10 Tips to Maximize your Amazon Sales and Profits This Holiday Season
The holiday season is upon us and for Amazon sellers this promises to be a record year. After all, when presenting its Q2 results Amazon announced that international sales had grown by a staggering 35.5%.
Sellers who are well-prepared for the season, will make the best of opportunities presented by this growth and this may lead to increases in the customer base over the longer term.
To help you to prepare for the season and make the most of increasing sales, we’ve put together a host of tips for optimizing conversions and maximizing revenues as we approach the 2021 holiday season.
1. Examine your 2020 holiday season performance
Take a step back and look at how your business performed over the last holiday season. What sold best last year? What ad strategy did you use? Which keywords worked for you? Use this information to build this year’s campaign. Last year’s performance should give you a good idea of how your customers behaved, what sold well and what didn’t.
Use the numbers to forecast your expected sales for this year. Once the season is closed take a look at your forecasts to see how well you’ve done. If your sales were better than forecast, it may be an indication that your strategies are working. If you’ve made less than forecast, you may have to re-assess your strategies in the coming year.
Regardless of your performance this year, see the value of data in developing a strategy that works. This year’s performance or lack thereof should lead you in your actions next season, so that you can make 2022 the best yet.
2. Analyse and optimize your listings
Don’t go into the holiday season with sub-optimized listings.
Take the time to go through all your listings. Get them into top condition to make the maximise the opportunities available at this time. Do some keyword research to find phrases and words that your target market uses most frequently. Then revitalize your content and, if necessary, take some new pictures.
Keyword research will help you to stay ahead of consumer trends. Consumers change and winning sellers adjust to those changes. If you need help with finding the most appropriate keywords and optimizing your content, the team at Margin Business would love to help. They’re enthusiastic, well-trained and experienced and they have all the tools to help. We specialize in Keyword optimization in a range of languages. Our team understands markets across the EU. They understand the language and the culture in each of these markets.
3. Use keywords with a holiday theme
Even if you’ve already optimized your keywords, you can make the best of the holiday by including holiday keywords. Try something like “Christmas gifts for men” or “Christmas gifts for mom”.
Both had over 400 000 searches in December last year. Of course, no one is searching for these in August so it may attract the attention of people looking for something special this holiday season.
We use tools like Helium 10 to get search volume history.
4. Try bundles
Analyse your listings to find your slow-moving products. Try bundling some of these products with more popular items to keep stock moving and reduce shipping costs. Make sure to stick to Amazon’s bundling rules. Bundling products will help you to improve your average order value, so why not try it and add it to your Amazon marketing ‘s strategy?
Try the Amazon Virtual Bundle Tool. It’s great way to bundle your products. Amazon FBA Sellers can use this feature to bundle between two and five matching products to sell them together from one detail page. You can use the bundle tool to create a new ASIN containing all the products.
This method saves you from having to rely on the “frequently bought together” grid. You also don’t have to take the extra effort of packaging separate products as bundled products.
5. Run different PPC campaigns to suit the shopping days and holidays
Amazon’s special shopping days may attract different target markets so it’s worth putting some effort into designing different PPC campaigns to align with the special shopping days and holidays. Prepare your Amazon marketing for the big shopping days which follow:
- Prime day
- Black Friday
- Cyber Monday
- 12 Days of Deals
- And let’s not forget the holidays.
Start your PPC campaigns as soon as possible. Amazon marketing tools such as PPC campaigns will move you up the search ranks for your chosen keywords. This means more traffic and that should translate into more sales. It also elevates your SEO which should enhance your sales over the longer term.
When you start your PPC campaigns earlier, you’ll have time to A/B test and adjust your campaign accordingly. Then when the holiday season comes along, you’ll reap the rewards.
6. Watch those stock levels
Whatever you do, don’t run out of stock over the holiday season. Stockouts annoy customers and send them to your competitors. So, you’ll lose sales now and possibly in the future too. Order as much stock as your cashflow will allow and do it soon. Make inventory holding decisions based on historical sales. That way, if you do sell out, it will affect fewer customers.
Once you have the stock in place, regularly monitor your stocks to replenish them on time.
FBM or fulfilment by merchant allows for more inventory control because you can order more stocks when you start to run low. It could be a great plan B for the holiday Christmas gift sale season.
7. React to reviews
We all love positive reviews but the negative reviews need some consideration too. Carefully analyse the negative reviews. Unfortunately, Amazon sellers can’t comment on product reviews. Amazon.com have, however, started rolling out a new feature from June which allows sellers to send messages — scripted by Amazon — to customers who leave one-, two- or three-star reviews of their products. This is in the hope of rectifying any issue or misunderstanding with the product or shipping process — and, from the seller’s perspective, potentially inspiring a customer to change the negative review.
You can also use the criticism to improve the customer experience.
As your sales increase so will your customers queries. Don’t be tempted to ignore them or take your time in answering no matter how busy you are. Answer every query as quickly as you can. Customers will return only if they feel that you care enough to answer their questions.
8. Sell your slow runners at lower prices
The holiday season may be the best time to clear out slow-runners. You can bundle them as we mentioned earlier, or you can cut prices to attract the price conscious holiday shopper.
We all know that feeling when we have run out of ideas and still need a gift. You could attract one of these shoppers who will appreciate the lower price.
When you get rid of stock, you free up money and improve your cash flow. You can then take this money and invest it in more product that actually sells. The best-selling items typically sell so you make more profit.
9. Watch competitor pricing
Price is an important part of the selling decision and buyers will be swayed by lower prices. Many sellers will adjust prices over the holiday season so it’s important to keep an eye out for what they are doing. You don’t want to start a price war but it is worth knowing your competitors and what they’re doing.
10. Use A+ Content
Customize your listing pages with A+ content. This is a tool that can help you to make more visually appealing listings. Consider a holiday theme and get into the spirit of things. Enrol in the Amazon Brand registry to get creative with A+ content.
The team at Margin Business has the experience to help you to create colourful and appealing content with A+. Beat the holiday season and contact us now for assistance.
Time to prepare for the holiday season
Christmas comes but once a year. Be prepared and you can outsell your competition. There is, of course, a lot to do and not much time but the rewards are many – increased sales, higher turnover, enhanced profits and the chance to increase your customer base.
The team at Margin Business would love to help you grow your brand. We’ll analyse your business and help you to increase sales while reducing risk during the Christmas sale items holiday season. Contact Us Now and we will help you to a bumper holiday season.
