This year’s Amazon Prime Day is predicted to be July 9-10, 2024.
Prime Day began as an anniversary celebration and has since altered the holiday shopping schedule across all of retail (not just e-commerce). Every year, Amazon buyers and sellers wait with anticipation for the summer Prime Day deals.
Amazon has historically released the Prime Day dates with fewer than four weeks to prepare. This means that sellers should start preparing early.
Here’s what we know about Prime Day in 2024, including key dates and resources to keep on your radar.
A Brief History of Amazon Prime Day
- The first Amazon Prime Day event was on July 15, 2015 as an anniversary celebration of 20 years of Amazon. This shopping event lasted 24 hours and was available to shoppers in nine countries.
- Since that first event in 2015, Prime Day has expanded to a two-day event, available to shoppers in more than 20 countries. The shopping holiday has become so successful, in fact, that Amazon released a Prime Early Access Sale in October 2022, leading up to the Q4 holidays.
- The shopping holiday has become such a success that its sales have surpassed that of Black Friday and Cyber Monday consistently. In fact, it has become a staple of the retail calendar, with stores like Target, Walmart, and Macy’s jumping on the summer sales boon.
- Prime Day 2023 was the biggest shopping event ever for third-party sellers, even outpacing Amazon’s own retail business. US sales were 6.1% higher than in 2022, reaching a record $12.7 billion.
In 2024, Prime Day is more than a reward for loyal Prime subscribers. It’s also a great way to garner even more subscribers and new shoppers for your store.
Amazon Prime Day 2024: Important Dates & Deadlines*
- May 3, 2024: Deadline to submit deals to be considered for Prime Day.
- June 20, 2024: Deadline for incoming inventory to be included in the Prime Day sale.
*Note: More details on Prime Day are forthcoming! Be sure to bookmark this official Amazon’s Prime Day prep page to stay on top of new information as it’s released.
How to Prep for a Successful Amazon Prime Day
Even if you’ve missed the key dates and deadlines, there are still ways to take advantage of Amazon Prime Day.
Start with this checklist to make sure you’re ready to capture more sales:
- Inventory: Look at comparable sales holidays from the past (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Prime Early Access Sale, etc.). See if you can spot trends and calculate a relative number you need in stock to cover all your sales because running out of stock on Prime day could be the kiss of death for your Amazon rankings. Do you have an FBM backup? Plan for all contingencies and make sure you have cash on hand to cover any pivoting.
- Marketing: Connect with your marketing team or agency early. If you’re running a Prime Day deal or external coupon on social media, keep your marketing team in the loop. Ask them for ideas on innovative campaigns to differentiate your brand from the competition.
- Listing Optimization: Don’t wait until two days before Prime Day to optimize your listings. Do it two weeks or more beforehand so you can get the organic lift of those powerful keywords. Reminder: Do not try to optimize for Prime Day-related keywords! In general, do not try to out-Amazon Amazon.
- Audit Your Ads: There’s nothing worse than wasting money on ads during peak traffic! Clean out keywords that aren’t performing and optimize for your top keywords. Be prepared to spend more money during Prime Day. You may even want to strategize higher ad spend in the hours before, during, and after your Lightning Deal.
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What to Do if You Don’t Have a Prime Day Deal
While shoppers flock to Amazon specifically for Prime Day deals, there is still plenty of opportunity to capitalize on the “halo effect” of traffic across e-commerce channels.
- Social Media and Email Promotions: If you’ve developed a social media community, you can run promotions or offers to these audiences. Drive traffic to Amazon, or you can drive to your own website, TikTok Shop, etc.
- Offer a Coupon: Even if you don’t have a Prime Day Lightning Deal, you can use a coupon to drive people to your listing. You only pay for redemptions, but you get the benefit of a callout with the little green banner on the listing, visible from search results.
- Host a Contest: Create buzz around your product and your brand by hosting a contest with your audience! This could be anything from a bingo card of Prime Day deals to a hashtag goal for user-generated content.
- Try a Bundle or a Gift-with-Purchase: Everyone loves a bonus deal. Increase the perceived value of your product by creating a bundle or tossing in a freebie with purchase over a certain dollar amount. This could be something as simple as a sticker, postcard, scrunchie, pen, etc.
- Utilize Ads Beyond Amazon: Try using Google Ads to drive traffic to your Amazon listing. We highly recommend our partners at Ampd to help with this. You can also utilize Facebook ads or other social media platforms as well to expand your reach.
- Work with Influencers: Create an influencer campaign around Prime Day. Offer coupon codes for influencers to share with their audiences or ask that they promote your products during the sale.
- Brand Yourself as a Maverick: This may seem counterintuitive, but you could avoid Prime Day, much like the popular party game Cards Against Humanity did with Black Friday a few years ago. The belief: If you know the value of your product, you don’t need to discount it for people to want to buy it. It’s a bold move, but if you can pull it off, it could be gold for sales and branding.
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