The good news is that this week’s Amazon Prime Day, the company’s seventh annual sale, will include influencer marketing.
The activation: The online retail behemoth reserved event rooms and filled them with merchandise for Prime Day. Consider bedrooms that are fully furnished and bathrooms that are packed with toiletries.
The business asked members of its Amazon Influencer Program to travel to these “creative residences” in Los Angeles, New York, and Austin in the weeks before Prime Day in order to create content.
Amazon held two webinars that provided best practices on how to maximize Prime Day earnings for creators who also sell on the site.
The business said that over 5,000 creators took part in these pre-Prime Day events.
Zooming out According to RetailMeNot, 313 shops advertised sales in conjunction with Prime Day in 2021, which is an 11% decrease from the previous year. That might be a sign of how challenging it is to compete with a big event that has amassed so much equity over time.
Despite this equity, the growth of Prime Day sales has slowed recently. According to Numerator, the average Prime Day order value decreased by 8.5% in 2021 compared to the previous two years.
This year’s Prime Day sales will be dominated by the US, which may be the reason the major retailer is introducing a number of new markets to the event.
One of the reasons Amazon is turning to influencers to reenergize the event is because the novelty is wearing off.
How come influencers? The significance of influencers to the normal consumer is rising.
In contrast to media firms and brands, who saw major declines, the number of minutes spent watching influencer-created content on Facebook and YouTube in Q4 2021 increased by 7 percent compared to the same quarter in 2020.
This is significant because 68 percent of viewers of YouTube influencer videos can name the brands mentioned.
Of that group, 86% have bought or plan to buy a product that has received such an influencer’s recommendation.
At the Cannes Lions festival in June, Ukonwa Ojo, then-CMO of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, stated that over the previous three years, creators have transformed from a “nice to have” to “a crucial part of how we go to market and how we succeed.”
Though authoritatives (experts like doctors and chefs), top-tier influencers, and micro-influencers were in the plans of at least 20% of such professionals, one in four communication specialists plan to invest in mid-tier influencers (100,000-999,999) as part of their influencer marketing strategies in 2022.
Between 20 and 50 percent of the marketing/communication budgets of three out of four communication specialists are spent on influencer marketing.
The main lesson learned is that producing aesthetically engaging material requires time and effort. Any retailer that has invested in influencer marketing should aim to make that process simpler for producers, so they can generate and share content before a big sale.
