Wesley MacLaggan, SVP of marketing at Marin Software, looks at the potential Amazons Prime Day offers to retailers

One of the biggest online retail events of the year is fast approaching. Amazon Prime Day 2019 will be the fifth instance of the annual event, taking place 15 and 16 July.

Amazon introduced Prime Day back in 2015 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its founding. It was a one-off sales event offering more deals than Black Friday, exclusively for Prime members.

Prime Day 2018 may have only lasted a day (and a half), but it was Amazon’s biggest shopping event in its history—sales surpassed Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Prime Day 2017 over a 36-hour period. Retailers offered over a million deals worldwide and sold over 100m products. For any retail company, that’s a staggering growth opportunity.

Prime Day 2019 holds the potential for you to reach a colossal number of shoppers and drive incremental revenue.

Here’s what you need to know to advertise on Amazon:

Advertising solutions
Advertising on Amazon can be an easy way to promote your listings and get your products noticed when people are shopping for similar items. There are two advertising solutions: Sponsored Products for promoting individual listings, and Sponsored Brands for registered brand owners to promote their brand and product portfolio. These solutions can give your products a visibility boost and maximise sales by bringing those products to a new audience.

Sponsored Products
Amazon Sponsored Products ads are a type of paid advertising where you’re only charged when a consumer clicks your ad (pay-per-click). Keywords trigger the ads, and they also drive the consumer to a product detail page within Amazon. The ads can be displayed on top of, alongside, or within search results and on product pages, and can appear on both desktop and mobile.

Sponsored Products ads can help you grow sales on Amazon by reaching consumers searching for products like yours and driving them to your product page. This ad type can increase eligibility and placement status for your top Buy Box offers, and help grow your new and low-exposure ASINs.

Sponsored Brands
As with Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands are a type of paid advertising where you’re only charged when a consumer clicks your ad. Note that this ad type is only available for professional sellers enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry, vendors, booksellers, and agencies. You can display your ads at the top of, alongside, or within search results, on both desktop and mobile.

Sponsored Brands ads can help drive discovery of your brand. They’re great for generating awareness of a new product, promoting seasonal items, or creating more demand for a bestseller. They also allow you to drive consumers to your Store page, custom URL, or a bestselling product page.

Should I Advertise on Amazon?
Are you selling products online either via your own website or a third party? If the answer is yes, then Amazon Advertising is a must!

If you’re reluctant, start small. Only sell your top selling product(s) online, and then once you see the value, begin to increase your Amazon inventory. If you need additional help, then a third-party ad management platform like Marin is the solution for you.

We may be biased, but Marin was able to increase exposure by 79 per cent for Buyagift (a leading provider of gift experiences in the UK) by optimising bids with our leading ad management platform. We were also able to increase click volume by 36 per cent, with a 7.4 per cent lower cost-per-click than before. This grew awareness and engagement, and ultimately helped Buyagift boost revenue on Amazon by 17 per cent.

Take a leap of faith and reap the rewards this Amazon Prime Day!