Crush the Competition: How to Win Sales During the Amazon Holiday Season

Sellers on Amazon all over the world have started stocking up on inventory in anticipation of the upcoming Amazon holiday season. Seventy percent of Americans are making purchases online, right now. By 2025, it is expected that there will be 285 million American digital shoppers, up from the 268 million who made purchases in 2022. There is plenty of money to go around over the holidays, and every Amazon seller may get a piece of the action.

To help you maximize your sales for Halloween, Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Black Friday, we’ve compiled a few tips and tricks that you can implement immediately. We have also compiled a schedule detailing our most successful holiday selling strategies for the holidays.

Making money from your business is as simple as making a list of tasks, checking them off as they’re completed, and repeating.

Understand Peak Amazon Holiday Season – 2023

Holiday advertising campaigns require meticulous planning. It’s a crazy busy season, and retailers have to work extra hard to keep up. Amazon sellers can increase their sales and conversion rates with some careful preparation.

Amazon sellers lose money on promotions since they have to pay for things like vouchers, discounts, and so on. Therefore, it is crucial to set aside sufficient funds to cover them. Not all products benefit from advertising, so focus on promoting the ones that bring in the most money.

After two years of exploding retail and ecommerce growth, 2022 saw a 4.8% YoY increase in Amazon holiday season retail sales. For the 2023 winter season, Tinuiti forecasts an increase of 4.5%.

According to Statista, 95% of Millennial online buyers in the USA claimed to have planned to purchase on Amazon.com during the 2023 holiday season, and we are here to help you get holiday-ready to win at Amazon’s busiest season of the year!

This holiday season, it is expected to witness a surge in demand for the product in the following categories on Amazon:

Optimize Listings for Holiday Keywords: Tips & Strategies

Prepare For The Unexpected:

This is the time to plan your Amazon holiday selling strategy for ‘Christmas,’ ‘New-years’ and so on. Marketing and advertising initiatives should begin well in advance to accommodate for the lengthier lead periods associated with the year-end holiday season.

If you’re an Amazon seller on FBA, take advantage of the Prime delivery to significantly increase your sales. With strategic inventory management and planning, you may avoid the higher storage costs for letting your products sit ideal in Amazon fulfillment warehouses.

You might handle packaging and shipping on your own to avoid the higher storage costs during the Amazon holiday season. Remember that you won’t be able to take advantage of a lot of deals if you aren’t a Prime member.

Stock and inventory levels

The holiday season is not the time to slack off on inventory management. Send in enough stock before November to cover projected December sales.

Amazon’s employees are swamped with orders and merchandise, so they can’t afford to make any mistakes in delivering. If you plan on using Fulfillment by Amazon, check that your inventory levels fulfill their specifications well in advance of shipping. Amazon frequently issues refunds if certain conditions are not satisfied, and the company’s staff may be less than helpful around the holidays.

Anticipating your inventory needs is the best way to avoid Amazon’s increased storage fees, missing shipments, and reduced customer service.

Optimize Your Product Listing

Listings are the next step once you’ve established the Amazon holiday selling strategy and made sure you have adequate stock. Check to see that you’ve used appropriate keywords in all of your listings and make sure you’ve double-checked your product images and copied and conducted any necessary A/B tests.

Keep trying out numerous product listings with various primary photos and captions until you find the one that brings in the most sales.

Invest time in your EBC content and keep it up-to-date with pertinent branding information and features if you have a brand registered on Amazon. Adapt your excellent material to the winter season if you like.

Launch Your Pay-per-Click Campaigns Prior To The Season

Make sure you have an advertising plan in place a few months before the end of the year if you want to see a significant increase in sales during the Christmas season. In order to fine-tune your advertising campaigns before November, you will need to execute both automatic and manual campaigns.

The earlier you begin the more time you will get to collect and analyze the data to enhance your holiday selling strategies and optimize your marketing budget.

You’ll need to take a few steps to fine-tune your campaigns after you begin receiving data about them. And steer clear of the few Common Errors Advertisers Make With Amazon-Sponsored Product Ads.

