Amazon’s biggest deal day of the year might be over, but there’s still time to uncover insights that will improve your marketplace strategy for the upcoming “Fall” Prime Day and the holidays.

Read on, or check out the recording of our Amazon Team’s recent webinar to gain actionable insights and takeaways that can be applied to your own business for the remainder of this year.

In this article, you’ll learn how our team achieved 57% revenue growth for our Amazon clients, from Prime Day 2022 vs. Prime Day 2021. We’ll share what worked, what didn’t work, and how you can apply these learnings to your own Amazon strategy.

We know what many brands were thinking heading into this year’s holiday: has Prime Day lost its luster? Leading up to Prime Day 2022, many publications speculated that the event would not be as strong as recent years. Contributing factors included inflation, value, and high competition.

Headlines in the weeks preceding this year’s Prime Day predicted that consumers would pivot towards essentials. To help ease the burden of inflation, consumers were expected to focus on everyday staples over fun. 

For Amazon’s part, the marketplace was expected to showcase the benefits of Prime membership by highlighting discounts on necessities. The eCommerce giant remained motivated to have a big Prime Day after seeing sales slow over previous months.

In spite of unsure predictions, Prime Day 2022 garnered some massively impressive results. At the end of the holiday, the numbers spoke for themselves.

• Prime members saved over $1.7 billion
• 300 million items sold
• 100,000 items purchased per minute
• The average order was $55.26, up 16.8%
• Total online retail sales ~$12 billion, up 8.5%

Some other news to come out of the day:

• Amazon Live Prime Day streams had more than 100 million views.
• 1 in 3 items sold came from small businesses.
• The top-selling categories in the U.S. were consumer electronics, home goods, and Amazon-branded devices.
• Of those who shopped both this Prime Day and last, 35% spent more this year while 65% spent the same or less.

CPG categories saw bigger boosts this Prime Day than last. Household essentials moved into the #1 position this year, with 30% of shoppers claiming a purchase in this category, up from 27% and the #4 position in 2021. Grocery, pet care, and baby items all saw increases this year as well, while health & beauty held steady.

Taking a look at our own client portfolio, the work of our Amazon team resulted in above average Amazon Prime Day performance across the board. Here’s a look at some of our results.

Prime Day 2022 Sales recap of both days:

• Average Sales growth was 57%
• Average Unit Sales growth was 133%
• Day 2 sales were 74% of Day 1 sales

Prime Day 2022 Advertising recap of both days 

• +223% Ad Attributed Sales vs. L30 Day Avg
• +151% Ad Spend vs. L30 Day Avg
• Impressions were up 80% YoY
• Clicks were up 43% YoY
• Average CPC was up 41% vs the prior 30-day average (This is 17.5% lower than the average Amazon CPC increase for Prime Day)

But, how did we get there?

The outstanding performance of our team this Prime Day was a result of four key areas of focus. Going into this year’s eCommerce holiday, we identified these as strategic initiatives that will remain important for Amazon brands during the upcoming Prime Day and holiday season.

1) Promotions

– Review assortment and financial goals to design the best promotion strategy

– Utilize Prime Member Promotions to get our products featured on Prime deals pages

– New products or bundles can also attract Prime Day shoppers

2) Brand Store

– Brand store is updated and features best sellers and promoted products

– Create a “Special Offers” page and have SB campaigns land there

– Review opportunities to drive external traffic to the brand’s store

3) Advertising

– Launch new Prime Day ads and adjust current campaigns to maximize product and promo visibility

– Decrease ROAS targets, enabling more aggressive CPC bidding

– Adjust DSP towards promo

– Increase and Monitor budgets

4) Business Prep

– Proper inventory levels to support promotions and hit our goals

– Be prepared to pivot based on performance and competition

-PDP’s are optimized to convert

By focusing our efforts on these strategies, we were able to drive more clicks on ads, more traffic to our clients’ brand stores, and more sales year-over-year.

Prime Day is a deal-driven event, leading to an array of advertising tactics based on strength of deal. 

With Prime Day Deal (Prime Day Exclusive, DOTD, LD): Leverage full-funnel (Display & Search), on and off- Amazon Advertising, driving traffic to amplify the event.

