5 Steps – How To Prepare For Amazon Prime Day 2023

Amazon Prime Day 2023 runs from July 12 to 13 for 48 hours.

Prime Day is a great opportunity for Amazon sellers to take advantage of the influx of Prime members on the Amazon platform.

Sellers can gain a huge boost in sales and revenue because of the big increase in consumers searching for lightning deals and discounted items.

The lead time for getting more stock manufactured, shipped, and stocked in the FBA warehouses can sometimes take up to 3 months, so now is the time to start getting ready.

This post will cover exactly how to prepare for Prime Day 2023.

Step 1 – Offer Different Prime Day Discounts

Some sellers decide to ignore Prime Day and rely solely on the increase in customers on the platform to experience a boost in sales.

I wouldn’t recommend doing this!

The idea of Prime Day is that Amazon Prime Members gain access to the sales event, and can expect to find discounted items.

Consumers are actively searching for deals, and when you don’t appear to be offering any, you’re likely to be bypassed and your competitors will get the sale.

Offering a different range of discounts is a great way to entice customers to purchase your products.

Here are 4 different ways to do this:

Prime Day Deals

If you are planning on offering Prime Day Deals, then you should submit your offers to Amazon before April 28, 2023.

Prime Day Deals are an investment and will not suit every budget.

They come with a rather large fee, but it’s usually worthwhile as your product will gain much more visibility during the sales event, and sellers will see a healthy ROI.

If you’re a new seller and you don’t have access to a large marketing budget, then Prime Day Deals won’t be worth your while, and you should look to offering Prime Exclusive Discounts instead…

Prime Exclusive Discounts

Prime Exclusive Discounts are discounts that you can offer to Amazon Prime members only.

This is a great way to incentivize customers with an existing Amazon Prime subscription and make them feel like they are getting value from their membership.

These discounts don’t come with the same hefty fee as Prime Day Deals, but they might not be as effective depending on your product category and target audience.

If you decide to go down this route then you need to submit your offers to Amazon before May 5th, 2023.

Run Promotions

You can also run promotional campaigns during Amazon Prime Day 2023.

These promotions could be in the form of a free gift or bonus for customers who purchase your product, or you could offer free shipping to incentivize customers to purchase from you.

These types of promotions are great because they don’t require as much lead time, and they give customers an added incentive to choose your product over others.

Step 2 – Optimize Your Product Listing

A highly optimized Amazon product listing is your best chance of increasing your conversion rate over the Prime Day period.

It’s important to do this now instead of a few days before Prime Day because you want to gain as much traction with your ranking and Best Seller Rating.

Here are the best 3 ways to optimize your product listing in preparation:

Check your Product listing Keywords
Improve product images
Increase your reviews

Optimizing Product Listing Keywords

Optimizing your product listing so that it is ranking for the most relevant, and highest converting keywords for your product search terms is vital to increasing your conversion rate, and organic ranking on Amazon.

The best way to check that your listing is properly optimized for the most relevant keywords is to audit the following sections of your listings:

Product Title
Product bullet points
Product Description

How To Audit Your Listings For Keywords

The best and most thorough way to audit your product listing for Keywords is to re-perform keyword research for your product’s root keyword.

Root keyword – is the shortest, most obvious search term for your product.

Then double-check that your listing includes all of the other longtail search terms for your product and make sure that they are properly placed within your listing.

This product launch checklist dives deep into how to properly optimize your product listing to increase rankings and conversion rates.

Optimize Product Images

There are two points of focus with your product images:

The main image
secondary images

The main image helps to win the click, and the secondary images convert customers into buyers.

So make sure your images are effective in their roles.

Your main product image should have:

Pure white background
No badges or text
Product without packaging
Images should be square
All extra white space cropped out
As high-quality as possible
Use ALL the space

Your secondary images should:

Have any color background (lifestyle images showing the product in use at home, or wherever the product belongs)
Images should be square
Be as high quality as possible
Use text overlays to communicate the benefits
Use all 9 product image slots
Show benefits
Reiterate bullet points
Showcase the product dimensions

Increase Your Product Reviews

The more reviews you have, the more likely customers will be to trust your product and make a purchase.

Gaining positive reviews is also a ranking factor for the A9 Algorithm that Amazon uses to select which products earn the highest rankings in the search terms.

