It’s the most wonderful time of the year and the busiest season for most sellers on Amazon and other platforms. Everybody needs a bunch of gifts to present to their loved ones, so they come to Amazon to find the exactly right presents every year, and this holiday season, they will do it too.
But you are not the one and only top seller on Amazon, and probably people can find an alternative for your products from other sellers. So what can you do to prepare for this situation and give your products a chance to shine on the top of the Amazon search page this holiday season?
In this piece, we will look at simple but effective steps you can do to prepare your products for holidays on Amazon and increase holiday sales. Interested? Then, let’s go!
Check all Amazon’s policies regarding the holiday season
Even though you are an independent seller, Amazon has some standards and policies they expect you to follow. Amazon holidays are a big deal, and the e-commerce platform has specific requirements and policies regarding returning the items and selling some of them during this season.
If you ignore these rules, you can get into trouble, experience an account hold-up, or get some fines or penalties. It can slow down your holiday season sales quite a bit, and this is exactly the opposite of what we’re reaching for here. So, read your rules!
Decide on your warehouse options
One of the biggest advantages of Amazon for a customer is their Amazon Prime membership with a fantastic shipment policy. You, as a seller, can choose whether you want your products to be shipped via the FBA method (Fulfillment by Amazon) or via the FBM method (Fulfillment By Merchant).
If you use the first one, you need to store your products in Amazon warehouses and, naturally, pay some fees for that. However, since the demand in the holiday season is higher than ever, it may be a very effective solution for you.
In the FBM method case, you are responsible for shipping your products to the customers.
Research your competitors, and decide what will be more profitable for you. You can even make a mix-up and have both products in the Amazon warehouse and in yours to see what works best for you.
Make sure that you have enough “hot” items in stock
Even if you do everything right in a digital marketing area but do not take care of the most basic part of things, like stock, you can waste all your hard work!
Analyse last year’s sales and find the items that were the most popular that year, how many of them you sold, and increase or decrease your stock according to the numbers you’ve got. Also, make sure that “hot” products are the ones that are popular every year and not just last year’s trend. Do you remember the spinner holiday craze of 2017? Who buys them now?
Change your bidding strategy
Since not only your Amazon sales grow and more and more sellers advertise their products during the festive season, the cost per click will increase. It’s just inevitable.
That’s why it is a good idea to increase your keyword bids before the holidays, but we advise you to do it smartly. You see, not every product may need it, and not every keyword will convert enough to cover your current bid. You can analyse it manually, or you can use a nice Amazon feature called Dynamic bids.
When you choose this option, you allow Amazon to decide on your behalf whether you need higher or lower bids on a particular keyword. Amazon adjusts the bids considering your profit in mind, and if the platform decides that your ad will not convert enough, they can lower your bid to prevent you from losing money.
Since you have enough things to worry about during the holiday season, let Amazon take care of your bids.
Update your promotional materials
Listing can make your product the most desirable thing on the platform or absolutely bury it if you do the listing wrong. Sprucing up your listings with festive templates is almost mandatory when the holiday season comes.
First of all, we advise you to open any photo editor of your choice and add up holiday lights, sparkles, ornaments, etc., to give your products that holiday feel they need. If you have a budget, hire a professional designer to add something more, like Santa hats on people in photos, or create a completely separate listing just for holidays.
Also, we are absolutely sure that adding a short holiday-themed video to your listing is the best thing you can do to attract more people to your product. It doesn’t have to be a blockbuster level clip, just make a nice, heart-whelming video about your product. Trust us, the result will be absolutely amazing!
You can even record a short vivid video with your team congratulating everyone with the upcoming holidays, sneakily advertise the product there. You don’t even need a professional camera, because you can use a powerful Mac screen capture tool or screen recorders for Windows 11 that allow you to record video from your webcam.
Do SEO preparation for the holiday season
An integral part of holiday marketing and the very effective way to boost your sales is to do a thorough SEO preparation.
You see, the keywords you are using in your texts and titles usually may not work at all during the holiday season. You absolutely need to optimize your content for relevant holiday keywords to help your products rank better and outbid the competitors.
We really think it is the time when you need to involve a professional SEO specialist to help you with keyword optimization. Since it is a temporary campaign, it is crucial to do everything right. We assure you, this money on a specialist will be well-spent and paid off!
Create a “special offer” campaign for your products
Everyone adores holiday deals, and they will do absolutely crazy things to get that 10% off on an item they probably don’t even need.
Without special offers, holiday specials, and other attractive propositions for customers, you will miss a chance to get a big bunch of sales.
Adjust PPC campaigns
We already talked about the bids and how it is important to adjust your bidding Amazon marketing strategy during the holiday sales season, but doing only that is not good enough. We also advise you to check your target RoAS and ACoS to help you figure out whether your PPC campaigns are profitable at all.
Also, we are big fans of experimenting, and we suggest you try different types of sponsored ads to see which one of them will be the most profitable for you. Amazon allows many options here: Display ads, Brands ads, and Brands Video ads. As for the last one, we think that this is the most effective sponsored ads option in general since video ads are the most eye-catching type of marketing ads nowadays, and they give incredible results and ROI in the end.
Conclusion
Well, now we are sure that your Amazon products will be completely ready to hit the top of the platform this holiday season. Use our tips and get ready for increased sales in your Amazon store!
What’s else left to say? Oh, yes! Happy holidays!
