Amazon Black Friday 2022: How to Prepare

Believe it or not, the most wonderful time of the year is upon us yet again: the Amazon Black Friday 2022 season!

With Halloween officially behind us, the always-hectic holiday season spearheaded by Black Friday is near. For those selling on Amazon, hopefully, you’ve already taken time and steps on how to prepare for Black Friday and crush it for the remainder of 2022 and start 2023 off right.

Whether you’re on top of your planning or an inexperienced seller unsure of the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday seller tips, we’ve got you covered with important dates and details to make this holiday season one to remember.

Should Amazon sellers prepare differently for Black Friday?

Unquestionably and without a doubt, yes.

When ranking the biggest shopping days of the year, Black Friday likely comes to your mind first. For decades, Black Friday has established the Friday after Thanksgiving as a day for shopping.

Steep discounts and special one-day-only deals make it a prime choice for shoppers to start or finish their holiday shopping. Every year, news stories about customers lining up at stores hours before they open and the ensuing pandemonium once doors are opened command attention across the United States.

Beyond the obvious influx of traffic and sales to be made on Black Friday, the date is also important for secondary reasons. Black Friday marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season, with days rivaling Black Friday sales showing up over the next few weeks.

Cyber Monday and Super Saturday (also known as Panic Saturday, the Saturday before Christmas) are both on the calendar’s short list of top sales days. When we mention being prepared for Black Friday, we also mean being prepared for the rest of the major sales events that follow Black Friday.

How to prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2022

  • Check your inventory restock limits
  • Ensure your inventory can meet the increased consumer demand
  • Be aware of shipping deadlines
  • Optimize your product listings
  • Plan your advertising strategy
  • Consider creating coupons and promotions
  • Monitor performance and adjust accordingly

Check your inventory restock limits

While utilizing all of your inventory limits throughout most of the year can be costly, it may be worthwhile or necessary during the busiest time of the year. To find out what your restock limits are, go to Inventory > Shipments in Seller Central. Below, we’ve included a few links to updated 2022 fulfillment fees.

If your inventory restock limits are less than satisfactory, you may consider going outside FBA and looking into third-party logistics (3PL) services as soon as possible.

Check out our podcast with Michael Sene from Deliverr one of the most popular 3PL providers for Amazon sellers and more.

Ensure your inventory can meet the increased consumer demand

If you’ve been selling for more than a year on Amazon, go back to your reports for last year’s holiday season and see how your sales were impacted by the holiday season.

If this is your first year in FBA, it might serve you well to check out a product research tool with historical sales data such as Market Intelligence.

Market Intelligence shows a peak for the “bartender kit” over the holiday season, showing the need for increased inventory during the period.

Because we know not all sales are distributed evenly in a category, you may want to look into how specific sellers have fared in the past over the holidays if their business is mature enough to have historical data.

When comparing sales with individual products, look for common competitors or similar-sized sellers in your market.

The seller in the 10th organic rank position for “bartender set” in Market Intelligence’s sales over the past two years.

Be aware of shipping deadlines

Unfortunately, it’s too late if you haven’t already made your fulfillment order for Black Friday or Cyber Monday. The last day an arriving order could be guaranteed in stock by Black Friday and Cyber Monday was November 2nd.

On the bright side, you can do your part to avoid any issues for Christmas by making sure your inventory arrives at Amazon’s fulfillment center by December 1st to ensure your product is available and stocked up by Christmas to avoid your product being out of stock for holiday shoppers.

While Amazon is usually very thorough with these dates, it never hurts to stay on top by checking Seller Central’s announcements periodically to keep track of any changes.

Optimize your product listings

Often overlooked until it’s too late, ensuring your product listing is optimized can be incredibly valuable during the holiday season. Additionally, the term “optimized” can admittedly be vague when used as a catch-all term, so let’s get specific on what that means.

When we say optimized regarding your listing, we mean a few different things. Overall, you want your products to be presentable, easily understandable to customers, informative, attractive to shoppers, and visible to anyone looking for your product.

You can achieve these aspects by enhancing your product photography and copy. The perfect product photography for your product listing takes care of the presentability and attractiveness while helping with the informative aspect by showing potential use cases for your product. Also, it’s a good time to double-check that your product photography meets Amazon guidelines and avoid any potential issues during this critical time.

The other half of optimizing your listing involves the written copy on your product detail page. This entails utilizing tools such as Keyword Research, Listing Builder, and Listing Analyzer to make certain your listing indexes for all search keywords customers might use to find your product. Just remember your customers are human beings, so don’t sacrifice readability for keyword indexing and utilize all the space Amazon gives you to inform and sell your product.

Plan your advertising strategy

Recently, we took a look into how sellers should handle advertising during major sales events in the run-up to the Amazon Prime Early Access Sale. Check it out for key insights and invaluable data on how significant increases in traffic and sales can skew your advertising campaigns juxtaposed to more standard sales periods.

Needless to say, the competition for eyeballs will be fierce. Understanding how the math and trends will change during Black Friday through New Year’s Day will yield dividends by preventing wasteful spending and racking up sales through the right strategies.

Consider creating coupons and promotions

It’s easy to lose track as a seller, but consider how you make your purchases. Putting yourself in the customer’s shoes is often overlooked with all that’s on a seller’s plate during these hectic times.

And we all love a good deal, right?

Especially during the holiday season as sales volume can increase drastically, it may be worth including coupons and promotions to increase sales.

A major chunk of the Black Friday and holiday shopping audience are hunting for deals, steals, and major markdowns. Giving them what they’re looking for can give your product the edge over the competition, especially those with a cheaper price, brand name, or better reviews.

Of course, selling on Amazon is a business so don’t go too crazy with the coupons. But depending on your product, the sales volume could very well lead to more profits for your business by providing your product at a cheaper price. For many shoppers, seeing that markdown price and the money saved by buying now is one of the most important factors that can lead to a purchase.

Monitor performance and adjust accordingly

As always, monitor sales performance throughout the holidays and adjust your plans appropriately. And not just the performance of your own products, but the competition as well.

Tracking competitors in Competitor Intelligence becomes even more crucial during this time when the stakes are the highest.

The Competitor Intelligence dashboard shows a variety of key performance metrics for your competition.

Within Competitor Intelligence, you’ll be able to track rank changes, price changes, and virtually everything you could want to know about a competitor. You can even set up notifications, so you can stay informed and react accordingly to competitors offering deals.

Amazon Black Friday 2022

Although time is running thin to make changes to make Black Friday 2022 one to remember, there’s still plenty you can do to go into the core of the holiday season with confidence.

By checking off these steps and monitoring performance, and making intelligent, data-backed decisions, you can put your products in a prime position to walk away from this season as a major winner.

Best of luck to you this Amazon Black Friday 2022 and beyond!

Get started for FREE with the entire Viral Launch software suite today!

Follow The Data: Advanced Amazon Seller Strategy Hacks for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

On this installment of Follow The Data, Danny Carlson of Kenji ROI walks us through advanced seller strategies that will make this your best Black Friday and Cyber Monday yet!

It’s that time of the year! Black Friday and Cyber Monday are coming up fast, and sellers who position themselves for success will ride a sales wave into 2021. Danny Carlson of Kenji ROI dropped by to chat with Follow The Data host Cam Yoder to provide insights on what tips and tricks Amazon sellers should be using to rise to the top and rake in sales from this holiday season.

With just a few days until Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, time is running out to set your listing up for success.

While savvy sellers have spent months prepping their product catalog for this holiday season, the days leading into the holidays are crucial. No matter how well you’ve developed your Q4 plan to this point, the week of requires unique strategies both offensively and defensively, that can make a tremendous difference when executed on the precipice of Black Friday.

