The fourth quarter is the biggest and most important time to drive sales on Amazon. With an increase in traffic and buyer intent around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, this is the quarter where sellers make the majority of their annual sales.
It’s important to be prepared for this peak in demand months in advance. To help you prepare, we have put together recommended strategies to follow for a successful Q4 below. Keep in mind, there isn’t a one-size fits all approach. The strategy that you develop should be tailored to meet the needs of your unique business. However, you should focus on covering the full funnel - from awareness, to education, to consideration, to purchase and beyond - for optimum success.
1. Use Amazon DSP for an Awareness Play
The Amazon Demand Side Platform allows you to get very specific with who you want to reach by targeting consumers that are in the market for a particular product or category, but have not made a purchase yet.
To make the Amazon DSP work for you:
- Always advertise your best selling, retail ready products on Amazon DSP.
- Always use in-market audiences, or customers that are more likely to continue through the journey (rather that customers that may not be the right fit).
- Allocate up to two-thirds of your advertising budget to display, with the rest going to search.
- Use dynamic e-commerce ads as well as static banner ads. If you have creative video content, consider running video ads.
- Start in October and increase spend for Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend so you are spending more when customers are buying.
2. Educate Your Consumers with A+ Content and Storefront Pages
When consumers are shopping specific brands, but they don’t necessarily know what product they are going to buy. In this case, shoppers may be starting to look for differentiation and unique selling points between products to hone in on their purchase.
Our advice is to ensure that the top 80% of sales in your catalog have A+ Content and your brand has a Storefront Page built-out and optimized. You want to have very compelling content on those pages and make that compelling content a priority this Holiday season.
3. Use Amazon Advertising to make sure your products are a part of shoppers’ consideration
When Amazon shoppers have narrowed down their search online, advertising becomes essential. Amazon is a massive search engine. When a consumer types something into the search bar, they are demonstrating purchase intent and considering when to buy. For example, is there a price promotion? Is this Prime eligible?
Advertising is a great way to capture folks in this space. When setting up an Amazon Advertising strategy, you should allocate at least 80% of your budget to non-branded keywords (category or competitor keywords - i.e. a shopper has not stated or specified the brand or product they intend to purchase). Depending on your category, keywords can get very competitive. If you aren’t careful, you can see diminished efficiency because of the increased competition. This is where an advertising automation solution, like Prestozon, can increase efficiency and maximize new customer acquisition.
All traffic will ultimately get funneled to Amazon product pages. Therefore, it's important to optimize your product detail pages (PDPs) with current, up-to-date, on-brand messaging. If your pages aren’t optimized, your advertising will fall flat.
For brands that already have their PDPs optimized, one of the things you can do this Holiday season is focus on your best sellers and add seasonal images to your pages. This visually demonstrates to shoppers that your products are a giftable item. You can even seasonally optimize your metadata with terms such as “gift for him” or “gift for her” to increase relevance.
The consideration phase of the customer journey is when you need to squeeze the funnel to get shoppers to make a purchase. You can do this by running a lightning deal, a price discount or a coupon to get that consumer over the hurdle. We talk about seasonal search, merchandising and promotions more in depth in this webinar here.
4. After the purchase occurs, collect consumer feedback
Reviews are essential for success on the Amazon platform. This holiday season, you want to be sure your consumer experience with the products you are selling is top notch. This includes the product itself, your packaging (ensuring that products aren’t damaged during fulfillment), and that your customer service team is ready to monitor and comment on your reviews and answer questions that consumers raise.
5. Create a ripple effect with customer loyalty
Post-purchase, you want to encourage your customers to buy more of your products and/or buy other products that you sell. You can do this through many forms. One way is through promotions. As a Seller Central brand, you can show promotions on your PDPs. You can also use product inserts in your packaging for re-purchase. This works especially well if you have a Consumer Product Good (CPG) item that people will buy again and again. Another option is to use Amazon DSP to re-market to customers who have already purchased your product. Through DSP, you can target customers who have already bought once and promote something new (or a re-purchase) on Amazon.
6. Activate advocacy in all sales and marketing channels
In addition to creating loyal customers, you also want them to speak positively to others about your brand and products. To generate strong brand advocates, you want to articulate the mission of your brand and your unique selling proposition. Find ways to give consumers something special and delight them - regardless of how or where they buy your products.
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