Yes, we are already well into 2022, and we already have in hand the first relevant event of the year at Amazon: Spring Week. This year, the confirmed date of the event is April 1-13, 2022 in Europe; specifically in Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, and the Netherlands.
All sellers using the marketplace to sell will have already received an email from Amazon around this time announcing the event and offering their recommendation as to which products they are allowed to run specific promotions on those dates. If you are a Vendor (i.e. you supply Amazon with your product and Amazon sells it on your behalf), your Vendor Manager will have already contacted you to discuss and recommend how to approach and with which products you should participate in the event. And if you are in Seller format, you will have received an email in your platform notifying you of the dates and recommended products.
In Amazing we know that this type of event causes doubts and questions about how to participate and the strategy to follow, so we will try to answer the most frequently asked questions for all those who it’s the first time they can participate in the event; and for those who have already participated it on the past years, some tips and recommendations given our experience.
Can I participate in the event, even if I don’t receive an invitation?
In any Amazon event, you can participate if you sell products in the marketplace, but there are certain promotions and locations that to access them you must be invited.
In this case, the paid and invitation-only offer is for Lightning Deals and 7 Days Deals promotions. The cost ranges between €40 and €70 (depending on the country where it is executed) per product (Asin). The cost is shown when you activate the promotion on the vendor central or seller central platform. Please note that promotions can only be activated up to 1 week before the start of the event.
What is a Lightning Deal?
A Lightning Deal or a “Deal of the Day” is a paid promotion that you can carry out whether you sell in seller or Vendor format in which the seller offers a price discount on a certain product for a limited time (between 4 to 12 hours active) and that expires either because this period has ended or because all the units assigned to the promotion have been sold. The promoted product will appear in the marketplace in the “Deals of the Day” section as well as in the usual sections.
This promotion is very popular on Amazon and can be activated throughout the year, although events of this type can only be carried out on products that meet certain characteristics.
What is a 7 Day Promotion?
It is an alternative to the previous promotion. It is a discount on the price of the product, but this discount will be available for one calendar week. As in the previous case, it is the platform itself that will offer you the first available day of activation and has an implicit activation cost that also ranges between 40 and 60 €.
This type of promotion does not appear in a specific section of Amazon, nor does it carry any identifying tag like other types of promotions.
If I can’t do this type of promotion, what can I do?
If you want to participate in the event, you can, and you should. The two promotions mentioned above are not the only ones you can activate. In fact, the event will cause an increase in traffic during this period, and you should take advantage of it.
You can activate coupons, price discounts, activate volume purchase promotions… but study well which of these possibilities best fits your business figures and activate them on those products that are Retail Ready and that you know are attractive to the user and that can serve as a spearhead for the rest of your catalogue. At Amazing we plan the activation of promotions on an annual basis, always considering which products are suitable for it, the key moments, and the appropriate type of promotion.
What type of products should I promote at this event?
We could, and we will make a post dedicated to promotions and which products are suitable for each type of action, but in this case, we recommend you:
- If you have seasonal products, and they correspond to this moment (garden products, outdoor products, home products…) do not hesitate. It is a way to start the season on the right foot and to activate sales.
- For the strategic products, you want to promote this year, go for it. The type of promotion does not have to be aggressive, but notorious in terms of awareness.
- For those products that you have a lot of stock, it is a good way to start selling them.
- Those products in large pack format (for example, 6 units of detergent) apply a relevant discount, and it will help you to get sales traction.
- Products that you do not know if they are going to work or not in the marketplace. Use the event to test.
- Within your catalogue, on products that are very relevant and that are not yet Retail Ready to gain sales and increase the generation of reviews.
How do I prepare my products for the event?
We love this question because it is a factor that must be considered when participating in an event of this nature or just want to take advantage of the increased traffic of those days, even if you do not participate with any promotion.
The product detail pages are your showcase and fundamental for the sale. Therefore, from Amazing, we recommend:
- Review the images, check that they meet Amazon’s requirements in terms of resolution, size…, include lifestyle images and if you have a video, include it.
- Check the titles, the taxonomy, that they include the fundamental elements of the product, and that they have the most searched keywords.
- Include in the bullets or characteristics words Ad hoc to the event such as gift, spring… and for this purpose, it is essential to have a keyword search volume tool.
- The A+ or enriched content must include, in the cross-selling table, the complementary products that you want to push at that moment.
Is it possible to do something special with the Amazon store during events?
As you already know, the store is designed according to a series of templates offered by Amazon; we cannot configure it from scratch as we wish. The layout is by tabs and therefore, we can create a specific tab to include all our products on offer. In addition, we can customize the header banners with images and creativities that are “linked” to the event so that we personalize it, and it is much more attractive to the user.
If you carry out this tab and include as the products in the promotion, this tab will be activated when the products start their offers and not before. Do not hesitate to activate Sponsored Brand campaigns, redirecting traffic to the tab as the conversion rates are great.
Should I increase my advertising budget during the event?
Spring Week will be promoted on TV (or so it has been done in the past years) to attract traffic to the marketplace during those days. The increase in traffic means that we will have a possible increase in demand and therefore all players will be there trying to attract those buyers eager to buy or looking for opportunities.
Advertising is fundamental and, in fact, a good advertising strategy will be crucial to achieve the planned objectives. In Amazon events, bids increase, and many sellers, who have low budgets during the year, substantially multiply their investments in events. In other words, there is more competition for the same advertising space, and the highest bidder wins, so the “fight” is fierce. It will be necessary to increase budgets (not as much as usually happens on a Prime Day or Black Friday) but the key will be to know in which formats I should increase those budgets, in which strategy, and in which products to achieve the best halo effect.
We could continue talking for long on everything you need to do to prepare and to achieve success in this type of event, but the most important thing is to have clear what your goals are, what products are you going to push to achieve them and how much I can invest in all the marketing assets for it.
At Amazing, we have been helping our clients to achieve their goals on Amazon for more than 4 years, activating in a personalized way the available marketing assets and always with the focus on measurement in all our actions to learn day by day from the platform and learn from consumer behaviour and the category in which our products live.
Somos una agencia especializada en ayudar a los vendedores en Amazon en la gestión de marketing y publicidad.