There are several ways to do this:

Create product inserts that your suppliers add to your product packaging.
Send follow-up emails to offer support and ask for any feedback.
Offering exclusive promotions/discounts in exchange for reviews.
Reaching out directly via social media platforms for reviews.

[Disclaimer]

It would be a breach of Amazon’s terms if you directly ask customers for a positive review, you are allowed to follow up to make sure that customers are happy with their purchase and to offer support should they need it.

By offering this level of service, customers will feel much more obligated to want to leave positive feedback in the form of a review, but a review cannot be incentivized or specifically asked for.

Step 3 – Increase Inventory

Running out of inventory can cause your organic ranking to plummet whilst you’re waiting for your stock to replenish.

Your search ranking should be maintained at all costs, so increasing the level of inventory in storage over the Amazon Prime Day 2023 sales event to account for the boost in sales is vital.

How Do You Know How Much More Stock To Buy?

Amazon Sellers (myself included) have experienced Prime Day sales reaching up to 3 times higher than normal sales, in some cases even more.

So as a rule of thumb, figure out your average daily sales per product, times it by three, and then double it (because Prime Day is a 2-day event).

How To Increase Storage Capacity Limits

For new sellers, or for sellers with a poor Inventory Performance Index (IPI) increasing your FBA storage capacity isn’t possible.

If you hold inventory for too long or have a low ‘sell-through rate’, then your IPI score may be too low for Amazon to want to increase the capacity for you to increase your levels of inventory.

The best way to increase your IPI score is to increase your sell-through rate.

Increasing your sell-through rate will naturally decrease your excess inventory score, by shifting the products that were sat for too long in storage.

Amazon wants your products to spend as little time in their fulfillment center as possible, so increasing your sell-through rate, and decreasing your excess inventory score can help you to earn a higher IPI, resulting in more storage availability.

Step 4 – Offer FBM If You’ve Reached Your FBA Storage Capacity

If you’ve maxed out your FBA storage capacity, and don’t have enough stock to meet the demand of Prime Day sales, then it makes sense to offer FBM sales.

FBM stands for ‘Fulfilled By Merchant’ and means you store the products in your home or a local warehouse, and take care of shipping them with your own courier services or Amazon Shipping Services.

Having a backup plan is key when it comes to Prime Day success, especially if you are unable to increase your storage capacity with FBA.

Your FBM inventory will automatically win the buy box and you can fulfill the products yourself.

Step 5 – Run PPC Ads

Running PPC (Pay Per Click) ads is a great way to drive traffic to your products and give them a boost in rankings.

You can create targeted campaigns specifically for Prime Day, with a higher budget than normal.

Your advertising budget should be reflective of the sales you anticipate making during the event, so calculate the extra cost versus potential profit, and then decide how much you want to spend on it.

It’s also a great idea to run PPC ads in the months leading up to Prime Day to improve your organic rankings.

Running your PPC ads on Amazon is much more effective when you use a PPC management tool like the Viral Launch Kinetic PPC Tool.

Kinetic PPC provides sellers with more data to easily analyze campaigns and search term information, meaning you can easily maximize profits on ad campaigns.

There is much more automation when you use a PPC tool like Kinetic PPC, rather than running ads on the Seller Central platform.

Once you have sales and conversions coming in from your PPC campaigns, make sure to keep an eye on them and optimize your campaigns.

The way to do this is to check the performance regularly and adjust bids or add/remove keywords as needed depending on which ones are performing the best.

Amazon Prime day 2023 FAQ

When is Amazon Prime Day 2023?

Amazon Prime Day runs from July 12 to 13

What is Amazon Prime Day?

Amazon Prime Day is a global shopping event exclusive to Amazon Prime members, offering amazing deals and discounts on a variety of products.

How can Sellers make the most of Prime Day?

Prepare your inventory and create campaigns to target Amazon shoppers during the event. Make sure you are monitoring your stock levels at all times, and increase your storage capacity if necessary. You should also be running PPC ads to boost the visibility of your products and create a backup plan with FBM sales in case your FBA inventory maxes out. Leverage social media platforms off of the Amazon platform too, to help drive traffic to your listings.

What types of deals can you find on Prime Day?