Keeping an Eye on Sluggish Sales

During the Amazon Holiday Season, it is especially important to promote slow-selling products. Try running specials or lowering prices slightly on products that aren’t moving. Amazon Virtual Bundles can be used to combine low-performing products with high-performing ones in order to provide more value to customers at higher profit margins.

Example of Amazon Virtual Bundle (Source: https://www.junglescout.com)

These tactics encourage shoppers to purchase slow-moving inventory, even if the items wouldn’t normally be considered gift-worthy. With that extra capital, you can promote even more of your highest-grossing products.

You can see where you are in comparison to the competition across all of your listings with the use of an automatic tracking system. It can be used to implement real-time price adjustments, giving you more power over your sales procedure.

Exciting Promotions, Deals, Coupons

The holidays are a great opportunity to promote your most sought-after items with discounts and special offers and keywords like ‘Black Friday.’

According to Adobe, in 2023 Black Friday’s online sales in the United States will total $9.6 billion, from $9.12 billion in 2022.

Promotions on Your Stellar Products:

Using Seller Central’s “Advertising” tab, you can quickly and easily make all kinds of promo offers for your customers. You get to decide on the discounts you offer, and for which products.

A buy-one-get-one (BOGO) promotion is an option for sellers to promote their new products. Offering products at a Buy One, Get One Free or Buy Two, Get Two Free price point is a terrific way to move inventory quickly, especially for those slow-sellers or less popular products.

Offering “Free Shipping” on purchases beyond a specific threshold is another low-effort advertising strategy.

According to Tinuiti, free shipping and fast delivery are the most important factors for shoppers when choosing where to buy their Black Friday gifts.

Using Coupons To Attract Customers:

Similarly, in the “Advertising” section of Seller Central, under the “Coupons” subheading, you’ll find the “Create a new coupon” option. Amazon Sellers will incur costs similar to those associated with Amazon PPC ads whenever one of their discounts is used. Each time a consumer uses your coupon to make a purchase, you’ll be charged a $0.60 fee.

Deals That Are Hard To Resist!

Like Promotions and Coupons, “Deals” can be made by going to the Advertising section of Seller Central and selecting the “Create a new deal” option there. Fees for facilitating transactions are charged to vendors and vary with the nature of the transaction. There is a $300 charge for 7 Day Deals, whereas the Lightning Deals cost only $150.

Information about which products have been accepted and the ability to make modifications to your listings may be found in the Deal dashboard.

Run Targeted Amazon Sponsored Ads

Your PPC ads should focus heavily on brand awareness if you have a private label. A Sponsored Brand ad can showcase up to three of your items with your company’s logo and a personalized headline.

You must adopt a more outbound marketing and place your bids on the branded keywords of your close competitors that are more established, so when people search for your competitor’s brand, your goods show up next to your competitor. You can even target your ads to your competitor’s ASINs to boost your presence.

Though, if you’ve been in the eCommerce business for a while you must realize that retaining customers is much easier than making new ones. Bid on your own trademarked name to get people talking about your brand. To keep buyers interested in your private label, publicize both your top sellers and your flops.

It is anticipated that by 2023, social media shopping platforms like Instagram and TikTok would have a significant impact on Black Friday and Christmas sales. So don’t forget about social media when expanding your brand’s reach.

Plan an Amazon holiday selling strategy for social media and leverage influencer marketing to expand your customer base across different social media platforms.

Learn more about Amazon marketing strategies: The Ultimate Amazon CPC Guide: Tips and Tactics for Boosting Sales.

Be Prepared For Everything!

You can do everything right, but you still need to catch up with the influx of customers and orders. There is so much you, as the merchant, can do to prepare. As exciting as the end-of-season might be, it can also be hectic.

Remembering to expect the unexpected is the single most critical piece of advice sellers should take seriously. An Amazon seller can typically expect to make the most money during the holidays. However, you should always be prepared for the unexpected and have backup holiday selling strategies to protect your business.

If you’re looking for a team of advertising experts to win at the next holiday sales season, contact AMZDUDES today or book a consultation with our Amazon specialists for tailored solutions to solve your business’ hiccups.