amazon, which I assume that is at least one big part of your business, then Prime Day should be important to you. 

So let’s talk about Prime Day last year.  Let’s talk about Prime Day 2017 because we aggregated a lot of stats from 2017, and we have some stats here just on Prime Day 2017 in general, which we can use to predict how big the Prime Day 2018 will be, at least this year.  So let’s go over some statistics, some data that we have.  Prime Day had more new Prime members join than any other day in history.  That’s big.  If you’re watching our content, we’re kind of keeping an eye on Amazon’s growth strategy.  But one of those honestly is to just get more people to simply join the Prime platform, like with their expansion into Twitch and a lot of different things, a lot of different Prime benefits like Prime Wardrobe.  They’re incentivizing people to join onto Prime or to jump on the Prime train.  And more Prime users really does mean more shoppers for you as a seller, which is important.  So more Prime members equals more shoppers, more potential shoppers I should say. 

So Prime Day 2017 was the largest single sales day in Amazon history until 2017’s Cyber Monday, which was not too far after Prime Day, but it was their biggest sales day until Cyber Monday.  For Prime Day 2017 we actually set up interactive graphics, or graphs, graphics, graphs to compare Prime Day sales to a 30-day baseline average.  Having this, having these interactive graphs and graphics really allowed sellers to keep an eye on sales trends for all categories, combined along with a lot of individual categories as well. 

So our largest – this was last year, again 2017 – our largest tracked seller saw a 6,000% increase in sales through this 30-hour window, basically this Prime Day window that we were tracking.  So again, that was the largest.  But just imagine, that kind of goes to show just the fact that more people are shopping on Prime Day, like a 6,000 increase in this 30-hour window is just literally insane.  This 6,000% increase was measured across a sales baseline from the two weeks leading up to Prime Day.  So we took an average of the same 30-hour period of time two weeks earlier in order to compare sales on Prime Day, and this baseline gave us a feel for exactly how big the sales influx really was.  With all of our drive data we estimated that there was a 252% sales increase on Prime Day across all of Amazon compared to, again, those baseline sales across all categories. 

So breaking down specific subcategories, specific categories and sales increases, the office category saw an increase by a huge 647.26%, electronics 412%, and kitchen and dining 400%.  So a lot of this, again, this does not mean that your sales are going to increase by 6,000% or 600%.  No, not at all.  All of this however simply does point to the fact that there are a lot, a lot, a lot of shoppers coming onto the Amazon platform on Prime Day.  So really you should be conc– not concerned, but you should really be kind of focusing on how can you take advantage of the moment.  Really, Prime Day is one of those levers, one of those easy levers that you as a seller can pull to increase your sales. 

At the same time you don’t want to run out of stock, so you want to make sure that you have inventory in place if you’re going to be competitive on Prime Day.  But also, you should be setting your expectations in kind of a realistic way.  So again, I would say that a realistic expectation would not be to expect an increase in 6,000%, a 6,000% increase in sales for your products across the board.  No, not necessarily.  But I would however expect more sales to come through on Prime Day.  And so really this episode is kind of going over those statistics and pointing to what we can expect from Prime Day this year.  And assuming, well, knowing that Prime, the Prime user base has grown and that Amazon of course just wants to make a lot of money, which, well, don’t just want to do that – they want long-term customers – but knowing that Prime Day is geared towards making a lot of sales, making a lot of money all at one time, we can assume that Prime Day is going to be even bigger this year. 

And so we’re tracking – again, we’re tracking Prime Day this year to see kind of the percentage, the average percentage in sales increase across the board.  And so expect us to kind of follow up with some statistics here.  But what should you do?  What should you do to prepare for Prime Day 2018?  Well, really, by the time this is out you really should have your game plan at least started for what you want to do, but I guess you should ask yourself how much you have to put into optimizing everything for Prime Day.  Like if capturing these extra sales are going to put you in a tough spot financially, or maybe even inventory-wise, maybe reconsider.  At least consider those as factors going into this.  You don’t want to just blindly start competing for a spot on Prime Day because it’s also going to be pretty competitive, or somewhat competitive depending on your product and depending on your category. 

So what should you do to, or what can you do about Prime Day?  What can you do to try your best to capture these extra sales that will be coming and these extra customers that will be coming in on Prime Day?  Well, there are a couple things that you can and should do.  One of those is optimize, get ready to optimize your PPC.  So we always talk about being aggressive.  Prime Day is really one of those things where being aggressive with your PPC makes sense, to put you in front of those buyers, those shoppers.  So I would say maybe optimize or put in a bit more into your PPC budget than maybe you usually do because, again, if you’re putting more in your budget you’re spending more on budgetary things like PPC, but you’re gaining more sales as kind of an end result, then that is a win scenario. 