As CEO of Kenji ROI, Danny has served over 500 Amazon sellers and created photos, video, copywriting, and graphics for over 1,240 listings. Kenji ROI assists sellers with PPC Management, creative services, and review boosting emails.

Danny was gracious enough to share groundbreaking strategies and seller tactics that are sure to give you an edge over the competition when it matters most.

HIGHLIGHTS

Getting to know Danny, his entrepreneurial journey, and his Amazon experience. (0:00)

Danny Carlson and Kenji ROI have been a force in the Amazon selling space for years. Before he drops groundbreaking tips, take the time to hear about Danny’s success and background.

What will Danny be doing for his clients and what advice would he give to sellers in the week of Black Friday and Cyber Monday? (3:51)

“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” – John Wooden

The importance of proper preparation in this busy time cannot be understated. Your competition understands how valuable a holiday season windfall can be, and they might be more incentivized to participate in black hat tactics. Too many sellers don’t prepare for these instances, and Danny breaks down what your competitors might try and how to defend yourself.

There’s no better time to rank highly through search than the holidays. While it might be late in the game to make a dramatic change, every spot you climb means more sales. How can you ascend the ranks in a short amount of time? Danny breaks it down here.

Amazon Advertising in the week of Black Friday / Cyber Monday: Using Modified Broad Match Ads, An Underutilized but Valuable Tool (9:27)

PPC Advertising is one of the surefire ways your product gets in front of customers, but everyone knows this. What’s the best way to setup PPC without breaking the bank?

Modified Broad Match Ads can be the magic bullet for you. It’s super easy to set up and helps sellers get the most bang for their buck when appropriately created. Danny gives his insight on why this overlooked method of PPC provides the most opportunity.

After Black Friday and Cyber Monday, what should sellers do to prepare for Christmas? (20:35)

Once Black Friday and Cyber Monday pass, there’s nearly a month of increased sales. Not all preparation is created equally, and that’s especially true in these unprecedented times. You better believe Danny has already looked into the possibilities and how you can prepare for them. Tune in to hear what this one-of-a-kind holiday season might look like after Cyber Monday and how it affects your planning.

What strategies should sellers be considering to grow their brand into 2021? (31:39)

As the marketplace continues to evolve, what should Amazon sellers be doing to stay ahead of the game? In Danny’s experience, he’s worked with sellers of all backgrounds and stayed up-to-date on the latest in trends. Danny drops knowledge on what you can do to start 2021 off on the right foot.

Be sure to tune in to the rest of the show for every valuable tip and tidbit so you can have the upper hand over the opposition in your market!

At Viral Launch, we believe the more informed seller wins. And that’s never been truer than now. A special thanks goes out to Danny for talking shop with us, and for sharing these crucial tips and tricks. In what is sure to be one of the busiest holiday seasons ever, these hacks could be all the difference you need to dominate the remainder of 2020.

To keep up with Danny and the team at Kenji ROI…

Connect with Danny on LinkedIn
Visit Kenji ROI’s site at https://www.kenjiroi.com/
Check out Danny Carlson’s Actualize Freedom Podcast

Q4 Is Closer Than You Think: A Guide to Selling Seasonal Products (Follow the Data Ep. 30)

Q4 Is Closer Than You Think: A Guide to Selling Seasonal Products (Follow the Data Ep. 30)

It’s never too early to start thinking about Q4. And with Q2 already under way, we’re one quarter closer to the holiday season. As Q4 approaches, you may want to consider sourcing seasonal products. Seasonal products aren’t for everyone, and they certainly aren’t for the faint of heart. But if you choose to take the risk, there’s potential for huge reward.

Show Notes

  • Find a seasonal product to sell using Product Discovery. Use filters like Best Sales Period to look at seasonal products to jump on now.
  • Serious about planning ahead for Q4 and potential seasonal products? Check out our Q4 Prep Guide.
  • Successful seasonal product have successfully written listings. Make sure yours is optimized whether with Keyword Research or a professionally written listing
  • Don’t forget your product photos. You can always ask your supplier to send a production quality sample ahead of your inventory to make sure your photos are ready to go before you launch.
  • Once you have a seasonal product in FBA, you need to get ranking quickly.  Set up a launch the right way with the help of an Amazon Seller Coach. Contact one today at service@viral-launch.com
  • Wondering how Keyword Research works? Let Amazon expert, Cameron Yoder, walk you through the tool.
  • Give us a call, and you could be featured on the podcast. Our number is (317) 721-6590

Podcast Transcript

CAMERON YODER:
Nice.

CASEY GAUSS:
Did you see my fact checking on George from MerchantWords?

CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, I did. That was funny, dude. Come on. Did you put that – yeah, you put that in –

CASEY GAUSS:
The marketing chat.

CAMERON YODER:
– in the marketing chat. That –

CASEY GAUSS:
I’m just a fact checker. BS caller on that.

CAMERON YODER:
[Unintelligible 0:00:17.8] just because no product is selling more than 30 units per month on average. Swinger anklets.

CASEY GAUSS:
Come on.

CAMERON YODER:
Wife. Anklets, oh man.

CASEY GAUSS:
Hot wife anklets. Nobody is searching that, bro.

CAMERON YODER:
Dude. Wait. How did you – oh, no, never mind. That dude –

CASEY GAUSS:
Get the heck out of here.

CAMERON YODER:
Come on, man. Swinger anklets. Are you kidding me? Ugh, man.

CASEY GAUSS:
Good?
CAMERON YODER:
Yeah.

CASEY GAUSS:
Ready?

CAMERON YODER:
Yep.

CASEY GAUSS:
It’s never too early to start thinking about Q4, and with Q2 already underway we’re one quarter closer to the holiday season.

CAMERON YODER:
As Q4 approaches you may want to consider sourcing a seasonal product. Seasonal products aren’t for everyone, and they certainly are not for the faint of heart. But if you choose to – oh, whoa, to the – but if you choose to take the risk there’s potential for huge reward. I’m Cameron Yoder.

CASEY GAUSS:
And I’m Casey Gauss, your hosts for Follow the Data: Your Journey to Amazon FBA Success. In this show we leverage the data we’ve accumulated at Viral Launch from over 30,000 product launches and our experience working with more than 8000 brands to help you understand the big picture when it comes to Amazon and, more importantly, the best practices for success as an Amazon seller.

CAMERON YODER:
In this episode we are going to walk you through the timeline for sourcing a seasonal product using a Q4 example. You’ll see it’s not too early to start your product research if you’re serious about selling a holiday, quote, hotcake. We’ll also talk you through basic inventory planning so you can stay in stock all season and outsell the competition. Let’s get started.

CASEY GAUSS:
Let’s find those hotcakes, Cam.

CAMERON YODER:
Hotcakes. Let’s get us some – let’s get some holiday hotcakes in here. It’s almost comparable to bread.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, no pun intended – pun intended.

CAMERON YODER:
No pun intended, yes.

CASEY GAUSS:
All right. What’s up guys? So Q1 just got done. Early April, you know, it’s like April 10th today, so first third of the first month of the second quarter of the year. So you know, when Cam and Becca came to me with this idea I was like guys, it seems a little bit early for that, but Cam was walking me through kind of the timelines and, you know, I don’t know if we’ve talked about just how great seasonal items can be or, you know, a lot of people – I think a lot of the kind of traditional sourcing gurus say stay away from seasonal products. I 100% understand why. The problem is that there is so much opportunity for seasonal products. We see some guys just absolutely killing it. I don’t have the stats, but there’s this guy, Justin Ligeri. If you want to check him out he claims to be the seller to have the first one million-dollar day. I almost want to say that he had a two million-dollar day, but anyways, he at one point had the largest two-week payout. I mean this guy is just killing it because he focuses, I think, almost exclusively on seasonal items, and it’s because people come in, and they spend an insane amount of money for Halloween. I think that’s his biggest month, or his biggest season. People spend just crazy amounts of money on these seasonal items, and there is so much opportunity. The downside is that it is seasonal, right? So if you are selling Santa hats you’re probably not selling Santa hats very well in July. So if you say, you know, I’m going to sell 500 Santa hats a month and you plan out, you know, six months of inventory, 12 months of inventory, you’re going to be sadly mistaken come, you know, July, June, you know, August or whatever, like when sales aren’t there. So if you are doing this you need to take a very data-driven approach so that you are making the right decisions.

CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, I really think that seasonal products in general – and seasonal does not – also, I don’t want you to necessarily think that seasonal means just in December, or just Christmas, because again, seasonal can mean, or does mean, a spike at really any point in time in the year that’s consistent, that follows a trend.

CASEY GAUSS:
Valentine’s Day-related products.

CAMERON YODER:
Or like Halloween.

CASEY GAUSS:
Pool floats.

CAMERON YODER:
Pool floats, yeah, yeah, Christmas, whatever, something that’s seasonal, spikes consistently at some point in time in the year. Like – seasonal products tend to follow the mantra of like high risk, high reward, right? And in this case you can use data to decrease the risk that you’re taking and really be smart and intentional about your decision. At the same time really the big risk – the goal of a seasonal product, not with everybody, but typically is to have enough inventory in Amazon, get to Page 1 for the primary search terms and sell your inventory during the full period of time, during typically the spike month or spike – whatever period of time that spike is, and then maybe not hold onto that inventory the rest of the year because that’s going to cost you money. So the challenge and the risk becomes ordering enough inventory at the right time, getting in Amazon at the right time, ranking for that item or those items at the right time, and having enough inventory, being in the right spot to capture those spike sales. That is – it’s a lot to think about, and I actually know just like – and Casey you probably know a lot of people that do pretty well with seasonal items. I actually know someone who has been selling seasonally and is actually trying to get out of selling seasonal items.

CASEY GAUSS:
Oh, why is that?

CAMERON YODER:
He is – according to him, he doesn’t really like the stress that comes with it.

CASEY GAUSS:
I see.

CAMERON YODER:
And it takes a lot of – and that’s not to deter you at all it. It just takes – for him, at least, it takes a lot of upkeep. Like he has to be really intentional, and it takes a lot to be intentional about ordering the right amount of inventory or knowing which market to go into. And so this, again like we said from the intro, is not for the faint of heart. However, it can get very profitable for you. And so okay, let’s actually talk through maybe just even the basic timeline of what you should expect when even just starting to think about a seasonal product. So when you’re starting – let’s say – let’s use – if you – actually, if you’re in a good spot to bring out your calendars on your phone, go ahead and bring out your calendar. We’re going to –

CASEY GAUSS:
If you guys are still into the physical calendars, you need to pull that off your wall.

CAMERON YODER:
Desk calendar also.

CASEY GAUSS:
Desk calendars.

CAMERON YODER:
Whiteboard calendars.

CASEY GAUSS:
Pocketbook calendars.

CAMERON YODER:
There are no excuses here. You should be able to find a calendar somewhere. Pull out your calendars. Let’s use December as our, let’s say, peak month. Let’s say we’re going, or we want to source a seasonal item in December, okay? If you’re sourcing a seasonal item in December and you don’t know what that seasonal item is, I am suggesting – we are suggesting that you start thinking about, you start researching seasonal items in April, which is this month, okay, and May. So that means that you should start researching your product, or you should start thinking about sourcing a seasonal product now and over the next – over the next month and over May itself.

CASEY GAUSS:
And I know – I do this as well – I know you’re all thinking. Oh no, I have plenty of time. Seasonal, like Q4 products, you know, really start picking up in December, late November so I have plenty, plenty of time. And if you’re that person I imagine you may have gotten hit with the Chinese New Year and maybe ran out of stock or, you know, maybe you had some issues and missed out on money because of that. Guys, first off, if you are finding the right products it is going to pay off like nothing you’ve ever seen before, hopefully, and anyways, now is the time. This is why we’re having this episode so early.

CAMERON YODER:
You really want a five- to six-month lead time for something like a December, a December-specific seasonal item. Now there are a couple different factors that go into that. Again, one of those is just kind of extended communication with manufacturers. You want to make sure that you’re finding the right product and also shipment times are extended, take a little bit longer leading up to the Christmas month or months just because a large majority of a bunch of sellers are trying to get their inventory into Amazon. So just to clarify, you do want – again, you want that five- to six-month lead time. However, that five- to six-month lead time should be – you want to give yourself basically five to six months before your inventory needs to be in Amazon. And I’m talking like the day that it gets into FBA. And if your – we’re going to speak a lot about in generalities for this episode. Like each market is going to be different, right? However, for most products that peak – most seasonal products that peak in December, typically sales start to pick up from kind of a low trend around October or November, typically maybe the second half of October.

CASEY GAUSS:
It really depends on your product.

CAMERON YODER:
It does. It does. And again, we’re just speaking in general.

CASEY GAUSS:
Candy canes I think pick up like end of September, like early October or something like that.

CAMERON YODER:
Yes, yes, and we’re going to talk about like maybe more specifically how to kind of catch that upswing. But generally let’s just say October is when your products should be in Amazon. So count five months back from October. One, two, three, four, five. That’s May. Six would be April, okay? So April-May is when you should start researching your seasonal products for December in order to get them in in October. So let’s break down – let’s break down these months, okay? April and May. This is what we’re suggesting that you’re performing all of your thought process, your maybe financial – you’re looking at your finances. You’re looking at your finances to see what you’re capable of, and you’re using something like a product research tool like Market Intelligence or Product Discovery to kind of try and find at least a list, or a list of options for products for you to source in December, okay?

June and July, those next two months, these would be basically – these would be months where you are contacting the manufacturers. So in this case you are – you found your products, right, and you’ve gone to something like Alibaba and you try to find a manufacturer for your seasonal product. And again, this is June and July. Ideally, ideally, again, every market is different, right, but ideally by the end of July you would be placing your order, right? And that means that you maybe pay your initial payment on something like Alibaba and you start production for whatever the number is going to be for your seasonal product. And that gives August and September and even some of October as a lead time for your products to be produced and ship, again, by – this is taking sea freight into consideration – and get them into Amazon hopefully by the end of October. And all things considered best case scenario you even maybe get your products in at the beginning of October or even a little bit before that. Like that month, having those products in that month will not hurt you. It’s always – in this case it’s better to have it in as early as possible I think but not too early, and that’s why kind of September and October are good months for you to get your products into Amazon. Once they’re in – oh, go ahead, Casey.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, so the only thing with that is I believe October-something is when they have long-term storage fees. So they’ll really hit you with the storage fees. So like Cam was saying, you absolutely have to make sure that you understand when sales start coming in. And even like, so let’s say it’s at the very beginning of October but you want to, you know, avoid as many of those long-term storage fees as possible. Start using a third-party warehouse. This is something that we’re planning on talking about a bit more here coming up. But anyways, like be really strategic about it. Don’t necessarily just send it into Amazon. This is kind of as a side note. Or let’s say sales really pick up in November but you want to make sure that you’re able to get your inventory in, send it to, you know, a third-party warehouse or something like that.

CAMERON YODER:
There’s actually – a side side note – there actually is another option for people, and you need to check with your manufacturer to see if they can do this. But I know there’s a couple sellers who will produce – they’ll manufacture their items in the manufacturer’s place in China, and the manufacturer will store the items for them for a pretty low fee, or actually for free sometimes –

CASEY GAUSS:
Gotcha.

