What happens when the world’s largest e-commerce company creates its own holiday?
Lots and lots of shopping.
In 2015, Amazon celebrated its 20th anniversary with the firstPrime Day, with the goal of driving Amazon Prime memberships and stimulating shopping among existing prime members.
The following year, Prime Day 2016 produced Amazon’s biggest sales day ever, with more than a half billion dollars in sales, according to FBIC. With a reported 80 million Prime members in the U.S. alone, Amazon’s invention has already begun to rival Black Friday & Cyber Monday in e-commerce excitement.
With Prime Day just around the corner (starting 9 p.m. ET July 10), how can vendors ensure they’re set up to take advantage of, and execute effectively on, their Prime Day opportunity?
1) Increase AMS Campaign Budgets and Bids
On Prime Day 2016, AMS campaigns saw a 50-100% lift in impressions, compared to the previous day. Marketplace Strategy Amazon strategist Sam Jennings notes, “Along with the monumental increase in impressions and clicks comes increased advertising competition. If a brand wants any chance of competing for a slice of the ‘Prime Week Pie,’ they will need to increase their advertising campaign bids, as well as their daily budgets.”
It goes without saying Prime Day is a time to adjust your maximum daily spend significantly to ensure your campaigns are not ending early. Marketplace Strategy recommends increasing AMS efforts and budgets at least a few days prior to Prime Day in order to build momentum prior to the big day.
Also, in order to compete with other brands in a category, a company will need to increase their CPC bids. A helpful feature to accomplish this task is Bid+ for Sponsored Product campaigns. Bid+ increases an ad’s chance for top placement. By enabling this feature, Amazon may increase a keyword bid up to 50% on ads eligible for the top placement.
2) Optimize, Optimize, Optimize!
If it’s been a while, now may be a good time to revamp product detail pages by updating the image gallery, product descriptions, bullet points, and product titles. Also, don’t forget to refresh your backend search terms.
If you have extra time, ensure that your top selling items are utilizing Enhanced Brand Content or A+ Pages in order to reap the benefits of higher conversion rates, increased traffic, and sales.
3) Make Sure to Keep an Eye on Things
Throughout Prime Day and the days that surround it, ensure you are keeping a close eye on Vendor Central, AMS, and your product listings. There are a few key AMS metrics to monitor to make sure everything is running efficiently and effectively.
We recommend you watch your daily budgets and confirm they are large enough to keep the ads running throughout Prime Day. If your click-thru rates are low, increase the bid to improve position on the page. Remember, there is a 3-day delay in sales data for AMS campaigns, so don’t make any decisions based on sales or ACoS performance.
Now get a move on it, Prime Day is coming fast!
Happy Holidays!
