Preparing for Prime Big Deals Days: Amazon’s Fall Deal Event
It’s been a couple months since Amazon Prime Day 2023 came to a close, with over 375 million items purchased, and over $12.5 billion saved thanks to special deals and discounts.
The big question is: Is there going to be another Prime Day in October?
The simple answer is: Yes! Amazon has confirmed they’ll bring back Prime Day in October. They even gave the upcoming sales holiday a new name: Prime Big Deals Days.
This event is an ideal opportunity to prepare for the holiday season on Amazon. It’s also a great time to optimize your brand’s presence on Amazon by evaluating all of your creative efforts, promotion strategies, review generation, and chargeback management.
Is your brand ready to cash in on what could be one of the biggest shopping holidays of the year? From buttoned-up operations to eye-catching creative and savvy advertising tactics, we’ve compiled the ultimate checklist to ensure you are Prime Day ready.
What is Amazon Prime Day?
Before we dive in, it’s important to understand why Prime Day is one of the biggest shopping events of the year and how it has evolved. Amazon launched Prime Day in 2015 to celebrate its 20th anniversary. The first Amazon Prime Day was a one-day retail holiday for Prime members. Since then, Prime Day has overtaken Black Friday and Cyber Monday as the biggest annual sales event on Amazon, with better deals on more products resulting in increased sales (and Prime memberships).
This year, Prime Big Deal Days will take place in the following countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, the U.S., and the UK.
How to Prepare for Prime Big Deals Days Ahead of October
Here is a valuable list of tips to help you prepare for the upcoming Prime Day holiday in October.
1. Review historical performance
One of the best things a seller can do after Prime Day is pay attention to actions. Dig up analytics and demographics from your July Prime Day event and check to see if there was a noticeable increase in things such as new customers or new search items. The goal is to identify your successes and failures and make the changes necessary (or mimic the actions that produced positive results for your brand) to facilitate future growth.
2. Choose your products wisely & check your inventory levels
Did you go out of stock during this year’s event? Did you have too much inventory on-hand? Take a look at historical performance so you can better prepare for October and other large shopping events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. You’ll also want to check in with Prime Day experts (like Tinuiti) to ensure you are meeting shipping and other important deal submission deadlines.
3. Optimize your promotion strategy
There are many ways to advertise your products on Amazon’s big shopping days. One of the most effective tools is using Amazon Sponsored Products. These ads let you test different advertising strategies before and during the holiday sale, which can be very helpful.
Alongside Sponsored Products, consider bookmarking the following pages to gain a deeper understanding of other promotion tactics that will help boost your sales this year.
Start optimizing your product listings – Amazon sellers know that optimizing their Amazon listings can directly impact their product rankings — and sales. But what most sellers don’t know is how to make a winning Amazon SEO strategy and crack the algorithm. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about Amazon SEO and how it works. In this article, we’ll share some of the most recent findings from our experience optimizing Amazon content.
Boost product and brand awareness on social media – Social media is a powerful tool to build your brand and product awareness. Along with social media, we recommend incorporating influencers into your strategy to tap into new audiences who trust their product endorsements.
Create an Amazon store subcategory page – Amazon Stores is a free self-service product that allows brand owners to design and create multi-page stores to showcase their brands, products, and value proposition on Amazon. So how can you create a subcategory page to promote your upcoming products? We’ll cover that in our latest guide “Amazon Stores: A Powerful Tool to Establish Your Brand on Amazon in 2023“
Employ Amazon DSP – Amazon DSP also known as the Amazon Demand-Side Platform — enables advertisers to programmatically buy video, audio, and display ad placements, using available data to target consumers on and off of Amazon. Advertising to the audiences available within the Amazon Demand-Side Platform (DSP) can help increase your brand awareness both on and off Amazon, reaching new and existing audiences – here’s everything you need to know to get started.