CAMERON YODER:
– until they need it to ship.

CASEY GAUSS:
Gotcha.

CAMERON YODER:
So if you can do that, I mean just even start that process as early as possible, and – well, whichever makes sense for you. It costs [money 0:13:29.8].

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, you also have to think from like capital gain tied up and everything.

CAMERON YODER:
But that’s just another option for you to consider as you’re producing items for seasonal products or even just in general. I know a lot of sellers who do that themselves. So we talked about – we talked about, we talked about – so again, generally, just generally, generally speaking, April this month like right now do your product research. May, do your product research. Maybe start conversations around the end of May, or June, or July, and then get your products ordered around July, maybe the end of July. Have them ship around that time, or like ordered – your order is in. Maybe they’re being manufactured and produced and shipped hopefully right after that period of time to get in around October.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, and a lot of people are like okay, I need to sell the products that are going to kill it in for the Christmas period. What about Thanksgiving? What about October? What about all the other holidays that come through that? What about all the lesser-known holidays that are coming through those times? Like definitely – again, there is so much money to be made for those Christmas sales, but there’s so much money to be made for every other holiday. So just want to keep reminding you not to – like for the example, it’s a lot easier for us to use like Christmas as that example, but there’s so much option – so many options out there.

CAMERON YODER:
It’s really important that you find what you’re lead time is going to be specifically for that product or that market that you’re interested in because that’s going to give you the most accurate representation. But let’s say – let’s go to – let’s talk about ranking.

CASEY GAUSS:
Okay, yeah.

CAMERON YODER:
Let’s talk about ranking. So getting your inventory into Amazon is one thing, but also we want to make sure that you are ranking your product on Page 1 at the opportune time. So Casey maybe talk about like when the most opportune time is for that.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah, and the reason we want to kind of talk about this now is one, just so you understand the process; two, so that you understand how easy it can actually be to seize the sales that are coming up because there may be some questions in your mind around like well, you know, will I have enough reviews? Will I actually be ranking by the time the sales come? Like will I miss it? And then, you know, three, we also want to make sure that you are ordering enough inventory so that when it comes time for that season you’re able to run the promotion because you have the inventory necessary to doing it.

So if you take this approach, so I don’t have specific numbers, but I was at an event late December, I believe, CapCon, Capitalism Conference in Austin by Ryan Moran, one of my favorite conferences to go to. Just a lot of my friends or, you know, clients or whatever, are part of that audience. So it’s always cool to catch up with them. But a friend of mine, he’s been selling, I don’t know, for at least a couple of years. He also just spoke at Amazing’s conference. SellerCon is what it was called. Anyways, this guy came to me and he was like dude, your – I had a podcast recently, or I had a podcast right before then, and he’s like dude, your podcast kind of changed my whole Q4. And I was like oh really, why? Like you didn’t tell me that. And it was because we gave him this tip on how to run promotions coming up to Q4, and he like absolutely killed it before. And so it’s very simple concept once you understand it, but if you haven’t thought of it I think we covered it in a different podcast, but essentially what it is is going, using Market Intelligence to see, or some tool where you’re able to see historical sales, where you’re able to see, okay, over the course of a year when does – when do sales really start to spike for this particular keyword or for this particular product? So let’s take candy canes. So yeah, let’s say sales start to increase, you know, in October, but let’s say every year right around the first week of November – let’s say second week of November is when sales really start to spike. So what you need to do is you need to go to November 1st, you know, a week before that, 10 days before that, 12 days before that, and you need to start your promotion. And through that promotion you’re going to be driving extra sales to drive that keyword ranking. And so by that second week of November your product’s ranking at the top of Page 1. And when all that additional traffic starts coming through they’re finding your ASIN. They’re buying it. And now you get to ride that wave of traffic.

And so essentially what we see is you get on top of the wave. You get to ride it up as more and more traffic comes through. You maintain your rank because everyone’s coming and buying yours versus what we see some people do, and I had people come up and say you know they didn’t have that great of a Q4 because they didn’t get their inventory in time – true story – they didn’t get their inventory in time and so they tried to ride, or they tried to swim up from underneath that wave all holiday season, and they just missed out on a ton of sales and spent a lot of money. And what that looks like is they didn’t get their inventory in until the second week of November, third week of November, and sales had already boosted, and now they were running promotions trying to catch up to everybody else. But the sales were so much higher organically than what they were willing to do in their promotion, and it was just a mess.

CAMERON YODER:
Yeah, so the thought process of having inventory in, in this case, by October is, again, generally speaking when those sales for a lot of December-specific products start to increase. And if you have your inventory in by around the middle to end of October, that’s when you have your inventory in. That’s when you start promotions because, like Casey said, when that traffic starts to pick up it becomes more difficult for you to rank in those positions. It takes a little bit more. And the goal here is not to get in too early, and it’s not to get in too late. It’s to get it right at the right time, run a promotion, get to Page 1, and then organically just write it up.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yep.

CAMERON YODER:
And that’s what in this case, again, generally speaking, if you have a seasonal product in December having your inventory in by October or early November, depending on your market, will allow you to start a promotion seven days before that increase to get at the top and to ride the wave up into the heavens.

CASEY GAUSS:
Unfortunately you can’t see Cam demonstrating it with his –

CAMERON YODER:
My hands are – I’m doing a reverse dab right now.

CASEY GAUSS:
Yep. Not to be confused with a reverse ASIN.

CAMERON YODER:
Not the reverse ASIN, but the dab.

CASEY GAUSS:
Oh man.

CAMERON YODER:
What should we talk about? Numbers specifically, do you think we should give exact numbers, number of units? Like what if people are asking –

CASEY GAUSS:
How long has this gone?
CAMERON YODER:
This is 6:14? Oh, dang, I don’t know the time. I think like 20, 20 to 30 minutes I think.

CASEY GAUSS:
Maybe that’s enough just to get people thinking.

CAMERON YODER:
Just to get people to think. Yeah, yeah.

CASEY GAUSS:
Maybe we can just cover like make sure that the – did you already say the trick is to get just enough inventory? You don’t want to get too much?

CAMERON YODER:
Right.

CASEY GAUSS:
Because now you’re stuck?

CAMERON YODER:
I did, but we should iterate – we should reiterate that point.

CASEY GAUSS:
Okay.

CAMERON YODER:
Okay, do you want to do it?

CASEY GAUSS:
Yeah. Yeah, just as a reminder – we can’t put enough emphasis on this – so I think why Cam’s friend he was talking about at the beginning of the episode is so stressed during this period is, again, if you don’t get your inventory in time and you miss out on riding the wave up, you’re going to be left with so much excess inventory because you’re not hitting the sales volume that you were anticipating. So you don’t want that to happen. You also don’t want to order, you know, 1000 units. But you sell through that thousand units a week before the peak season even, or you know, peak sales even get there, meaning you left so much money on the table. So the real trick is using data to understand how much inventory you should have, being able, being willing to plan for a best-case scenario, worst-case scenario, and on both sides. Worst-case scenario that we didn’t order enough inventory, worst-case scenario that we ordered far too much. Then try to figure out what each of those look like. Do some kind of risk/reward calculation. If we order too little inventory, here is what that means. You know, we’re only going to be able to profit, you know, two grand or something for this month, or on this product for that month, or for the season, whatever. If we order to much inventory well, if we order five – let’s say if we order 5000 units we know we can at least sell 3000, but the extra 2000, like that would eat up all of our margin if we’re not able to sell it for the next, you know, couple months. And there’s ways that you can liquidate that to try to get some of your money back. But anyways, really try to figure out what is the goal of this? What do you think is the best-case scenario potential, and trying to work back from there. Okay, we’re okay if we had an extra 500 units, are we okay if we ended up having an extra 1000 units or whatever, so that you understand what kind of risk you should be taking with your inventory.

