The holiday season is fast approaching, and that means people are already eyeing those Amazon listings to buy the perfect gifts for their family, friends, and significant others.
Consequently, millions of sellers are working rigorously to get their marketing, sales, and fulfillment prepared for the holiday rush.
The big question on everyone’s mind is: Who’s going to win the battle for shoppers’ dollars and walk away with all those sales?
Whether your brand sells home appliances, mobile accessories, or customized backpacks, now is the time to hype up the value proposition of your offerings. Holiday shoppers are expected to spend over $1 trillion between November and January—so it might as well be your Amazon store they choose to buy products from.
Here are our best Amazon holiday selling tips to help boost your sales in the upcoming season.
1. Order Your Stock Early
Adequate stock levels are essential for merchant success during the holiday season, as well as in the first quarter of the upcoming year. Traditionally, both big and small suppliers have their hands full around the holidays, which means you may struggle to get anything manufactured or private labeled or get products dropshipped in time. To keep this from happening, ask your suppliers and wholesalers what their plans are and whether or not they’ll be able to prepare and send your stock well before the holiday months.
Also, consider stocking more than you typically would to cover any unforeseen spikes in demand. If you and the supplier have generous terms over product returns, you can do this with your eyes closed. In addition, you can try negotiating a buyback with your suppliers. Taking this measure can help reduce the risks associated with stocking seasonal items in bulk.
If you’re a veteran seller, the best way to forecast the stock level you’ll need for the upcoming holidays is to analyze last year’s holiday sales and predict when you’ll run out by. This should help you order just enough stock to meet your holiday sales goals.
Related read: Everything You Need to Know About Finding Suppliers
2. Sign Up for Fulfillment by Amazon
When it comes to holiday shopping, many consumers prefer buying from sellers who are offering the Amazon Prime two-day shipping guarantee. To take advantage of this feature, you must sign up for FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) where Amazon handles sellers’ operations, including customer service, storage and fulfillment.
With FBA, you simply send your inventory to Amazon’s fulfillment centers and let Amazon take care of the rest. FBA sellers are eligible for Amazon Prime one- or two-day shipping, as well as more likely to win the Buy Box. Just make sure that enough of your inventory is available for people to buy during the holidays by sending it to the fulfillment centers well in advance.
Ideally, sellers should send their Black Friday and Cyber Monday inventory before November 5, and Christmas and New Year product inventory between November 25 and December 5.
3. Offer Lightning Deals
Show us a shopper who would turn down the opportunity to buy a product at a discount, and we’ll show you a printer that can churn out cold, hard cash. Because a lot of people will be hunting for discounts during the holidays, running a deal or two can be a great way to give exposure to your listings. A good way to do this is to run Lightning Deals for your eligible products.
Lightning Deals refer to those flash sales where a product is featured on the Amazon.com Deals page for several hours. What’s unique about these deals is that they can be activated for a limited number of products, which means you won’t need to put a discount on all of your items. For a tiny fee, lightning deals are a great way to get your products in front of impulse buyers.
To quality for Lightning deals, you must fulfill the following requirements:
- Be a professional seller
- Have a minimum of five Seller Feedback Ratings every month and a minimum overall rating of three and a half stars
- Carry products that have a sales history on Amazon and a minimum 3-star rating
- List the product’s lowest historical price (within the existing calendar year) as the deal price
- Create a Lightning Deal that is a minimum 20% off the current lowest price of the product in the last 30 days
4. Rework Your Product Listings
Your Amazon product listings are the magnet that brings you traffic and conversions. They’re the most critical part of your ecommerce business. Hence, you need to make sure they’re up-to-date, error-free and attractive at this important time of the year. Below are some tips to help optimize your product listings.
- Add a holiday-themed image or two to your product page to tell shoppers that your merchandise would make a great gift.
- Add A+ content to your product listings. A few must-haves are videos, featured copy, bigger images, charts and FAQs that offer a clear understanding of the details of your offerings.
- Try to get as many good reviews as possible before the holidays. This will help attract more customers in the upcoming months.
- Review the “Listings Quality and Suppressed Listings” report in Seller Central, and see if you can find any data omissions or errors in your product listings. Resolving potential errors before the holiday season should improve conversions down the road.
5. Create Sponsored Product Ads
Online traffic almost always tends to rise during the holiday season. Because of this, the months of November, December and January are a great opportunity to increase ad clicks and conversions via Sponsored Product Ads. Having your items appear on Page 1 of Amazon search results may end up being the difference between a successful Q4 and an unsuccessful one.
As you incorporate Sponsored Product Ads into your Amazon PPC campaign, use manual targeting to experiment with keywords that are unique to the holiday season. For instance, if you’re selling Pokémon toys, you might want to test out keywords like “Christmas Pokémon toys” and “Pokémon holiday deals” for your campaign.
In terms of ad design, infusing a holiday vibe into your images can help attract holiday shoppers. The best thing about Sponsored Products and other Amazon ads is that you only pay when shoppers click on your advertisements and visit your product information page.
6. Cut Your Prices on Slow-Moving Stock
The holiday season also attracts price-conscious shoppers to the Amazon.com marketplace, so consider lowering the price of your unpopular items to increase their appeal to such consumers.
Cut your price on slow-moving items a bit more in December to ensure you aren’t left with any unwanted stock that would be hard to sell after the holidays. Listing prices that are lower than other merchants, especially for high-volume items, may also allow you to win the buy box during this busy time of the year.
Final Verdict
During the holidays, people will visit the Amazon.com website to make purchases regardless of the size of their budget. Make sure not to overlook the opportunities to get their attention and increase the general visibility of your listings. By making a few small tweaks and arranging inventory ahead of time, you can be sure that you’re capitalizing on the biggest sales opportunity the upcoming holiday season will offer to your business.
To learn more, read our expanded guide to optimizing your Amazon seller business for the busy holiday season. And if you’re looking for more guidance to sell more during the holidays and year-round, get in touch with us.s
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