Amazon Prime Day may have been going since in 2015, in an effort to lure new subscribers and deepen existing members’ loyalty to the programme, but it is still one of the largest sales events in the world.
And while there are no official numbers available yet on this year’s event, Reuters reports that US online sales on the first day rose about 6% compared to a year ago. In the UK, industry experts are expecting it to be the largest Prime Day ever, with £1.2bn of online spend – a 92% increase in customer spend compared with normal spending levels.
But with consumers leveraging search and price comparison as never before, even Amazon must keep an eye on rising competition and customer-centricity, because the Prime Day craze is rubbing off on other retailers.
Walmart, Target and others have all launched large promotional events just around the same time, targeting the people out there, in the mindset to find deals, and comparing across platforms. Amazon is no longer the only significant retail media player, with more and more retailers having matured their retail media offer.
That brings great opportunities to brands in this omnichannel world. They can direct that traffic to their products with Amazon media investments, but they can also expand their offer to other retailers and diversify their portfolio. In marketing and media, more is often more.
Setting up the right media plan and cutting through the noise on Prime Day – or any other retail high times – can be challenging, but there’s huge potential to tap into as retail media is evolving. Here’s a few success factors to consider to make the most of sales events and the increased number of retail media networks:
– Diversify the retail media investment and consider investing into other networks to benefit from increased activity, especially if you have tested the impact before.
– Diversify ad formats, e.g. extend from the very crowded search into video and display formats.
– Be aware of halo effects. As well as driving sales on the platforms, retail media ads have a significant halo impact on non-platform sales. For example, when spending on Amazon display ads, we know this spend drives 45% of sales off Amazon.
– Leverage channel synergies. Stacking multiple marketing channels and taking full omnichannel impacts into account will drive a larger impact and ROI.
– Test and learn your way through options, guided by KPIs – then optimise for next year/the next sales event.
– Think omnichannel. Brands must remain customer-centric and cover the entire customer journey. Don’t plan, execute or measure in silos.
– Measure holistically. It can be tricky to understand actual, incremental return on investment; therefore, it is vital to measure and understand the role of retail media within the full marketing mix, and impact across channels.