With Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) coming up right around the corner, here are some last-minute tips to help increase sales and improve your sales velocity on Amazon.
1.) Organize Your Sales Data
One of the main tools that can help you to establish your BFCM campaign is to evaluate your sales from past years. This is so helpful in establishing sale prices for your products, as something that is not profitable during the rest of the year, maybe during this week. It’s also essential to figure out which products do well during this time of year. Look into what sold best over the past years, was it one particular product? Does it consistently do well? Do some products not sell as well? How can you improve on these products? It’s important to ask these questions to determine where to put the focus for ads and marketing for the holiday push.
Analyzing past data also helps in ensuring you have the proper inventory in stock, so you don’t run into issues such as running out too soon and losing a massive chunk in sales or creating a surplus of your products that you may have a hard time selling at a non-Black Friday sale price point.
Checking historical data and inventory levels can be an easy first step in properly preparing your business for the hectic BFCM market, and can help determine the best strategy for success.
2.) The Price is Right?
The most important facet of BFCM is well… the incredible sale offers! This is a tremendous opportunity to increase your sales and it is your best chance to reach your end of year goals. That’s why it is crucial to pick the right price for your products to help maximize profits. Keep these tips in mind when evaluating your pricing.
With all of the sales going on during BFCM, a lot of new sellers feel compelled to drive their prices down to get the deal, and in turn- they end up selling out too soon. It’s imperative to avoid this at all costs! Stand your ground and keep your prices high until the day of the sale; that way, if you decide to lower your minimums, then you are more likely to gain higher profits.
3.) Use of Amazon Lightning Deals
Running hourly sales can have enormous potential to boost your BCFM sales. Offering flash sales for a set period throughout the day (like an hour) can make an impact on your overall number of sales. If you are offering 30% off of your store all day, that is nice, but it will be even nicer for a customer to see that they have 1 hour where everything is now 40% off. It will cause them to spend more than they would have initially because everyone loves a deal, and they will feel like they hit the jackpot with this new limited-time higher percentage off.
4.) Offer Coupons to Shoppers
If your margins do not allow you to operate within the high fees of partaking in Amazon’s lightning deals during BFCM, you may also opt in offering your potential customers coupons. Coupons on Amazon are applied to your cart at checkout and may sometimes offer incredible savings. Coupons are easy to click and hard to miss so why not offer them on Black Friday if you are not able to offer lighting deals or be part of other Amazon promotions?
Coupons will cost you 0.62 every time they are clipped. It is important to note that you should try to limit them to one per customer but also not limit how many times they can be used by Amazon shoppers. Once your coupon is clipped to 80% of the amount you allowed then the coupon will disappear in results for Amazon shoppers. If your coupon is popular enough it may also end up in Amazon’s coupon section where bargain hunters will take notice of your business and products.
5.) Keywords are Key
The effort and planning put into creating a beneficial BFCM campaign means nothing if no one is coming to your store. That is why you need to put in just as much effort into driving traffic to your products. The best way to do this is by using the most relevant and highly searched keywords in your listings. This increases a product’s rank and visibility on Amazon’s search results page. During the holidays, it’s essential to include general holiday search terms so that your items come up when people are searching for something broad such as “Black Friday Deals.”
Start by inserting broader terms like “gifts”, “gift ideas”, “Black Friday”, “Cyber Monday offers” (Amazon discourages the use of words like deal or sale, so you may want to avoid those) into your back-end Search Terms, so that they will start popping up when people are searching for BFCM offers. Also, consider more specific words related to your product, such as if you’re selling lipstick, you may also want to want to include “beauty gifts,” “gifts for women,” or “makeup gift ideas” to grab more targeted customers.
Choose the most important relevant keywords to you and insert them throughout your listing. Putting holiday-related keywords into your copy will hold more rank than putting them in the back-end. Place the #1 keyword that you want to rank for in your title (think “Holiday Red Lipstick” or “Red Lipstick for the Holidays”), then pick 1-2 more/or a phrase into each bullet point, add some into your description and save the rest for the Search Terms. It’s important NOT to go holiday-keyword crazy, first see if altering 1 or 2 keywords will benefit your listing and go from there. Also, remember to remove terms such as “black Friday” after the holiday is over.
Final Takeaway
While Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be overwhelming, these tips and tricks can help you make the most of the experience. Doing your historical data research beforehand, picking the best price point for your business to prosper, and inserting the proper keywords to drive site traffic are quick and easy ways to ensure that your business succeeds this holiday season!
If you find yourself struggling to beat the competition on Amazon during the Holidays, call Amazzia today! Our team of experts can help determine the proper pricing that will drive sales, perform keyword research to optimize and rank listings, and analyze inventory and sales data to help you reach your goals, plus much more!