Prime Day offers a wide range of deals including discounts on electronics, home appliances and furniture, fashion, toys, and more.

What are the most profitable product categories on Amazon Prime Day?

Toys, electronics, home appliances, and fashion are some of the most profitable product categories on Prime Day. Other popular categories include beauty products and pet supplies.
The top 2 most profitable categories on Amazon Prime Day are:
#1: Toys and kids’ and babies’ items (32%)
#2: Electronics, computers, and office tools (21%)

Amazon Selling: How to Advertise Your Business During Major Sales Events

If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s the importance of being able to recognize changing conditions and adapt and adjust to changing conditions. This begs the question: How to advertise your business during major sales events?

On September 26th, Amazon officially announced the inaugural 48-hour Prime Early Access Sale slated for October 11th, leaving Amazon sellers just two weeks to prepare for what projects to be one of the biggest shopping events on the calendar.

While it had been rumored for months before it became official, the timing of the announcement leaves little time for Amazon businesses to stock up on supplies and optimize inventory. Additionally, the sale effectively speeds up the holiday shopping window.

Needless to say, the market conditions have changed.

For many Amazon sellers, advertising on Amazon can be a headache even on an average day. So how does a major sales event like Prime Day, the holiday season or Prime Early Access Sale change how to advertise your business?

Below, we’ll take a look at a few crucial pieces of advice and data points that may help you take control of what can be controlled at this point, and navigate through busy sales periods like a seasoned pro.

Know When The Math Changes

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Perhaps it goes without saying, but it certainly helps to know when these busy sales periods are. With a heightened awareness of the potential of changing conditions comes a greater ability to act swiftly and decisively with confidence.

On rare occasions, times with drastic change can’t realistically be accounted for. But for the most part, Amazon sellers can do themselves a favor by anticipating seismic shifts in the market.

Even for savvy, longtime Amazon sellers, the rules and conditions they grew accustomed to disappeared when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted normalcy around the globe, with plenty of trickle-down effects impacting the e-commerce and Amazon marketplace.

While the COVID-19 disruption served as an extreme example of how an agent of change can flip a marketplace on its head, we can apply that thought and learning experience to other avenues when business as usual takes a turn.

More typically, busy sales periods like Prime Day, Cyber Monday, Black Friday, the Prime Early Access Sale and holiday season will cause greater fluctuations in the market. If you sell a product with a greater deal of seasonality, the ability to forecast when sales will see an uptick or downtick in demand can have a great impact on the profitability of your ads.

High-traffic sales events up the ante in every way for Amazon businesses. It’s a key factor to consider when deciding how to advertise your business at these times. With more shoppers searching for a deal, the opportunity for record sales multiplies. But with that opportunity being there for the taking, the competition in the market intensifies.

Your typical ad bids that routinely win prime digital real estate are highly unlikely to get the job done during these high-sales periods, changing the math significantly in the battle between visibility and profitability.

Understanding Benefits Beyond The Obvious

Although it can be easy to focus on the big sales number during a major sales event, that big bag of cash isn’t the only thing to keep an eye on.

Without a doubt, seeing skyrocketing sales is always welcomed. But success during Prime Day or the Early Access Sale can do so much more, helping your business prosper far beyond the promotional period.

For example, increasing brand awareness and new-to-brand customers through advertising can go a long way toward earning sales all year long. According to an Amazon study, brands that advertised leading up to and during Prime Day showed a 216% increase in awareness and 214% increase in considerations, compared to the prior week.

The most difficult aspect of customer retention? Earning their purchase in the first place. Once a customer has purchased a product from your brand, they are much more likely to purchase yet again from you as long as they feel like they got a good return on their investment.

Additionally, the sales made during these multiplier events greatly affect your visibility going forward. When you achieve sales either via search or through keyword-targeting advertising, your product sees an increase in organic rank. With organic rank serving as the holy grail of profitable sales, a successful sales event can help your bottom line all year round.

Capitalizing on the influx of traffic during these sales events can become a foundational part of your year-round performance, bringing in repeat customers who seek out your product the next time they need it.

Because of the increased competition for eyeballs, your ACoS (average cost of sale) will likely increase, a metric sellers like to keep as low as possible. However, consider these ancillary benefits while concocting your strategy and use these extra wins as consolation for the added cost.

