Amazon has recently announced that their flagship annual summer event — Prime Day — will be recurring again this year from July 11th through the 12th. Historically, Amazon has seen a substantial boost in both customer traffic and purchasing behavior. According to Amazon, over 300 million items were purchased during last year’s event. With this much having been said, it is crucial that all sellers on Amazon consider the potential implications of Amazon’s Prime Day events and strategize how to best take advantage of the surge in customer traffic during these events. 

Ensuring Your Ducks are in a Row Ahead of Prime Day

One of the most critical components of Prime Day readiness is to ensure that you have plenty of inventory in place, as many sellers will often sell out of inventory far faster than they would outside of a Prime Day event. If they haven’t recently done so, it may be a good idea to take a glance at your seller inventory quantities to make sure that you have enough products in stock for the near future. Also, for sellers who participated in previous years’ Prime Day events, sellers can consult their historical sales data within the Business Reports section of Amazon Seller Central to get an idea of what percentage increase of sales to expect, based on previous years. 

In addition to this, if you are a seller who takes advantage of and currently implements Amazon PPC advertising, it is definitely worth considering setting aside an increased amount of daily spend caps/budgets, as the surge in traffic can easily blow through early in the day if budgets are left the same as during regular shopping traffic; which can result in a potentially vast amount of missed sales.

Prime Exclusive Deals & Coupons 

Among the most notable of promotion types during Prime Day events are Prime Exclusive Deals. As the name might imply, the Prime Day event is largely coordinated by Amazon to present their Prime membership as a valuable benefit for their consumers. In fact, 72% of Americans are registered members of Prime, according to data from Insider Intelligence. Prime Exclusive Deals are highlighted and include special callouts both in Amazon’s “Just for Prime” section (as seen in the image below), in addition to on the product detail page of a product participating in a Prime Exclusive Deal. Prime Exclusive Deals for Prime Day may be at a dollar off amount, or a percentage off amount; however, the discount must be at least 20% off the original price.

Both during and before/after Prime Day events on Amazon, Coupons are a promotional feature that are popular with sellers that allows brands to create a highlighted discount off a particular product or range of products. Sellers can implement discounts either on a percentage off basis (with a minimum discount of 5% and a maximum discount of 50%), or a monetary discount basis, though either way the amount of the discount must be between 5-50%. Coupons have the advantage over conventional Discounts on Amazon, due to the nature that Coupons are highlighted both within the search results page as well as on the product page, as seen in the below image. This added visibility does come at a cost however. In addition to the cost to the seller of the discount itself, the seller will additionally need to pay a 60¢ fee every time the coupon is “clipped” by a customer (when a customer clicks the box to add the coupon to their cart), regardless of whether or not the customer actually goes ahead in purchasing the product. With this much having been said, it may make more sense to utilize coupons on products with a higher selling price and/or better profit margins. 

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Example of Coupon Prompt Seen by Customers on Amazon

In conclusion, Amazon Prime Day is a great opportunity for sellers to boost their sales and visibility on the platform, but it also requires careful planning and preparation. Sellers should ensure that they have enough inventory, adjust their PPC budgets, and consider using Prime Exclusive Deals and Coupons to attract more customers. By following these tips, sellers can make the most of the Prime Day event and grow their business on Amazon.