Cat’s out the bag! Amazon Prime Day 2019 is expected to take place July 15 – 17! The question is; how to prepare for Amazon Prime day 2019. For sellers and consumers alike, Amazon Prime Day can be an exciting (yet daunting!) event. In 2018, beauty product sales increased by 186% and electronics sales increased by 2,718%.
When consumers are looking to buy big-ticket items, they wait for the massive discounts Prime Day offers. The joy consumers experience on Prime Day is much like a kid on Christmas morning.
So I ask you, are you ready to give your consumers that joy? If your answer is an overwhelming “Yes!”, your listings better be in tip-top shape come July 15.
Getting Ready for Prime Day 2019
If you’re anything like me, you have a couple of items waiting in your virtual shopping bag in hopes the price will magically drop. On the flip side, you’re diligently working to make sure your product listings don’t get buried on SERPs. Regardless, there are three key elements that come into play; Search Engine Optimization (SEO), building traffic both on and off Amazon, and advertising.
At Envision Horizons we ensure our listings are retail-ready and prepared for Amazon Prime Day. Retail-ready means; that listings have informative images, a brand feel, and copy that both informs the customers to buy decisions but also indexes keywords. In addition, listings should have a minimum of 10 to 15 reviews and built out Enhanced Brand Content. Once a listing is retail ready we create Prime Day strategies to enable our clients to succeed.
Indexing Keywords
Keywords, keywords, keywords. If you want to ensure your brand has a successful Prime Day experience, ensure you’re indexing correctly. After re-analyzing your keyword research, there are a few places we need to make sure these words are located.
Keywords for your product and category need to be indexed on the back-end and front-end of your listings. If these keywords aren’t present in all available placements, then your advertising and the organic search won’t pack that punch you’re looking for.
Leading up to Amazon Prime Day, if your brand has the bandwidth, we advise you to start conducting a full account audit. However, if you don’t have the bandwidth, I advise you to audit your product listings and make sure they are optimized down to the last character.
Planning Your Promotions
The Amazon consumer is action-oriented. They are there to make a purchase – so you’re going to want to survey the competitive landscape, and leave no reason for them to choose someone else.
Plan out your coupons and promotions ahead of time. One of the strategies I encourage for my clients is running discounts in the days leading up to Prime Day. This gives your listings an added organic boost before Prime Day occurs.
Alternatively, if you’re selling on other large retail sites, make sure your coupons are Amazon exclusive for the duration of Prime Day. Lower prices on other sites run the risk of foiling all your preparation by sinking your listings and causing you to lose the buy box. This strategy is twofold:
(1) It will help to ensure your listings don’t fall behind competitors and;
(2) The moment you gain during Prime Day could carry over to the following weeks.
Advertising Strategy
For advertising, I always advise my clients to adopt the EH Way: the three-prong approach to advertising for Prime Day. This strategy includes Lead-Up, Prime Day, and Lead-Out advertising.
In the days leading up to the big event, we’re going to promote our deals and brand to researching audiences. Reach out to Amazon Affiliates and tell as many listicles about the discounts you’ll be pushing. Sites like Slickdeals, the equivalent of the modern-day coupon guide, release lists of products having huge discounts. Buzzfeed even has a tag dedicated to Prime Day updates. This added PR will ensure traffic from other sites is headed to your listings, which will boost sales and further help with your organic ranking on Amazon.
On Prime Day, we’re going to engage brand-aware audiences. These are the people who already know about your products, who have been eyeing category deals and are more likely to purchase your products. Now that your product detail pages are completely optimized, we’re going to ensure they convert through strategic bidding. This ensure’s your products stay competitively priced and are in the top ad placements on the SERPs. Remember, if customers can’t find your products then they won’t be able to purchase them!
Finally, the lead-out from Prime Day is where you’ll carry your momentum from. We’re going to re-engage your audiences at scale; the people who viewed your products or similar products through Amazon DSP. As we re-engage this audience, it’s imperative to have an optimized and user-friendly Amazon Branded Storefront. This is where you will showcase a variety of products and imprint your brand on consumers.
Long story short: while Prime Day is where we target brand-aware audiences, the lead-out is where we target new audiences and grow our brand loyalty.
Conclusion
Once I optimize my clients’ listings, consult with them over promotions, and formulate a solid advertising strategy, I switch to auto-pilot – if there is such a thing as an Account Manager! Setting up alerts on my client accounts is one of the last strategies I use as a second set of eyes. Too many times I have seen sellers lose bullet points, images, and titles during the heaviest traffic periods. By setting up these alerts, I’m immediately notified of any “fire drills” which may arise.
Finally, make sure you keep a document of all your indexed keywords and their placements to ensure a quick fix if something goes missing.
If you’re a brand or seller who needs a little extra help this Prime Day, fill out our consultation form, reference this blog in the notes, and one of our Account Managers will hop on a quick call with you!
