While no official date has been set for Amazon Prime Day 2023 yet, recent history indicates that the event will be held in mid July. This leaves Amazon sellers with just over a month to prepare for one of the biggest sales events of the year. I wanted to put this guide together to help you make your final preparations as July is suddenly right around the corner. So whether you are just starting to prepare or are putting the final touches on your Prime Day 2023 strategy, here’s my Amazon Prime Day outlook and preparation guide for 2023.
The History of Prime Day
Amazon has succeeded in creating its own major shopping event in the middle of the summer. Let’s take a look at some of the amazing success this event has had since its launch in 2015.
Amazon Prime Day 2015
Amazon launched the very first Prime Day on July 15, 2015 in celebration their 20th anniversary. The event was a huge success, with sales exceeding the previous year's Black Friday. Amazon sellers using FBA enjoyed a record-breaking day with a nearly 300% increase in units sold.
Amazon Prime Day 2016
The second Prime day took place on July 12, 2016, and Prime members saved more than double on deals than they did during the first Prime Day. Amazon sellers saw their orders nearly triple year-over-year from Prime Day 2015 as well.
Amazon Prime Day 2017
Prime Day 2017 extended the event to 30 hours long, with Mexico and China taking part in the sales event for the first time. The number of Prime members making a purchase during the event increased over 50% from the previous year with tens of millions of Amazon customers participating.
Amazon Prime Day 2018
For the second straight year, Amazon increased the length of Prime Day in 2018, this time to 36 hours. Small and medium businesses selling product on Amazon recorded over $1.5 billion in sales on this Prime Day as members worldwide purchased over 100 million products. The Toys, Beauty, Computer Accessories, Apparel, and Kitchen categories all thrived with over five million items sold in each.
Amazon Prime Day 2019
Prime Day’s growth continued in 2019 with a bump up to 48 hours and 18 participating countries. Amazon customers purchased over 175 million items during the two days and enjoyed exclusive Prime Day stream events including a Prime Day Concert headlined by Taylor Swift.
Amazon Prime Day 2020
Due to COVID-19 shutdowns, Prime Day was pushed to October 13th and 14th in 2020. Third-party sellers had amazing success during this event with over $3.5 billion in sales worldwide, which was nearly a 60% increase over Prime Day 2019. In the two-week lead up to Prime Day, small and medium-sized businesses generated over $900 million in sales.
Amazon Prime Day 2021
Amazon Prime Day 2021 ran earlier than it had in previous years on June 21st and 22nd. The growth of this event continued with new records in total event sales ($11.2 billion) and sales by third-party sellers.
Amazon Prime Day 2022
Last year’s Prime Day returned to the usual time frame, running on July 12th and 13th. Prime members in the United States purchased over 60,000 items per minute during the 48-hour event. Sales increased another 15% from the year before.
Preparing your Inventory
One of the most important aspects of preparation for Amazon Prime Day 2023 is making sure that your inventory is in order.
Plan Ahead on Inventory
Amazon requests that you have all inventory you plan on selling for Prime Day through FBA sent in to the warehouse by June 15, 2023. This is to ensure that you won’t have any issues with stocking when there is a large influx of shipments being sent in by third-party sellers next month.
Use all of the data at your disposal from previous major sales events like Prime Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday to try to make as accurate of a prediction as you can on how much inventory you will need on your products. Over-stocking can lead to additional storage fees and under-stocking can lead to products being sold out and lost sales, so be sure to plan accordingly.
Create FBM Listings For Excess Inventory
Fortunately, in the event that your FBA stock runs out, you do have another option. By creating Fulfilled by Merchant listings on your most popular products, you will have the option of activating these listings in the event that something sells out, so that you can continue to fulfill orders yourself in the event that your FBA stock is sold out. If you have the ability to fulfill orders from your home or office, be sure to take advantage of this option.
Create Virtual Bundles
Another great tool for Amazon sellers during Prime Day is virtual bundling. Bundling products is a great way to leverage some of your best performing products into more exposure to other products in your store. Think of bundles that make sense from the buyer’s perspective with items that compliment each other well. For more ideas an information on virtual bundles, check out my Ultimate Guide to Virtual Bundles on Amazon.
Improve Your IPI Score
Amazon’s new FBA capacity limits are tied directly to your current IPI score. While you don’t have a whole lot of time before Prime Day to make huge changes to your Amazon store, even tidying up your stranded inventory and excess inventory can make a quick impact on your IPI scores. I covered this in more detail here: Why Your IPI Score Sucks and How to Fix It!
