Turkey 5 Prep Guide

With the holiday season rapidly approaching, it can only mean one thing: Turkey 5 is around the corner. The international shopping spree that occurs from Thanksgiving Day to Cyber Monday is the busiest sales period of the entire year, so it’s important to have a foolproof plan in preparation for this big event. As a leading Amazon marketing agency recognized by Inc. 5000 and Business Insider, Bobsled offers the best advice for brands looking for a complete Turkey 5 prep guide in Q4.

Account management and PPC experts Armin Alispahic and Nikola Bacic have put together 5 of the most important T5 tips to keep Amazon brands well prepared for the up-and-coming holiday shopping frenzy. It’s a good idea to pinpoint high-performing targets without getting overwhelmed by growing shipping volume demands. Here are some critical elements to consider as Turkey 5 gets closer.

1) Manage Your Inventory

Ready Your Shipments

It goes without saying that you cannot sell if you do not have inventory. If you want to increase your sales after Thanksgiving, your FBA inventory needs to be checked in by November 3rd. Planning in advance is an essential component of preparation for Black Friday madness. When preparing your shipments, add 2-3 weeks of buffer time in addition to the standard lead time to account for the delays that are expected at peak times. Pro tip:  Send multiple shipments to Amazon instead of one large shipment to avoid further delays.

Vendors should prepare for larger POs from Amazon during this rushed season. Vendors can get a better idea of the PO sizes that can be expected by checking their Forecast and Inventory Planning Report.

Mind Your FBA Limitations

As a preemptive measure, brands should check their FBA storage limitations and prioritize their best-selling products. Use this opportunity to get rid of abandoned shipments as they count against FBA limits.

If you have storage limitations that prohibit you from sending inventory for your entire catalog, prioritize sending your bestsellers for FBA and make plans to fulfill your other products by merchant (FBM).  Have logistics in place and ready to turn on FBM in case an issue arises with your FBA inventory.  If you are having trouble fulfill so many orders directly, try outsourcing a 3PL like Deliverr.

💡 Want more inventory planning tips?
Check out our Amazon Q4 Inventory Planning Guide.

2) Invest in Organic Marketing

There are a couple of ways to use organic marketing to your advantage during the Turkey 5 season. Minor adjustments to product pages and storefronts can bring in a wave of new customers at just the right time of the year.

Optimizing Product Pages

Titles, bullets, and descriptions on your product pages should be well optimized to rank highly on Amazon search results. Brands that maximize keyword coverage with backend search terms are more likely to reach customers. If you have received feedback from your customers through messages, seller feedback, or product reviews, make sure to address relevant concerns in your product descriptions or images. Are you maximizing the number of images per listing and are you including a good mix of product in use, infographics, and lifestyle images?  These minor tweaks can make a huge difference over the next few weeks to increase traffic to your listings and convert shoppers into buyers of your products.

Learn more about Amazon backend keywords here.

Brand Store Adjustments

Any Amazon brand that currently exists without a digital storefront will want to consider adding a store before the rush of Turkey 5. If your brand does have a storefront, it is still a good time to think about giving it a refresh. Amazon recommends updating your brand store quarterly, which can keep your products relevant in the eyes of new and old consumers.

 Don’t forget about the Store Versions feature on the storefront page, which will allow you to schedule holiday-specific or themed versions of your storefront.

Above: A Featured Deals page on a Storefront, themed with Black Friday buy buttons.

3) Start Publishing Promotions

The deadline to submit 7-Day Deal, Best Deals, and Lightning Deals was September 17th, which is more than two months before the start of Turkey 5. If any of those deals didn’t make monetary sense or they were not readily available to you, there are always Prime Exclusive Discounts available through seller accounts.

Omnichannel Promotion

No matter what kind of deal or promotion is going on, it is imperative to sync them across all seller channels. This is advantageous for a few reasons:

•     You won’t hurt your brand’s reputation when customers find out that the price of your item is more expensive on one platform than on another
•     You won’t run into buy box issues that result from selling products cheaper on platforms off of Amazon.  

If your brand is fairly active in the world of social media and email, you can create a marketing campaign that is specifically tailored to Turkey 5, drawing in customers with a wide range of shopping habits. Just be sure not to promote products that you have any inventory issues with, as they may end up giving you more pain than profit.

4) Deep-Dive into Data Analysis

A more direct way to figure out what will work and what won’t work for your brand during the upcoming Turkey 5 season is to take a look at last year's Turkey 5 Amazon performance recap. This will also give you a pretty good idea of what you can expect for this upcoming year. While shopping and consumer trends tend to shift quite rapidly, larger shopping habits stay relatively the same during these significant annual shopping events.

Check Prime Day Statistics

Another good source of data to look into is the Amazon Prime Day 2021 results. How did Prime Day go for you and your brand? Did you find major successes? Fix the failures and emphasize your top products so you can lean into more profits by the end of the year.

Stay up-to-date on raw Prime Day data and compare it to last year’s T5 numbers. These statistics offer a good starting point for brands trying to decide which products and strategies will bring in the biggest expansion to their bottom line.

Above: Looking at Prime Day data across Amazon, there has only been an 8% increase in sales between 2020 and 2021. (Source: Statista.com)

5) Balance Bids and Budgets

You don’t have to be a financial guru to achieve success as an Amazon brand, but every seller needs to dedicate some time to figure out their advertising bids and budgets. PPC bids tend to shift quite rapidly during the holiday season, and budgets need to be airtight before the dawn of Turkey 5.

Increase Your Budget

Amazon is always faced with an influx of inventory volume around Turkey 5. As such, it is important that brands prepare to handle much larger stock. This means that PPC budgets will need to be increased by a hefty amount to cover any unexpected inventory surprises. The best-performing campaigns should be pushed to remain on the top of Amazon’s search list. To help with this, Amazon has a new tool called Top of the Search Impression Share, which can be seen as a column on the seller’s analytics dashboard.

If you can’t add to or increase your budget manually, there is always the “Add a Budget” rule!

Manage Bids

PPC bids work similarly to budgets in that they need to be increased to cover Turkey 5 expectations and costs. Regardless of if the bid is made to target keywords, products, or categories, it will likely need to be increased.

You can maintain a high level of bidding success by using some of Amazon’s built-in search tools, such as the “Bid Adjustment for Top of Search” placements, which will automatically give you first-page results. Amazon will even suggest a range of bids for you depending on how much you can spend and how efficient the targets are.