Smart Preparations and Predictions for Prime Day 2021

10/06/2021

Digitas USA

Advertising Agency

New York, USA

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10/06/2021

Christa Klausner SVP, commerce, media at Digitas shares how brands can be prepared for Amazon Prime Day and its recipe for success

Prime Day is around the corner (June 21st-22nd) and below are smart strategies and actionable steps brands can take to participate. Last year the event brought in a 45% increase in total global sales during the October window. Across all categories, impressions more than doubled in 2020 compared to Prime Day in 2019. Amazon now has over 200 million Prime members worldwide, up from 50 million at the start of 2020. An e-commerce leader in the US, traffic on Amazon is up on the platform 8% year-over-year.

Amazon’s Recipe for Success

In addition to the promising growth, a study from McKinsey revealed that 40% of US consumers are optimistic about the current state of the economy. 51% of consumers reported they plan to splurge in the upcoming months to treat themselves because of “pandemic fatigue”. Many shoppers are more willing to try new products (+39%), and Prime Day offers a unique avenue to drive an immediate and scalable trial. Amazon will, of course, use audience data capture to build ongoing relationships across all touchpoints. These factors are creating a winning formula for Amazon’s upcoming Prime Day.

How Can Brands Prep for Prime Day?

Optimise your brand presence:  

Utilise Brand Stores to showcase your brand and product portfolio in a multipage, immersive shopping experience on Amazon. Make sure it’s optimised, up-to-date, and best-in-class.  
Use the new Brand Values Messaging with a banner to show solidarity with communities or movements like Stop Asian Hate or Black Lives Matter.  
Optimise your product listings to maximise traffic and conversion rates. Use high-quality images, answer key consumer questions, and convey important features and benefits through imagery.  
Now is also a good time to update your keywords for SEO title, bullets, and description. Search-optimised copy is one of the key components that informs the Amazon Algorithm for product results and ranking.  
Implement enhanced content on all priority items to inspire, inform, educate, cross-sell or upsell across the portfolio.

Prepare campaigns to maximise impact  

Plan to launch campaigns two weeks prior to Prime Day and keep them live for two weeks post Prime Day.  
Run Search and Display campaigns simultaneously.  
Test multiple sponsored brand creative types that help to tell the brand story.  
Utilise additional Sponsored Brand placements to reach new audiences as they shop the category.

Implement offers & promotions  

Utilise offers and promotions to encourage trials, accelerate sales and create urgency (Percentage off, BOGO, Giveaways, Coupons, Virtual Bundles, etc.) 
When running a deal, leverage the automated ‘Deal’ call to action in your Sponsored Brand Campaigns. CTA can be automated to run during the time of the deal period and will revert to the standard CTA when the deal ends.  
Consider a virtual bundle to fulfil multiple items together at a discounted price.

Support with other media channels  

Leverage other media channels, like social, to promote coupon codes or specific times and Prime Day deal details. 
Implement the Amazon Attribution tag to ensure you can track the impact of these other media channels on sales performance.

Support other retailers  

Retailer search volume will increase on other retailer sites such as Target and Walmart as consumers will be in a buying mindset.  
Capitalise on this by running sponsored products, search brand amplifiers, and other search placements with the corresponding retailers.  
Be prepared to bid aggressively, as retailers tend to host their own promotions during Prime Day (i.e. Target Deal Days and Walmart’s The Big Save). 
To ensure performance across the promotional period, remove daily spend caps. This will allow your brands to stay top of mind throughout the day.

Understand your reach of new customers 

Amazon Attribution now allows you to measure consumers who are new-to-brand driven by Amazon Search and Amazon Display campaigns. New-to-brand represents first time orders for products within a one-year lookback window.