With the competition on Amazon getting fiercer every day, sellers use several methods to thrive in the Amazon marketplace. Lightning deals are one of the best methods! Although this may require you an investment of some sort — like an initial fee — lightning deals can give back more long-term investment returns when appropriately utilized. Lightning deals paired with Amazon product listing optimization will definitely provide positive results.
Today’s guide centers on how to create an Amazon lightning deal that can supercharge your product ranking and overall performance on search results. So, don’t miss out! Learn about what a lightning deal is and why many sellers utilize it to develop their comprehensive Amazon SEO techniques.
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What are Amazon Lightning Deals?
These deals are a type of product promotion you can see in the Amazon marketplace. You can apply to have time-sensitive discounted product features for both the Amazon Today’s Deals page or the Prime Day page as a seller. You can see these deals available for a set period of time, or until the stocks run out.
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These pages place all the best deals on the site into one place, which is perfect for shoppers who are always on the lookout for discounts. And because these deals are time-sensitive, customers tend to buy the discounted items right away. This is a perfect opportunity to attract more shoppers and experience a significant boost in sales.
What Lightning Deals Can Do For You
As indicated above, lightning deals are discounted products available, but with a limited amount of stock, and only for a certain period of time. Lightning deals help boost sales, visibility, and traffic. These things are crucial if you want to rank higher and have better chances for the buy box.
Boosts Sales
Lightning deals can only provide a relatively low-profit margin. However, the significant spike in the order frequency can make up for it. Since the promotion is time-sensitive, shoppers are more likely to buy the items to take advantage of the sale. This is also a good strategy if you want to get rid of your stale inventory to make way for new products.
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Improves visibility
Aside from getting sales, brand recognition is just as important. With your products spread out on every possible page on the Amazon website, you will have a greater chance of increasing your brand awareness. It plays a vital role in a shopper’s buying decisions and will help your brand get ahead of your competitors. When you have at least one item up on the lightning deals page, it can significantly affect your other products’ visibility, as well.
Drives traffic
Deals are an effective way to get a shopper’s attention. In fact, Amazon gets the most sales during Prime Day. Most consumers would check the deals page first before even going through the main page. The discounted price makes your product listing more attractive and more likely to be clicked by Amazon shoppers–driving more traffic and clicks to your store. With a good Amazon account optimization and the best images to go with the listing, your clicks are expected to spike.
How Do You Create an Amazon Lightning Deal?
Here’s a detailed list of the things you should do to create a successful Amazon Lightning deal:
1. Check for Eligibility
There are several requirements you need to meet to be eligible for an Amazon lightning deal. You need to have a professional seller account. It is also important that you maintain your overall ratings to a minimum of 3.5 stars with no less than 5 Seller Feedback every month.
In addition to that, there are still some requirements that your product must meet to be eligible for the deal.
- It needs to have an Amazon sales history and a rating of not less than 3 stars.
- It must be eligible for Prime in all regions.
- It must follow the pricing policies of Amazon.
- It must be inoffensive, unrestricted, and appropriate.
- It should be in ‘New Condition.’
- It must have a wide variety of selection.
- It must adhere to customer product review policies.
- It must follow with the deal frequency policies.
2. Log on to Amazon Seller Central and Navigate to the Deals Menu
This is the next thing to do after determining that your Amazon seller account and products are eligible for the Amazon Lightning deals. Log on to Amazon Seller Central, go to the “Promotions” tab and click “Deals.”
3. Select “Create a New Deal”
After you clicked on “Deals,” your previous promotions will appear on the screen after loading. On the same page, you will see a “Create a new deal” button. Click on that button.
4. Pick an Eligible Product and Type in the Correct Information
After clicking on “Create a new deal,” the next thing to do is to choose the product, and choose Lightning Deal as the promotion type.
5. Choose a Schedule for Your Amazon Lightning Deal
After you enter all the vital information for your Amazon Lightning Deal, you need to choose a date range for your promotion. However, you can’t pick the actual day and time that your Lightning deals will appear.
6. Configure your Lightning Deal
Enter the deal’s price and the details about your remaining inventory. You need to give at least a 15% discount for your items. It is also wise to offer some or all of your product variations.
7. Review Your Product’s Information
Do not forget to review if you have input the correct information for your Lightning Deal.
8. Submit and Receive Your Schedule
After making sure that your product information is accurate, submit your Lightning Deal for approval. Take note that Amazon will give you a notification about your actual Lightning Deal a week before. If you are lucky, your deals might appear at a good time, when shoppers are busy buying.
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Cancelling Your Amazon Lightning Deal
It is worth noting that it is possible to cancel a lightning deal. However, there are cancellation rules you must observe:
- Amazon will charge you upon cancelling a lightning deal less than 25 hours prior to the start of your deal’s schedule.
- There’s a possibility that you’ll be blacklisted from future lightning deal creations.
Here’s how to cancel a deal:
- Go to the Lightning Deals Dashboard on your Amazon seller account.
- Select the All tab on the left side and then View.
- Click Cancel Deal.
Using Lightning Deals to Boost Your Search Performance
Offering lightning deals is like hitting three birds with one stone. You can make good sales while also boosting your brand awareness, while ranking higher in the search results. This is the reason why these deals are intentionally created to complement Amazon’s A9 ranking algorithm. If you do it correctly, lightning deals can be your fail-proof SEO strategy. Make the most of your lightning deal by making sure your listing is properly optimized.
Your product listings’ optimization is vital for the long-term results of your lightning deals. A single lightning deal can significantly influence the performance of certain keywords, thus taking your Amazon Standard Identification Number or ASINs up the search ranking results along with it.
Optimize your listing according to the guidelines below.
- Your descriptive titles should not be over 200 characters in length and should only include the most relevant keywords.
- Choose high-quality images that would showcase your product’s best characteristics and application.
- Highlight your product’s benefits using descriptions and bullet points.
- Maintain a healthy seller account and a positive rating and feedback.
You have an option to do the Amazon optimization yourself or hire a professional. Either way, you will still need to invest if you want to rank and create profit in the Amazon marketplace.
Key Takeaway
Offering a lightning deal will not only boost your sales for the duration of your promotion. It could also improve your sales within your niche for up to two weeks. With the right planning, computation, and product listing optimization, running a lightning deal as soon as possible will be the best thing you can do for your Amazon business.
Author’s Bio
Jayce is the managing director of Seller Interactive, an Amazon marketing agency in Canada dedicated towards helping brands grow on Amazon. His content marketing expertise has led him to work with brands such as Toyota and GoDaddy, producing content that reached over 20M views in a month. He is on a journey to help D2C brands scale their business on Amazon.
Earlier this year, it has come to our attention that eMarspro has been named a top business consultant. According to Clutch, our company ranked highly on their list for the top consulting firms. If you haven’t heard of Clutch yet, it’s a market research and review firm based in Washington, DC.
Each year, Clutch holds an awards cycle to recognize the top-performing service providers from different industries such as IT, marketing, and business services. We work hard to deliver the absolute best products and working experience to our clients, and we’re thrilled that this hard work has paid off.
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