It’s almost that time of year again, where we celebrate Amazon Prime day — every introverted deal-seeker’s dream. The two-day digital shopping frenzy is set to begin on July 15 this year, and tens of millions of Amazon Prime-eligible customers are expected to make a purchase.

If you’re an Amazon Seller, now is a great time to run through the checklist below to make sure your Amazon Seller Central account is prepped and ready for the big days ahead!

1. Start Early & Finish Late – Even though Prime Day doesn’t officially kick off until July 15, deal seekers are already frequenting Amazon to get a head start on their research to find products and savings that interest them. The time to start advertising, or preparing for Prime Day if you haven’t already, is NOW.

If you’re only focusing efforts from now until July 16, that could prove to be a miss. According to Amazon, Customers stay engaged and ready to shop even after Prime Day ends. In fact, shoppers generated higher category search volume in the 14 days after Prime Day versus the 14 days before according to 2018 Prime Day data.

• Prepare Your Inventory – Everyone hates running out of Product Inventory. Your ads stop serving, your account learnings are put on hold and customers are hitting you up on social media upset that they can’t find your products. Before Amazon Prime Day hits, make sure you have ample inventory available to last throughout.

• Give Attention to Product Pages – Product Detail Pages not only play a big role in how your listings organically appear on Amazon, but also help your conversion rate. Make sure your Product Detail Pages are in tip-top condition, have beautiful and explanatory imagery, and use appropriate back-end keywords to help them rank better. If you need help figuring out how your Product Detail Pages could be improved, check out some competitive sellers and see how they are showcasing their products. (Or, of course you can just make it easy and call us.)
• Increase Your Budget – Increased traffic on Prime Day, and the days surrounding, means that your campaigns are more likely to hit their daily budgets quicker. Amazon recommends a 200% increase in daily budgets, and though that’s a great starting point we always suggest monitoring and adjusting based on performance.

• Consider Targeting Options – Just like with traditional search, the actual way in which people search tends to change a bit around Prime Day. Suddenly, new sales-based keywords are showing in your query reports and doing better than ever before, or you have a better chance of ranking for a similar product than you did just days prior.

To capitalize on this, consider creating Sponsored Product campaigns with automatic targeting, as well as complementary ones with manual targeting. With your automatic targeting campaign, Amazon will work to match your ads to relevant shopper search terms using their algorithm. After this campaign picks up and you can see what’s working, add the terms into your complementary manually targeted campaign for more control. Even if you’ve done this before, it’s worth a reboot around Prime Day, as new searchers are popping up all the time.

You’ll also want to consider product targeting, which allows you to target your ads to certain ASINs or categories. Even if you already have product targeting enabled – now is a GREAT time to do a sweep of any new products hitting Amazon that might be worth targeting.

• Set Competitive Bids – During Amazon Prime Day, and the days leading up to it, you may have to increase your bids to remain competitive. Remember, more advertisers are entering the space just for Prime Day, while other advertisers are increasing accordingly to get that ‘prime’ placement. Also note that with Prime Day, there’s much more to come of it than increased sales for your company – the influx in traffic can be valuable and help build awareness, consideration and loyalty over time. That being said, even if higher bids increase your CPA slightly, it may be worth it to get the traffic if you can figure out how to convert it down the line.

• Monitor & Adjust Campaigns – Like with any advertising program you launch – monitoring and adjusting based on performance and your goals is important. Be sure to check in on campaigns regularly before, during and a few days after Prime Day to ensure your budgets aren’t being capped, your queries are relevant, etc.

Have you considered these tips for your account? Any more to add? Keep the conversation going in the comments section below. As always, if you need help getting started on Amazon or just getting “primed” for Prime Day, contact us today.