Black Friday is, for most Amazon sellers, the biggest sale event of the year. It is important to prepare in advance to make the most of the high traffic coming through Amazon’s website. Amazon confirmed that 2020 was the biggest holiday season of its history. Many experts are anticipating this year to break even more records which makes the importance of preparing for Black Friday undeniable! Remember, how you prepare for Black Friday can have a significant impact on your sales and profitability. In this article, we’ll go over 11 important Black Friday selling tips to help you rake in maximum sales. These Amazon seller tips for Black Friday also cover tried and tested recommendations for brands vendors.
1. Optimize Titles and Bullets
When you think about applying Amazon seller tips for Black Friday, make sure that you have the basics of Amazon SEO covered. This is where product listing optimization comes in. Although this tip doesn’t only apply to Black Friday, it is the best time to do it if you haven’t already optimized your titles and feature bullets. Titles are the first thing shoppers will read about your product. This is why optimization is necessary to boost your Click-Through-Rate (CTR). If you want an in-depth how-to guide on how to optimize your Amazon listing (ASIN) based on Amazon’s best practices and recommendations in 2021, read our detailed blog post here.
Amazon allows up to 250 characters for product titles. However, a lot of listings barely use half of the maximum limit. Here’s a great example:
The difference between the 2 is significant in terms of reviews. Nonetheless, one thing to note in this example is brand recognition. Some major brands don’t feel the need to use the full length of the title because of their brand popularity. In the example above, we see a great case of a less known brand that used titles (among other selling tips) to compete against a bigger brand. Although we can’t attribute the success of this listing to the title alone, it definitely helps a lesser-known brand showcase all its features before someone has to click on the product.
Having said that, if a brand isn’t as established as a popular brand, improving your titles to add features and important information about your product can result in greater CTR. You can use this free ASIN analyzer tool to analyze your Amazon listing and receive immediate feedback on your listing. A well-optimized listing is the first step of a successful Black Friday. Even if you increase ad budgets & inventory, a poorly optimized product listing will produce low CTR. This tool is a must-use for merchants looking to optimize their listings before the biggest season of the year.
2. Submit Lightning Deals (When You Can)
Prepare your sales and promotions in advance, and also submit them on time for lightning deals. Those few hours of being featured on the lightning page during Black Friday can be worth thousands in sales. A lot of merchants submit their deals, but only a few spots are available. Thus, your deals must be as attractive as possible. In some rare cases, if the featured product is new, it may be worth it to sell it at the lowest price possible. This strategy will help generate enough reviews to push organic sales later on.
Unfortunately, the odds of Amazon approving a lightning deal on Black Friday for a new item are almost none. Therefore, we recommend focusing on your best-selling items, with the most reviews, to put all chances on your side. At the end of the day, Amazon approves ASINs they think can generate sales during one of the busiest times of the year.
Even if your lightning deals are not approved, you should still schedule your promotions on Seller Central. Even though the items are not going to get featured on the front page of the Black Friday deals, people are still going to search for products they’re looking for.
It is important that the maximum number of people see your product. Don’t forget that 70% of Amazon sales are generated directly from the search bar. Having a “sale” badge or highlighted discount can improve your sales immensely.
3. Streamline Inventory Management
Due to container shipping delays and high freight costs, it is important to prepare Black Friday inventory weeks before the event, in case the delivery to your warehouse (or Amazon’s) takes longer than expected. It is especially true if your inventory comes from overseas. Inventory is important since it is also considered when submitting a deal. If the inventory is too low, and can’t handle the demand, Amazon can still deny an aggressive deal.
4. Increase Advertising Budget
An Amazon seller tip for Black Friday that you should consider is increasing your advertising budget. It is one of the few aspects which Amazon sellers have full control over. During Black Friday on Amazon, all sellers increase their ad spending. If you don’t, you’ll probably run out of budget earlier as your bids become more expensive due to the competition. It is still possible to have a profitable Black Friday without ads, but increasing the ad budget can, in some cases, triple the revenue generated for a well-optimized item.
