The hot shopping season on Amazon has started, but the climax is yet to come. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday approaching quickly, we should get straight to the point.  

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are the biggest shopping days in the USA and an amazing opportunity for third-party sellers on Amazon. During last year’s holiday season, nearly 70% of all Amazon sales were made by small and medium-sized sellers. To speak in actual numbers — third-party sellers sold 1 billion items on Amazon during the last year’s holiday season, with over 140 million products sold between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday. Enough said! 

Here are a few ways to profit from the holiday season shopping fever 

To join the merry gang of those who profit big during the holiday season on Amazon, you should: 

1.  Optimize

2. Discount

3. Advertise

4. Support

Optimize

There are two things you should be paying special attention to when it comes to optimization. You should make sure you optimize both your product pages and your product images. 

Product page optimization

Product page optimization has several aspects to it.

Keyword optimization

First, you should be optimizing your product page content for keywords. Start by researching the relevant keywords. Brainstorm a list of phrases people may type in the search box when searching for products like yours. Next, test your keyword choices. You can simply use the Amazon search for the testing, or you can use a third-party tool.

After you finalize the list of keywords for the products you want to promote, make sure to get these keywords on your product page. However, be careful as keyword stuffing can have a negative impact on the readability of your content. Don’t trade readability for keywords. Yes, you want to show up high in the search for certain keywords. But, on the other hand, you don’t want people to bounce off your product page due to poorly written, useless content.

Content optimization

This brings us to the second aspect of product page optimization — the relevance of information. Potential buyers will appreciate educational and informative content. Stand out by offering high-quality, well-organized content that is easy to read.

With so many things to buy, they won’t have time to dig deep to get the information they need. Therefore, make sure your product pages are organized in such a way that all the important information is visible without scrolling. Highlight your advantages and tell your buyers what they will get by purchasing your products. Optimize your content so that it highlights the benefits vs. simply listing the product features.

Clear call to action

Next, emphasize your call to action. Naturally, your call to action will be “buy now,” but make sure you create a sense of urgency. Also, let them know what the added value is if they purchase immediately. Give them a clear deadline for making the purchase.

Mobile-friendly product pages

Last, but not least — make sure your product pages are optimized for mobiles. Did you know that 50% of purchases during the holiday season come from mobile devices? This is a huge percent, and you would be missing many opportunities if you didn’t optimize for mobiles. Play smart!

Product image optimization

We cannot emphasize enough how important it is to optimize your product images. Online shopping has a lot of advantages — convenience being the major one. However, people shopping online don’t have the opportunity to touch and feel the items. Make sure you compensate for this by offering lots of high-quality images. Take shots from different angles, show all the details of your products, and be sure to show the product in use.

Also, don’t forget to post only high-resolution images so that people can use the Amazon zoom feature to get to know your product well. If you can make it possible for your potential buyers to take a close look at every detail of the products you’re selling, that will give you a head start over your competitors.

Advertise

Plan your budget

With billions of people browsing Amazon during the holiday season, you need to make sure you get in front of their eyes. To do so, you need to invest in advertising.

Note that cost-per-click increases significantly during the holidays, so you will need to adjust your budget to accommodate for the increase. Additionally, don’t give up on your advertising efforts easily. At first, you’ll probably see an increase in spending without seeing a spike in purchases. However, that doesn’t mean that people won’t eventually buy. Keep calm and regularly check your performance reports to make sure your spending doesn’t go through the roof, but give your ads a little time to start generating sales, as they may come back to purchase your product after comparing it with others.

Focus on a few products only

It would be great if you could promote all your products. However, if you’re like most sellers, then your budget will be limited. This is why it is important to choose a couple of products that you will promote. If you have a trending product, invest in it. Or, choose the products that historically sell well during the holiday season.

Whichever products you choose to advertise, make sure to use the product pages to push related products. You will be spending more money on advertising during the holiday season; therefore, you want to increase the value of every order you get.

Choose the right ad type

To get the most bang for your buck, you should choose your ads wisely.

If you want to get better visibility for specific keywords, opt for a Sponsored Products ad. These are actually the most popular Amazon ads, and they generate the most sales.

You should launch both Automatic and Manual campaigns. Automatic campaigns will monitor what people type when they search for products similar to yours and will capture keywords that you may not have thought of. Manual campaigns will allow you to target specific keywords.

Sponsored Brands (formerly Headline Search) are banner type ads that appear at the top of the search pages, in the sidebar and at the bottom. These will get you the most visibility and let you promote your entire brand. However, they are only available for brand-registered products and sellers. Also, you should be careful with those. They get the most visibility, so it’s important to target your audience well. You don’t want people clicking on your ads just because they’re nice and shiny. You want clicks from potential customers.

Finally, if you can allocate a bigger budget for advertising purposes during the holiday season, you should go with Display Ads. They show both on Amazon and on other diverse websites. They are a good opportunity to expand your brand reach and visibility.

The best thing about these ads is that they offer different targeting options, and you can even use them for remarketing purposes. With these ads, you can keep reminding your potential buyers about your offer even after they move away from Amazon.

Discount

Let’s be honest! People expect discounts during the holiday season. If you don’t offer any, you’ll probably not be able to generate sales during this year’s shopping season. Now that we’ve established that, let’s briefly review what promotion options there are.

Lightning deals

The Lightning deals page is the second most visited page on Amazon. However, to get listed, your product needs to be listed in Amazon’s recommendations. Also, you will need to invest a significant amount of money in offering lightning deals promotions. It would cost you between $300 and $500 to offer a lightning deal on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and have to offer at least a 20% discount on the promoted product.

Coupons

However, if you aren’t entitled to lightning deals, or you don’t want to invest so much into promotion, you can opt for coupons. Coupons are visible on the coupon page. In addition to this, an orange coupon tag will show on your product page and on the search result pages. The cost is only $0.60 per coupon redemption. Coupons will encourage shoppers to follow-through as they are always on the lookout for good deals during the holiday season.

Amazon promotion tools

These are the least effective as they show only on your product pages. However, they are free, and if combined well with advertising effort, they can really help you increase the value of every order.

Use these promotion tools to offer discounts and highlight related products you want to sell. Or you can use them to offer bulk discounts. In any case, your aim should be increasing the size of every order you get during the holiday season.

Support 

During the holiday shopping season, people want to see as many deals as possible, compare them and make decisions. In order to do so, they need to get information quickly. This is why it is crucial you offer a top-notch customer service during this year’s shopping frenzy. Educate your staff. Make sure they are knowledgeable, fast, and can stay polite even with impatient and irritated customers. Excellent customer service can be the deciding factor for many customers. 

Ok, now that you know how to prepare for this year’s holiday season on Amazon, don’t waste your time. Go and prepare. Remember — optimize, discount, advertise, support! We wish you good luck and merry selling!