Preparing for Prime Day 2023
Prime Day 2023, Amazon’s biggest sales event of the year, is quickly approaching. The month leading up to the event is crucial to prioritize a final content evaluation, implement seamless fulfillment processes, and align your advertising strategy.
As a best practice, brands should run through a “Prime readiness” check no later than two weeks prior to the event to avoid any last-minute issues. This includes:
1. Optimize PDP (Product Details Page) and Brand Store content to prepare for, attract, and convert customers during the Prime Day traffic increase. Pay close attention to bullet points, A+ content, titles, and imagery during this process.
2. Ensure strong inventory positions across Amazon’s FC (Fulfillment Center) network. Prime Day is an opportunity to convert customers that are excited to find a good deal and purchase quickly. Being in stock is a crucial piece to capturing those sales and driving your business. In preparation for high order volume, ensure that your inventory accurately reflects true in-stock volume for all ASINs with adjustments for buffers. Amazon has provided guidance to update inventory feeds at least three times per day during the Prime event.
3. Align your Amazon advertising strategy with your Prime Day goals. Brands should anticipate increases in competitor spend rates and bids. We recommend aligning budget increases with brand goals for Prime Day, planning to increase budgets/spend by the % lift in sales or traffic a brand is hoping to achieve. We also recommend focusing less on ROAS (which will likely drop) and more on NTB (New to Brand) and customer LTV (Lifetime Value) during this event.
4. Assign a point person to ensure everything launches smoothly on Prime Day. Amazon’s systems require oversight and even if you’ve planned promotions or coupons, it is best practice to have people on early to monitor the site and ensure everything performs as expected.
5. Update your contact information, holidays, and hours of operation. Ensure your contact information is accurate in Vendor Central with the appropriate assigned Primary Contact. This will allow Amazon to contact the correct person in case of emergency to help resolve common issues that could impact your operations and customer promise. In addition to updating your contact information, your holidays and hours of operation should be up to date at least 2 weeks before closures.
How Does Harvest Group’s Amazon Team Approach Prime Day with Clients?
The Harvest Group Amazon Team starts Prime Day planning with clients as part of fiscal year planning to inform a brand’s overall Amazon strategy to consider:
- Client Goals: Every client’s Prime Day strategy is unique. We start by discussing goals and determining a total advertising and promotions budget/plan to understand how Prime Day will fit into overall strategy.
- ASIN Readiness: Our team will ensure that the content, inventory levels, pricing, and category ranking are all primed and ready to receive the increased traffic during Prime week.
- Vendor Manager Engagement: For brands that work with Vendor Managers, Prime Day is a key time for them to further establish trust with the VMs and assert their brand as a front leader for Amazon leadership to focus on for future deals. Harvest partners closely with clients and their VMs to ensure that the deals are further cementing a strong partnership for both the brand and client.
The Value Beyond Prime Day
While Prime Day is an exciting time to capture sales, the Harvest Group Amazon Team also views the event as an opportunity to learn from the data afterward. The results from Prime Week can influence future business and advertising strategies, product and channel management, and promotional plans.
Harvest Group is a close partner with Amazon’s AMC (Amazon Marketing Cloud) team and leverages the data to pull insights that can fuel future growth. Prime Day is a great opportunity for sales, but it can also be expensive as you fund incremental promotions and marketing. Leveraging AMC insights will make your investment work harder, go further, and inform future strategies beyond the Prime Day event.
Overall, Harvest Group positions Prime Day in the total Amazon sales strategy as a momentum piece for brands to fill the top of the customer funnel with attractive offers on great items. There is a lot of strategic planning involved before and after Prime Day to retain these customers, learn from the data, and understand the total impact on your omnichannel business.
If you’re interested in learning more about Harvest Group’s omnichannel approach for brands at Amazon, reach out to us at hello@harvestgroup.com or fill out our Contact Us form here.
This post was written by Wyatt Sosey, Director – Amazon, Harvest Group
