How to Prepare as a Seller for Amazon Black Friday in 2019
It’s a few weeks before Black Friday, one of the biggest selling days of the year, but have you been preparing your Amazon store for it? There are a lot of preparations needed for a big sale, from managing your inventory, choosing the right items to discount, sending out ads and mailers to let your customers know of the upcoming sale, dealing with shipping and packaging, and so much more. Amazon Black Friday is a great time to make hearty profits, but research and preparation is a must!
Quick Guide:
- Choosing the Right Content for Your Store Catalog
- How to Prepare Your Inventory Control?
- Managing a Black Friday Ad Campaigning
- Optimizing Your Product Listings
- Prepare Yourself for Amazon Black Friday
Choosing the Right Content for Your Store Catalog
Amazon Black Friday is a great time to be pushing your signature items from your catalog that you have a lot of stock of, but you should also consider expanding. There are always new items trending in the market, and this might be a great time to consider stocking up on one of these trending items to take advantage of the sales push that Amazon Black Friday gives. Is there a new type of toy in that market that everybody is going to be scrambling to get? Or is there a new lifestyle item that is all the rage amongst the fashion-forward?
Research is important to know what content you should be putting in your store catalog for Amazon Black Friday. There are numerous sources you should be checking out to find out what the latest trends are. Social media is one of the most popular ways to get informed, but also check out your competitors’ stores on Amazon; they may already be stocking that trendy new product. You can also check out retail store flyers, or even just ask around your family members and friends to hear what they are excited to buy.
How to Prepare Your Inventory Control
Amazon Black Friday is one of the most important times of the year for you to have your inventory control in tip-top shape. Hopefully by now, you have already sent in all the inventory you want in stock for Black Friday to the Fulfilled by Amazon (FBA) warehouses as the cutoff date this year was November 6, 2019. If you haven’t, you should get them in as soon as possible, but even if they aren’t fully available by the time Black Friday starts, it isn’t the end of the world as the Christmas holiday season is soon after, and the FBA inventory cutoff date for that this year is December 3rd, 2019. As well, if you have stock that is taking up space that is seasonal or just not selling, try to clear some of it out to make room for the inventory that will sell during the holiday season.
Amazon Black Friday sales are an amazing time to sell a lot of inventory quickly, but don’t sell your entire stock; you should be keeping stock for the rest of the holiday season. While Black Friday does get a lot of sales, there are still many sales you will get in December, all the way up to the end of the year. The plus of this is that the sales in December will most likely be at a higher price, so you’ll be making more profit overall. Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that Black Friday sale prices you offer will bring in many new customers, who after experiencing your customer service and product quality, may purchase more items in December to fill out the rest of their holiday shopping needs.
If you are an FBM seller, where you do the shipping yourself, you need to be prepared for the influx of orders; any delay in shipping is going to harm your customer service and product ratings. You should also be upfront with customers saying if you do not offer the same shipping speed and return policies as Amazon.
Amazon Black Friday is a time that you should consider free shipping as well. People are shopping for the Amazon Black Friday sale because of the sale prices, but if they see that they still have to pay shipping, they may skip your listing and go to a competitor that is offering free shipping. Free shipping isn’t for everybody, but if you can afford to take the slight hit to profit, you should very much consider it, if only for the holiday season.
Managing a Black Friday Ad Campaigning
Amazon Black Friday these days isn’t limited to Black Friday, but also Cyber Monday and even Black November; so, you should be getting your product ad campaigns rolling ASAP if they aren’t already going out there. You should be adjusting your ad campaigns to account for mentioning Amazon Black Friday sales and any sales you may have for the whole of Black November, and also getting a jump start on theming some ads for the holiday season in December.
You can start running PPC ads via the sponsored products option. Getting your product listed below search results or on product detail pages will give you a lot more visibility. You also pay for the ads per-click. It is a monetary investment, but you only pay for the clicks that actually go through. You can use Amazon auto-suggested keywords for your ad campaign, and you should bid the most on long-tail keywords that your potential buyers might use.
Don’t forget to start sending out emails or social media to your current customers to let them know of your upcoming sales for Amazon Black Friday and the holiday season. Letting them know will ensure they come to check them out, and maybe even share them with people they know.
Optimizing Your Product Listings
Once you have chosen what products to highlight during Amazon Black Friday, have your inventory control and shipping sorted, and settled on your ad campaign, you should look through every one of the product listings you plan to have on sale and make sure they are up-to-date and appealing to consumers. This is a great time to update your product photos, especially if you aren’t maximizing all nine photo spots, and are missing visuals like lifestyle photos. You should also be optimizing the copy in your listings, filling out the titles with all the appropriate keywords, and even holiday keywords for the upcoming season; but make sure the title flows nicely. A keyword-stuffed title can put off some customers. Make sure your descriptions are as good as they can be, describing the item’s purpose, materials, quality, dimensions, etc. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers and think of what they would be looking for in a product, and use that as a template for a good description.
Also, consider grouping up some of your products in a bundle deal where appropriate. For any product you have that doesn’t qualify for normal Amazon Black Friday deals, or lightning deals, you can create coupons to incentivize customers to purchase. Also, you can consider special packaging for the holiday season so that they are easy to give as a gift.
Prepare Yourself for Amazon Black Friday
With proper preparation, you can ensure that you have a very profitable Amazon Black Friday; but not only that, you will have started your preparations early for the holiday selling season, which can end up being just as profitable.
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