Black Friday is an important day for any business. Historically, deals were only offered one day in-store, not online. In recent years, stores have begun to roll out their sales early and offer deals online. In 2020, 100 million people shopped online on Black Friday, looking for the best sales. Amazon is the #1 retailer in the US, making Black Friday and Cyber Monday very important days for the company.
If you’re a seller on Amazon, you’re probably wondering how you can increase your sales over this major shopping weekend. With so many deals on Amazon offered by so many competitors, how can you make your products stand out? What merchandising opportunities are available even if you can’t offer an extreme discount? Goat Consulting helps Amazon sellers with merchandising, advertising, and strategy, and has put together a list of best practices for optimizing account performance over Black Friday.
Best Practices for Preparing for Black Friday on Amazon
Optimize Advertising Campaigns on Amazon
Advertising is the best way to get your products in front of potential customers and this is especially important on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If you haven’t created Amazon advertising campaigns before, we recommend learning about the different campaign types and creating some before the holiday weekend.
If you already have advertising campaigns running, be sure that they are optimized in order to perform at a higher Return on Ad Spend (RoAS). To do this, we recommend:
Increase Campaign Budgets: The weekend after Thanksgiving is a competitive time for Amazon sellers. Make sure you are ready for the spike in bids and the increase in shoppers clicking on your ads. Running out of budget before the end of the day will cause you to lose sales so preparing your budget for the increased traffic will be crucial.
Pause Underperforming Keywords: Sometimes, keywords generate lots of clicks without converting to many sales. This drives up the cost of advertising without providing much of a return on investment. Deciding the desired performance for keywords is unique to each business and its products. To find underperforming keywords, look at the keyword targets in your campaign and organize them by the RoAS. Any keywords that aren’t meeting your desired performance level can be paused so they won’t run anymore. Keywords can always be enabled again, so this decision isn’t final.
Add Irrelevant Search Terms to Negative Targeting: When ads display on a customer search that isn’t relevant, ad performance decreases. Avoid this by monitoring the search terms that your ads display on and identify any that aren’t related to your products. Once you have generated the list of terms and products that you don’t want to target, add them to negative targeting.
Adjust Bids: Amazon advertising allows you to choose the bid or price you pay for each click on your ads. Amazon provides a recommended bid but sellers can increase or decrease the bid from there. Sellers are also able to choose a bid strategy in order to be more competitive.
Utilize Promotional Tools on Amazon
Another way to increase sales on Black Friday is by offering a deal, coupon, or sales price. Each of these can be used on its own or in combination with the other promotional tools.
Coupons - These offer a percentage or amount off of your product
Pros:
Display on detail pages, search results, gold box deals page, and a separate landing page for coupons
Savings are instantly applied, giving customers a reason to buy now
Possible to target specific customers
Cons:
Certain product categories are prohibited from using coupons (hunting and fishing products, for example)
ASINs must meet a certain star rating depending on the number of reviews
$0.60 fee charged by Amazon per every coupon redemption
5% discount minimum
Sale Price - Temporarily discounted price
Pros:
Any percentage-off allowed
Can be set for any amount of time
No additional fee for offering the discount
Increases chances of being the featured offer (win the buy box)
Cons:
The referral fee from Amazon stays the same (based on the original price)
Lightning Deals - Flash Sales featured on Amazon Deals Page
Pros:
Highly Visible
Improve Discoverability
Create a halo effect for the whole brand
Cons:
The product needs to be FBA or Merchant-fulfilled Prime
Amazon’s fee is 15% of the sales price on top of FBA fees
Promotions
Pros:
Flexibility for designing the promotion
Unique options including buy-one-get-one-free
Cons:
Poor visibility compared to other promotional tools
Instruction is usually needed for most consumers to use
Improve Merchandising on Amazon
Merchandising is one of the most important aspects of selling on Amazon. Customers won’t purchase products that have poor quality images or don’t provide all of the necessary information. Marketing your products by creating professional-looking content and thorough descriptions is crucial to being successful on Amazon. Here are a few tips to improve your product listings:
Evaluate A+ Content: This is a unique tool that Amazon offers to sellers with brand registry. This allows you to add important product information with additional images and content about your brand. A+ content is featured heavily on mobile devices, which over half of Amazon customers use for shopping.
Feature Important Products on Storefront: Utilizing your brand’s storefront is a great way to put best-selling or new products in front of the customers. Before the major holiday weekend, make sure the products you want to sell are prominently featured on your storefront and have plenty of stock.
Create and Schedule Amazon Posts: This tool helps you reach shoppers who are interested in your brand. Choose a product, create a caption, and decide which image will display. Next, schedule when you want the post to display and watch shopper engagement with your brand increase.
Add any additional images or videos to listings: Customers rely on images and videos on product detail pages to decide if a product is worth buying. Images are often the first thing the customer looks at, so having at least 7 images is a great way to improve conversions.
Customer Engagement: This is a great way to leverage your brand’s followers on Amazon. The Manage Your Customer Engagement (MYCE) tool allows you to quickly and easily set up email marketing campaigns. You can customize the emails with your logo and product images to promote new products and stay connected with customers who shop for your brand the most.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two important days for every seller on Amazon. Don’t miss the opportunity to put your product in front of millions of shoppers this holiday season. Whether you are an experienced seller on Amazon or you are just getting started, these tips will help you improve your overall account performance and can lead to higher sales. As important as these two days are, preparing your selling account for the holiday shopping season should begin before Thanksgiving. The uptick in customer searches for gifts and holiday products began in October this year. Being ahead of the curve is the best way to be successful when selling on Amazon. For more assistance and account management services, contact Goat Consulting.