Transcript

Hey Scott Austin here.

Today we're diving into a topic that could boost your sales this summer. We're talking about why you should create your own marketing campaign around Amazon's Prime Day in July.

Now, you might be wondering, "Why should I care about Prime Day if I'm not selling on Amazon?" That's a great question, and here's the answer: Prime Day is a massive shopping event that has conditioned millions of consumers to think about deals and discounts in July. In 2023, Prime Day generated over $12 billion in sales globally! That's a huge surge in online shopping activity that you can tap into, even if you're not on Amazon.

I'm not the only one that thinks this way.  This year, Walmart, Target, Nike and many more companies are building their own campaigns around Amazon's Prime Day timing.

And Prime Day is not just an American phenomena - it's happening in these 20 countries in 2024: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, UAE, the U.S., and the UK

So, let's dive into why you should piggyback on the Prime Day buzz with your own marketing campaign.

Christmas in July is not a new marketing idea.  But Amazon has institutionalized it in our culture.  Prime Day has now been going on for ten years.  Prime Day has created a shopping mindset where customers are actively looking for deals and discounts. They're primed—pun intended—to spend money.  Many customers have been holding off on big purchases to see what deals they can get during Prime Day.  They will be spending their saved dollars and you need to tap into that when they are opening their wallets.

By running your own promotions at the same time, you can capture some of this purchase intent and direct it towards your brand.

While many retailers are focused solely on their Amazon presence during Prime Day, you have the opportunity to stand out by offering unique deals and experiences on your Shopify store. This can help differentiate your brand and bring you closer to your customers who appreciate the value you provide outside of the Amazon ecosystem.

So, how do you go about creating your own Prime Day campaign? Here are some actionable steps:

The first thing I think about is that this is just another campaign in your marketing calendar.  So many of the best practices still apply.  As such, I'll link to Episode 108 of this podcast in the show notes where we covered getting started with campaigns.

Now, although I said that this is just another campaign in your marketing calendar, there are some differences.  First is that this event is driven by Amazon, the 800 lb gorilla in eCommerce.  So marketing to a new audience will be hard as there is so much buzz around Prime Day.  As such, I recommend reaching out to your existing audience for this campaign, so that means email and social.  Avoid spending ad dollars or trying to generate PR unless you are extremely confident that you can pull it off. 

And I recommend that you let your customers know ahead of time that you'll be offering your own Prime Day deal.  This way, your customers can factor your offer into their financial budgeting for Prime Day.  That means putting out advance emails and posts about your campaign with specifics on products and deals.  And you can use this promotion as a way to convert social followers into email subscribers.  Have a landing page for your followers where they can sign up to get notified when the deals go live.

There's also an SEO play that you can do with this landing page.  Here are some things to think about with your landing page:

1. Have a single landing page for your campaign.  The message in it may change through the stages of your campaign, but having a single page sends Google a clear message on which page to rank.
2. Use Prime Day keywords.
1. Have the word Prime as one of your keywords.  Some brands do this directly by calling out their campaign as a counter to Amazon's Prime Day.  Other's just use the word Prime in their copy without associating it to Prime Day.
2. Have the year in your keywords.  And update the year to next year as soon as the campaign is over to start improving your organic ranking for next year.
3. Use tail keywords.  For example if you sell fishing gear, you may target the keyword phrase 'Best fly fishing deals for Prime Day 2024'.
3. Reuse the same page each year and keep it up all year long.  This will ensure the page gets indexed in search and give it more time to get ranked.

You are going to want to make sure that your deal is strong.  There's going to be a lot of noise out there with all the buzz that happens with Prime Day.  So your deal needs to rise up to capture your customer's attention.  As you are competing with Amazon, I wouldn't use Free Shipping as your deal as that's table stakes for Amazon.  But a free gift with purchase or decent percentage off may work.  A custom bundle with a good savings is also a good option that can improve your average order value. 

I also recommend highlighting the fact that your brand is not a corporate behemoth.  Tell your brand story and contrast it with Amazon's.  For example an email title could be 'Buy from a family owned business instead of the richest man in the world.'  And yes, I know Bezos is not currently the richest man in the world, but I'm taking some creative license here.

In conclusion, leveraging Amazon's Prime Day with your own marketing campaign on your Shopify store is a smart move. It allows you to capitalize on the increased shopping activity and boost your sales during a typically slow season. 

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Thanks for listening.