The Second Prime Day of the Year Is Coming: Six Strategies to Drive Growth for Your Brand

Though it feels and seems impossible, it’s true – the 2022 holiday season is just weeks away. And Amazon is looking to kick things off with their first-ever Fall Prime Early Access sale. 

The two-day event takes place October 11th-12th and, like the traditional mid-summer eComm shopping experience, offers Prime members exclusive, steep discounts that may result in sales far surpassing Black Friday and Cyber Monday numbers. 

Amazon’s Prime Days historically have the potential to drive significant revenue growth, but as a brand, you need to be savvy to get the most out of the opportunity. Here’s everything you need to know to use Prime Day to your (and your bottom line’s) advantage. 

1. Plan for Success (Think: Ad Budget)

Think about your holiday advertising budgets and the normal annual rush of shopping between November and December. We typically see an across-the-board spike in sales between Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

Given the state of the economy, it might be wise to prepare for an even sharper surge in traffic during special “deal events” throughout the season. Consumers are likely to be more conscious of their spending, looking to save whenever and wherever they can. Utilizing a notorious deal day may offer you the best chance to capitalize and capture holiday traffic-turns-revenue. 

Planning will be essential, though – just think back to the pandemic-year Prime Day event, which was postponed to October in 2020. Amazon saw a whopping 45.2% jump in sales year over year. 

Consumers are just as – if not more – eager to save this year. Planning ahead might mean increasing your budget so ads don’t automatically pause, costing you traffic and, ultimately, sales. 

2. Prioritize Prime

Amazon emphasizes the exclusivity of Prime Days, and there’s no exception for the upcoming October event, as they’ve boasted deals will once again only be available to Prime members. 

Brands must cater discounts and promotions to a Prime-only audience if they hope to get the effective, eye-catching badges in search results and be featured on the “Deals” page. Run-of-the-mill coupons and strikethrough pricing that any shopper (Prime or not) can redeem aren’t likely to get the traction a Prime Deal might.

3. Move Inventory with Deals

When running Prime-exclusive deals, look to go big. Offer 20% off (or more) on products you want to clear from inventory. Analyze historical performance to help determine which products do best during specific times of year. Let this information help guide your Prime product and deal offering.

4. Understand Buyer Trends

Using Insider Intelligence’s July 2022 Prime Day data, we can assume that rising prices and inflation are having a direct impact on consumers’ purchase decisions. Today, we’re seeing shoppers gravitate toward deals on household essentials, which is a dramatic shift from the previous top sellers in the consumer electronics and health and beauty sectors. 

About 34% of this year’s Prime Day shoppers said they were willing to wait for the sale to get a deal on a specific item they wanted or needed. And 28% said they passed all together on nonessential items, even if something was priced right and a “great deal.” 

As economic uncertainty is even higher today than it was during Q2 and Q3, it’s likely we’ll continue seeing declining sales on regular-priced items during the holiday season, as cost-conscious shoppers are willing to wait for discounts. Translation: The Fall Prime Early Access Days = opportunity. 

5. Build an Omni-Channel Approach

When determining your marketing approach, think across the entire customer journey. The timing of the Early Access Sale can have a significantly positive impact on Q4 revenue, especially given the back-to-back additional deal moments ahead, as Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BF/CM) quickly approach.

Beyond just running sponsored ads, Demand Side Platform (DSP) campaigns used during these promotional periods can convert shoppers through retargeting. The close timing with BF/CM means DSP ads can let you take full advantage of the influx of interested and in-market audiences who may not be ready to convert after the Early Access Sale. DSP ads might help bring them to the point of conversion just in time for BF/CM. 

In addition to DSP, utilizing off-Amazon marketing efforts can also be powerful revenue-drivers. You can drive customers to Amazon during the periods of promotion through:

• Social media
• SMS
• Email campaigns 

These campaigns are run through Amazon Attribution and can significantly improve a product’s organic ranking, leading to better SERP placement and effectively reducing the need for costly, big jumps in ad spend. 

Retail brand SAXX, saw huge success by taking advantage of the full funnel approach going into Prime Day in July. They ran search and DSP ads in addition to external traffic campaigns, driving traffic to their discounted products on Amazon. As a result, SAXX saw growth throughout the month of July as sales more than doubled across the US, CA, and EU – and these results weren’t just MoM, but YoY! 

This potential for growth exists across the board for any brand that sells on Amazon who utilizes all the tools at their disposal. The Fall Prime Early Access sale, especially when layered on top of BF/CM, can make or break Q4 revenue goals for many brands this year. 

To take full advantage of these deal moments, it’s imperative that you formulate a sound strategy while catering to the correct audience. This means not just offering steep discounts and deals, but also coordinating your search, DSP, and off-Amazon marketing tactics and strategies to maximize your sales. Now is the time to get a plan in place, as these events could be the difference between hitting goals and falling short as you close out 2022.

6. Dial in Your Shipping

Shipping time and cost are two of the biggest concerns for consumers making purchase decisions today. Over half of all cart abandonments are related to shipping (Baymard Institute). An astounding 90% of consumers in the US now expect (or demand) 2-3-day shipping as a baseline (McKinsey & Company). And this is BEFORE the holiday season takes effect. 

It’s important to have a solid solution in place that offers consumers affordable, on-time delivery. Further, you must be hyper-transparent with customers about things like delivery dates, shipping cutoff dates, and fees. To ensure success- consider a 3rd party partner such as FenixCommerce to streamline the shipping process and improve customer experience. Having your shipping dialed in offers you a leg-up to capture additional revenue and keep your customers happy. 

In summary, planning is key. Q4 can make or break the year for retail brands and with the October prime event- retailers have yet another opportunity in a busy holiday schedule to drive growth. Now is the time (if you haven’t already), to get products, deals, and campaigns in motion in time for one of the biggest holiday events of the year. 

To learn more about retail marketing or driving growth through digital, visit: powerdigitalmarketing.com.