Amazon flash deals – how does it work?

In addition to PPC campaigns in Amazon Marketing Services, Amazon retailers have a further option to make their own products particularly appetizing, apart from organic listing: Amazon flash deals.

What are Amazon flash deals?

This format consists in a paid advertisement for a limited time, which, in contrast to the PPC campaigns, is not keyword-based; it is independent from Amazon keywords, but can be found in a separate offer area on Amazon.

Amazon Brand Guide

Here there is a large number of bargain hunters, who have particularly distinctive purchase intentions. According to this, a flash offer has an extremely important placement, which can generate an enormous amount of sales in a short time and push the organic listing; provided, that offers and products are actually attractive.

How can I generate flash deals?

Creating instant offers is easy. As a retailer, you will find the option in the Seller Central at the top below the tab “Advertising”. There, you can then select the product for which you want to create a quick offer. Basically every product can be advertised as a flash offer, even though Amazon must first approve. Whether or not an article is released for flash offers depends on various factors, some of which cannot be fully understood.

An individual week can be set for each product on which the flash offer will be played. Amazon specifies several periods that can be selected for the offer. It is particularly important to remember that the offer price cannot be entirely freely chosen. In fact, a maximum offer price is set by Amazon. This maximal amount is based on the price for which the item is normally sold. So, if you want to activate flash offers, be aware of the fact that a standard 10% discount is not enough: you´ll have to pay a little bit more.

In addition to the price offered, Amazon also specifies the minimum quantity for which the flash offer is available: the offer cannot be activated below the prescribed minimum quantity. This means that a certain amount of stock must be available in order use a flash deal.

The dealer pays the price for the flash offer not on the basis of clicks, but as a fixed fee, in this case of 35€. One should therefore consider in advance how to determine the offer price and quantity, since the fee is incurred directly and cannot be adjusted or adapted later, as well as PPC.