Optimizing Your Product Listings
Regular readers of my blog and newsletter know how important it is to consistently audit your product listings to make sure that they are as up-to-date and optimized as possible. Below are a few key factors to consider when it comes to optimizing your Amazon product listings.
Product Titles
Amazon shoppers looking for deals on Prime Day 2023 are going to have a lot of options to choose from. Along with your product image and price, the title on your listing is one of the best tools you have to draw their attention. Make sure that all of your products have keyword-rich and relevant titles that accurately reflect your product line.
Product Images
The featured product image on your listing will be the one that shows up in Amazon search results on Prime Day. And once potential buyers click on your listing, your images may be what helps them to decide whether or not to make a purchase. All images should be clear and should show off important features about your item. For more tips on getting this right, check out my post on how to Optimize Your Amazon Pictures and Boost Sales.
Bullet Points and Descriptions
Product descriptions and features (listed as bullet points) are where sellers really have the chance to lock in a sale. Keep in mind when reviewing your bullet points and descriptions that you already know the ins and outs of your products; you need to have the customer in mind and think of what questions they might have or detail they might need. Consider having a friend or family member read these as well to get a fresh perspective on them.
Offering Deals to Customers
When it comes to Prime Day, Amazon Prime customers are expecting big savings. You don’t have to offer your products at blowout prices, but you should try to think of ways to make sure that potential customers feel like they are getting a good value during this sales event.
Prime Exclusive Discounts
While the deadline has passed (April 28) to apply for Prime Day Lightning Deals, sellers will still be able to take advantage of Prime Exclusive Discounts, which can be created in Seller Central under the Advertising tab. These will show the regular price of the product crossed out and the percentage that Amazon Prime members are saving. This is a fantastic marketing tool for Prime Day 2023, where the majority of customers shopping worldwide are Prime members.
Coupons and Promotions
Coupons are a great way to visually show the customer that they are saving money as a bright green tag is added next to the list price. Promotions like “buy one, get one 50% off” are also great to give potential buyers some added incentive to choose your products. And these promotions can also be shared on other platforms such as social media, which extends their reach and effectiveness.
Manual Repricing
In addition to discounts, coupons, and promotions, sellers should also review all of their listings and make manual price adjustments where it makes sense to do so. Your competitors will be offering a wide range of discounts and prices to fight for customers on Prime Day, so it will be important to factor this in to your pricing strategy. You don’t have to have the lowest price in your market, but you will want your prices to be competitive so that customers still feel like they are getting a good deal.
Ironing Out Your Marketing Strategies
Millions of customers will navigate Amazon during the 48 hours that Prime Day is running. The marketing strategies that you have both on and off of the site will play a large role in determining how many of those customers are making their way to your product listings.
Pay-Per-Click Campaigns
With hundreds of thousands of active Amazon sellers around the world jostling for positioning on Prime Day, the prices for pay-per-click campaigns can go up quite a bit during Prime Day. Veteran sellers will be familiar with these types of spikes that occur around big shopping events like Prime Day, Black Friday and the holiday season.
My post on Mastering ACoS, ROAS & TACoS to Maximize your Amazon Advertising Campaigns could be a useful resource for Amazon sellers deciding on what products they should spend the extra money to advertise on and what metrics they should be looking at. Keep in mind that for events like Prime Day, quantity sometimes outweighs quality when it comes to sales.
For example, you may sell a lot more products than usual at a lower return on investment (ROI). But those additional sales could have a lot of long-term value in generating product reviews and building relationships and brand awareness with customers. Consider all of these factors when deciding how much to spend on PPC campaigns.
Utilize Social Media
Now more than ever, short-form content on TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts is helping small businesses to get exposure on their products in new and exciting ways. And a lot of this content can also be repurposed into Amazon shorts, which I covered in a post recently: Stop Sleeping on Amazon Posts!
Whether you create content for your brand yourself or enlist the help of an influencer, Prime Day is the perfect time to ramp up your presence on social media. Consider including promotion codes in your social media posts to give both new and loyal customers the opportunity to save.
Advertising Off of Amazon
External traffic can be a great addition to your PPC campaigns on Amazon. Targeted ads on platforms like Facebook and Google can be effective in driving off-site traffic to your top products.
Final Thoughts on Amazon Prime Day
Amazon Prime Day 2023 has the potential to be two of your biggest days of sales this year. Have fun with it! It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all of the work and preparation that goes into an event like this, but that hard work is part of what makes being an Amazon seller so rewarding.
And keep in mind that no matter how well it goes or how many obstacles you run into, Prime Day will be another great learning experience for both new and experienced sellers alike. The information that you gain from how things go in July will help you to better prepare for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and beyond. Good luck!
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