It’s important to make sure that you’re ready to go for the holidays on Amazon, but how? Here are seven simple tips to make sure that you’re ready to roll.
Check Your Stock Status
Make sure you have a desirable product selection. Replenish any popular items that are currently out of stock in time for peak season.
If you ship items to an Amazon warehouse for Prime eligibility, there’s an extra layer of logistics here! Keep in mind, this year Amazon has made some changes on the fulfillment side.
Finally, make sure your product data and landing pages are accurate and optimized!
Plan Your Promotions for
Black Friday and Cyber Monday
Promotions increase click-through-rate and conversions—after all, who doesn’t like a good deal?
They also help you stay relevant against your competitors, who will almost certainly be offering some kind of deal during the holiday season. People make purchases during this time of year because of perceived value or actual value, so make sure you’re offering just that!
Put Amazon holiday promotions in place, or at least discuss if a promotion is a viable offering.
Analyze Your Amazon Black Friday Data
Harvesting last year’s results helps predict trends and improve efficiency.
If you have the data available from Seller Central, analyze what did or didn’t work last year and adjust accordingly. For example, if you had a promotion in place for an item but that promotion yielded little to no return, you may want to consider re-visiting your strategy this year.
Additionally, if you know a specific category does better than others during this time of year, be prepared to allocate more spending to this category by setting specific budgets. (A good Amazon product segmentation strategy helps a lot!)
Start Planning for Amazon Black Friday Early
There is no point in launching new campaigns, ad groups, ad copy, etc. the week of Black Friday or Cyber Monday. You want to have campaigns up and running, so they can collect data beforehand, and so you have time to optimize.
If you launch a new campaign the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and the cost per click turns out to be much higher than expected (which it’ll likely be considering the time of year) with a similar conversion rate, you’ll waste a lot of ad spend.
Having campaigns live before the big day means you’ll already have a good idea of what’s working well and what isn’t, which helps you understand how to allocate spending. The lag in Amazon reporting makes this especially important.
Make Sure You’re Competitive
Many retailers are advertising on multiple channels during the holidays, which can complicate price comparisons.
Keep a close eye on the conversion rate for your most popular and your most price-volatile items.
Remember that Amazon is just one channel—what’s being offered on Google or other channels can impact your sales as well.
Be Aware of the “Amazon Effect”
Amazon can have a serious impact on your other sales channels. We often see retailers price themselves out on one or more channels—by charging more on their website than on Amazon, for instance.
If this is the case, Amazon will likely get the sale, and with most businesses that means less profit per sale.
It’s sometimes worth it to price Amazon items lower, if you drive a lot of volume through Amazon or if those sales tend to create add-on purchases or repeat customers. However, it’s still worth careful consideration.
Don’t Set It and Forget It
Regularly monitor your Amazon holiday campaign performance, and re-allocate spend appropriately.
This is something a lot of retailers fail to accomplish during this time of year. We see businesses come to us after the season that have failed to be aggressive enough and left revenue and profit on the table.
We also, unfortunately, see businesses that have spent disproportionately to the returns they were seeing —and that have lost money as a result. Amazon’s attribution reporting makes this process more difficult than on other channels—but it’s still crucial to ensuring profitability.
The single biggest piece of advice for managing the Amazon holiday period: be prepared. Plan and prepare now, and be ready to launch campaigns early to collect important data.
Want to succeed this holiday season? You need an experienced agency that knows Amazon inside and out. Read about our Amazon Campaign Management here!