So I would say run aggressive PPC.  I would also say to optimize your listing and your photos.  Again, maybe double check your keywords that are in your listing.  Double check to make sure that your photos are up-to-date, are competitive because, I mean simply put, if you are competing for a spot on Page 1 on Prime Day and your photos are awful, like we always talk about, then you have a lower chance of converting.  So really make sure that your keywords are optimized.  Update your keywords because keywords, again, keywords should be one of those things that you’re kind of double checking every now and then to really make sure that you have the most up-to-date keyword information and the most up-to-date searches, search information on or for your product just because you, honestly you as a seller cannot control what sellers are searching for or how they’re searching.  And so making sure to update your listing, making sure to update your photos is huge.  Even if your conversion rate is something like 1% higher on Prime Day because of photos or a listing that you changed up, that 1% conversion rate paired with something like an average of 252% increase in sales across the board is huge.  It really does make a difference.  So optimize your listing.  Optimize your photos. 

Lastly, we talked about this – I believe we talked about this last year, but also making sure to plan a launch, something like seven days ahead of time is huge.  So really getting on Page 1 – Prime Day is great because I mean there is, again, a general increase across the board, but even better if you’re on Page 1 for your primary keywords.  So really our advice for now, right now, is to plan a launch something like seven days ahead of Prime Day to make sure that you’re on Page 1 before Prime Day hits because honestly once Prime Day hits that’s going to be that huge spike in sales, and you’re not going to want to run something like a launch to compete with a category or a market that is just running a ton of traffic. 

And so what should you do as a seller that wants to run a launch?  Well, really before Prime Day if you’re serious about getting onto Page 1 for, again, your primary keywords, if you are serious about that run a launch seven days before Prime Day.  And maybe even honestly 10 days before.  I would say 7 to 10 days before Prime Day.  So that would be July 6^th through something like the 8^th or the 9^th you should plan on already starting.  That’s when you should start, be starting something like a launch or a promotion to get you to Page 1 because, again, why is Prime Day a huge deal?  Well, Prime Day is a huge Dale because just more sales in general.  If there are more sales, if you have the potential to capture more sales, if you’re capable of getting there, getting to Page 1, then honestly I would say you should take that opportunity. 

But also there are going to be some pretty good deals, or supposedly some pretty good deals on Prime Day 2018.  So if you’re in the market for buying, if you’re in that market for buying products, then Prime Day is going to be that day, I guess.  So they have some good – they’re going to have some good deals on Alexa Echo, the Show, the Spot and Dot devices, Kindles, things like that.  So if you’re in the market to buy certain things, definitely check Prime Day out.  But also, really in the end ask yourself whether you want to or are capable of capturing those extra sales right now and prepare for just kind of an extra bump in sales.  Again, it’s not like a life-changing day or moment for a lot of sellers, but for some, some sellers are going to see that 6,000% increase in sales, and you never know whether that seller could be you or not.  So at least, at the very least, you want to position yourself to be that person just in case it is you. 

And that’s all we had for today.  We just wanted to put out a quick piece of content talking about Prime Day, making sure that you all are prepared.  If you want to look over kind of more data we actually have a sales tracker on our website.  I’m going to put a link to that in the description.  But it would be awesome – it’s actually really cool to check out a kind of keep an eye on sales across the board for specific categories and subcategories.  But check that out. 

Also, subscribe to the podcast if you really do find value from it.  We love, we love, love, love hearing from you as well.  So go to our Facebook page right now, look up Viral Launch, direct message us any questions or thoughts you have on the podcast.  We love hearing from you.  So go do that.  If you like what you hear, or even if you don’t, leave an honest review on iTunes.  We love, again, hearing just your feedback and what you do or do not like.  So leave a review for us. 

Also, keep an eye out for more content.  We’ll be back next week with more things.  The next big thing that’s going to happen for a lot of sellers is July 4^th.  Actually by the time you’re listening to this July 4^th  will be over.  But I’m hoping that you all had a great time, whether you were taking a break from work, or working, regardless, I hope you had a great time.  I hope you were able to celebrate in some way.  Thank you all again so much for listening.  Remember, the data is out there.