Prime Day 2021

Prime Day - An Amazon Made Shopping Holiday 

Amazon launched Prime Day in 2015 as a celebration of the 20-year anniversary of Amazon’s founding, The Shopping Holiday is exclusive to Amazon Prime members (although non-prime members also buy on the day) turned into the biggest shopping day of the year!

Prime Day has historically broken sales records every year - sales are usually higher than Black Friday and Cyber Monday!!!

Even with its delayed date and logistical challenges, Prime Day 2020 managed to break previous sales records and was officially the BIGGEST shopping event in Amazon’s history!

Prime Day is usually in July, However last year due to the Pandemic Amazon moved it to October, This year the day has been moved to June and the exact dates are:  June 21st & 22nd (technically 2 days even though we call it "Prime Day") 

In this article, I will share tips on how you can prepare for Prime Day 2021, as it is still not too late. However, the tips will be broken into 2 parts.

1. How to Prepare for Black Hat tactics

2. How to prepare to maximize sales. 

So let's get the bad out the way first so that we can move quickly to the good. 

Firstly, last year I made an in-depth video on How to Prepare for Prime Day on my youtube channel - To watch the video CLICK HERE, I gave all sorts of tips, and one of my tips was to make sure that you prepare for black hat sellers if you have Best Selling Products!

Little did I know that I was actually preparing myself, as we had one of our brands attacked by bad actor sellers in order to take us down - so that our sales would go to them instead. It was such a bad attack that I made a video showing exactly what happened and how long it took to get my products up in a video on youtube called "The Ugly Side of Amazon" to watch it CLICK HERE.

So this leads me to: 

MY FIRST TIP: HAVE A FLAT FILE READY FOR UPLOAD JUST INCASE 

Yes, so simple yet so overlooked. You see, the way I was attacked last prime day, was that bad-acter sellers had uploaded a flat file to our Canadian Listings, which ultimately took down our Best Selling USA listings. The flat file was full of Drug and Medication keywords (see below). They did this so that our products would get flagged as restricted. 

Here is what one of our listings back end keywords looked like after the flat file was uploaded the drug-related keywords:

These products are best-selling products in their niche on Amazon USA, and as they had used the Canadian listings to attack us, It had taken me a while to uncover why our products had been flagged as restricted specifically on Prime Day Morning, as on the USA seller central everything looked as it should. Once I finally understood what had happened, I knew exactly what to do. If you want to know more about what happened, watch the video I shared above about the "Ugly Side of Selling on Amazon". 

Now, Why have a flat-file prepared? Because the quickest way to try and fix this issue is to upload a flat-file with your listings correct information in hopes that it will over-ride the changes made, for us - this worked for 3 products, and one was left as flagged for over 3 weeks. Had I not had backed information and all our listings details through flat files/category listing reports, It would have taken me longer to deal with this.

If sales come to halt the way they did for us in this brand last year, then make sure to check to see if maybe this had happened to you, and if it does most of the time, a new flat-file upload will help you to over-ride the mess, however - not always. 

I used Nir Raveh from Market-Wize to help me with the product that stayed down for weeks and highly recommend him in case this happens to you. 

A few more tips to try fight black hat and then we will get to the important stuff: 

• Make sure your listing is capped to 1-3 units per order. It is a common black hat move for sellers to buy out competitors stock early Prime Day morning COMPLETELY leaving you out of stock!! Only to return everything and apply for a refund a few days later!
• Click Fraud: Be on top of your campaigns all day - top sellers target their competitors and have people click (there are companies that have bots that they can pay to do this!) on their competitor's sponsored ads on purpose to have them go out of budget earlier in the day! If you have a product with the Best Seller Badge you may be targeted in hopes to "steal" the badge from you. 

If you feel like you had an unusual amount of clicks on your PPC ads, ask amazon to investigate for click fraud, I have been reimbursed hundreds of dollars over the years.

Ok now that we are done with the Ugly stuff, let's move to the Strategic Stuff:

TIPS AND TRICKS 

1. Prime Exclusive Deals

In 2019 Amazon introduced "Prime Exclusive Deals", Deals Specifically made for Prime Members.

Having these deals allows for you to have the big blue "Prime Day Deal" badge as seen in the above image, however, this also forces you to give a discount of at least 20% (as you can see in the image below: 

To create a Prime Day Deal, hover over the "advertising" tab in seller central and then click on "Prime Day Exclusive Discounts". See if your product is eligible and if so follow the prompts. 

2. COUPONS

If for whatever reason you have decided not to submit an Amazon Prime Exclusive Deal, then I would defiantly still add a coupon (voucher in the UK) to the listing instead. Buyers come to shop and will buy anything with a discount even if it is not a "prime day" deal. A coupon will still have the little Orange Coupon Badge which also stands out. 

I usually have $Dollars off unless it is easy to calculate the % Percentage off, for example, 10% off, otherwise I may have "$3 OFF". 