And, like I said, if you’re taking a data-driven approach, something like Market Intelligence, you can go back and you can look at historical sales. How long did that – when did that spike start? You know, what is kind of the volume underneath that curve? So what were the sales through that peak week and then descending down so oh, it looks like, you know, sellers were selling 5000 units over that brief period of time. So now you know, okay, I should be ordering somewhere around 5000 units, maybe I’ll order 6000 just in case because the margin would absolutely be there. I’d much rather bet on potentially making more than losing the, whatever, money on the thousand units. So anyways, Cam can probably recap better than that.

CAMERON YODER:
No, no, I think that’s good. The bottom line in this episode we just want to get the idea in your guys’ mind to start thinking about Q4, Q4 seasonal products right now because right now is the time to start doing your research if you’re not sure or if you’re not sure which product you want to pick and/or if you had a product last year that might be good this year and/or might not be as good this year. So just start thinking about it. Start doing your research now and really start digging into possible seasonal products for you to source. Oh, I start. Well, that is all for this week. Thank you again so much for joining us here on Follow the Data. For more insights and reliable information on how to succeed on Amazon, subscribe to the podcast and check us out on YouTube.

CASEY GAUSS:
If you’re listening on Apple products please leave us a review and/or rating. Guys, we all know how tough reviews are on Amazon and also how critical they are. Same is true here. Reviews help other people to find our podcast and hopefully give them deeper insights, better data so that they can make better decisions in their Amazon business. If you’re listening on SoundCloud leave us a comment. We appreciate all the feedback for the show and everything that you – dang it.

CAMERON YODER:
That was good.

CASEY GAUSS:
We appreciate all the feedback for the show so much. This show really is for you all, and your input helps us understand how we can do it better at what you guys are looking for, how can we help you essentially.

CAMERON YODER:
And also, if you know a fellow seller who is using suggestions from their keyword tool to determine how many units to give in their launches, send them our way. We want to be a resource for sellers and the information source in this space, so please tell your friends, tell your family, spread the word and share the show.

CASEY GAUSS:
Thanks again for listening, and as always, if you want to be featured on the show, have an Amazon-related question or an idea for an episode, feel free to leave us a voicemail. Our number is 317-721- 6590. Until next time, remember, the data is out there.

CAMERON YODER:
Got ‘em.

CASEY GAUSS:
Kevin David messaged me.

BONUS: Q4 Part II Inventory Planning & Promotions (Follow the Data Ep. 3)

Follow the Data Episode 3: Q4 Part II Inventory Planning & Promotions

With more people shopping on phones and tablets, your listing needs to be optimized for mobile. Then, once you’ve made your listing shopper friend, carefully planning your inventory and perfectly timing a product promotion are crucial if you want to ride the wave of holiday sales. Join Cameron and Casey as they dive into planning for Q4.

 

Listen in iTunes . See All Episodes

Listen on Stitcher / Listen on Google Play

 

Follow the Data Show Notes:

Podcast Transcript

Casey Gauss:
You need to have your ducks in a row for Q4 because this is the biggest shopping season of your career.

Cameron Yoder:
And we’re back with part two of our Q4 episode to talk about the role of enhanced brand content in optimizing your listing, how to make sure your products look great on mobile, how to predict your inventory needs and how to time a product launch to ride the holiday sales wave. Let’s get started.

Now let’s talk about enhanced brand content, EBC.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, at the end of the day, you guys, anything that you can do to improve conversion rate, to improve – drive sales at the end of the day, you should be doing, right? And so enhanced brand content, these are things you should already be doing, but you know, our hope is that you’re really concerned about these Q4 sales and that you’re going to, I don’t know, get your house in order, whatever the saying is, in order to maximize sales for Q4. And the best way to do that is to have enhanced brand content because some of your competitors are not going to. And that’s a leg up. Or they are going to, and that’s a leg up they will have over you. So please have enhanced brand content.

Cameron Yoder:
If you aren’t brand registered yet, it’s too late right now for this holiday season, for Q4, but – unless you’re already in the process of going through the trademarks and everything. But this might be a good step for you to take if you don’t, if you aren’t brand registered and if you don’t have enhanced brand content. So basically you might be better off focusing on other things if you aren’t already brand registered this holiday season.

Casey Gauss:
True.

Cameron Yoder:
And this might be a good thing to focus on for the next year or to start the next year. Overall, basically what I like to think of is if you have your listing photos and everything else as optimized as possible this is kind of the next viable step or option to dive into.

Casey Gauss:
And honestly it doesn’t take that long to file for a trademark.

Cameron Yoder:
No.

Casey Gauss:
And just some other side benefits of brand registry, why you’d want to be in there, this is outside of Q4 unless you are in brand registry, is just the Early Reviewer Program, getting those initial five reviews, really I don’t think people value reviews enough, and this is a good way to grab some of those reviews.

Cameron Yoder:
Reviews, the reviews are like the currency of Amazon.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, that’s how I feel. Anyways, you get your own Amazon stores. We’re still looking for the data on how important those are. Headline search ads, those are very, very powerful, at least right now, so get brand registry so you can have access to all these things. Also, enhanced brand content, we put out a blog post recently about this, but it’s also on mobile. And I think Amazon said last year 70% of shoppers used, made a purchase or ran a search on the mobile app. And so that means that more and more people are going to be seeing your enhanced brand content, and so put that out there.

Cameron Yoder:
Mobile is, in general, just another really good thing to focus on in Q4. I mean another stat – Casey, you touched on one stat – but the mobile app actually grew by about 56% last holiday season.

Casey Gauss:
Oh nice.

Cameron Yoder:
And so it’s going to grow again, I mean not 100%, I don’t know that 100%, but I’m predicting that it’s going to grow this holiday season. One other thing that I would also consider if you are, again, going through all this and enhancing your listing and photos and everything, is to go – if you don’t, or if you haven’t yet, go look up your product or products on a mobile device just to see how they look and how they feel because then if you haven’t yet you can take a look at that and see okay, if there’s this large of a percentage of people ordering on mobile I need to make sure that my stuff is optimized on mobile. And if you haven’t seen it yourself yet, then you probably should.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, at the end of the day you need to understand how your customers are perceiving your product.

Cameron Yoder: Exactly.

Casey Gauss:
We have just a few additional things, honestly what I think is the most important or the biggest actionable takeaway coming up.

Rebecca Longenecker:
Did you ever wish you could go back in time and get into the Amazon market earlier? What if you had been one of the original sellers? Well, here’s your opportunity. Amazon is starting to ramp up in other countries. If you’re looking to get in early and launch your products in Canada, the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Spain or all of the above, we’ve got exciting news. Viral Launch is now offering international launches. Set up a promotion for Amazon Canada, UK Germany, Italy, France or Spain with the launch experts you know and trust. Stay tuned for additional countries like Japan and Mexico.

Casey Gauss:
First off, just know your turnaround times. You have very limited time to place a purchase order for – if your stuff needs to be in for Christmas. So definitely make sure that you are well aware of your turnaround time, which has got to be coming right up to the end of it. Make sure that you are aware of the trends with market intelligence, basically what we’re doing for a particular market. Let’s take candy canes as an example. This is a classic example for us. If you go search candy canes and then you run market intelligence and move over to the market trends tab, we will show you exactly when sales start to increase across the market for this particular product. So if you run market intelligence through candy canes you can see in 2015 and in 2016 when the sales started to increase, and it’s pretty awesome because you can see here’s when sales started to increase, here’s to what degree they increased, you know, what were the orders per day, how long did that increase sustain?