Balancing Sales and Profitability

Photo by EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA on Pexels.com

For every seller, finding the perfect balance between advertising costs and profitability through conversion takes a large sample size of data and plenty of trial and error. And these numbers become warped on high-traffic sales events, but typical data can still be incredibly useful for mastering that balancing act.

One study conducted by Perpetua provides valuable insights into the numbers during July’s Prime Day 2022 compared to data in the month before and weeks after.

One of the more interesting figures from their case study shows that for Sponsored Products, Amazon businesses that increased ad spend by 50% saw a minimal rise in ACoS while experiencing a significant boost in conversion rates.

Graphic and data originally from perpetua.io.

In short, this data indicates that increasing ad spend to match the hype of these events can be quite profitable despite the rise in ACoS depending on your product, price point and ad spend budget.

If you can afford to raise your ad spend by a significant amount, you’re much more likely to see a positive return on ad spend. For those who choose to stick with business as normal or provide a meager boost to their ad spend, the return on your investment are more likely to disappoint.

How to Advertise Your Business: Execution

How Can You Execute These High-Opportunity Strategies?

For each and every product, the data changes can be drastically different, making it difficult to apply widescale rules to follow.

However, Viral Launch’s Kinetic tool makes creating profitable advertising campaigns and tracking performance as easy as can be via automation. With easy-to-create rules you can create to trigger action, you can optimize your ad spend by combining an informed strategy with state-of-the-art automation.

Within Kinetic, you can customize your advertising experience to match your goals and budget like never before. Create rules that increase ad spend for profitable campaigns and shut down campaigns or keywords where you’re not getting a proper return on investment once they’ve met the criteria you’ve set.

Kinetic PPC provides all the Amazon advertising functionality and tracking to help maximize your advertising success all year-long. However, it can be especially worthwhile when it comes to deciding how to advertise your business during high-velocity, high-stakes sales periods.

Set yourself up with Kinetic PPC today to manage campaigns, monitor keywords and product performance and optimize your advertising experience today.

Amazon Officially Delays Prime Day 2020

As speculated, Amazon has shelved its signature summertime shopping holiday for a later date than usual this year.

The annual e-commerce mega-event typically kicks off in mid-July, so the cornoravirus complications causing the postponement comes as no surprise. Amazon did not provide a replacement date for Prime Day, only giving away that “This year we’ll be holding Prime Day later than usual.” via an Amazon spokesperson. Despite an officially announced date, rumors persist that Prime Day will occur sometime in September of this year.

Prime Day started in 2015 with heavily discounted products available exclusively to Amazon Prime subscribers to celebrate Amazon’s 20th birthday. Since the inception of Prime Day, it has rivaled Black Friday and Cyber Monday for the calendar’s most massive commerce days.

In 2019, Prime Day extended to 48 hours, with 18 participating countries. The sales extravaganza spurred over 175 million items purchased, surpassing totals from Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018 combined.

Prime Day Over The Years

With this immense influx of sales from the over 150 million Amazon Prime subscribers, Prime Day has been an incredible opportunity for sellers to extend their reach and boost their sales. Like the holiday season, it requires unique planning for sellers as they gear up to optimize their chance to make the most of the sales spectacular.

All sellers should circle the eventual date of Prime Day once Amazon announces the new date. In the meantime, we recommend penciling in September for the expected Prime Day 2020.

Prime Day always presents a humongous opportunity for sellers to take advantage of the sales promotion and deep discounts.

For sellers, Prime Day prep begins well before the event kicks off. Be sure to optimize marketing and inventory planning to get peak value as a result of the additional exposure.

Be sure to stay posted to our blog! We’ll keep you updated and informed on the latest happenings surrounding Prime Day and other aspects of selling on Amazon.

Product and market research is absolutely critical to ensuring you’ve got the edge on your competition all of the time. But, the importance of that edge amplifies during times of increased sales.

Make sure you’re the most informed seller in your market by utilizing tools like Market Intelligence and Competitor Intelligence to have the upper hand and dominate your market!

New To Amazon Seller Central: Prime-Exclusive Discounts

Prime Day is right around the corner, and in true Amazon fashion, they’ve rolled out a brand new feature just in the nick of time.

