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Amazon Prime Day quickly ascended into one of the biggest retail holidays of the year. So much so, that in response we now have Walmart Deals for Days, Target Circle Week, Best Buy Black Friday in July, and TikTok Deals for Days. What traditionally is an extremely slow period for retail sales (summer) has become the most competitive sales week outside of the holidays, ever.
Amazon Prime Day has been happening since 2015. It saw explosive, explosive growth from 2015 ($900M sales) to 2023 ($12.9B) – 39% cAGR (NBCNews). They do more revenue in 2 days than all but a few companies do in an entire year.
How do they do it? Lots of reasons. A ton of investment, strategies, etc. have gone into making Prime Day one of the most successful retail holidays in history. However, in this article – we’re going to focus on one big Amazon bet: influencer marketing and social commerce.
Amazon Prime Day 2024 is Going All In on Influencer Marketing & Social Commerce
Amazon has been betting a big chunk on its success on influencer marketing and social commerce for a long-time now. The Amazon Influencers program is stuffed with a ton of fantastic features to optimize social selling for its creators. So much so, that nearly every successful influencer has an Amazon Storefront (curated influencer lists of products and content directly on Amazon.com)
Because of that – Amazon has available to them one of the best toolkits and an army of creators at its disposal for maximizing revenue for Prime Days. We dive into Amazon’s influencer & social commerce marketing tactics below.
1. Favorite deals picked by influencers – on the Amazon Prime Day homepage
Shoppers are immediately greeted by the familiar faces of well known influencers like Alix Earl, Monet McMichael, Meredith Duxbury, and Jess Sims.
Consumers can click into a creator to get a curated list of their favorite deals. For example, Alix’s ‘Prime Day Favorites’ includes 281 skincare and home goods items.
It’s a brilliant & easy tactic to capture the attention of Gen Z and younger shoppers – every brand should be doing it. LoudCrowd, an integrated social commerce solution, can automate this shopping experience for any eCommerce brand – powering influencer shops for brands like Kohl’s, LOFT, and Crocs.
2. Exemplary communication with creators and affiliates
Amazon has been planning with its creators for months. The Amazon Influencer program to-date has been regularly keeping creators posted about what to expect for the retail holiday.
Leading up to and during Prime Day, creators received notifications like:
- Recommended products to promote for Prime Day
- An opportunity to opt-in for boosted commissions for certain product categories
- Tips & tricks about the most effective user-generated content for Prime Day
- Notes of encouragement and affirmation
3. Giving creators an Amazon Influencer Storefront and the tools needed to optimize for social conversions:
Amazon has mastered optimizing the customer journey from social through purchase.
Content creators love to regularly mention and link to their Amazon Influencer Storefront because they know it helps their followers quickly find the products they’re interested in. Once a shopper reaches a person’s influencer storefront, they can also check out other curated lists and UGC (content, reviews, etc.) from that creator, increasing the likelihood of a sale.
Maximizing Influencer Marketing & Social Commerce like Amazon Prime Days
eCommerce brands & retailers need a modern social commerce technology stack to fully replicate Amazon Prime Day’s influencer and social commerce marketing successes. LoudCrowd is the ideal solution for building out the exact same technologies and strategies for any eCommerce brand.
With LoudCrowd:
- Automatically generate influencer storefronts / shops for any creator, natively on the eCommerce website’s domain
- Provide creators a DIY way to curate product bundles and looks, plus create shoppable UGC with tagged products
- Manage affiliate and creator applications and communications
- Track sales from each creator and automatically payout commissions for approved sales
- Provide incentives for creating user-generated content like free product, discounts, site credits, and more
For example, boohoo.com uses LoudCrowd to power Creator Storefronts for the boohoo Collective influencer program:
Conclusion
Amazon’s Prime Day influencer marketing and social commerce strategies clearly work. It’s why competition is heating up and using copycat campaigns. Every one of the competing brands are being more aggressive about competing with Amazon. More press. Steeper discounts. Lots of influencers.
We saw the same thing around Black Friday in 2023 – classic Black Friday wars. Plus came the emergence of Pink Friday (championed in 2020 to help smaller Shopify stores collectively pre-empt big retailers- founded by The Boutique Hub) (Source: Seguno).
Brands & retailers need to differentiate themselves through integrated influencer and social commerce. Brands & retailers are destined to fight and lose these margin and promotion battles forever if they aren’t reactionary to trends in social commerce.
Build a great consumer experience. Build a great product. Find loyal customers. Use influencer and social commerce. Then brands can protect theirs margins instead of spending all summer planning a sale to cut into Amazon’s idea from 2015.
