The holiday season is an exciting time full of celebrations with people we care about. In the Amazon store, it means sales, deals, and increased customer traffic. Learn tips and best practices to prepare for holiday seasons and shopping events in the Amazon store. Get ready for high-traffic times with tips for increasing visibility and conversion
Preparing with FBA
FBA, or Fulfillment by Amazon, can help set you up for success every day and during holiday seasons. When you enroll your products in FBA, they receive Amazon Prime badging and offer free two-day shipping for your Prime customers. Amazon also provides customer service and handles returns for your FBA orders. Enrolling in FBA can help your products earn Featured Offer placement. The Featured Offer is the prominently displayed offer on a product detail page with an Add to Cart button shoppers can use for easy purchase.
FBA’s fast, free shipping is a key factor in Featured Offer placement. Featured Offer placement can also help your listings earn prominent exposure if you decide to run Deals on them. Holiday seasons and shopping events like Prime Day are busy times in Amazon fulfillment centers. To best prepare, plan to have your inventory arrive at fulfillment centers at least one month prior to the holiday season or sale you’re pursuing.
FBA New Selection
FBA enrollment also gives you access to the FBA New Selection program. FBA New Selection is limited to new-to-FBA parent ASINs. This means products that have been listed with FBA in the past, by you or other Sellers, are not eligible. After enrolling in New Selection, you will have access to the FBA New Selection dashboard.
FBA New Selection Benefits
If you are new to FBA, enrolling in New Selection will earn you $200 in sponsored ads promotional clicks and free campaign creation. You receive $100 in promotional clicks when you enroll and launch a campaign with no end date for an FBA ASIN. You earn an additional $100 in promotional clicks if you advertise an FBA ASIN for at least 30 days.
• If you are new to FBA, enrolling in New Selection will also waive the first $100 in charges for Amazon partnered carrier shipping.
• No monthly storage fees for the first 50 units of each new parent ASIN for 90 days after the unit is first received at a fulfillment center.
• No removal fee for any of those first 50 units if removed within 180 days from the date they were first received.
• No monthly storage fees for the first 30 units of each new parent ASIN for 90 days after the first unit is received at a fulfillment center.
• No removal fee for any of those first 30 units if removed within 180 days from the date they were first received.
• Extra benefits for shoes and apparel. No monthly storage fees for the first 100 units of each new standard-size parent ASIN for 120 days after the first unit is received at a fulfillment center.
Sponsored Products
Advertising with Sponsored Products is one of the most direct ways to increase visibility for your listings. Sponsored Products campaigns let you advertise listings by selecting keywords. When shoppers search for products using the keywords in your campaign, your Sponsored Products ads will be shown. When creating a campaign, you can choose to manually select keywords yourself, or choose automatic and let Amazon make the selections for you.
Ads for your items can appear at the top of search results, within search results, or alongside search results. Ads can also appear on product detail pages and will display on desktop, tablet, and mobile. It’s important to know that you only pay for ads that receive clicks and that your ads only run when your product is the Featured Offer for a listing. Impressions, or views of your ad, are not charged.
Tips to prepare for holiday season with Sponsored Products ads:
• Advertise all eligible products: Increasing your reach across many products can improve visibility and conversion overall.
• Consider raising your daily budgets and bids 2x or higher: A higher daily budget can help meet the demand increased holiday traffic brings, helping you reach more interested customers.
• Enable multiple selection types: When creating a Sponsored Products ad campaign, you can choose to reach your audience manually or automatically with the help of Amazon. With manual selection, you can choose to identify by keyword or product. Running campaigns using multiple selection types (automatic + manual, keywords + products) can help maximize the success of your ads by reaching the largest relevant audience.
• Adjust bids by placement to win top placements: Placements are the places in the Amazon store where your ads appear. You can bid on Top of search (first page) to be shown on the top row on the first page of search results. Rest of search refers to ads shown in the middle or at the bottom of search results, and placements on the second page of results and beyond. Product Pages refers to placements on the product detail page and all non-search placements like the add-to-cart page. Refine your bidding strategy to help your ads appear where you want them.
• Use a mix of keyword match types: Using manual selection campaigns, you can choose to use Broad match (general match using related terms and variations), Phrase match (an exact phrase or sequence of words), and Exact match (search term must exactly match). For automatic selection campaigns, you can choose Close match (terms closely related to products), Loose match (search terms loosely related to products), Substitutes (shows ads on similar product pages), and Complements (shows ads on complementary product pages). When running your campaigns, use a mix of these match types to maximize your visibility and conversion.
• Leverage negative keywords: Negative keywords are search terms that you do not want your ads showing in the search results for. For example, if you sell eyeglasses and have a campaign focusing on the term “glasses,” you may want to add “wine” as a negative keyword. This way, shoppers searching for “wine glasses” will not be shown your ad, refining your strategy and focusing on people searching for your products.
Pro Tip:
Sponsored Products campaigns can be used in combination with other marketing tools. Campaigns can be run on Coupons, Deals, and other merchandising promotions as well. Combining your marketing efforts can help drive traffic to specific products.
