Prime Day has become one of the biggest shopping days of the year competing alongside holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In 2021, the site brought in $11.2B in sales and had the biggest sales day ever for smaller third-party retailers. Prime Day has offered many retailers the opportunity to increase sales in a somewhat dormant summer season to get that revenue boost between holiday shopping. Plus, other superstores like Target, Walmart, and Best Buy join in on the fun to host their own mega-sales days around the same time.
This year, however— is different with the shifting macroeconomic environment. In turn, consumers have tightened their belts and become more mindful of spending habits. This year’s Prime Day will offer a unique opportunity for consumers to combat some of those inflation prices, while also allowing retailers to clear out stockpiled inventory.
Of course, Amazon is taking the necessary steps to push Prime subscriptions in the weeks leading up to their event through additional social video & entertainment activations. Let’s take a look at how this leading retailer is prepping audiences for Prime Day.
Social video incentives
Amazon has fully embraced popular social video trends & filters to notify audiences of the upcoming shopping day. The brand’s most significant campaign push on Instagram Reels has been the utilization of funny filters that put a human face onto inanimate objects. While this filter adaptation has been seen on social video for some time, the objects are actually tech devices and appliances that will have Prime Day deals available.
This theme from the shorter Instagram-first clips emanated through their TV commercial with the full video posted to YouTube. Singer Jon Batiste has an entire backup crew of singing home appliances, gadgets, and more.
The marketplace has also expanded its influencer affiliations. Aside from retailers forming their own influencer partnerships, Amazon uses its affiliate program to nourish the funnel between social video and conversions. In fact, during the two weeks surrounding Prime Day, affiliates can earn 2X the amount they normally do from sales.
Amazon is actively leveraging its live shopping adaptations that feature influencers and celebs reviewing their favorite products. Under their live shopping, they have a “Prime Day Deals” section where creators are already going live in anticipation of the big day. This feature comes after the APAC distributor Alibaba first introduced livestream shopping to audiences in 2016. China has undoubtedly been a pioneer of livestream video shopping which creates a social connection as well as a sense of urgency in consumers. The Cyberspace Administration of China reported 388M livestream shoppers and an estimated value of $166B in 2020. Large enterprise brands like PG&E have gone around influencer partnerships to create their own livestream sales rooms, and even local farmers create channels to sell their food products!
In the western hemisphere, Amazon still reigns supreme and in the last two years, we’ve seen this content take off with bigger celebrities partnering with the marketplace to sell products. Influencer Porsha Williams shares her Prime Day favorites to her audience which has a high purchase affinity for skin products, moisturizers, and women’s apparel according to Tubular data. Gaming and tech influencer, Trisha Hershberg’s streams her sales day picks to her audience who is most likely to purchase fashion sneakers, mouse pads, Nintendo Switches, and strength training equipment.
Hilary Duff’s stream is specifically centered around supporting small businesses on Prime Day. Tubular’s Consumer Insights indicates that Duff’s social video audience exhibits a high purchase affinity for hair products, books, home & kitchen items, and beauty.
Streaming incentives
In order to elicit new subscriptions before the shopping holiday, Prime Video is leaning into its owned entertainment to attract new memberships. On July 6th, Prime made a bonus trailer for the new Lord of the Rings spin-off series, The Rings of Power, available for members’ viewing for only 48 hours. Lord of the Rings social video audiences are extremely valuable, loyal consumers which makes this highly-anticipated show a great piece of leverage. They are 19x more likely to shop for graphic novels, 9.9x more likely to shop for Playstation 4, and 3.9x more likely to shop for Kindle eBooks— all items that will be discounted for Prime Day deals!
Then on July 9th, Prime Video and Amazon-owned Twitch will stream The Ultimate Crown featuring mega-influencers MrBeast and Ninja playing League of Legends. In order to further attract this gaming audience, Prime is offering members exclusive experiences beyond Twitch streaming and chances to enter sweepstakes. By leveraging these action & gaming influencers, Amazon is attracting high converting gaming audiences. MrBeast’s audience is 6.8x more likely to shop for practice swords, 4.4x more likely to shop for airsoft products, and 3.3x more likely to shop for gaming mice.
With widespread fear of recession sweeping across the globe, Prime Day deals will provide some relief for consumers and smaller third-party retailers, alike. Nevertheless, Amazon has been taking extra steps to drive sales keeping in mind the economic uncertainty and many shoppers returning to in-store shelves post-pandemic. This is the first time we’ve seen the company using its owned content as leverage to pull more subscribers. We expect to see a huge turnout for Prime Day as consumers eagerly await deals on large purchases like tech items, gaming gadgets, beauty products, and more.
Learn more about how you can see which audiences are driving sales for specific brands and product categories here.