Before doing so, we highly recommend using this free tool to understand how to best approach your Amazon advertising strategy. Combining a deal and well-placed product ads can be a great combination to improve your conversion rate and increase sales.
5. Focus on FBA Products
Fulfillment by Amazon’s cost increases between October and December due to the holiday season. For slow-selling items, it is best to try to sell them as fast as possible since the price increases up to 2.5 times the original cost of FBA, depending on your country.
In some cases, it may be better to heavily discount a product with a lot of FBA inventory to avoid losing on the margin on stock sitting too long at Amazon’s warehouse. The Prime badge, combined with a good sale price, can help you get rid of slow-moving items that may end up losing you money if they don’t sell during that holiday period.
6. Utilize B2B Offers
A major feature that merchants don’t always take advantage of is ‘Business Price’. This is an Amazon seller tip for Black Friday that most are unaware of. In Seller Central, there is a field to add a discounted price for businesses. These prices are only shown to accounts registered as a Business, so you can be assured that standard customers will not see that price. You can (and should) add quantity discounts. Again, this will only show to business customers.
If “Business Price” isn’t available on your “Manage Inventory” page, you can click on “Preferences” in the top right corner, then check the box “Business Price” to make it visible by default.
7. Update your Amazon Brand Store (*If ‘Brand Registered’)
If you have an Amazon Store because your brand is registered on Amazon, you can update your store to focus on the best deals for the holiday seasons. Depending on your catalog size, you may want to focus on categories instead of specific ASINs. If your catalog is significantly large it might be overwhelming for shoppers to sift through it.
A good approach that works is building a gift guide with categories. For example, gifts “For Him”, “For Her” and “For Kids” etc. You can then focus on the best deals for each group and include products from different categories that complement each other.
Moreover, linking Sponsored Bran ads to stores instead of product pages can contribute to a 22% increase in ROAS. With that said, brand owners should focus on building a unique store experience as it may help increase the average cart value for some of the sales.
8. Add Videos to Your ASINs
Enhance the visual presence of your products with not just images but also videos. According to Web Retailer, a good product video can help increase conversions by over 80%.
However, some Amazon merchants avoid using video because of the cost, time, and resources required to produce a compelling outcome that resonates with their target audience. Our in-platform feature, Trellis Video Creatives, resolves this challenge by enabling merchants to create Amazon-compliant product and brand videos within seconds. These videos can then be used for Amazon Sponsored Brands Video ads or uploaded within the product listing.
9. Harness the Power of Sponsored Brands Video Ads
Amazon is putting more focus on videos which is why we’ve included this Amazon seller tip for Black Friday on our list! Video ads are proven to help convert better, so why not use them? We recommend reading our complete guideline to creating Sponsored Brands Video ads that convert. You can also use Trellis Video Creatives to generate multiple videos that are Amazon-ready. Here’s an example of a video generated through our platform:
10. Prepare for Customer Service Inquiries
With an increase in sales during Black Friday, customer inquiries can (and will most likely) increase. Devise a customer service strategy well in advance to cater to the influx of customer inquiries. If your inventory is sold only through FBA, you have the luxury to not worry about customer service. This is because Amazon will take care of it. However, if you fulfill your orders yourself (Fulfillment by Merchant), prepare for the expected surge in customer service inquiries. You may also see an increase in returns, which can be frustrating. However, the volume generated from your Black Friday sale will surely make up for it.
11. Ask for Product and Seller Reviews
Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t send emails to all customers asking them for a product or seller review. You can manually ask for reviews by clicking on “Request a Review” in the top right corner of an order’s details page. If manually requesting reviews isn’t possible due to the volume of orders, you can benefit from tools that can automate this process.
Taking advantage of the peak in sales to generate more reviews will help you increase the sales ranking of your products, which in return will improve your organic sales.