Cameron Yoder:
What were prices like?

Casey Gauss: What were prices like, how did prices change throughout that? And this is different than looking at Keepa or CamelCamelCamel that has all this historical data because we are showing you across the market, whereas let’s say one particular candy cane seller, if you’re just looking at their BSR history maybe they ran a promotion. Maybe they were running outside sales, and that’s why the spike happened in October instead of November when everybody else’s increased. It’s not very indicative of the market if you’re just looking at one ASIN. You need to look at the market as a whole. But this is a really, really cool feature of market intelligence when it comes to seasonal products. The same is true for Halloween. This will probably be out before Halloween. So if you run through market intelligence through candy canes, you can see in 2015 and in 2016 when the sales started to increase, and it’s pretty awesome because you can see here’s when sales started to increase, here’s to what degree they increased, you know, what were the orders per day, how long did that increase sustain?

Cameron Yoder:
What were prices like?

Casey Gauss:
What were prices like, how did prices change throughout that? And again, across the market versus seeing one guy who raised his price like an insane amount and his sales didn’t reflect that increase or didn’t help support, didn’t show that people were actually buying it at that price point. So anyways, what you need to do, go look. If sales increased on October 15th you need to have your inventory checked into FBA at least 10 days before that so that you can prepare.

Cameron Yoder:
I mean this is one of the biggest questions that sellers have around this time of the year is okay, what can I expect in terms of inventory? How much inventory am I going to need in preparation for Q4? And this is one of the best answers in predictive software that is going to let you know how much or around how much you need to order and have in place and also when you need to have it in place. Once you’ve got your holiday inventory figured out you need to start strategically positioning yourself to ride the wave of holiday sales.

Casey Gauss:
We saw people have insane amount of success when it came to Prime Day. Riding the wave is really, essentially as sales increase you need to make sure that you’re on top of that wave of new traffic or sales increase so that you can ride it. And here’s the example, right, so let’s say right now barely anybody is buying candy canes. So let’s just say those guys are doing five sales a day on average. People in top 10, selling five units a day on average. But during peak time these guys are selling 300 units a day, let’s just say. So to get ranking in the top 10 for candy canes, right now all I need to do is give away five units a day, and I’ll be in the top 10, and that’s really cheap. But if you time everything just right and you run a promotion so you are ranking in the top 10 right when that sales wave happens, right, then you will get to take part in that wave of sales increase. So when sales moved to 15 a day, well, I’m at the top of page 1, so I’m getting a bunch more sales. And then, you know, by December or whenever the peak is, I’m seeing an insane amount of sales because I was ranking at the start of it, and I just continued to maintain that rank because people continued to buy my products.

And so what we see other people try to do is let’s say with the candy canes again, by November 15th everyone is selling 50 units a day or 100 units a day. Let’s say 50. So in order for me to get ranking the top of page 1, well, now you have to run a promotion giving away 50 units a day in order to try to hit page 1. But the problem is these guys also have a great sales history, which we recently talked about. Basically the analogy is riding the wave, right? So if you run a promotion before things start, you get on top of that wave and you ride it up as sea level increases, or whatever. But if you don’t run that promotion now you are under this wave of 50 sales a day that you now have to paddle all the way up to, now catch your breath, now try to ride that wave up.

So what we saw with Prime Day is people that were – they ran promotions across their entire account, and they saw 400, this one particular person, saw $400,000 in that 24 hour period because with their 10 products or so they ran a promotion so that they were raking at the top of page 1 for each product right before those Prime Day sales kicked in. And so as Prime Day sales kicked in, they rode that wave, and they absolutely killed it. And so we really, really hope that you guys do that. Whatever your method of ranking is, whether it be Viral Launch, whether it be some other competitor, whatever your method is, make sure that you are ranking at the top of page 1 right when that wave of sales increase begins to happen because you definitely don’t want to be paddling from underneath, and you definitely don’t want to be fighting these competitors’ better sales history.

Cameron Yoder:
It’s just going to be, in the long run, kind of summarizing what Casey said, it is just going to be much easier to jump on when sales are lower but at the very beginning of when they start to pick up so that you’re visible, you’re on page 1, so again, you can ride that wave like a California surfer.

Casey Gauss:
And the research that you did to understand when those trends start to pick up is going to inform you of, okay, let’s say it’s October 15th that sales start to increase. Well, walk back seven days. Walk back five days. That’s the day your promotion needs to start so that at the end of that promotion you’re ranking page 1, and as sales start to increase you ride along with it.

Cameron Yoder:
Another good action step for this podcast is to encourage you guys to really just lay out the dates that you need to follow things through by because there are a lot of dates involved with Q4. Again, we went through the deadlines, but even more than that it’s days to make sure that you’ve run your promotions by, that you’re on page 1 by, that you’re ranking by, while taking into account the fact that you have to or should be following all these deadlines for like Black Friday or Christmas. So I would say just go lay out, whether it’s a physical calendar or a digital one, and make a strategy for Q4.

Casey Gauss:
And you have to do this for each product, right?

Cameron Yoder:
Yes.

Casey Gauss:
Because each product is going to have a different pickup date in terms of sales.

Cameron Yoder:
Right, right, right, right. There was a product whose big point of Q4 was actually after the Christmas season. So that person is going to have to plan their launches and their inventory a little differently than someone whose peak is right at that November-December point. So again, like Casey said, just go through each ASIN, each product, and create a plan individually.

Casey Gauss:
Yep, and you know, same is true, ride the wave for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. The last thing we want you to do is to come to us for, you know, these candy canes on October 15th and say hey, more people are starting to buy these candy canes. Can I run a promotion to help get ranking? Or, you know, the last thing I want to see is that happen in December because –

Cameron Yoder:
Oh, geez.

Casey Gauss:
– to ride that wave like you’re going to have to be spending thousands and thousands, if not five figures, to catch up.

Cameron Yoder:
That’s a lot of candy canes there.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah.

Cameron Yoder:
Well, that’s all for this episode. Thanks for joining us on Follow the Data, and good luck as you prep for Q4. For more reliable information about how to succeed during all four seasons, subscribe to the podcast and check out the Viral Launch blog at Viral-Launch.com.

Casey Gauss:
And don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you like the podcast. We really appreciate your feedback. We like to know how to be better, so we would love your honest feedback. And if you like what we’re doing, leaving a review helps other people find us as well.

Cameron Yoder:
Exactly. And if you’re wondering about how exactly Viral Launch helps Amazon sellers, make sure to check out one of our more recent blog posts, a Viral Launch review by marketplace director Lindsay Todd. She’s great. She shares three awesome stories about a few of our clients that utilize Viral Launch software to take their businesses to the next level. We’ve also got a new course up on our YouTube channel about how to set up a product launch. You can have a coach walk you through the whole process at your convenience and with the option to play back all of the information.

Casey Gauss:
Want to be featured on the show? Leave a voicemail and tell us your thoughts on today’s episode, or ask us any of your Amazon questions. Our number is 317-721-6590. Join us for Episode 3 where we dispel the diversification myth. Until then, remember, the data is out there.

 

About the Amazon FBA Seller Podcast:

Viral Launch CEO, Casey Gauss, and Amazon Seller Coach Cameron Yoder bring data-driven insights to the Seller community in their weekly discussions.

On the show you’ll get the latest Amazon selling strategies and best practices based on the company’s experience launching over 22,000 products and working with over 5,500 brands. Casey and Cam will bring you up to speed on the latest Amazon news, share stories of success and failure, explore the difficulties of entrepreneurship, and discuss the way Amazon is changing retail.

