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Amazon’s Prime Day, their annual cyber holiday featuring around-the-clock deals that rival those offered on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, is set to take place once again during the second week of July.

Prime Day has seen increased sales each year since its creation in 2015, with 2017’s Prime Day finishing with a record-breaking 60% YoY increase. Amazon said in its press release following the event Prime Day, “grew by more than 60 percent compared to the same 30 hours last year, and sales growth by small businesses and entrepreneurs was even higher.”

Needless to say, it’s critical for Vendors and Sellers of all sizes to be planning a Prime Day strategy that will ensure they’re part of one of Amazon’s biggest shopping days of the year.

At Marketplace Strategy, we’re making sure our clients are prepared to dominate on Prime Day, and, in that spirit, we thought we’d offer a series of tips to ensure your brand is prepared, too.

As part of success on Prime Day, Lighting Deals are a vital consideration, as they’re very much the promotional offering that Prime Day is built around. A Lightning Deal is a price discount promotion featured for up to 6 hours as a “flash” sale on the Amazon Deals page.

3 Tips to Strategically Select Prime Day Lightening Deals:

1) Choose Products Wisely: First and foremost, there are criteria that products must meet to be eligible for a Lightning Deal:

• The offered price must match or beat its lowest price since Jan. 1
• The product must have at least a three-star rating and a minimum of five reviews
• It must have a per-unit funding amount that supports a promotional selling price that is at least 20% off the Amazon retail website price on the date of submission and 15% off the lowest price in 30 days

Lightning Deals on Prime Day are a great way to liquidate a product that will soon be out of season, if a new version being is released soon, or if the product has excess inventory in stock at Amazon.

Since Lightning Deals have per-unit funding, it’s also vital when selecting products to consider the potential profit from the promotion should every unit offered sell.

While Amazon does generate recommendations for brands (Vendor Central > Merchandising > Marketing recommendations,) Vendors also can manually search through their catalog to see which products support the brand’s merchandising goals moving forward.

2) Ensure Conversion through Optimization: It’s extremely important to choose products with optimized listings to ensure maximum customer conversion and brand recognition. For more information on product listing optimization, read a blog post on it here.

3) Dig Deep into the Catalog: For brands that already have strong brand awareness on Amazon, Prime Day is a great opportunity to promote products not already best sellers with their catalog. When a deal is featured on Amazon’s Deals page, a brand with strong name recognition is more likely to convert, even if that product is lesser-known or has minimal sales.

If you haven’t already, it’s time to evaluate your Prime Day 2018 strategy and get those deals submitted before it’s too late! Check back next week to read our take on, Preparing for Prime Day: Using AMS to Leverage Lightning Deals

The last day to submit Lightning Deals for Prime Day 2018 is:

Vendor Central: May 31, 2018

Seller Central: May 18, 2018