As an Amazon seller, you’re probably quite used to visiting the Advertising tab in Seller Central. For US accounts, you’ll now see a sub-tab called Prime-Exclusive Discounts. This is a new way to offer a discount on your products exclusively to Prime members. These discounts can be offered all year long, and they’ve been unveiled just in time for Prime Day (which has been rumored to be July 15th, 2019). But hurry up… the deadline to run these new discounts on Prime Day is July 5th!

Prime Day will provide sellers with an incredible opportunity to jolt their sales. We even put together a step-by-step guide to help you prepare. Now is the time to take action, and Prime Exclusive Discounts are an easy opportunity for you to set your product apart from the pack… or at least to make sure you’re not left behind if everyone else sets them up too.

What are Prime-Exclusive Discounts?

Prime-Exclusive Discounts are offered on Prime-eligible products sold through FBA, which are only available to Prime members. These products will show strikethrough pricing plus a savings message in the search results and in the buy box.

Amazon is giving sellers like you the ability to create Prime-Exclusive Discounts specifically for their upcoming holiday: Prime Day. You can do this by checking the corresponding box during setup. On Prime Day, these discounts will even include an extra badge that reads “Prime Day Deals” in the search results and on the detail page.

What are the requirements for Prime-Exclusive Discounts?

Many Amazon.com products are going to be eligible for Prime-Exclusive Discounts, and they are free to create. In order to set one up, your product must meet the following criteria:

Prime shipping eligible in all regions in the US
New condition
No rating or 3+ stars
The discount must be 10%-80% off of your listed price. For a Prime Day discount, it must be 20%-80% off
The discount must be the lowest price in the past 30 days

How do I set up a Prime-Exclusive Discount?

The process for creating Prime-Exclusive discounts is quite manual, but it only takes a few minutes. Don’t forget: the deadline for Prime Day discounts is July 5th, so take action now before it’s too late!

1. Find the discounts in Seller Central

Sign into Seller Central and navigate to the Advertising tab. Inside, you’ll find the option for Prime Exclusive Discounts. To get started, click “Create Discount.”

2. Name your discount

A name is required, and it will be used internally for your reference. Give the discount a name that corresponds to the product(s) you’re setting it up for so that, in the future, you can look back and quickly recognize what the discount was for.

3. Decide whether or not to run the discount on Prime Day

From what we can tell, you cannot uncheck the box labeled, “Is this a Prime Day discount?” So for now, it seems the Prime-Exclusive Discounts are being initially rolled out for Prime Day specifically. We assume that, in the future, you will be able to set a timeframe and date range for these deals. (If you’re seeing something different, please let us know in the comments below!)

4. Upload your product template

This part is a little bit manual, but don’t let it scare you away. It’s pretty easy to set up. Click the “view upload template” link, and it will download a spreadsheet for you to read through and fill out. There are three tabs:

Instructions: Learn how to use your Price Loader Template. This is pretty straightforward, but read through it so that you’re fully informed.
Data Definitions: Get specific instructions on what exactly to put into each field.
PrimePriceLoader Template: Enter your discount information, including SKU, amount off vs. percentage off, price discount, minimum discounted price, and the action (whether you’re adding, editing, or deleting the discount).

Don’t worry about deleting or renaming any tabs. If you do, it will cause an error. Simply fill out the information, save the Excel document, and upload the file. In the next step, you will find out if your inputs are valid.

5. Validate products

Here, you can make sure you’ve filled out the template correctly, along with seeing any issues that may make your product ineligible. If there are issues, the status will show why. You can edit the Discount Type, Prime Discount, and Minimum Price to resolve the problem. From here, you can add more products or Submit the Discounts. Next, you’ll be taken back to the main page where you can view discount details along with the status of each deal. Amazon states that if your start date is today, then the discount may take up to 120 minutes to go live.

Do Prime-Exclusive Discounts overlap with other deals?

Yes, they do overlap! Regular promotions or coupons will stack on top of these Prime-Exclusive Discounts. Please review your products carefully before scheduling to prevent customers combining them for significant discounts. And keep in mind that if you are running a Lightning Deal during the Prime Exclusive Discount, it will impact the maximum Deal Price of your Lightning Deal.

What do you think about Prime-Exclusive Discounts?

