admin_fortress | Nov 04, 2020
Published in Market Trends
Despite global sales of $10 Billion, Prime Day was not a success for many leading brands.
The last minute announcement of dates took many by surprise, but this wasn’t the only driver of performance on the day.
Whilst all brands we partner with experienced an overall uplift in sales, we wanted to share what drove an increase of 355% for one of our star performers on Prime Day.
Success Driver # 1 – Planning for Multiple Scenarios
Nobody outside of Amazon was certain of the dates for Prime Day and waiting for the announcement was a mistake many made.
Our approach with this beauty brand was to scenario-plan in the months leading up to October. We workshopped a host of different scenarios and enabled the client to make smarter choices on preparation including stock levels, marketing readiness, pricing, Amazon conditions and a host of other factors so they didn’t need to make decisions urgently.
When dates were announced, most of the thinking had already been done, enabling them to pull the trigger on campaigns that were ready to go.
We’re finding the smarter retailers are taking the emotion and urgency out of these types of events with smarter scenario-planning that includes the many idiosyncrasies of selling inside the Amazon environment.
Success Driver # 2 – Product Offering
Only choosing your top performing products for these types of sales is often the wrong decision.
For this brand we suggested offering a larger variety including both top performing and lesser known products, which ended up being 50% of their total catalogue.
By doing this we were able to give shoppers a variety of options, allowing them to purchase refills and also try new products at a discounted price. This approach was very successful as we sold out of 3 items, one of which was not a best-seller.
Success Driver # 3 – Pricing Discount Strategy
When the default pricing discount is 20%, following the herd may not yield the highest revenue opportunity.
To stand out and entice prime day shoppers we suggested increasing the discount to 30%. The additional discount doesn’t always need to be this drastic but if you can still make it profitable then go for it!
Prime Day allows customers to purchase products at a discounted price, giving them the flexibility to try new products with less risk. If your customer is making a decision between multiple products, chances are they’re going to go with the product that’s discounted by 30% vs the default 20%.
Success Driver # 4 – Proactive Responses
In a dynamic and frantic market that only lasts for 48 hours, marketing strategies can’t be static.
During day 1 of the sales our client was a victim of its own success, selling out 3 products that underpinned their overall campaign strategy.
The team hustled relying on scenario-planning and real time communication with the client, adding 3 additional products including campaign strategies for each.
These additional product sales were a significant contributor to their overall result and ensured brand loyal customers were able to make purchases.
As the client said:
With Fortress Brand, we were able to launch our brand on Amazon and enjoyed an incredibly fruitful Prime Day. The account management team of Alexandra and Luke has been indispensable in creating effective product pages that appeal to our target market/seasonal strategy. The team worked in real-time during Prime Day to ensure sales ran smoothly.
Your Success…
Prime Day is an amazing opportunity to radically improve sales, but there are opportunities every day in the Amazon marketplace and smarter planning, product selection, pricing strategy and a proactive and responsive approach can make all the difference.
That’s what we do here at Fortress Brand and if you’ve got an exciting product, we’ve got an exciting partnership offering we’d love to discuss with you. To learn more about this please reach out to [email protected]