4 Ways to Drive Sales This 2020 Holiday Season | SupplyKick

With the launch of Amazon Prime Day in October, the 2020 holiday shopping season has officially begun. If you haven’t already started preparing your Amazon sales and marketing strategy for the extended season, don’t worry—consumers are just getting started, and there is still time to implement your game plan. If you’re an Amazon seller, you’re probably reeling from a busy two weeks preparing for Prime Day 2020—it’s time to use that momentum and push forward in November and December.

Here are the top four strategies and tactics Amazon sellers should implement now to drive sales this holiday season:

1) Take a look at last year’s data and use the information as your guide

The 2020 holiday shopping season has already kicked off with Prime Day on October 13 and 14. Because of this, Amazon sellers should expect to see a boost in online shopping that begins earlier than normal.

This is exciting news for Amazon sellers! You’ll be able to learn from this year's Prime Day, and make changes to your holiday strategy and how you approach Black Friday and Cyber Monday. What deals and promotions did you run, and were they successful? Are you selling products that are in-demand right now because of the COVID-19 pandemic? Do you have any stock that you’re desperately trying to sell through before Black Friday and Cyber Monday arrive? These are all questions to consider and cater to as we kick off the holiday shopping season.

It’s also important to look at how your business did during the 2019 holiday shopping season. You’ll want to use these numbers to forecast your inventory levels, plan for mistakes, and develop an optimized holiday strategy.

2) Brace yourself for COVID-related shipping delays

Due to COVID-19, delays in receiving times and supply chains are now more common. Throw in an unexpected, extended holiday shopping season and forecasting your inventory stock levels becomes a little more difficult. Here’s what we suggest paying attention to as you forecast for the holiday shopping season during COVID-19:

• Be aware of Amazon’s fluctuations in receiving times. Amazon is currently taking almost twice as long to fully receive products into their facilities compared to early March. Be prepared for longer receiving times and plan accordingly when creating your forecast.
• COVID-19 sent ripples all the way down the supply chain. Be proactive and reach out to your suppliers to make sure they have inventory available and no production or personnel issues. Also, build in longer lead times for your manufacturers as they’ll likely have production issues of their own. 
• Pay attention to the promotions you’re offering and manage your advertising so that you can either slow or increase your sell-through depending on your product availability. 
• As with any holiday season, make sure you know holiday shipping deadlines set by carriers and plan accordingly.
• Storage fees at Amazon fulfillment centers increase in Q4—in order to avoid paying more you’ll want to sell your inventory as soon as possible while there is traffic.

3) Brush up your A+ Content and other design elements on your product listing

During the holiday shopping season, your product pages are bound to see an increase in traffic. Whether or not you see an increase in sales, though, will depend on the quality of your product pages—especially the design elements such as photography and A+ Content. 

A+ Content and photography are time-consuming to completely revamp for a large assortment of products. But, it’s important to proactively answer customers’ questions and concerns in these elements of a product listing. Look at your customer reviews and questions and brush up your product listings. Get ahead of the curve by answering these customer questions using these design elements—for example, maybe you need to better explain or show the features, usage, and/or directions on how to use your product. Incorporate your brand voice to create an experience that will give customers the confidence they need to purchase your product. 

When executed, custom iconography, graphics, and images on your product listings have proven to drive an additional 25% increase in conversion rate to your products.

4) Prepare an in-depth advertising strategy

Customers love holiday shopping because of deals, promotions, and great savings. Thankfully, Amazon offers a ton of ways to advertise your product—from Sponsored Products to their newest tool, Sponsored Display.

Obviously, the holiday season is a great time to take advantage of the various advertising avenues that Amazon offers. But, what can you do before Black Friday and Cyber Monday that will have the best return on investment and increase in conversion rate? You should:

• Utilize Prime Exclusive Discounts: Amazon offers many different deals during the holiday season. We recommend setting up Prime Exclusive Discounts—these deal types get the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deal badges and draw shoppers attention.   
• Decide on a daily budget for your holiday advertising strategy: The cost of running ads increases during the holiday season—make sure you have a well thought out plan of how much you want to spend and when you want to spend the most. You’ll want to consider increasing your advertising budget so your campaigns remain in budget throughout the day (we recommend increasing your budget 3x what it normally is for Black Friday and Cyber Monday).
• Do your keyword research ahead of time: Find out what customers are searching for and then target your ads using carefully selected keywords so you can make the most of your advertising dollars.

Make the most of the 2020 holiday season and beyond

Millions of shoppers are expected to purchase on Amazon this holiday season, so it’s more important than ever to implement these tactics to drive sales over these next few months and into 2021.

At SupplyKick, we’re focused on creating optimal Amazon strategies for our partners. From optimizing product pages, to handling logistics, to creating and managing effective advertising campaigns, we help our partners navigate Amazon’s complexities.

Talk to our team to find out how a SupplyKick partnership can save you time and increase your sales.