At the center of the show is the Viral Launch commitment to offering reliable information to today’s entrepreneurs.

BONUS: Q4 Part I Optimizing your Listing (Follow the Data Ep. 2)

Follow the Data Episode 2: BONUS Q4 Part I Optimizing Your Listing

The holiday season begins in October for Amazon sellers, but it’s not all fun and gifts. Being aware of fee changes, having crucial deadlines circled on your calendar, and optimizing your listing to move sales is just part of the diligent work it takes to beat out the competition and increase profits during the biggest shopping event of the year. Listen in as Casey and Cameron detail how to prepare for success in Amazon Q4.

Listen on iTunes . See All Episodes

Listen on Stitcher / Listen on Google Play

 

Follow the Data Show Notes:

  • Check out this Amazon press release for more cool and crazy stats about Q4 2016 like those featured at the opening of the show.
  • Important Dates
    • Oct. 1 – Reduced Fulfillment and Increased Storage fees
      • Fulfillment Fees will be reduced and will now be consistent with Fulfillment Fees in November and December. With the reduction in Fulfillment Fees, if you reduce the storage space you use in October, you have the opportunity to pay lower total FBA fees in October.
      • The monthly inventory storage fee for October will be increased for standard-size and oversize items to be consistent with the monthly inventory storage fees for November and December.
    • Mid-October – FBA Cutoff for new FBA Seller Accounts
      • This one is for those who have not sent a product into FBA through their seller account. On October 10, 2016, Amazon denied new FBA sellers in anticipation for full warehouses. This year, watch for the same cutoff in mid-October. As confirmed by an Amazon rep, this restriction is account-based, not ASINbased. So if you’re planning to start selling later this fall, send in a few products to FBA now to ensure your eligibility for the 2017 holiday season
    • Nov. 7 – FBA Inventory Deadline for Black Friday and Cyber Monday
      • This one is crucial. Make sure you plan to have your Black Friday and Cyber Monday inventory arrive at Amazon before early November (or even well before then, just to be safe).
    • Nov. 24 – Black Friday
      • The day after Thanksgiving, regarded as the first day of the traditional shopping season will set the holiday shopping in motion. From now until Christmas, FBA sellers must be on top of their game to capitalize on the immense sales potential.
    • Nov. 27 – Cyber Monday
      • comScore reported Amazon ranked #1 among online retailers in Cyber Monday traffic for 2016, and this year will likely follow suit. Gear up for massive sales on November 27th.
    • Dec. 1 – FBA Inventory Deadline for Sending in Inventory to be Delivered by Christmas
      • The peak worldwide shipping day during the 2016 holiday season was December 19th. Just because Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over doesn’t mean you should pump the breaks. Make sure your Christmas inventory is in Amazon’s warehouses by the December 1, if not earlier.
  • Optimizing your Listing
  • For more helpful tips about preparing for Q4, download the Viral Launch Q4 Guide.
  • Check out our How to Launch YouTube Course
  • A Viral Launch Review: 3 Amazon Product Launch Case Studies
  • Want to be on the show? Leave us a voicemail at (317) 721-6590

 

Podcast Transcript

Casey Gauss:
In just three months during 2016 Amazon generated almost a third of its yearly revenue, and with growth projections pointing skyward, we’re expecting an even bigger holiday season for Amazon this year.

Cameron Yoder:
Q4 is almost here, and if you’re not already preparing, it’s time to start. Competition is fierce around this time of year, and only those who meet the season head-on will truly benefit from the extraordinary amount of traffic Amazon is likely to see. I’m Cameron Yoder.

Casey Gauss:
And I’m Casey Gauss, your host for Follow the Data: Your Journey to Amazon FBA Success. In this show we’ll leverage the data we’ve accumulated at Viral Launch from over 20,000 product launches and our experience working with 5500 brands to help you understand the big picture when it comes to Amazon and, most importantly, the best practices for success as an Amazon seller.

Cameron Yoder:
We’re taking a break right now from our four-part series on dispelling myths to help you start preparing for the most important sales quarter of the year, yes, Q4. In this episode we’ll run through all of the must-know dates and all the vital prep that will set you up for success for this holiday season.

Casey Gauss:
By the time the episode is over hopefully you’ll have your work cut out for you and a proven prep strategy that will help you take advantage of the crazy Amazon Q4 sales coming your way.

Cameron Yoder:
Q4 2016 on Amazon was an event like the US economy has never seen. In the course of three months Amazon delivered enough men’s jeans – men’s jeans – to fill an Olympic -sized swimming pool. That’s crazy. Customers purchased enough 4K TVs to reach the peak of Mount Everest more than nine times, and 2.5 million watches were purchased. That is a watch sale every 1.5 seconds.

Casey Gauss:
I heard they had to actually go to an Olympic pool to measure the jeans there.

Cameron Yoder:
Yeah, I think you’re right actually.

Casey Gauss:
It’s pretty interesting.

Cameron Yoder:
You know, out of all those TVs I still don’t have a 4K TV.

Casey Gauss:
Missing out man.

Cameron Yoder:
I know.

Casey Gauss:
Viral Launch needs to pay you more.

Cameron Yoder:
Ah, geez.

Casey Gauss:
So Q4 was huge in 2016, and it’s going to be even bigger this year. If you want to claim your share of Q4 sales you need to make sure your business is set up to succeed. Let’s get started.

Cameron Yoder:
Yep. So we’re talking about important dates right now. I would encourage you, if you’re in a spot to be able to write them down or type them out, then follow through with us. But if not, then you can just go back and listen to the podcast and get those dates.

Casey Gauss:
We’ll also have some show notes.

Cameron Yoder:
Yeah, oh yeah, right. Well, I guess that helps, too. So the first date we’re going to talk about is October 1st. Now this is coming up. It’s soon. October 1st is the date where fulfillment fees will reduce and inventory and storage fees will increase.

Casey Gauss:
Amazon does not want to be a warehouse, but they do want to ship your goods when sales are happening, and they want to make sure that they are the warehouse to do that. So definitely make sure that you mark this down. Make sure that you have inventory moving, and ideally, if possible, don’t use Amazon as a storage facility.

Cameron Yoder:
This is – we’ll go through some of this later, but really having your inventory planned and numbers planned kind of goes into account here. Now these numbers, the reductions in fulfillment fees and increase in inventory and storage fees, will go into effect in October, but they’ll last through November and December, so again, throughout that holiday season.

Casey Gauss:
In mid-October last year in 2016 we saw a cut off for new FBA seller accounts.

Cameron Yoder:
Now this was actually kind of crazy for new sellers because Amazon did not announce it beforehand.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, so if you had $500,000 of inventory that you purchased because you thought you were going to get rich in Amazon Q4 but you hadn’t created your seller account and sent inventory in, like you were just completely screwed. So Cam has got the trick for you.

Cameron Yoder:
I’ve got the trick. Here’s a trick that should work. Again, we’re not claiming that it’s going to work indefinitely for every single person. However, however, we have seen this work for others. So if you are a new FBA seller and you have not sent in inventory yet, here is something you can do to ensure, or hopefully ensure, that you will be able to send in inventory if you plan on getting your inventory in after mid-October, which you should get it in as soon as you can. But if you haven’t created an order yet you should go to the store. You should buy something, and you should send it in to Amazon FBA. Basically you should do what’s called retail arbitrage. So you’re going to go to the store, you’re going to buy something, and you’re going to flip it basically and sell it on Amazon. You’re going create a separate shipping order. If you need instructions on how to do that just Google Amazon retail arbitrage or how to ship retail arbitrage stuff into Amazon, and it will take you through it. But basically by doing this you are creating a shipping order for Amazon which will basically get that one, that one or that first shipping order out of the way, and Amazon will then allow you to create another shipping order once your inventory gets in or is on its way.

