It doesn’t take a financial growth analyst to tell you that the holiday season is the most important time of the year on any eCommerce platform. This is especially true for Amazon sellers who want to exponentially increase their profits in Q4. The holiday season simply allows for higher traffic, larger sales, and massive growth in consumer activity. And this year, customers are more eager than ever to get their gift shopping done on Amazon.
In order to prepare for the upcoming rush of the Turkey 5 period, brands can make the effort to understand how they can optimize their listings and pull together key tools to maximize sales. There are many instruments in an Amazon seller’s toolkit that can help accomplish this, from pricing to content creation. Bobsled’s Nikhil Chothani & Matteo Bizon will shed some of the expert insight that has landed Bobsled on the Inc. 500 list and given us a seat at Business Insider’s table. Turkey 5 is right around the corner, and the time to act is now or never!
Content optimization, pricing adjustment, and different inventory options are just a few ways that you can maximize the efficiency and profit capacity of your Amazon seller brand. Here are some important reminders about the tools you should be using over the next couple of weeks with Turkey 5 on the horizon.
Running coupons, lowering marketing sales costs, and adding BOGO promotions allow customers to know that your brand is open to offering the best prices possible. This can also increase your visibility on specific pages, such as those that promote outlet deals and wholesale prices.
💡 Pro Tip
Don’t overlook your sales history! Take a look at past promos and events you have run and determine what worked for you in the past. Upcoming sales are important, but so is expanding your bottom line.
From Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, the competition gets even more fierce than usual. To make the most out of available impressions - and to not get trumped by the competition - it would be wise to have increased bids to win on this virtual superstore. If ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale) is a concern, plan to increase the bids at least on your key terms and product targets.
Moreover, competitors might decide to attack your brand with specific keywords and similar targets with the hope of stealing your stake in the market share. Make sure you have a solid defense strategy in place to counter any attempts at keyword thievery.
💡 Pro Tip
If you want to avoid changing bids and budgets manually, there are several tools (like Pacvue) at your disposal. These tools can help you use dayparting and budget scheduling options to ensure you don’t miss any details. You can even input special Turkey 5 settings that will default back to your original settings once the 5-day period is over. This is the best way to avoid human error!
Speaking of keywords, you might want to include a combination of your regular, everyday keywords with holiday-themed keywords. Black Friday and Cyber Monday attached to “coupon” and “discount” will make you go right to the top of consumers’ Amazon feeds.
💡 Pro Tip
Since many people will use this occasion to start buying holiday gifts, you might want to include Christmas-themed keywords as well. Using this method, you can directly intercept the people looking for your products by offering them a discounted price right away.
The ability to switch to Fulfilled by Merchant (FBM) during the Turkey 5 season is incredibly important! If FBA inventory goes out of stock (OOS) at any point, it can slow down the process of getting orders out to customers. In order to prevent this slowdown (and the fallout of negative customer reviews that can come with it), consider making FBM available as a backup.
One important aspect to remember is that you can greatly increase visibility and efficiency by having all deal ASINs inside advertising campaigns. You want to make sure your promotion is visible to the widest possible audience. Most brands will want to make sure that the products associated with a discount are already set up in campaigns and ready to deliver. There are both automatic and manual checks available to make sure that ASINs are included and correct.
💡 Pro Tip
Once the event starts, you will want to keep monitoring your campaigns to make sure they are running and delivering. Using the Advertising Console, you can verify that ads are receiving impressions through manual checks. You might want to run some searches on Amazon to confirm that your products are appearing. If not, troubleshoot them accordingly by verifying bid issues or portfolio budget limits that may be preventing ads from showing up on the platform.
💡 Pro Tip
You may also benefit from adding a delivery schedule. The search patterns for Turkey 5 are quite different from the ones you may observe regularly on the platform. A large portion of seller audiences will start browsing for products and deals first thing in the morning, even before the official start of Turkey 5. Expect an increase in traffic during these peak times, as many sellers make most of their sales before noon. Consider scheduling your ad delivery appropriately, especially when it comes to DSP advertising.
Turkey 5 is just a handful of days away, but there is still time to make last-minute preparations to ensure that your brand is ready for the year’s busiest online sales event. Stay up to date with Bobsled’s marketing team and get the most out of your seller platform tools to end Q4 with bigger profits and an increased bottom line.