Preparing for Amazon Prime Day

Amazon announced that this year’s Prime Day will be the longest event of the “holiday’s” short four-year history. Prime Day 2018 will start on July 16th at 12 pm PT and run through the end of July 17th. Prime Day (and a half) will extend six more hours in 2018 than last year. So it’s official, Amazon Prime Day is quickly approaching, but first, let’s take a look back at the impact Prime Day saw in 2017.

Amazon Prime Day, which originally began as a way to increase Prime memberships, quickly transitioned to the largest shopping day in online history. What does that mean for you? Amazon Prime Day is a huge opportunity for brands to push product and increase their brand exposure. Tens of millions of prime members made a purchase in 2017.

The magnitude of this event continues to grow exponentially every year, with over a 60% YOY growth since 2016. So we agree, Prime Day is no joke, here’s how you should prepare for this key shopping day.

@Prime Day Shoppers

Shoppers ready, take your mark, and go sign up for Amazon Prime (if you aren’t already)! Amazon Prime Shoppers have exclusive access to top deals throughout the event. Other Prime perks include free 2-day shipping, Amazon video streaming, and other exclusive Amazon deals.

@Marketers

Amazon Prime day is the perfect opportunity to maximize your brand exposure and tell an immersive brand story as July is the time to leverage your Amazon Marketing Services account and capitalize on the monumental growth.

Last year, Amazon Marketing Services saw a 150%-200% lift in ad impressions and nearly a 400% lift in ad attributed sales on Prime Day 2017 compared to the previous Tuesday. Marketers, here’s what your brand should do on Amazon Marketing Services to prime your ad campaigns for the 36 hours event.

How to Prepare your AMS Campaigns for Prime Day

• Use all Amazon ad types together to maximize reach.
• Start early and stay top of mind.
• Launch new campaigns at least two weeks in advance of Prime Day (aka now).

This will give you enough time to measure results and optimize performance before the big day.

• Advertise products with only 3.5 stars or better.

82% of Amazon prime members consider ratings and reviews as important when purchasing a product.

• Promote your deals!!
• Use a mix of (keyword) match types.
• Turn on Bid+.

This setting can increase your bid up to 50% to give your brand a better chance to appear at the top of the page.

• Increase bids and budgets.
• Set daily budgets at least 200% higher. Don’t risk your ads not showing due to low bids and early budget cap outs during this “holiday”.
• Add negative keywords.

Ensure your ad isn’t triggered for certain keywords and to help prevent irrelevant traffic.

• Make sure your Product Detail Pages are retail-ready with A+ content pages.
• Monitor campaign performance closely.

This Isn’t A Deal Breaker…

Don’t have a deal for Prime Day? Don’t worry! The excitement extends beyond just products with too-good-to-be-true deals. Users flock to the e-Commerce giant during the deal period, with search traffic reaching up to 15% higher than Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

What does this mean for you?

Amazon Prime Day means tons of additional viewers primed for exposure to your brand during the shopping frenzy. Long story short, if you aren’t already preparing for Prime Day, you should be. Even though the holiday is seven days away, shoppers are already researching which deals are worth taking advantage of. Now is the time to start preparing your AMS campaigns and increasing consumer consideration. Best of luck!

Originally published at www.pmg.com on July 9, 2018.