With Prime Day behind us, the next big online shopping holidays should be at the forefront of your strategy – Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This year, the influx of customer demand seen during Prime Day is expected to be reflected over the course of Cyber Week as customers flock to online sales instead of brick-and-mortar stores.
This year, the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the trend towards online sales growth as customers are actively avoiding shopping in traditional retail stores. Shopping online has become the safer, easier option for most customers.
It’s essential to ensure your Amazon account is prepared for the online Christmas rush now. We’ll give you a quick overview of preparations that will help make your – and your customers’ – experience more profitable and enjoyable. Here’s what you need to know for Cyber Five 2020:
Last year, Black Friday “for the first time beat Cyber Monday in the number of e-commerce shoppers by 10 million, totaling 93.2 million.
Picking the Ideal Holiday Products
For Cyber Week, you ought to plan to offer deals on your most optimized listings. The products you choose to promote through deals should have:
- Listings with 5-7 images
Informative, keyword optimized content - At least 10 reviews
- A 4.0 star rating or above
- Accurate answers to customer questions
Combined, these all create product listings that perform well and stand out among the rest during high-traffic events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
If your listings aren’t optimized for the holiday shopping season Commerce Rev can help produce optimized content and keyword lists, professional imagery, and A+ Detail pages so that you can be confident your listings will stand out.
Inventory Readiness
Choose to offer Black Friday deals on listings with inventory already available to reduce the chances of stock shortages. For sellers, FBA is the best option to fulfill orders in a timely manner with greater chances of being featured in the Buy Box. Amazon’s warehouse space is very limited, so use statistics from your previous year’s Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday sales to determine the most efficient use of your inventory.
Amazon recommends that your FBA inventory for the Cyber Five sales week arrive at their fulfillment centers by November 6th. Make sure your warehouse operations are prepared to ship your inventory before the deadline.
Plan ahead and prepare to fulfill more orders than usual if your FBA inventory runs out. Check your carriers’ shipping rates for seasonal increases to prevent surprises.
Take advantage of programs designed to make your business logistics easier – Commerce Rev offers access to our warehouse operations and FBA Onsite program to boost your business’ own shipping abilities during high-volume events and seasons.
Use Amazon Store Scheduling
You can update your store to include a new subcategory page just for Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals to make sure your customers can find your products on sale. Amazon allows sellers to create temporary versions of their Amazon stores with a new feature called Amazon Store versions.
You control the temporary store scheduling – consider making use of this store feature for other holidays to expand your brand’s reach. You can choose a date-based timeframe that will display the temporary version of your store to shoppers just during Cyber Five.
Take Advantage of Amazon Posts
Brands can use Amazon Posts to reach customers and for free, and are still fairly new on the platform – a great opportunity that hasn’t been fully utilized by most brands. Amazon Posts can:
- Increase brand awareness
- Appear on competitor product detail pages
- Defend your own product detail pages from competitors
- Drive incremental sales from product detail pages at no cost
Posting on a platform where your customers are already in a purchasing mindset will give you an advantage over other social media platforms that you manage. Amazon Posts appear to customers on:
- Brand-owned product detail pages
- Related Brands detail pages
- Related Post feeds
- Category feeds
Create posts designed to promote the same products you’re offering Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals on to maximize the chances of conversion.
Plan Your Advertising
Be ready for Cyber Week and take the time now to create budgets based on historic data from past Prime Days, Black Fridays, and Cyber Mondays. Ensure that you’re budgeting for the right products – listings that perform well without ads will likely need less of a boost than poorly performing listings.
- Increase budgets by 20% a couple of days before and after Cyber Week
- Increase bids as advertisers are willing to bid higher for the increase in traffic
- Have your campaigns optimized before Cyber Week
- Start advertising before Thanksgiving so your ad spend isn’t wasted during the highest traffic days
Advertising campaigns running during high traffic shopping days such as Prime Day or Cyber Monday receive more clicks from shopping customers. Plan to keep your ads running for more than 72 hours to maximize your reach to customers looking for the deals you’re providing. The Christmas shopping holiday starts on Thanksgiving and continues through Cyber Monday.
Commerce Rev can help you make the most of your budget by targeting keywords, increasing brand awareness, and remarketing your products to customers that already viewed pages. Start your strategy now to drive traffic and sales during Cyber Week 2020.
“A record $9.4 billion was spent online on Cyber Monday” in 2019, making it the “biggest U.S. online shopping day” behind this year’s Prime Day.
With more customers shopping from the safety of their homes this holiday season, use these guidelines to prepare your Amazon account for more online shoppers than you’ve experienced in previous years. Keep in mind that Black Friday is expected to generate more traffic, but Cyber Monday is expected to generate more sales. We invite you to optimize your listings and advertising campaigns with Commerce Rev to maximize your success during the holiday shopping season.
