Prime Day 2022: what you need to know about Amazon's big event

It’s not your average sales day. It’s not even one day. Prime Day is serious business for Amazon, and serious business for any brand that’s hot on its Amazon strategy.

It’s becoming the biggest sales event of the year not just for Amazon, but for all retail: a 48-hour sales bonanza that serves as an ideal launch point for a lot of brands.

Lady Gaga saw its potential in 2019 when she used Prime Day to launch her cosmetics brand Haus Laboratories, as part of its unique Amazon-exclusive debut. Customers were able to preorder the products ahead of their official launch on Amazon two months later.

Haus Labs has since used Prime Day to offer huge discounts – 30% off in 2020, 60% off in 2021 - contributing to its massive success: already one of the world’s biggest beauty brands, it was the third biggest-selling celebrity brand of 2020.

Use Prime Day well and you could be the Gaga of your own sector.

When is Prime Day 2022?

Amazon Prime Day 2022 will take place on Tuesday 12 July and Wednesday 13 July, with early deals starting from 21 June.

How can I prepare for Prime Day?

First you should decide which deals you want to use, on which products, and submit them by the deadline dates you can find in Seller Central. Consider whether you have overstock products to shift, or whether you want to improve rankings on best sellers.

Coupons may work particularly well for overstock, for example.

Perhaps you want to do a Gaga and launch a new product on Prime Day: in that case, Prime Member Promotions and Lightning Deals may be the way to go.

After you’ve chosen your deals, you should make sure your listings are perfect. Increased traffic to your pages is no good if your content doesn’t convert.

Make sure you have plenty of images of your product, your bullets are well written, and any questions in the customer questions & answers section are answered.

As well as deals, you should consider your advertising – more about that below.

Finally, make sure your inventory is ready for extra demand, and check the shipment deadlines.

What kind of deals can I use?

There are a few to choose from, which suit different purposes. Lightning Deals allow you to set a maximum quantity of units to sell at a discount, and these are displayed on the event page.

Prime Member Promotions and Prime Exclusive Discounts are similar to each other: they’re both exclusive to Prime members, and they’re always an option, but on Prime Day they’re displayed with a Prime Day Deals badge. Prime Member Promotions are pushed to the Prime Day and Today’s Deal pages.

Finally, you can use coupons. Your products are displayed with the coupon badge, which gets high visibility on search results and helps you get more traffic, sales and reviews.

How can I increase my Prime Day success?

Amazon itself encourages brands – naturally enough – to use the time around Prime Day, not just the event itself, to engage with shoppers. It says Prime Day shoppers engage with Amazon before the event, and after it too.

It makes sense: shoppers are aware of Prime Day, and plan to use it to find bargains, but have no idea what they’ll actually buy. The lead-up is a good time to advertise, and inspire those undecided shoppers.

Amazon says brands that advertise through the lead-up and lead-out phases of Prime Day are better able to build a brand presence.

We would certainly encourage brands to advertise in the two weeks before Prime Day.

Anything else I should know?

Prime Day can be expensive for brands – the fees for deals are higher, and the CPCs for advertising increase – but year after year proves to us that the results are well worth it.

Talk to us if you want any help with Amazon Prime Day, whether you’re launching a product or just want to build your brand. We’ll be delighted to help.