 Notes:

• Amazon charges $0.60 for each coupon used - take this into account.
• Remember that Coupons show on search results, product pages and also in the Coupons section on Amazon.

3. Make sure your Listing is Optimized!!! 

DO THIS NOW! 

Make sure your listing is optimized!!!! This Includes:

• Informative and Within TOS Title
• AMAZING and engaging Images including Hero, Lifestyle (at least 2), Infographics, What's included, etc. Make sure they are professional images and look VERY GOOD and made for conversion! Add gift-giving images if possible and makes sense to your products too 
• To the Point Bullet Points (according to Amazononly the first 1000 Characters are indexed)
• Description: Use HTML formatting only for line breaks, and make sure it is not just a long paragraph, add what's included where each feature is in its own line.
• Optimized backend search terms: relevant, no commas, keywords and not phrases, no repeating keywords, do not add deal words (like Prime Day) - this is against tos. 

4. PPC Budgeting & Bids

Tips on PPC for Prime Day:

• Increase your current advertising budgets and bids - You will face crazy fierce competition on Prime Day sometimes 2-x as usual or even more! If you understand PPC - Don't be afraid to get aggressive - raise your bids.
• Optimize your existing campaigns!!!!! You should be doing this regularly anyway but make sure to do this like RIGHT NOW -  so you can prepare your campaigns correctly and focus on the keywords that you convert well on. 

 Look out for your best and converting keywords, Add negative keywords (no emotions! If it doesn't convert and eats up your budget either lower the bid on it (if in exact) considerably or negative exact it! Watch my PPC Videos to understand.

• Create a campaign Just for Prime Day TODAY - I suggest always having a campaign called "BOOST" or something like that, and activating the campaign a few days before an event like Prime Day, Black Friday or Cyber Monday - add your best converting search terms (from tier 1 and 2 of my latest PPC videos which you can find HERE) 
• Brand Ads: If you are brand registered and have access to sponsored brands then create brand ads too!!!!!
• TARGET YOUR COMPETITORS!!!!!! Make sure you have ASIN targeted campaigns running targeting your competitors so that you can steal sales from them too 

DON'T FORGET: 

IF YOU SELL MULTIPLE PRODUCTS THAT ARE WITHIN THE SAME BRAND AND NICHE - TARGET YOUR OWN ASINS!!!!!

IF YOU SHOW UP ON YOUR OWN ASIN THIS IS ONE LESS COMPETITOR THAT SHOWS UP IN HOPES TO STEAL A SALE FROM YOU!!!

• Some People turn off their campaigns until mid-day in order to avoid being out of budget too early... I do not do this, If someone sees my ad and they click on it, they are interested in my product and even if they didn't buy in the morning, they will likely buy it later in the day. Therefore I rather have a budget for the entire day and not do "dayparting" 
• USE DATA FROM PREVIOUS YEARS: If you have access to brand analytics use it to look at last year's top searched keywords on amazon during the month of October (month of Prime Day 2020). You can search a keyword related to your product to get relevant keywords to your product)

To do this change the Reporting Range in Brand Analytics to "Monthly" and then change the dates to October last year. 

You can then take these keywords and add them to your campaigns, specific keywords related to your products, for example, "Baby Blanket Prime Day". 

Some of the below may be too late for you to add as they take time to get approved but I will add them to my tips anyway:

• Sponsored Brand Video Ads: If you are brand registered and have access to video ads and do not have video ads running.... GO MAKE ONE RIGHT NOW!!! You can make a quick super cheap ad using Promo.com or even Canva!!! They take up an entire row on search pages!!!
• Amazon Posts (Brand Registered sellers only): Prepare a Batch of Posts and post them TODAY, TOMORROW, and as often as possible!  It's Free Advertising on Competitors Listings... So.. DO IT! To watch my video on Amazon Posts CLICK HERE
• Prepare your Amazon Store!!! Always have your store prepared for events like Prime Day in advance

5. Spread the word!! USE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA!!!!!!!!

If you have Social Media Accounts for your Brand, Make great content from TODAY already, and tell your followers to look out for your Prime Day Deals!!! Look for hashtags like #AmazonPrimeDay #AmazonPrimeDaydeals etc and a link to your deals on social media posts, emails, and paid traffic.

You Can use Your Facebook Page, Instagram, Pinterest, Blog, Email List etc.

My Most Important tip is:

Take a Chill Pill

Prime Day can be exciting and scary at the same time..... Try to enjoy it!

REMEMBER: Not all niches see a crazy increase in sales.... So if you don't see an increase in sales it may just be a niche thing and not necessarily your specific product. Also, compared to previous years Amazon did not have major press releases and hype around Prime Day 2021. 

If you are not part of the FBA Alphas Facebook Group - I encourage you to join, I will be in and out of the group on Prime Day often - join here .