Get started for the Amazon holiday season

August 4, 2017

Reading time: 5 minutes

Amazon is bound to dominate the online landscape again this holiday shopping season. If you’re hoping to take advantage of the extra traffic on Black Friday and beyond, then we have a few tips to get you started.

With Prime DayPrime Day was initially a one-day sales ... More sales growing by 60% this year, Amazon is on track to becoming this year’s online shopping season champion once again. As we’ve seen in previous years, Prime Day tends to shift conventional timeframes for some of the other shopping holidays. So, it’s never too soon to start planning for Q4.

Here’s a checklist of things to do to make sure you’re ready for the Amazon holiday season:

Boost AdvertisingAdvertising is a means of communication ... More

If you’re going to make the most of Q4, you need to look at all the aspects of your online advertising through Amazon.

There are 3 main areas you need to set up. 1. Keywords 2. Campaigns 3. Ad Groups

1. Keywords – Broad, phrase, exact & negative match type

Assess existing keywords to see how they are performing. Remember, your ads won’t show up at all if the words you chose aren’t aren’t within the content of your product listing page.

You’ll want a combination of keywords/phrases that are specific to your products, including negative keywords – for example, if you sell dress shoes, you wouldn’t want to show an ad for running shoes
Research long tail keywords

2. Campaigns

Group like products within campaigns (you can do this by category, brand, top sellers etc). This is where the organization you did above comes into play
Use the keywords you created and apply to the appropriate campaigns. You don’t want a lot of one-word keywords. Choose phrases that customers use to find your products.
Look at past campaigns, and sort them by category, brand, top seller, etc. to see which ones failed. Try to use a consistent structure when you create your campaigns, so that you don’t create multiple campaigns for the same product.
Run automatic campaigns first, analyze the results from your ‘Search Term Report’ in Seller CentralAmazon Seller Central is a portal or a h... More, then transfer the most sought-after search terms to your manual campaigns, raising the CPC bids.

3. AdGroups

10-20 keywords per ad group
Split these into small, relevant groups
Talk about 3 things – feature, benefit, CTA (buy)
Create 2-3 ads in each ad group to compare – ads should be similar but worded slightly differently. Analyze which ad is doing better, remove poorly performing ads
Remove poorly performing products from your Ad Groups, adjusting your CPC bid price to find your sweet spot. Compare the timing and value of your bids to see if there are any patterns.
Make ad groups for both general and specific keywords, and keep separate records of their corresponding bids.

You need to be strategic in how you organize your Sponsored product/PPC listings. The first step is to decide which products you want to advertise, and how you will organize your listings. This means you need to have a goal for each product you are advertising. You would advertise a new product differently than if you are trying to clear out old inventory, or if your goal is profitability, you would advertise that in a different way as well. Amazon has manual and automatic campaigns..

Prices and ACoS

Your costs are very likely to rise in the second half of the year. FBA Long-Term Storage Fees fees have changed and shipping costs are going up. Manufacturers are also bound to raise their prices slightly in anticipation of the Amazon holiday season.

This isn’t the time to quickly bring your target Cost of Sale closer to 100% just because you’re trying to promote a new product. It’s much better to tweak your product prices and your bid prices prudently over the next few weeks, to minimize your losses.

Join In On Back to School

Last year, the back-to-school event was disrupted by Prime Day, according to CNBC. The school shopping season started much earlier than expected and peaked in mid-August. Whereas, in previous years, parents would have started doing the school shopping just before the first school day, last year there were very few sales in September.

So, it would be a good idea to start your back-to-school campaigns early, before those good Prime Day vibes wear off. A dedicated Back to School landing page is available on Amazon precisely for that reason.

Do Your Own Inventory Clean-Up

Prime Day tends to leave a great deal of returns, negative feedbackA performance rating on a scale of 1 to ... More and unflattering product reviews in its aftermath. If that’s the case, then this would be a good time to optimize your listings, tweaking your descriptions, images, etc. to reflect what you’ve learned from these transactions.

While you’re at it, go through a quick inventory purge. Take care of FBA items that risk costing you hefty Long Term Storage Fees by removing them and disposing of them.

Mingle and Stay Alert

Black Friday will fall on November 24 this year, but you should warm up for it weeks ahead. Cyber Monday is on November 27, 2017, and if you hope to sell electronics, household appliances, toys, pet products or BMVD, you’ll be expected to offer hefty discounts on the day.

Keep an eye on Amazon’s announcements, the current fee schedule, and our Digest to make sure you comply with holiday season warehouse and shipping deadlines. The buyer cut-off date for Christmas will be announced here, and FBA cut-off dates will soon follow on our blog. For freight forwarders, the end of September marks the last opportunity to ship on time for Black Friday.

For product ideas, new distributors, help with expansion, tips on product reviews and more, it may be a good idea to do some research. Listen to seller podcasts, join private social media seller groups, download free seller-specific guides, and attend as many retail conferences as possible.

ASD Market Week is currently taking place and the Sellers’ Conference (formerly SCOE) will be in September in Seattle. Various eCommerce expos will also be taking place across Europe in the months to come, in preparation for the new Amazon holiday season. If you’d like to meet and chat with our experts, we’ll be attending the next Prosper Show in the spring of 2018 in Las Vegas.