This is a guest post from the e-Comas team. e-Comas is a Luxembourg-based eCommerce agency that helps brands grow faster globally with data-driven insights. Working across Amazon, Shopify, CDiscount, Veepee, Bol, Walmart, and more, they set brands up to scale their business and increase their profitability by overseeing their accounts, content, and advertising.

Amazon possesses an impressive range of promotions for sellers to tempt customers old and new. Amazon Deals are lucrative opportunities, especially around Q4, when Black Friday and Cyber Monday trigger a major surge in holiday shoppers.

2022 saw a more than 400% boost in Amazon sales on Black Friday across several European countries, and these shoppers tend to return looking for more Deals throughout the winter holiday period.

However, using Deals requires a well-crafted plan to see impressive results. Whether you want to make a profit, shift excess stock, or increase brand awareness, you need to strategize carefully to achieve your goals. This post will cover the different types of Amazon Deals, how to use them, and top tips from the e-Comas team on making the most of this attractive sales tactic.

Types of Deals

Amazon offers a range of Deals, with the main ones being:

• Lightning Deals: These are quick-fire offers lasting only four to six hours and are very popular among shoppers. They’re great for sellers who have excess inventory to shift. However, your product must have at least a three-star rating and be Prime eligible.
• 7-Day Deals: Also known as Best Deals, these are price discount promotions with a week-long duration. Your product will appear on Amazon’s Deals page with a “Limited time deal” badge.
• Deal of the Day: This is Amazon’s highest-visibility Deal, which takes priority over 7-Day Deals. Running for 24 hours, it appears at the top of the Deals page and, again, is excellent for selling excess inventory.
• Coupons: Coupons give shoppers the extra thrill of money off at the checkout. They require shoppers to click the coupon to apply the discount and are available as “link” discounts that apply across your store or “clip” coupons that are limited to a specific product. There’s a small charge to the seller every time a coupon is used.
• Promotions: Amazon promotions allow you to offer a percentage off your products, free shipping, or a Buy One, Get One deal. Promotions have to wait four hours after they’re created to go live, otherwise it’ll be denied.

In addition, each type of Deal has eligibility criteria, so run through each list to make sure your products can be included in a Deal. Most of the requirements are fairly obvious (e.g., no restricted or offensive products, the product must be Prime eligible). However, they must also have a sales history on Amazon, at least a three-star rating, and be in new condition.

Creating a Deal strategy

Deals cost you money and can see your inventory fly off the shelves faster than you anticipated, so you need a strategy in place before adopting this tactic:

• Beware Buy Box suppression: Amazon imposes this penalty if your Deal price isn’t lower than your average price for the last 30 days. This prevents sellers from inflating their prices prior to introducing a “discount” to sell the item for the same price. So, for example, if you lowered your price as a test to see if it was more effective than your current price, then went back to the original price, Amazon could suppress your Buy Box. That’s why you should test new prices with a Deal.
• Capitalize on ASINs: Ensure you launch Deals on selected ASINs based on predetermined factors. Will the deal impact your P&L negatively? Only set up a Deal if you have to shift stock or if margins allow. Launching deals on any ASIN without considering profitability will only harm your business.
• Monitor Deal performance: If your brand is in growth mode and you expect your bottom line to be impacted, make sure you select the right KPIs to measure. You should forgo monitoring profitability in favor of brand awareness metrics. Additionally, A/B test your Deals to see what yields the best results, such as running a particular product as a Lightning Deal rather than a 7-Day Deal.
• Leverage data: Amazon can provide highly detailed information on not only your Deal sales, but also their upper-funnel power (i.e., when people become aware of your products and at what stage they hit “Buy”). Use Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) as well to see which Deals have been effective and when.
• Run tempting discounts: Offer a discount that’s significant enough to convince shoppers to take advantage of it. People want a good deal; otherwise, your traffic won’t convert.

Note: If you sell groceries or other commonplace commodities, Lightning Deals are not for you. These tend to underperform compared to luxury or highly coveted purchases because the discount usually isn’t enough to motivate them to buy.

Using Deals on Amazon event days

Obviously, Deals cost more — but often yield incredibly fast results — on Amazon event days like Prime Day and other major shopping days. However, you can capitalize on the time leading up to these events since Amazon shoppers start browsing early.

Look at deal prices the week before the event and capture some of that lead-in traffic. This is also a prime opportunity to advertise your products with Sponsored Brands, DSP, and Sponsored Display to drive brand awareness and product discovery. Be sure to take advantage of final hours to catch straggling shoppers who missed the main event.

Your inventory planning should factor in an increase in units sold during Deal events (forecasting for the whole year based on the same event in previous years will greatly help with this).

Again, we recommend using data to assess performance around event days. Within AMC, you can, for example, receive a Tentpole Phase Analysis report that establishes which phase of a sales event is the most profitable and which brings more traffic. Is it the lead-up, the event itself, or the lead-out phase? Or a combination of these? This report will help you distribute your budget accurately throughout the whole period.

If you need help leveraging your AMC data for actionable insights, consider reaching out to e-Comas, a data specialist eCommerce agency that can help you achieve the best possible results.

How to advertise your Deals

Advertising Deals will boost traffic and conversion, but with stock moving so fast, any error could have costly repercussions. To avoid mistakes and promote optimal ad performance, be sure to:

• Plan your budget ahead of time, factoring in lead-up and lead-out phases. Your spend will increase for at least two weeks, so you don’t want to run out of budget on the most important days.
• Verify your Sponsored Brands campaigns are live and running once they launch, with no copy that could stop the approval process; otherwise, your ads could be rejected during the main event days. To increase visibility, ensure only ASINs with Deals display in Sponsored Brand campaigns. Run a healthy mix of Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display on your Deal ASINs for maximum publicity.
• Protect your product detail pages (PDP). Competitors will try to steal sales through Sponsored Products and Sponsored Display placements on your listing, so make sure you target those placements with the rest of your catalog to retain shoppers’ attention.

Depending on your brand goals, you could drive organic and paid social media traffic to Deals during the promotional period.

Other ways to boost visibility for Deals

Amazon offers several free tools to help sellers boost their brand presence on the marketplace. The Brand Store, Amazon Posts, and Amazon Live are all excellent (and free) options for promoting your Deals.

A top tip for increasing their discoverability and improving the customer experience is to create a specific Brand Store page showcasing your Deals.

Another simple way to support your Deals’ performance is to ensure PDPs are optimized for all ASINs you run Deals on. Check these pages regularly to keep them up to date and seasonally accurate, as well as to make sure they include the most relevant keywords. Update them before you start running your Deal.

Wrapping up — Amazon Deals are your secret weapon for success on the marketplace

Sales promotions and discounts on Amazon are a sure-fire method to capture consumer attention and nudge them to make a purchase. Amazon Deals take this tactic a step further by boosting your product visibility and brand awareness with unique offers.

Review the types of Deals outlined above to decide which ones best suit your catalog (while ensuring your items meet the accompanying criteria), then you can begin developing a strategy to advertise and launch your discounts. By following the advice in this article, you’ll equip your brand to draw in more traffic and entice them to jump on your Deals — essentially selling low to earn high profits.