Holiday shopping frenzy and the widely-celebrated holidays are just around the corner. It’s time to prepare your channel and store for the busiest, most hectic, and most unpredictable time of the year. Most brands fail to capitalize on the impressive increase in traffic during the last three months of the year without a proper strategy. Brands can maximize their sales during the holidays with our Amazon experts’ actionable tips. We’ve covered every aspect of preparing your Amazon store right from inventory management to high-level strategic recommendations to reach and crush your Q4 sales target.
Table of Contents
Amazon Q4 2022 sales dates
- 31st October is Halloween
- The 24th of November is Thanksgiving
- November 25th – Black Friday
- The 28th of November is Cyber Monday
- December 18-26 is Hanukkah
- 25th December is Christmas
- Christmas Day – 26th December
- Kwanzaa – 26th December – 1st January
Managing inventory
In this year’s inventory management challenge, Amazon has left no stone unturned. One of the biggest headaches is Amazon’s announcement of higher storage fees to offset rising costs. After hiking fees in January, the retail giant announced a 5% fuel and inflation surcharge in April.
On average, their fulfillment services remain 70% less expensive than comparable two-day shipping alternatives despite the constant increase in storage fees. In the event of a need, sellers must be prepared to switch to FBA.
Your marketing strategy might need to be adjusted based on your current inventory. Whenever you are about to run OOS, you should be more conservative with your advertising campaigns.
Assess sales lift during holidays by comparing year-over-year data. As you send in holiday stock, prioritize ASINs that are fast-moving.
Protection of brands
During the holiday season, counterfeit third-party sellers and bad actors are likely to emerge to make a quick buck. To prevent unauthorized sellers from siphoning your traffic and sales, you must maintain constant vigilance.
You can fend off counterfeits by adding brand terms to your listing, using software that monitors infringement, registering your brand with Amazon, signing up for programs like Project Zero, and adding branded elements such as A+ Content to your listing.
Optimizing the listing
Don’t make any major changes to your listing if it is already optimized with informative content, high-quality images, and A+ content.
In your listing content and backend, include holiday-related and seasonal keywords, like “stocking stuffers” and “holiday gifts”, as well as dressing up your images. Adding an image to your product that highlights it as the perfect gift can be as simple as that. In the absence of keyword research Use tools like Helium10 or MerchantWords to uncover seasonal keywords relevant to your products using Amazon’s Brand Analytics tool.
Ensure that you read customer reviews and questions and answers sections to address common concerns that create returns and lower your valuable ratings.
Universal Commercee can assist you with Amazon SEO optimization, even though it takes time and effort.
The creative
During their holiday shopping spread, buyers view dozens of products every day. To get an edge on your competitors and add an extra layer of customer confidence, include visual elements to your detail page and create a fully branded experience for shoppers.
- A+ Content: With Amazon A + Content, brand registered sellers can upgrade their existing text descriptions with professional-looking, image-based reports. You may also be eligible for Premium A+ Content if you have published more than 12 A+ Contents this year.
- Store Versions: This feature allows brands to create a temporary Amazon Store version for each day of the week. In the unique version created, products can be highlighted with discounts and promotions, or holiday-themed creative can be used.
- Amazon Brand Story: Located above the A+ Content section, the brand story highlights the brand’s unique value proposition. Your storefront or product detail pages can be reached by scrolling through a scrollable carousel.
- Amazon Posts: Amazon Posts are social media-style posts with lifestyle pictures and catchy captions that help brands attract customers. On a product’s detail page, similar products’ details pages, and on a storefront on a separate page, posts appear. You can view the detail page of the product advertised in a post by clicking on Posts.
- Amazon Live: Brands can engage with browsing shoppers in real-time on high-traffic days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. A discount code can be offered or common questions about the featured products can be answered.
- Your conversion rate can be increased by 58% when you add a video to your listing. Videos are more appealing to shoppers than dry blocks of text when it comes to learning about your products. The best way to highlight your products’ unique features is to create a professional video.
You should start these creative changes to your store as soon as possible since they can be time-consuming. To create professional designs, consider hiring optimization services.
The advertising industry
- Don’t focus on anything but winning ASINs. The time is not right for experimentation. Make sure you prioritize your top sellers, especially those who have done well over the past few years.
- Take advantage of the big holidays by running your PPC campaigns a week early.
- Make your Sponsored Brands and Display campaigns festive with holiday-themed images and copy. Utilize Sponsored Brands’ custom image feature and the new headline suggestions for Sponsored Display campaigns.
- During peak retail holidays like Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Halloween, Christmas, Jewish Holidays, and Boxing Day, you can earn more by spending more. Your top-performing keywords may not be getting the placement you want unless you are aggressive with your bids. Keeping visible is key, but increasing spending without a strategy can blow your ACOS targets and hurt your bottom line. To remain competitive while remaining profitable, we recommend increasing bids by 60-70%.
- Gift-giving campaigns that feature unique holiday-themed products and relevant keywords.
- To cross-sell your product catalog, use Sponsored Products and Sponsored Display product targeting. Your product detail pages should be expensive, less optimized, and poorly rated in comparison to your products. To increase customers’ overall order value, brands can also advertise complementary products or “frequently bought together” products. Additionally, this will protect ad placements that would otherwise be assigned to competitors.
- Leverage promotions and coupons to encourage ad-driven traffic to convert to customers.
Troubleshooting and risk management
Prepare a contingency plan if any issues arise and keep an eye out for common roadblocks.
- Your listing may get deactivated or suppressed due to a faulty main image or a restricted keyword, so make sure all listings are live and available.
- If you don’t make payments or your campaigns go over budget, your PPC campaigns will fail. Therefore, it is imperative to monitor your campaigns every day, especially during big events.
- Make sure you have a plan in place in case your products run out of stock.
Returns post-holiday
Following a busy holiday selling season, almost every brand on Amazon experiences a wave of returns and refunds. Even though you can’t stop the influx of returns and refunds, you can learn from them and try to avoid them in the future. You may want to create an image explaining how to buy the right size if the product did not fit the customer as expected.
How can I manage my Amazon account for Q4?
Although the fourth quarter is just around the corner, it’s never too late to start planning your holiday sales strategy. Universal Commercee’s Amazon seller consultants can help if you don’t have a plan yet. In Q4, things happen fast, and if outsourcing everyday Amazon tasks and Q4 preparation to an agency can save you time, then it’s worth it.
