How Brands Can Replicate Prime Day Success this Holiday Season

Over the past 10 years, Prime Day has become a critical sales event for brands, especially for the countless small- and medium-sized sellers that rely on Amazon to grow their businesses. But Prime Day’s impact has permeated the entire retail industry, with direct competitors like Target and Walmart launching their own midsummer sales holidays and brands designing their own unique campaigns to ride the wave of consumer intent.

With this year’s Prime Day come and gone, the focus is now on holiday, but many of the same tactics that garnered success during the summer sale can also make the holidays merry and bright.

Dig deeper into Prime Day selling tactics in the full report Prime Day and Beyond, and tune into our Holiday Readiness Webinar Series later this month for even more tips and tricks to win the holiday season.

Gamifying the Season

At a fundamental level, Prime Day is driven by gamification principles. The sales event is only available to a select group of people (Prime members) and they only have two days to sift through Amazon’s extensive network of sellers and deep inventory assortment to find the best possible deals.

The core mechanics of the holiday activate all kinds of emotions — excitement, urgency, even anxiety — that rev up customers and inspire them to shop. This is a strategy that all brands can benefit from during any peak shopping period, according to Ericka McCoy, Chief Marketing Officer at Resonate.

“The gamification of Prime Day is something that brands and retailers can replicate,” McCoy said in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “We saw in our data that these are not low-cost shoppers versus, say, Walmart. However, they are trying to see if they are going to get a better price on the things they have been looking at — things that are likely already in their cart. Because when you look at the products in their carts, it’s things that are unique or innovative, even fun. This is telling me that this audience was a shopper that was playing along.”

For competitive sales periods and events especially, brands can convert more customers by putting these more innovative and best-selling products into the sales spotlight.

’Tis the Season to Prep Holiday Sales, Inventory

Once sellers determine which products they want to create limited-time deals and discounts for, they need to develop a plan for promoting these products, especially if they want to be featured in Amazon’s most high-traffic sections, like the Lightning Deals and Prime Deals pages, according to David Hutchinson, VP of Marketplaces at NP Digital.

“You have to be thinking ahead in terms of which products will go on that page and be ready because that window opens up and sells out very quickly,” Hutchinson said in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “Once you identify which products you’re going to discount, you need to think about whether you’ll have enough in either your warehouse or Amazon’s warehouse so you’re not displacing products that would be bought over the holiday season. We do not see many brands discounting every single product they have for the sake of it anymore — they understand the financial and supply chain pains that come with doing that.”