The Amazon Black Friday sale of 2022 is among the most anticipated sales events of this year. Amazon sellers bent on maximizing sales and profit are just as excited as the consumers looking to enjoy big discounts, as sales are expected to hit $5.8 billion dollars in that week alone. Preparing for this big event and leveraging effective sales strategies cannot be understated in this quarter. Here are some tips on how an online seller can best prepare for the Amazon Black Friday sale of this year:
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Check your stocks
Check your data from Q1 to Q3 and base your sales projections on this. Sales for a specific item on a normal day may double or triple on Black Friday. Compare this with the data on your Q4 sales from the past three years and restock accordingly. Which item sold the most? Were there any product returns? Which products were these?
Replenish those items that are currently out of stock or those that are likely to sell out based on the gathered data. Have enough in your inventory and make sure you don’t sell out as this will cause you to lose your Buy Box.
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Be Strategic on Your Pricing and Offerings
Discounts and deals are important during this buying blitz because they help boost sales, but use them wisely. Other sellers price their products too low to gain more traffic. Sellers all want to win at price wars, but discounting too aggressively too soon may result in profit losses. Protect your margins by employing strategic pricing or getting Amazon repricing software.
Most experts agree that buyers are willing to modify their spending to enjoy free shipping benefits, which is why you’ll find many stores offering free shipping deals. They also advise that sellers tend to benefit more from discounts that promote higher cart value or quantity instead of sitewide discounts. A 35% discount for a minimum spend of $200 is also more enticing from a buyer’s perspective than a sitewide 25% discount.
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Bundled Product Offerings
Consider offering bundled products. While consumers will likely appreciate the deep savings there, you can also enjoy the profit and sale of the individual items. This also accelerates exposure. If you have products that complement each other and you’re selling them as bundles, you’ll want to pre-pack them ahead of sale day.
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Ramp Up Your Marketing Efforts
Most consumers consider Black Friday as the start of the holiday shopping season. This is the best time to ramp up your marketing efforts. Optimize your campaigns and launch your advertising as soon as possible, if you haven’t already. Starting your advertising campaigns on Black Friday week might be too late. Check your internal links because we don’t want consumers leaving your landing page or your store (or not getting there, to begin with) because of a broken link. Use email and social media marketing to pique your customers’ interest and hype your store offers. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are great opportunities to build up your company’s sales velocity and are well worth all the ad spends.
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Optimize Your Amazon Listings
Determine the keywords that people are likely to use on that week, such as “Black Friday,” “Cyber Monday,” or “Christmas” and use them wisely when you post your listings. Aim for customer conversion, not keyword stuffing. Spammy titles or listings that do not sound natural may negatively impact your click-through rate.
Include the brand name and a concrete description of what the item does and its properties like its color, size, and material in your product listing.
Do customers usually use acronyms to locate your product? Is the product name commonly misspelled during searches? You can include both as backend keywords.
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Pre-Black Friday Sales
Sales and discounts don’t necessarily start on Black Friday. You will find a lot of stores slashing their prices earlier than that. This is because consumers start building their shopping lists and searching for holiday sales in the first week of November. You’ll gain site visibility by starting a pre-holiday shopping season sale on your promotional items. If people don’t buy from you at that point yet, there still is a big chance that they’ll come back and buy your product on the big day itself.
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Customer Service
With so many merchants trying to win consumers over, Thanksgiving is going to be quite a hectic weekend. You’ll want your buyers’ transactions to be seamless. Don’t lose potential customers over a few hiccups in the system or because they’re unable to reach customer service. Have a team of customer support representatives at the ready and make sure they are trained to combat any possible problems, especially on that weekend.
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Customer Review and Feedback
Aside from raking in sales, this is also an opportune time for you to get customer reviews and feedback. Email those who have bought your items over the sale week and ask them to write a review. It is wise to send them an automated email within a few days after the transaction while they are still in the honeymoon phase of the purchase. About 90% of Amazon customers trust verified store or product reviews.
Most of the customers on this sale weekend are price-driven, which results in price wars among sellers. Sellers should be able to strike a balance between winning traffic while maintaining profitability. Beyond offering discounts – which is what most online stores would be doing – it helps to come up with personalized offerings that cut through the noise.
