The Amazon Seller's Guide to Prime Day 2018

Amazon.com, Inc. (“Amazon”) just announced that Prime Day 2018 will begin on Monday, July 16 at 3 p.m. ET. This highly anticipated annual sales event promises to be even bigger than ever.

Last year, Prime Day 2017 became the biggest sales day in Amazon’s history, a record that was later broken by Cyber Monday 2017. Since the Amazon Prime program has only continued to grow in the past year (Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos recently shared that the program has over 100 million members), it’s safe to say that Amazon sellers are eagerly anticipating another great Prime Day this year.

Other retailers have jumped on the bandwagon to offer similar deals around Prime Day to capitalize on a sales boost during a normally sluggish time of year. If you’re a shopper looking to make a big purchase, it might worth it to wait until around July 16th!

This is BIG

Similar to Cyber Monday and other major online shopping events, Amazon sellers reported an increase in sales in the days surrounding Prime Day. As a seller, you should be prepared for higher demand in the first half of July. Also, Prime Day 2017 was literally more than a day—the deals ran for 30 hours! (Get a peek inside Prime Day 2017 in this video featuring an interview with Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO Jeff Wilke.)

Amazon Prime Day is an international event. Last year, it expanded to China, Mexico and India. The deals were also offered in the US, UK, Spain, Japan, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Canada, France and Austria.

"We anticipate that Prime Day 2018 and the days surrounding it will be a very successful time for Amazon sellers worldwide. Being prepared by having enough inventory in stock and a strategic plan for promoting products can help sellers maximize profits during this high-volume sales window. We're excited to see how Prime Day 2018 compares to last year.” -Jay Lagarde, eComEngine Founder and CEO

Plan Ahead

Prime Day inventory needed to arrive at the FBA fulfillment centers by June 26th in order to guarantee inclusion in this year’s event. If you fulfill orders through Seller-Fulfilled Prime, be sure to build in plenty of bandwidth for you and your team to get orders out on time.

When it comes to Prime Day advertising, this is the time to boost your budget. Amazon reports that sellers using Sponsored Product Ads saw a 150%-200% increase in ad clicks on Prime Day 2017 when compared to the previous Tuesday. Amazon recommends setting campaigns before Prime Day and allowing them to run for at least two weeks. This is a good time to be competitive and strategic with your bids.

"Brands will need to make sure they are getting as much visibility as possible and converting that traffic at a high rate to have the best performance during Prime Day and Prime Day week. From a product discoverability standpoint, Amazon's suite of advertising products (Sponsored Products, Headline Search Ads, Product Display Ads, and AMG display ads) are the most powerful tools in a brand's arsenal during the Prime Day period. Using these instruments, an advertiser can expand and target their reach to maximize exposure on a day when customers are coming to Amazon with high purchase intent. Once those customers find a brand's product, Enhanced Brand Content (EBC) and optimized detail page content help to maximize the conversion rate of that product by giving shoppers the confidence they are getting exactly what they want. EBC is also a great way to differentiate a brand from its competitors and address any shopper hesitations so they move from consideration to conversion." - Pat Petriello, Head of Marketplace Strategy, CPC Strategy

You can also create coupons or offer special promotions such as a percentage off to generate interest in your products. If you’re a seller enrolled in Amazon’s Brand Registry program, make sure that your Enhanced Brand Content includes detailed product descriptions and great images. Speaking of product descriptions, it’s important to make sure your product page is optimized. Check out your listing on mobile to see if you need to make any changes for a better shopping experience, and make sure that your images highlight how awesome your products are. You can learn more about product page optimization in a recent webinar featuring Liz Adamson of Egility and Liz Fickenscher of eComEngine. Adamson also wrote a great follow-up piece that demystifies keyword indexing.

Reputation Matters

Seller feedback and product reviews are important components of your overall Amazon seller reputation. Great ratings can help you stand out from the crowd during a busy sales period, but negative ratings can cause significant damage to your sales.

“Proactive reputation management is key to year-round success on Amazon, but having great ratings is even more crucial during a competitive time such as the weeks surrounding Prime Day and Cyber Monday. Seller feedback ratings can affect your Buy Box eligibility. Having too few product reviews (or too many negative reviews) could mean the difference between a great conversion rate and poor sales during what should be a very successful selling period. Establishing regular reputation management practices can help you keep your seller account healthy during Prime Day and beyond." - Louis Mizzell, FeedbackFive Product Manager at eComEngine

By the way, you can use FeedbackFive to request seller feedback and product reviews, get alerts for negative feedback and more. (Click here to start your free trial!) Of course, it’s important to follow Amazon’s guidelines when communicating with customers. Need a refresher? Check out our 2018 best practices for requesting feedback and product reviews.

Further Reading

If you’d like to learn more about making the most of Prime Day 2018, check out these great resources:

• Preparing for Prime Day: David Griffith shared smart tips for preparing for Prime Day in this blog post.
• How to Make the Most of Amazon Prime Day: Our friends at Payability wrote a great guest post for the TaxJar blog that’s all about getting the most out of Prime Day.
• How Not to Over or Under Collect Sales Tax for Amazon Prime Day: Speaking of the TaxJar blog, Jennifer Dunn wrote a helpful post last year about collecting sales tax during Prime Day sales and ensuring that your sales tax settings are correct before the big day.
• Amazon Prime Day 2018 Preparation for Amazon Vendors & Sellers: Tara Johnson at CPC Strategy created this excellent guide to Prime Day prep.
• Advertising for Prime Day 2018: 4 Tips to Make the Most Out of This Amazon Holiday: Matt Ellis covered Lightning Deals, Sponsored Product bid adjustments and other advertising topics in this post.

Do you have questions about Prime Day 2018? Want to share your success from last year? Let us know in the comments!