Believe it or not, Amazon is planning for another Prime Day in 2022, and sellers need to be prepared!
The online shopping behemoth is looking to reap the benefits of its annual holiday once more before the year’s end, which means sellers get another day or two of massive increases in high-intent shoppers being driven to the online marketplace. Here’s the catch: They are likely planning this holiday around the first week of November, just a few weeks before Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Why would Amazon be trying to compete with one of their staple holidays? Given the timing of ‘Prime Day Part Deux,’ we imagine Amazon expects to drain the online shopping market of their holiday spending budget before Black Friday and Cyber Monday, essentially creating a better incentive for shoppers to pick Amazon over any big box retailer this holiday season. While this certainly doesn’t mean Black Friday and Cyber Monday are no longer worth planning around, Amazon sellers need to consider the fact that a portion of the usual Black Friday and Cyber Monday crowd will be spending earlier than usual.
Regardless of Amazon’s reasoning, you don’t want to be caught unprepared this winter! This is the latest Prime Day Amazon has ever done. The other instance Prime Day was this late was 2020’s October event, however we wouldn’t necessarily want to base expectations on the Prime Day during the year everyone was locked inside with record online spending. We don’t yet know how the market will react to this change in the annual spending options, but we can assume that Amazon did the research to prove it will be worth their while. Here are a few tips for Amazon sellers and some things you should do to prepare for the selling bonanza that will be November 2022.
Amazon Seller Tips
The first thing any seller needs to do is plan. How does this addition to your calendar affect your inventory projections? You certainly don’t want to sock out after Prime Day and leave yourself unable to sell for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Similarly, you will want to set aside some extra budget to fund your ads for both holidays. At this moment in time, we believe it makes the most sense to treat both holidays equally, with roughly equal daily budgets, revenue projections, and targeting strategy (generally speaking, outside of any specific category or seasonality). This does sound like a pretty large investment, and you need to look at your profitability and operations before making any substantial adjustments; however, we believe this early-November event will have an impact outside of the month as well.
We would imagine the announcement of Prime Day will occur mid- to late-October. After that moment, we should expect a similar reaction from the market as we do for every other Prime Day: an immediate and large influx of non-converting traffic. People are going to flock to the site to plan out their deals for days, if not weeks, before they do their Amazon Prime Day shopping. Sellers should adjust their expectations and strategies for that time. Since a larger portion of the traffic is looking for information (not intending to buy anything), we would expect a dip in sales towards the end of October, leading up to the event. Sellers should also expect that, if planned for, the losses in October will be outweighed by the massive gains during Prime Day.
The late-October high-traffic period should be met with solid top of funnel advertising. Attract your potential buyers while they are doing research by hitting them with an ad right where they are. That doesn’t necessarily mean “go ahead and advertise on Amazon during this period.” If you want a lot of cheap but quality exposure, you should be targeting specific products being sold on Amazon. Many big ticket tech products get a high volume of traffic during these events. Consider placing some ads on Alexa-focused PDPs, or Apple tangent products. Not only will this expose you to a large number of viewers, but will also introduce you to those who clearly are willing to spend. More importantly, focus on targeting categories with Sponsored Display campaigns that are tangential to the category in which your product resides (in addition to your actual category). Visibility will be the name of the game for this part of the year, hopefully to culminate in the strongest month in Amazon history, November 2022.
It’s also going to be vitally important to update your Amazon Storefront in October to carry you through the rest of the year. If you are focusing on driving quality traffic, a portion of that traffic should be visiting your store to check out the breadth of your products. While they are there, you must stand out against your competition. Many brands have not yet fully capitalized on the storefront’s capabilities. While you are constrained by a rigid template, there are many creative features you are able to incorporate to give your storefront a fully branded experience.
At the end of the day, Amazon sellers can’t really complain about another Prime Day! A greater opportunity to move inventory and stack revenue is what Amazon is all about. You just can’t be caught flat footed when it gets to November, or else your top line will carry that burden.
Want more information about Prime Day? Here’s another blog about Prime Day Checklists that you’ll want to read. Whether it’s optimizing and expanding your reach with Amazon Advertising or you’re in need to help with paid search and social or SEO or other digital marketing offerings, Logical can partner with you.
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