Without Prime Day Deal:

• CPC’s will increase +40% prior week, conversion will hold or decline, leading to ROAS inefficiency if ad tactics are not adjusted. Consider reducing ad spend to only brand defense, and top performing category traffic
• Bid aggressiveness should consider how much traffic and potential rank gain you may grant competition

“We focused the majority of our spend on four ASINs that had significant discounts. These were also multi-pack items so they have higher ASP’s and can remain profitable on promo.” – Trenton, The Stable Amazon Advertising Manager

What worked for us? Prime Day ad effort coordinated with Prime Exclusive Deal or DOTD with recommended discount >=20% off.

How did we do it?

– Structure Prime Day specific Sponsored campaigns driving to the primary deal page(s)

– Funnel brand search traffic (SP & SB) to deal page(s)

– In combination with promotion, isolate top performing category keywords, aggressively advertising the deal ASIN(s) – win your digital shelf!

– Pause non-promoted ASIN traffic campaign efforts during Prime Day

– Coordinate off-Amazon media (i.e. Google, Social, Display) for CPC efficiencies (branded and category traffic)

– Increase upper-funnel DSP pacing, specifically branded retargeting to Prime Day Deal

“For Prime Month, we tested an influencer partnership with the Lovin Sisters. The brand saw a 14.8x lift in total sales compared to their L30 daily sales average. Brands that utilized external traffic (email, social media, influencers, SMS) saw an additional 2X increase in total sales compared to brands that didn’t.” – Saundra, The Stable Amazon Advertising Manager

School/Office Supply Client Funneling Ad Traffic to Prime DOTD Promotion:

• $315k, or 14 days of Attributed Ad sales in 2 day span at an efficient 15x ROAS!
• 16M impressions thanks to Prime Day ads and branded traffic reroute effort
• Innovative product, capturing New-to-Brand (NTB) and brand loyalists
• 40% off DOTD (lowest price in 12+ months)

“We delivered a 15x ROAS over Prime Day, with nearly half of total sales generated through Sponsored Ads. The deal sold nearly 25 weeks of volume.” – Julia, The Stable Amazon Advertising Manager

Post Prime-Day Insights:

• Opportunity to measure Keyword Share of Voice (SOV), BSR shifts, and “halo effect” of the deal thanks to improved organic rank
• Leverage Sponsored Display ads and DSP to retarget consumers that viewed promoted products during Prime Day. The Stable Amazon DSP clients saw +105% retargeting ad sales attribution WoW following Prime Day 
• Inventory position check – forecast accuracy evaluation to strengthen next promotion planning

“Retargeting shoppers that visited a listing but did not purchase has resulted in $13k in ad revenue at a 3.89 ROAS since Prime Day.” – Trenton, The Stable Amazon Advertising Manager

Faster, More Robust Data Across Multiple Platforms

• Advances in Amazon Data Stream now enables hourly performance data to pivot away from inefficiencies and more quickly scale what’s working – faster budget and bid adjustments
• Measure spend effectiveness across multiple platforms with a combination of Amazon attribution pixels in your external links, combined with advancements in Amazon Marketing Cloud
• Continued advancement of in-house multi-platform media spend and sales reporting

Despite a skeptical lead into Prime Day, it continues to be a huge shopping event. As predicted, essentials grew the fastest YoY as consumers look towards discounts to counter inflation. We saw Prime-exclusive deals perform very well compared to other promotion types. Furthermore, brands that had a breadth of products on discount performed better than those with only 1-2 discounted products. 

For brands planning to participate in Amazon’s September/October Prime Day-like event (what we’ve affectionately dubbed, “Pumpkin Spice Prime Day”), we’ve got a few tips too. 

Deals

– Coordinate deal planning & execution through all functions of the business – inventory, finance (profitability), forecasting, content, & advertising.  

– Maintain consistent branding and promotional strategy across retail outlets 

– Be cognizant of the promotion’s “halo effect”, or BSR gains

Advertising

– Prep Amazon budgets and bid logic based on Prime Day objective

– Route branded search traffic to the deal

– Amazon Attribution pixel, AMC, and Amazon data stream are further enabling the optimization of the full media mix

– Avoid aggressive CPC’s without a compelling offer

-Build an updated library of video assets to leverage the growing uses of video content across Amazon

Interested in leveling up your Amazon business this upcoming Prime Day, holidays, or beyond? We would love to hear about your Prime Day experiences so far and chat about how to improve in Q4. Reach out to our team at bizdev.amazon@thestable.com, or contact us here. 

Webinar Recording

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