Another Prime Day, another dollar. Hopefully, many more dollars.
Prime Day 2024 may have been an unmitigated success for Amazon, with an estimated $14.2 Billion in sales generated over the two day extravaganza and an increase of 11.7 percent over last year. And while you may have fallen just a little shy of Amazon’s profits, there’s a very good chance you saw your own sales receive a boost as a result.
Now comes the aftermath.
For any brand that wants to achieve a modicum of success and longevity on Amazon, Prime Day is a means, not an end. It’s a strategy, not a goal. And every strategy begins with insights based as much on history as they are on circumstances and opportunity.
What Did Your Figures Look Like Prior to Prime Day?
Prime Day may (typically, at least!) come during the critical middle of Q2. But without a keen insight into performance based on a historical benchmark of pre and post-Prime Day sales, you’re never going to be able to adequately optimize your marketing efforts.
One general rule of thumb is to access your business reports from Seller Central 30 days before and after a holiday for a rough overview of the dent seasonality made in your sales. But Prime Day is an exception, not a rule.
It’s more common for sales to slow down in the weeks leading up to Prime Day, as non-subscribers and new customers generally tend to wait until the final minute before making a decision. We recommend taking sales history in intervals of 30, 60 and 90 days before and after your Prime Day campaigns to allow adequate time to gauge its effectiveness on transforming bargain hunters into long term converts.
Keep a Close Eye on Inventory
It’s far from uncommon to see stock outs as a result of Prime Day. In fact, for many of you it will generally be a given. That should be a telltale sign of your success, right?
Think again. A recent analysis from web data intelligence firm DataWeave found that when top selling products ranked in the top ten on Amazon search results experienced stock outs for just one day, their rank fell by 28 percent. After being out of stock for over 10 days, their rank fell by nearly 150 percent.
Nor are search rankings the only dilemma stockouts can poise on Amazon. Your Inventory Performance Index (IPI) is affected significantly by both overstock and understock, which can result in both limited warehouse space, diminished accessibility and some fairly exorbitant fees (of which the less said, the better.)
The minimum threshold of your IPI score should be roughly 500 - 600, although the higher score will obviously be an indicator of your inventory management success. The Inventory Age page in your inventory dashboard helps show you SKUs with both high and low rates of sales, allowing you a clear and accurate understanding of your in stock rate.
Normally, we would recommend auditing your inventory every 30 - 60 days to avoid a low IPI rate. But as we stated, Prime Day is an exception. Depending on your sales, there’s a strong chance that some inventory will need immediate attention, including restocks and vendor reorders, On the other hands, the threat of overstock can be cushioned by running off-season sales, product bundling or simply removing in stock inventory that's not selling altogether through solutions such as Amazon’s FBA liquidation program.
Reevaluate Your SEO and Ad Programs
Neither ad spending nor performance are never static. Even if investing in a Sponsored Products listing will generally be a high performer, Prime Day is not necessarily a consistent benchmark of long term click-through rates—or conversions.
Are you seeing more traffic from individual ASINs or your Amazon brand store? Is that traffic converting into purchases or merely browses? Are you seeing an overall uptick in traffic? Is the ROI on your ad spending consistent or seasonally based?
Ideally, you want long term conversions from organic product searches. At least for eCommerce in general. But Amazon is its own beast, and not necessarily a rational one. Amazon SEO factors in different variables than your standard search engine. Much like other search engines, your visibility on Amazon will be contingent on traffic and relevant keyword optimization.
But high traffic and keyword optimization is irrelevant unless they convert. And your Amazon visibility is also dependent on your prices compared to competitors (price discrepancies may result in low ranking listings) as well as the aforementioned IPI score.
You can access your profitability over a 30, 60 and 90 day period by navigating to Amazon Seller Central Home > Left Nav > Reports > Payments > All Statements. Your profitability and loss settlement report is after the range when Prime Day actually falls, obviously. But comparing your settlement reports based on monthly, quarterly and annual performance will give you a general insight into which ads are leading into actual conversions.
If you’re seeing a massive surge in sales due to a Sponsored Display campaign on Prime Day, for example, that may not necessarily translate to long term sales. That’s because Amazon Prime Day is an outlier, not a typicality. But it’s an outlier which can also lead not only to conversions, but loyal converts.
Engage With Your New Customers
It’s no secret that success on Amazon is not a case of a “set it and forget it” scenario. But customer loyalty is your overall goal, both during and after Prime Day. And there’s no simpler and tried way of maintaining it than direct engagement.
It’s been estimated that 79 percent of customers rely on product reviews before making an Amazon purchase. The dilemma? You can’t directly solicit reviews on Amazon. But you can still use buyer seller communications to engage with customers. Encourage them to keep in touch or even leave a review using the “Request a Review” feature in Seller Central.
The Request a Review button can be accessed from the top right corner of your Order Details page. While it’s handy, it suffers from one major quirk: it needs to be applied for each individual transaction, not mass transactions. It’s not as time consuming as you might imagine, but it can still be somewhat intensive. Yet it’s a small price to pay for making your customers feel valued.
And a valued customer is a return customer.
Your Marketing Solutions Aren’t Limited to Prime Day
Prime Day may bring you high volume discovery as a seller. And Amazon’s toolbox of internal solutions can elevate your visibility and drive your listings. But there’s a fundamental difference between hedging your bets on seasonal increases and maintaining sales volume year-round.
If it worked on Prime Day, it will work off Prime Day. Top sellers know exactly which tools to use because of their year-round performance, not just a seasonal promotion. But not every Amazon solution will work for every seller.
PPC may be a cost-friendly and easily trackable method for many new sellers, but its efficacy is entirely subject to year-round demand for your product line. And while larger brands can expect a relatively high conversion rate through programmatic DSP, smaller niche vendors shouldn’t necessarily budget with the same expectations as well established entities.
Above all, remember that Prime Day is a means, not an end. It’s an effective means. And it can catalyze long term sales. But it’s far from a long term goal.
Your long term goal? Maintaining long term customer interest.
Think mastering your strategy on Prime Day occurs once a year? Think again. Find out more at Color More Lines
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