Casey Gauss:
Next date is November 7th. This is the inventory deadline for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and this does not mean send your last shipment on November 6th at midnight. It takes time to get your stuff checked into FBA, and during the holiday season Amazon is definitely ramping up staff to make sure that they can process all the inventory and all the orders. But sometimes there’s major delays, and you know we’ve definitely had friends that their inventory gets stuck in customs, or it gets stuck in FBA going through the check-in process. So the earlier you can get your inventory in in preparation for Black Friday/Cyber Monday, the better, and the more likely it is that you are able to guarantee that you’ll have the inventory you want to sell.

Cameron Yoder:
So if you want to make some crazy good sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, have your inventory in before November 7th. Again, in Amazon. Now as for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Black Friday is on the 24th of November, and Cyber Monday is on the 27th. So again, November 7th, 24th, 27th. Cyber Monday was – this is just a little fact — but Amazon reportedly ranked number one among online retailers for Cyber Monday traffic in 2016. We’re assuming it’s the same thing for 2017.

Casey Gauss:
Yep, and then final date just to be aware of, December 1st is the deadline to send inventory in to be delivered by Christmas. Again, please expect delays. Do not expect things to go quickly. Make sure that you have your inventory in as quick as possible. Another interesting little fact is the peak worldwide shipping day in 2016 was December 19th.

Cameron Yoder:
Geez. I want to reiterate the deadlines. Again, mid-October is at — unconfirmed, again unconfirmed cut off for new FBA sellers. November 7th is the deadline to have your stuff in for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. December 1st is that Christmas inventory deadline.

Casey Gauss:
So next we want to talk about optimizing your listings in preparation for Q4. You know, really at the end of the day this should go without saying, but we kind of want to dive in a little bit. You need to have your ducks in a row for Q4 because this is the biggest shopping season – not single-day; that’s Prime Day assumedly – this is the biggest shopping season of your career. Like it’s not worth cutting the corners or, you know, being lazy and just expecting the money to roll in. Will some money role in? For sure. But if you could be making tens of thousands of dollars more by taking an extra day or two extra days, it’s totally worth it.

Cameron Yoder:
And all this stuff, I mean this advice for optimizing the quality of your product, should be taken into account every single day for the rest of the year.

Casey Gauss:
For sure.

Cameron Yoder:
But it’s going to matter probably the most around this time of the year.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, everything is just amplified. Cam, let’s talk about photography.

Cameron Yoder:
Yeah, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about photos, yo. With photography, honestly, the most important thing is to have high-quality, a high-quality professional hero image that stands out to accentuate all product features. It tells a story, or your photos in general tell a story, and establish and build an emotional connection with whoever is seeing it. What do people see when they search for products? Your photo. They see your photos. They see your listing. So having something that’s really well done in that realm, in the realm of photography, is going to be important. I think, from what I’ve seen after talking with a lot of sellers, people get lost in their own photography. And personally I think they need to – I think sellers need to get the opinion of other people that they trust to tell them what they think about their photos. It could be going to like five people and asking them, hey, what do you think of these photos? Are they good, or are they not?

Casey Gauss:
And don’t even tell them that they’re your photos. And you become emotionally attached to your product and whatever materials are surrounding it. And so you are obviously biased that your photos are good, or your photos are better than the competition, and you would just not believe the photos that we have seen where sellers, you know, asking us to optimize their listing or help them increase sales. And you know we just see the images, and it’s absolutely insane that these guys think they’re great. You know it’s hard for us. We want to be nice –

Cameron Yoder:
Of course, of course.

Casey Gauss:
– and say hey, you know, we think you should maybe consider getting or improving your images. And then, you know, they’re like oh no, I’ve had professionals do that.

Cameron Yoder:
They’re good. They’re good to go.

Casey Gauss:
And it’s like it’s just absolutely laughable. And so you know, you’re probably not a creative. You’re probably not the best judge to say whether or not your photos are as optimized as possible. Definitely using split testing to get some data around, you know, what is the best image, what is the best main image, what is the best photo set, what is the best order of my photo set? These are all things that we’re constantly split testing because we want to understand what makes the best photo sets possible. How can we improve sales as best as possible? Definitely, like Cam was saying, having a high-quality main image is important. If you’re having someone shoot photos, have them shoot three or four different potential hero images so that you can identify this one is driving the most clicks; this one is driving the most sessions. Typically it’s not the main image. The main image is just driving clicks. Definitely invest in some high-quality lifestyle shots so customers can really build an emotional connection to your product so you can really tell that story. See much better conversion rates when we have high-quality lifestyle photos. You just cannot supplement those with some Photoshopped who knows what.

Cameron Yoder:
Let’s move on. Let’s move on to listing. Casey, what you got?

Casey Gauss:
You cannot have temporary language, or you’re not supposed to have temporary language in your listings. I have a friend; they’re doing like 150 K a day, and they had their entire account suspended because they had the term “holiday sale” in the title of one of their listings, just one of their listings. Their entire 150 K-a-day operation was suspended for a little over a week, which is pretty insane. So please do not use holiday type language. Some of your competitors will get away with it. Some of your competitors will not. So if that’s a gamble you want to play, I mean –

Cameron Yoder:
It’s not worth it, in my opinion.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, I mean yeah, that’s completely your call. Definitely make sure that, again, everything is as optimized as possible. Make sure that your language is tailored to the holiday shopper, but again, don’t use that temporary language like sale, holiday, unless holiday is very descriptive of what the product is. Backend keywords, really backend search terms just don’t matter very much. I mean, at the end of the day you only need to include a word one time in your listing. Keywords in your title are much more heavily ranked than anywhere else in the listing. So if you should be worrying about anything, it’s your title. You should be keyword stuffing as much as possible, as much as possible while still giving like a cohesive title so you can maximize the number of keywords and the total views possible for your listing.

Cameron Yoder:
There is a confirmed limit on – basically byte limits for the backend keywords. In the United States it’s 250, but again, that’s 250 without – or characters without spaces for indexing from the backend, 500 in Japan, 200 in India.

Casey Gauss:
Yeah, and, you know, at the end of the day, again, you should not be repeating those backend search terms. So everybody’s like all up in the air about backend search terms, and in reality that’s only 250 characters. There’s so many – I don’t remember of the top of my head anymore – but you have, you know, 100 characters in the title, 100 characters in the five bullet points on your listing and then 2000 characters in your description. So why are you so, you know, worked up over this portion of your listing that’s not even 10% of your listing’s content? Anyways, basically use backend search terms. Don’t repeat any words that you’ve repeated or already put in the front end of the listing. Just don’t worry about them.

Cameron Yoder:
Hey, thank you so much for joining us for part one of our Q4 episode. Feel free to join Casey and I for part two where we’ll talk about the role of enhanced brand content in optimizing your listing, as well as inventory planning and the best way to perfectly time a product promotion to make it big this Q4. I promise you won’t want to miss it.

 

About the Amazon FBA Seller Podcast:

Viral Launch CEO, Casey Gauss, and Amazon Seller Coach Cameron Yoder bring data-driven insights to the Seller community in their weekly discussions.

On the show you’ll get the latest Amazon selling strategies and best practices based on the company’s experience launching over 22,000 products and working with over 5,500 brands. Casey and Cam will bring you up to speed on the latest Amazon news, share stories of success and failure, explore the difficulties of entrepreneurship, and discuss the way Amazon is changing retail.

At the center of the show is the Viral Launch commitment to offering reliable information to today’s entrepreneurs.

 

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