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Our experience with Prime Day 2023: Did it meet the expectations?
Our experience with Prime Day 2023: Did it meet the expectations?
George Reid
July 15, 2023
We have concluded the results of Prime Day, Amazon’s major 2-day event. It’s been an important event for Amazon in terms of sales growth, known for setting new records every year. But was it also worthwhile for Sellers? The short answer is yes.
This year, for most of our clients selling in different categories, it exceeded expectations. The results were better than the last year, as suggested by the performance insights we are going to cover in this email.
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Before looking at the stats, let’s first understand the key factors that played a pivotal role in determining the success of Prime Day:
Category / Niche: certain categories may experience relatively higher demand during the event.
Competition: depending on the number of competitor brands/products, as well as the deals and promotions they were running.
Catalog Size: A diverse range of products can attract a wider customer base and increase the chances of achieving higher uplift in sales.
Stock Availability: Low stock can limit how much a Brand can take advantage of the surge in traffic and demand.
Goals – Different goals such as awareness, customer acquisition, and profits, would dictate spending allocation and returns.
Budget - Sellers with a higher budget may choose to run more extensive campaigns or offer deeper discounts to attract customers.
Our findings:
Overall, we noticed:
• Ad impressions surged by 1.5x to 6x.
• Clicks increased by 1.2x to 3x.
• Average Daily PPC Sales increased between 1.5x to 3.6x.
• Total sales increased between 1.6x to 3.5x.
Day 1 vs Day 2
The Day 1 of the two-day event appeared stronger than Day 2 for most accounts.
• On average, there was a 25% - 48% drop in PPC sales on Day 2 compared with Day 1,
• the number of impressions experienced a decrease of 2% to 51% on Day 2.
• And Overall sales saw a decline of 14% to 80%.
The PPC conversion rates were somewhat lower than on other days for most accounts, with advertisers bidding higher to capture more impressions share. This resulted in increased ad costs (ACOS) or lower ad returns (ROAS).
The ROAS was also impacted by the factors we discussed above. In certain cases, sellers were willing to allocate more budget, considering the broader benefits such as increased brand awareness and customer acquisition. Additionally, we considered an expected decline in search volume in post-Prime Day week, which is a common trend. Therefore, the impact on ROAS was not solely attributed to PPC management.
On average, we observed a decrease in average ROAS ranging from 3% to 44% compared to other days of the month. However, in some instances, we also witnessed up to a 15% increase in ROAS.
Prime Day 2023 vs 2022
Since Prime Day this year (Jul 11-12) took place around the same time as last year (Jul 12-13), we can rule out the seasonality aspect, making it more comparable. We observed a significant jump in sales, importantly on products without offers, with an average 76% rise compared to the previous year. (9% to 165%).
Furthermore, last year, deals and offers played a more substantial role in driving sales and conversions. Products that were featured with deals experienced a higher share of sales and conversion rates, and most products without, rather saw a drop. This year we observed a notable shift. Products without deals also witnessed an uplift in sales, resulting in higher sales vs last year.
This indicates that Prime Day 2023 was also favorable for sellers who did not rely on deals.
The above performance insights majorly involve products without deals. The products with deals witnessed higher results up to an 8x increase in impressions and up to 5x increase in sales.
PPC planning
PPC played an important role during Prime Day. Without the strategic implementation of PPC campaigns, the outcomes we achieved would not have been the same. Here’s a high-level overview of how we planned for Prime day:
Implementing campaigns ahead: We planned our Prime-day specific campaigns or changes 1-2 weeks ahead. This enabled us to gradually push the campaigns, for a warm-up period to maximize their effectiveness and impact. New campaigns need some time to build momentum and history.
Preparing campaign segments: We carefully segmented our campaigns to effectively target specific customer segments, and allocate budget based on goals: awareness, conversion, ranking, etc. Our campaign structure helped us to allocate the budget more effectively.
Anticipating a drop in conversion: There is generally a temporary dip in conversion rates leading up to Prime Day. Shoppers are usually checking out products, adding them to cart, to apply any offers during the event. This also helps to build a pool of retargeting lists to remind shoppers (who visited) of the product. This strategy pays off much more for products with offers and discounts.
Prime Day Specific Strategies
Based on business goals, we implemented keyword and product targeting as well as retargeting strategies, to optimize our campaigns specifically for Prime Day, to ensure maximum reach and effectiveness.
Closely monitoring the day: We closely monitored the performance of our campaigns throughout Prime Day, allowing us to make real-time adjustments and optimize our results for optimal performance. We needed to adjust budgets throughout as some campaigns started spending more than planned, bids, and placement. We also leveraged budget rules, for automatic adjustments where needed.
Planning for Post-Prime Day: As a general trend, search volumes see a steep decline in the post-Prime Day week, and campaigns spend low. It can be a useful strategy to utilize this underutilized spending during Prime Day. Additionally, it’s crucial to reassess performance and make changes after the event, as the performance is different, usually marked by a significant drop in conversion.
Other learnings:
Issue alerts on the Sponsored Products campaign page. The feature shows alerts on the Campaigns page for various issues such as ad policy violations, product eligibility issues, low featured offer win rates, and campaigns not receiving clicks. [Read more].
Improving CTR through main images. Main image can have a huge impact on your product CTR. Here’s a good way to improve your products main image. [Read more].
The new 'Trending Now' category on Amazon. This feature displays products that were popular and in high demand for specific keywords during the Prime Days event. [Read more].
Thanks,
George
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