Sale season has come knocking before you know it, and you as a seller want to make sure you’re leaving no stone unturned. As the mega sale event draws closer, sellers are on the cusp of making last-minute preparations to leverage the traffic surge. Gearing up for the rush period means that you need to scrutinize every aspect that goes into having a successful and highly profitable run. 

In this artilce, we deep-dive into some last-minute tips that can come in handy for Amazon sellers before the upcoming Black Friday-Cyber Monday period and the festive season as well. In fact, it can be an essential checklist for all sellers prior to a big sale event.

• Consider Inventory Backup Options – You must check if all the products in your listing are adequately stocked to meet the additional demand. Identify products that have lower inbound limits set by FBA or those which will not be inbounded in time for the sale event. You can use FBM or third-party fulfillment as a backup to stock up those products. You can further optimize your inventory placement by using data from previous sales to ascertain key geographical areas where your products are delivered and store your inventory accordingly in nearby warehouses.

• Explore Last Minute Discounting Tactics – You might be unable to secure a Lightning Deal special sale offer for some of your products either because you failed to meet the minimum inventory requirement or missed out due to limited slot availability. For such products, make sure you offer lucrative discounts for buyers in order to leverage the high traffic period and to avoid losing out to heavy promotions applied by your competitors. Deals can be in the form of Prime Exclusive Discounts, Coupons, percentage offs, or other promotions that involve a much shorter approval time. These products will also benefit from the halo effect of the products for which deals were secured. Such promotions should also be planned for all products that can’t participate but can fall under the deal halo effect.
• Optimize Campaign Budget to Align with Increased Spends – It is imperative that your ad campaigns don’t go out of budget on high traffic days because it might significantly hurt your visibility. Observe the average spend on each ad campaign ahead of BFCM sales or any other major shopping day. You need to be prepared for a 2 to 2.5 times increase in account level spends and adjust your campaign level budgets based on performance to meet the spends threshold. You should always keep your campaign level budget 10-20% higher than the account level budget. In addition to Sponsored Product ads, a sound investment made on well-optimized display ads and brand ads will drive brand awareness and promote your offers and deals beyond the product ads. Focus on retargeting ads as well as, both during and post deals.
• Optimize Bidding Strategy to Secure Top Placements – With more competition, bid amounts and cost-per-click for PPC campaigns are bound to shoot up. Place stronger and competitive bids on the relevant search terms that will bring you the highest traction. For well-performing campaigns, you can consider bidding higher for “Top of the search” placement to ensure maximum visibility before as well as during the sale event. Additionally, you can switch to ‘Dynamic – up and down’ strategy to allow some room for the engine to bid higher/lower based on chances of conversion. For low performing targets, opt for bid increase or decrease. Monitoring every 6 hours will allow you to assess whether higher ad spend is being met with increased conversions, and if needed, adjust your bidding accordingly. 
• Create a Separate Deal Page on Your Storefront – You can boost visibility and awareness by creating a separate storefront page for the special sale event products. However, this must be done in tandem with the Sponsored Brands ad strategy that you are adopting for your products. If you have created separate ad campaigns only for your top products being offered for sale, customers can be directed to your storefront page to explore all the other ASINs that are available on sale.
• Daily Checks on Account Health – On the days leading up to the sale event, you must routinely monitor your account health and performance notification dashboard. Check that your performance metrics are in good shape and look out for any inefficiencies in your customer experience or fulfillment process. Amazon remains on high alert before and during sale season to regulate and detect irregular behavior on the marketplace, and flagging and suspension can become more common in that time frame. Thus, you must conduct daily checks to ensure your account is in good standing.
  
• Follow a Staggered Approach for Post Sale Period – After the sale period, bid adjustment and budget reversal should be planned in a staggered way, as all gain could be lost if drastic changes are made immediately. Since traffic goes down after the rush period and causes a lower click-through rate, it is not necessary to reduce your bids to minimize costs. Furthermore, retaining your bids will help in maintaining the gain in ranking due to the sale period, provided the keywords are still as competitive.

All in all, sellers need a comprehensive strategy to navigate through sale season and this includes tips and tricks that can be employed up until the last minute. Our aforementioned suggestions can help sellers intervene and make spur-of-the-moment decisions to facilitate smooth sailing through the peak season.

Want to know how you can make the most of the sale season on Amazon? Hit reply and let’s chat.