Prime-Exclusive Discounts are brand new, so we’re not sure how they will impact conversions. Some sellers are frustrated, calling this another way for Amazon to make money while sellers dig into already-slim margins. Others are hopeful this will help set their products apart.

What’s our suggestion? Well, we know that shoppers will be flocking to Amazon in mid-July during Prime Day, hungry for the best deals on products across all categories. And honestly, the more you can appeal to these shoppers, the better. So, our suggestion is to try these out. The volume here will hopefully make up for the cost (of course, this depends on your market, your conversion rate, and your visibility). If your margins are already pretty thin, consider raising your price and then discounting it to appeal to the discount-nature of Prime Day. The extra badge on your listing should help draw some meaningful attention to your product (especially if you missed the Lightning Deal deadline). And since you cannot set these up for Prime Day after July 5th, schedule them now and keep an eye on your clicks and conversions during the holiday.

To make sure you’re fully prepared for Prime Day, check out our free guide: How to Prepare for Prime Day & Crush It. We’re excited to see the results for those of you that take action on these new discounts, and we can’t wait to hear of the successes that Prime Day brings.

We’re interested… what do you think of these new Prime-Exclusive Discounts? Will you be using them in your strategy?

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

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. Cameron’s going to break down data resulting from last year’s Prime Day, which can lead us into what to expect for this year’s 2018 Prime Day. Let’s dive into the data, and dive into how you can best prepare for 2018.

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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.

Prime Day Sales Trends Reflect Amazon’s Biggest Sales Day Ever

“Prime Day Sales Trends Reflect Amazon’s Biggest Sales Day Ever”

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Amazon experienced its biggest sales day in history on Prime Day 2017.

How big?

Prime Day 2016 was previously the largest sales day for Amazon, but Prime Day 2017 just blew it out of the water by a 60% increase over last year’s Prime Day event.

Take all Amazon sales from Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2016, combine them, and the numbers still fall short of this year’s Prime Day sales.

And, Prime Day brought more new Prime membership signups than any other single day in the company’s history.

It’s safe to say that June 12th, 2017 was a huge day for the e-commerce giant.

Prime Day Sales

The most popular product sold on Prime Day was Amazon’s Echo Dot, which had a $15 discount to $34.99 during the sale.

But how did other categories perform? What did the sales trends look like across the board?

For Prime Day 2017, Viral Launch set up interactive graphs to compare Prime Day sales to a 30-day baseline average. These graphs showed sales trends for all categories combined, along with many individual categories: Beauty & Personal Care, Health & Household, Office Products, and more.

Our findings confirmed that Prime Day was indeed massive.

We found that our largest tracked member saw a 6,000% increase in sales throughout the 30-hour window! The real winners of Prime Day were those that took the time to tighten up their listings and run promotions to rank well on page one for relevant, high volume search terms. Many sellers saw over a 1,000% increase in sales.

VL Findings: All Categories

We took a baseline average of the same 30-hour window, two weeks earlier, to compare with Prime Day sales. This way, we have a reference for just how awesome Prime Day sales really were. Estimates come from Market Intelligence, our Amazon product research tool.

Viral Launch estimates a ~252% Prime Day sales increase compared to baseline sales across All Categories!

This graph shows how sales trended throughout the entire day, as compared to that baseline.

And here, you can see an hour-by-hour comparison of Prime Day’s percentage of average daily sales.

VL Findings: Individual Categories

We also looked at some individual categories to see which categories were outperforming others. Some of our largest percentage changes included Office Products and Electronics.

Take a look at the Office Products hourly graph, displaying a whopping 647.26% increase!

Other category percentage increases included:

Electronics: 412%

Beauty: 211%

Home & Kitchen: 376%

Kitchen & Dining: 400%

Pets: 346%

Conclusion

Viral Launch’s Prime Day trends reflect just how much of an impact Prime Day had on overall sales. In April, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimated 80 million US Prime members… and Prime Day has since increased that number even further!

As Amazon continues to grow its Prime membership program, having that sought-after Prime badge is becoming more important with each passing day.

Appeal to this enormous pool of buy-ready shoppers coupled with the additional Amazon Prime benefits creates an amazing opportunity for Amazon private label sellers.

And if Prime Day 2017 was any indication of what’s to come for Amazon Prime, I’d say it’s time to leverage this rapidly expanding membership program on the largest e-commerce site in the world.