Coupons
Coupons are an easy-to-use marketing tool that let sellers offer discounts on a single product or a set of products. Running a Coupon can help products stand out on a search results page with additional badging. The most popular Coupons are also merchandised on the Coupons home page, category pages, and peak events pages.
Customers engage with Coupons by “clipping” them to apply the discount. This can lead to more engagement with your brand or products. Coupons can also be a great way to capitalize on increased holiday traffic, especially to pages offering discounts for customers.
Coupons are 100% self-service and carry a lot of benefits: • Can be created in Seller Central at any time • Can become active the same day • Can be run on new ASINs and ASINs with no reviews • Can run up to 90 days, allowing you to cover entire holiday seasons • Can be created for either a percentage off or amount off discount
Holiday best practices for Coupons
• Set appropriate budgets: If you don’t allocate enough budget, only a few customers may be able to take advantage of your Coupon, limiting its reach.
• Set deep discounts: Deeper discounts have a higher chance of being featured on the Coupons home page, increasing your visibility.
• Try using a Money off discount for higher-price items: Customers can respond more positively when they know exactly how they’re saving without having to do the math themselves.
• Capitalize on holiday traffic: Run coupons during the lead-up to and tail-end of busy seasons.
Promotions
Promotions can be a great way to help your listings stand out, especially during the holiday season. You can use them to:
• Offer a flat amount or percentage off discount
• Offer free products bundled with other items
Promotions can help drive traffic to the specific listings you’re looking to promote for the holiday season. Customers love seasonal specials, so be sure your promotion offers real savings.
Note that Promotions are most effective when your offer wins the Featured Offer placement. If not, promotional messaging can’t appear on the product detail page.
Remember: Creating multiple promotions and discounts on the same product can result in customers combining them for significant discounts. Keep this in mind when creating your marketing plans.
Deals
Deals are a great way to increase conversion and drive sales with limited-time savings. To be eligible for Deals, you must be a Professional Seller with at least five Seller Feedback Ratings per month and an overall rating of at least 3.5-stars.
Products have their own eligibility requirements. To see if any of your products are eligible in Seller Central, select Advertising > Deals > Create New Deal. You can find recommendations for 7-day Deals and Lightning Deals here.
These recommendations are generated on a weekly basis, so check frequently to see if your products are eligible. Deals are a great option for promoting your products.
You get the most out of Deals when you:
Provide meaningful information for the promoted product’s description
Use high-quality product photos
7-day Deals:
– Time-bound promotional offer where item is featured for up to seven days on the Amazon Deals page.
Lightning Deals:
– Time-bound promotional offer where item is featured for up to 12 hours on the Amazon Deals page.
When creating Deals, you choose the deal price and the amount of inventory you’d like to dedicate.
After your Deal is approved, scheduled deal date and time will appear in your Deals Dashboard one week before it’s scheduled to run.
PED (Prime Exclusive Discounts)
Use Prime Exclusive Discounts throughout the year and during key events to stir up interest, which could increase sales. A Prime Exclusive Discount is a price discount available only to Prime members.
Features and Benefits:
• Exclusive to Prime Members
• Displays strikethrough pricing and savings message in search results and on product detail page
• Price adjusted discounts are displayed on the detail page Featured Offer for Prime members
Product Eligibility:
• Must be Prime shipping eligible in all regions within the country
• Must be in new condition • Must have at least a three-star rating or no rating
• Discount offered must be at least 10% off the product’s price or current sale price
• Can’t be offensive, embarrassing, inappropriate, or a restricted product
There are additional criteria to run a Prime Exclusive Discount during Prime Day:
• Seller must have at least four-star Feedback Rating
• Sellers with no feedback are also eligible
• Discounted product must have at least a three-and-a-half-star or no rating
• Discount offered must be at least 20% off your price or the sale price, whichever is lower
• Discounted price offered must beat the lowest price for the ASIN in the past 30 days by 5%, including all Deal, promotional, and sale prices from other sellers
Listing Optimization
After preparing your Sponsored Products ads, Deals, Coupons, and promotions, double-check your listings for overall quality. Optimizing listings is one of the biggest ways to improve conversion.
Add images:
Product images play a large role in customers’ purchase decisions. Be sure to use high-quality images that properly showcase your product’s features and benefits. If customers have frequent questions about a product’s features, size, or dimensions, try to use product photography to answer some of these questions.
Informative descriptions:
Include a detailed description that has all of a product’s relevant details, benefits, and selling points, as well as any features unique to your product. As with pictures, try to answer any questions your customers may have right in the product’s description.
Key Product Features:
Use a product’s key product features field, located under the Product Description field, to highlight some of the product’s most important qualities. Each line you enter will be displayed as a separate bullet point above the product description. You can use up to 100 characters per line.
Titles:
Your product’s titles play a major factor in how often they appear in search, so improve titles to fully describe a product and include all relevant keywords.
Listing Status:
Ensure that all of your listings are active and check to see if any listings have been suppressed. You should check your listings in advance, so if any suppression issues occur, you’ll have the time to remedy them. Check multiple times in the weeks leading up to the holiday season or event you’re pursuing.