5 Steps to Prepare for Amazon Prime Day

Ahhh, Prime Day. For sellers on Amazon, this yearly shopping storm is one of the busiest days of the year. Over $55 million was spent on Amazon Prime Day in 2017, and with more Prime members joining the online marketplace every minute, this year won’t be any different. Thousands of items will hit the virtual sale rack come July, and sellers must act now to be prepared for the onslaught.

With last year’s Amazon Prime Day breaking records left and right, 2018 is set to be one of the busiest – and lucrative – days on record for most Amazon sellers. Unfortunately, in order to be eligible for Amazon Prime Day, you must be in an FBA relationship with Amazon. Because Prime Day relies on two-day shipping, the fulfillment centers must have product in-house to ship it out on time. If your organization is part of Amazon Seller Central and is eligible for Amazon Prime Day, congrats – it’s time to start planning! In order to have the best possible results from Prime Day, sellers must have all logistics details and marketing campaigns prepped and in place well before the big day.

Here are five steps to prep your Amazon listings and your team for Amazon Prime Day 2018:

Step 1: Optimize your Listing Copy
When it comes to Prime Day, it’s all about the product listing. There will be hundreds of thousands of items for sale, and all of them will be vying for the attention of sale-hungry Prime members. In order to stand apart from the competition and truly entice your target audience, it’s time to upgrade your listing copy. Make sure that all of your product details — from potential colors and sizes to product dimensions — are all accurate and up-to-date. Sometimes, if brands are working with multiple sellers on the Amazon marketplace, there is no control over product messaging or value statements. This is one reason single third-party seller partners are so important.

Some listing copy best practices include:

• Using popular keywords and phrases on your product descriptions
• Leveraging bullet points to share the most important facts about your product
• Hit the high points, but don’t forget to add in details as well

It might even be worth it to invest in some A+ content space for a week or so leading up to Prime Day as many consumers will do a little ‘window shopping’ to find which items they want to buy on the actual day if they go on sale. Enhanced product listings may make the difference between a simple ‘window shopper’ and an actual buyer.

Step 2: Update your Listing Creative
After the words on the page help your products show up in Amazon search results, the pictures associated with your listings get people to click. Without strong images that convey exactly what your product is, what it looks like, and how customers can use it, shoppers will pass right over your product for something else. A good rule of thumb for optimized listing creative is to have 4-5 clear, high-resolution product images in front of a shadow-free all-white background. If your product warrants them, you could also consider lifestyle or in-use photos as well for added context.

If you’re really trying to step up your listing game for Prime Day 2018, then Enhanced Brand Content is for you. If your brand is part of the Brand Registry Program on Amazon, one of the biggest benefits (especially during Prime Day) is the Enhanced Brand Content space. This spaces allows sellers to showcase product images in new and unique ways to stand out from the competition and attract new customers. Studies show that Enhanced Brand Content can help increase Amazon sales by up to 30%, making it a true secret weapon for brands looking to go above and beyond this Prime Day.

Step 3: Take a Detailed Product Inventory
Once your actual online presence is ready for Prime Day, it’s time to take a look at your back-end operations. One side effect of the increased online traffic during Amazon Prime Day is that more people will be buying products, which means that more products must be in stock than historical numbers may warrant. A brand’s actual sell-through over Prime Day might be much higher than the historical sell-through value, which means brands must plan ahead to ensure credibility and reputation stay intact.

One of the first things to consider is your product lead time. Because Amazon Prime Day deals solely with brands leveraging Amazon fulfillment centers, think of how much time you’ll need to ship your products to those distribution centers and work backwards from there. Next, it’s worth planning in advance what you’ll do with any excess inventory that’s left in Amazon warehouses to avoid long-term storage fees. Finally, if your product does become back-ordered on Prime Day (trust us, it can happen), does your team have the bandwidth to expedite production to fulfill these orders in a timely manner?

Step 4: Draw out a Detailed Advertising Strategy and Budget
When it comes to advertising on Amazon, it’s all about doing more without overwhelming your target audience. With options like Sponsored Products and Headline Search Ads, building a strong Amazon advertising strategy doesn’t have to be hard. With more brands competing for Amazon ad space during Prime Day, your team must look for strategic ways to increase advertising reach without necessarily increasing normal spend. Define your budget and plan creative campaigns that stick to it.

Different types of Amazon advertising opportunities include:

• Lightning Deals
• Social Media Promo Codes
• Headline Search Ads
• Product Display Ads
• Sponsored Products
• New Product Launches
• Platform Branding

With all of these options available, it can be tempting to just throw cash in and watch the sales pile up. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t make it easy for sellers when it comes to handling advertising logistics. Sellers can review metrics like Average Cost of Sale in their Seller Central dashboard, but these metrics alone won’t show if a campaign is successful or not. To get to the bottom of this, brands must be ready to manually track metrics alongside Amazon’s campaign dashboards.

Step 5: Begin your Process with the End in Mind

As with any promotional sales effort, the only way to truly have a successful Amazon Prime Day is to track as many details as possible for a clear evaluation of efforts. This way, you’ll only be more successful in the years to come. Going in, it’s important to think about:

• How well your online content and creative performed. What was your click rate vs. your conversion rate? How does this number compare to past years?

• How well you planned out your inventory stock. Did your team run out early, or was there excess product left over both in your warehouses as well as Amazons? If you got it just right, how will you prepare for next year?

• How well your Amazon ads complied with your budget. Were you able to run the promotions you wanted within your allowed budget? How much additional traffic did these ads drive? How much of this additional traffic converted into customers?

Making Prime Day a Breeze
We get it – this can be a huge undertaking, especially since it’s just all in preparation for a single day of the year. But Amazon Prime Day is the biggest day of the year for Amazon sellers, and it’s worth it to be prepared. Instead of wasting internal time and resources on your Amazon Prime Day prep, partner with a single third-party seller like SupplyKick who will handle all of this for you and more. From optimized content listings to detailed inventory tracking and a dedicated advertising strategy team, SupplyKick can help your brand rise above the competition on one of the busiest days of the year.