The holidays can be bittersweet for FBA sellers because their Amazon holiday sales can vary widely.
On the one hand, it’s an excellent opportunity for you to boost your sales. On the other hand, it’s also a great opportunity for your competitors to increase their sales. With so many others working to capture shoppers, how will you boost your Amazon holiday sales?
While some will be scrambling to survive the holiday season, others will thrive. Let’s make sure you’re one of the thrivers.
Determine Which Products to Focus on
It might be tempting to try and sell everything you’ve got, but you can make a lot more sales by focusing your efforts on the products best suited for the holidays.
According to esquire.com, the top-selling holiday gifts over the last two decades have been video game consoles (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo), electronic gadgets (small robots, tablets, phones, etc.), and dolls/action figures (Elmo doll, Transformers, etc.).
Determining whether a product will hit or flop is no easy task, and it can be incredibly expensive to get wrong. The last thing you want is to be understocked on your most popular products and overstocked on your not-so-popular products.
Figuring your logistics out requires robust analytics as well as an accurate anticipation of future demand. This task might sound daunting, but there are modern solutions that can make this process much easier. For example, Trendster can quickly and easily analyze the seasonality of the products you’re considering to source, so you can make well-informed product selections about how well particular products will perform sales-wise all throughout the year.
Optimize Your Listings
Once you’ve identified the products you want to boost, you’ll want to optimize your product listings.
Your main product image is the first thing your customers will see, so it’s worth putting some time into it. Always check the image’s dimensions (1000×1000 for zoom capability), photo quality (professionally lit, realistic colors, and smooth edges), and overall frame (must have a white background with the product taking up around 80% of the frame).
Keyword research will also be essential to optimizing your listings for the holiday season. As millions of shoppers search for Amazon holiday sales, you’ll want to make sure your product is the one they find. Using software tools can make this process much easier. For example, Scribbles is a free software tool that ensures your listings are fully optimized from front to back.
Once you’ve done your keyword research, you’ll also want to consider including the common misspellings of your keywords to capture those searches for your products as well. We’ve all searched for something on Google only to be asked: “Did you mean…(blank)?” Misspellings can be tricky to guess, but neglecting them could mean you miss out on “low hanging fruit” sale opportunities. Misspellinator instantly provides you with the most common misspellings of your keywords.
Build Buzz For Your Products
The holidays can be a hectic time for shoppers. So many people, so many gifts, so little time. Not to mention, shoppers are being bombarded with ads for many other Amazon holiday sales. Let’s make their purchasing decisions easier by creating buzz around your products! Get people talking about it, sharing it, and watch your sales take off.
Utilize as many resources as you can to create social proof for your products. Whether you use Amazon, Facebook, or Twitter to advertise, take advantage of social media to get some buzz going.
There are many strategies that sellers can use to build buzz around their products. Target users with interests that fit your products’ audience demographic and focus your efforts on them. For example, makeup companies like Sephora concentrate almost exclusively on women while construction tool companies like Dewalt market almost exclusively to men.
Both Amazon and Facebook have great built-in advertising tools and analytics to help you discern between what’s working and what’s not.
Last but not least, remember to try something outside the box. Get creative with this! You can try contacting other influencers in your industry, creating a viral video, doing surveys, and creating buzz through entertainment. Don’t be afraid to use humor and irony to give your brand a unique feel that overshadows all the other Amazon holiday sales.
Perhaps one of the most popular and successful examples of creating buzz is Dollar Shave Club’s viral video. Around 12,000 people signed up for the service within the first 48 hours of the video’s debut, and it racked up 4.75 million views within the first three months.
Protect Your Brand
The busy nature of the Amazon holiday sales makes it a convenient time for hijackers to ride your wave. You worked hard to source your products and get them out there. There are few things more disappointing than other sellers hijacking your brand and eating up your sales.
Outsmart the hijackers and keep your brand locked down. Helium 10 founder Manny Coats announced that hijackers cost him nearly $40k in sales during his first year as a seller by taking away only 3% of his buy-box time.
One of the easiest ways to protect your brand is to utilize a software tool like Brand Gate Checker. It allows you to instantly know the level of protection that your brand has against hijackers, and it enables you to fully lock up your brand so that only you can sell your products.
Prepare For Returns
It’d be nice if we could just pretend returns won’t happen and move forward confidently, but the hard truth is it’s inevitable.
Returns are especially problematic after Amazon holiday sales because so many products may be returned at the same time. Keep your inventory well-stocked and organized so you can better cope with the inevitable fluctuations in sales and returns during the holiday season.
Keep in mind that Amazon has an extended holiday return policy that requires orders shipped between November 1st and December 31st to be returnable through January 31st of the following year.
Keep Track of Lost or Damaged Inventory
Inventory is bound to be lost or damaged during the holiday season. It’s essential that you keep track of inventory as well as your refunds from Amazon to avoid losing your hard-earned money.
If you want a quick and easy way to find lost or damaged inventory that Amazon hasn’t reimbursed you for, try an easy-to-use software tool. Refund Genie generates reimbursement reports with the click of a button so you can collect those funds and get back the money you are owed. Many users have been able to recover hundreds or even thousands of dollars for lost or damaged items.
Final Thoughts
As a seller, the holidays don’t have to turn your world upside down. Equip yourself with the right knowledge and tools, and you’re ready to thrive this holiday season.
Remember to ensure that your inventory arrives at an Amazon fulfillment center by December 1st! Amazon also has a guide of its own that’s worth checking out.
Original post from 6 Ways to Boost Your Amazon Holiday Sales – Helium 10