Leverage Amazon Posts – Amazon Posts is a program available to brand-registered sellers that allows them to share brand and product-related content in a “feed” that resembles other social media platforms. By using Amazon Posts, brands can duplicate what they’re already doing on Instagram and similar image-based platforms directly within the Amazon Marketplace.
For more specific details on how to promote your products, check out our recent post on ” How to Prepare for Amazon Prime Day 2023: The Seller’s Guide” or visit Amazon’s free list of resources.
4. Design holiday and savings-focused creative assets
Numerous creative strategies are at your disposal to enhance your brand assets on Amazon. These strategies include optimizing your Amazon stores, allocating resources to craft distinctive content for your Amazon Posts, prioritizing the selection and promotion of product photography with a holiday deals focus, and, naturally, ensuring the utilization of A+ content throughout your product detail pages and stores.
To avoid campaign delays during the Prime Early Access Sale, be sure to familiarize yourself with Amazon’s creative best practices and ad policies in advance. Understanding common policy blockers will support your Prime Early Access Sale setup and creative effectiveness. You can find Amazon Ads guidelines and acceptance policies across all products here. Take a look at these creative optimization tips from Prime Day 2022 here as well.
5. Generate new reviews from July Prime Day shoppers
Amazon product reviews are vital for several reasons. They build trust and credibility by showcasing the experiences of previous buyers, helping potential customers make informed decisions. Reviews also provide valuable feedback to sellers and manufacturers, aiding product improvement. Amazon’s search algorithm considers the number and quality of reviews when determining search rankings, enhancing a product’s visibility. Positive reviews contribute to higher conversion rates, giving products a competitive edge.
The Amazon Request a Review button is a great way to generate a product review and seller feedback. If you want to learn more about how the Request a Review button works – check out our recent blog post on “Amazon Request A Review Button: 4 Great Reasons You Should Use“
6. Think about chargeback and return management
From packaging problems to technical errors in transmitting Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Amazon will charge vendors for almost anything they can. Amazon Chargebacks are operational fees a vendor will see as deductions from their Amazon remittance checks. Amazon vendors should familiarize themselves on how these fees impact their account and what steps they can take to avoid deductions.
Earlier this year, Amazon announced that they are now flagging high-return items on product detail pages to warn customers prior to purchase. This new badge will encourage customers to dive a little deeper into product research and reviews before purchasing, ensuring they are receiving the exact item they want/need.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to improve your chargeback and return management process, check out our latest “How Vendors Can Avoid Amazon Chargeback Fees“.
Prime Big Deal Days: Additional Expert Tips
“As Amazon pushes to extend the holiday shopping period, brands are encouraged to participate in Prime Big Deal Days with managed expectations. While Amazon will see higher-than-average traffic and sales volume, brands should plan for lower customer purchase intent over Prime Big Deal Days in comparison to summer Prime Day and Turkey 5. It is recommended that brands utilize an omnichannel strategy to grow market share during the extended holiday shopping season.” – Eric Eisner, Team Strategist at Tinuiti
Below is a list of additional tips for brands and advertisers on Amazon’s Big Deal Days:
- Brands should participate in Prime Big Deal Days with discounts in the 15% to 30% off range and increased budgets to support more traffic and higher cost per clicks.
- Brands should utilize social media and other off-Amazon ads, paired with Amazon Attribution, to drive traffic back to Amazon leading into and on the days of Prime Big Deal Days.
- Brands should take advantage of the lead out period of Prime Big Deals Day with retargeting and upper funnel / awareness building tactics to raise Amazon market share to drive new to brand customers.
- In addition to Prime Big Deal Days, brands should be prepared for other Fall sale events, including Target’s Circle Week (October 1-7) and Walmart’s Holiday Kick Off, (October 9-12).
Learn More
Prime Day in October is one of the biggest opportunities for your brand in 2023 on the Amazon Marketplace. If you want to learn more about how to prepare for Prime Big Deals Days be sure to check out Tinuiti’s 2023 Prime Day Study and our 2023 Holiday Playbook!
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