Brace Yourself – The Holidays are Coming! 5 Clever Amazon Holiday Sales Strategies for 2021

Jungle Scout’s 2021 Amazon Advertising report indicates that Amazon has now become the first stage of more than 74% of consumers’ purchase journey. This means – more than 74% of consumers prefer conducting their product search on Amazon over Google and other search engines.

Amazon delivered a stellar, record-breaking performance in 2020 with its annual revenue standing at $386 billion, a 37.62% Y-o-Y increase.

Sourced Via Statista 2021

While various factors have contributed to Amazon’s mind-blowing success, you’ll be shocked to know that the tech giant’s Q4 revenue spiked by a whopping 30.58% in Q4 2020 – from $96.15 billion in Q3 2020 to $125.56 billion in Q4 2020.

Sourced Via Statista 2021

This data chart has been fetched from Statista. And if you look closely, you’ll observe that Amazon’s net revenue skyrockets in the fourth quarter of every year. 

Wondering what causes this gigantic spike each year?

Our answer – it’s the holiday season.

The 2020 holiday retail sales stood at $789.4 billion in 2020, signaling an 8.3% Y-o-Y increase. Out of the $789.4 billion that people spent during the 2020 holiday season, $142.5 billion accounted for eCommerce purchases. 

While Amazon didn’t share any actual sales numbers for either Cyber Monday or Black Friday, the eCommerce giant claimed the 2020 holiday season to be its biggest holiday season to date. And if the numbers are to be believed, about 42 cents of every dollar spent during the 2021 holiday season will go to Amazon. 

It’s a great time to be an Amazon seller.

If you currently sell your products on Amazon, we have some exciting news for you. The 2021 Amazon Holiday season may break all past records. U.S. Retail executives expect the 2021 eCommerce holiday sales to grow by a gigantic 35% over last year.

We’ve crafted this amazing piece to help you skyrocket your 2021 holiday sales in the smartest manner possible.

In this blog post, we’ll be looking at the five clever Amazon Holiday Sales strategies – we personally are going to implement – to help you hit your KPIs and conquer your goals.

Let’s dive straight into them.

5 Clever Amazon Holiday Sales Strategies to Maximize Your Conversions in 2021

Following are five of the most brilliant Amazon holiday sales strategies we advise you to implement:

• Ramp Up Your PPC Efforts
• Tap into the Power of Amazon Influencers
• Equip Yourself with an Amazon Seller Software Like Jungle Scout or Helium 10
• Host a Giveaway & Offer Mind-Blowing Discounts (Before, During & After the Sale)
• Inventory Management

Tap into the Power of Amazon Influencers

For every dollar businesses spent on influencer marketing, you can expect an average $6.5 ROI. In the last three years itself, the global influencer marketing space has grown from $6.5 billion to $13.8 billion. 

A recent study conducted by LTK indicates that influencers will be the #1 drivers of purchase on social media platforms this holiday season. 

“With the vast majority of shopping predicted to happen on smartphone devices this holiday season and influencers turning out to be the most trusted advisors on social media platforms, influencer marketing is poised to be one of the most effective selling strategies. Our advice for brands looking forward to maximizing their sales this holiday season is to plan their influencer marketing campaigns early.”

– Rodney Mason, Marketing Head at LTK 

Some of the relevant stats surrounding the influencer marketing space:

• 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations heavily. 
• Over 40% of consumers have reported that they bought a product or service after watching their favorite influencers promoting it on Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube. 
• 4 in every 10 millennials believe that influencers understand them better than their real friends. 

And with Amazon standing tall as the #1 retail eCommerce marketplace, it makes sense to tap into the power of influencer marketing to boost your sales on the platform during the holiday season. Fortunately, Amazon has its own influencer program – where it allows influencers to create their own storefronts. On these storefronts, influencers can add items they’d like to recommend to their audience sold by Amazon sellers. 

To learn more, check out our  “Your Go-To Amazon Influencers Guide.” Also, feel free to read our “10 Best Amazon Influencers in 2021” guide ☺

Host a Giveaway & Offer Mind-Blowing Discounts
(Before, During & After the Sale)

The best thing about the holiday season – brands host giveaways and at the same time offer heavy discounts on their products. That’s the reason millions of Americans wait for the holiday season to purchase the products they have been looking forward to getting their hands on. 

But – to stand out – we’d advise you to kickstart your holiday sale a bit early. For example, you can start offering discounts on your products a week before the holiday season kicks in. Think of it as a pre-holiday season sale. And you can do the same a week after the conclusion of the holiday sales. A week after the holiday season is concluded – you can run a sale named “The Holiday Discounts are Back for a Week” or something similar.

And trust me on this – it’ll do wonders for your Amazon business. That’s because people love discounts. Also, you can host giveaways to build hype. 

Some of the best Amazon giveaway and discount sites include:

• Stack Influence – we run highly targeted discount and giveaway campaigns to present your offers in front of the people who are most likely to purchase from you.
• RebateKey
• Vipon
• Rebaid
• Jump Send – Merged with Jungle Scout

At the same time, you can create coupons from within Seller Central itself. To create one:

• Hover over the “Advertising” tab.

• In the drop-down menu, select “Coupons.” 

• Now, click on “Create a New Coupon.”

Either you may offer a price discount or a percentage-based one. However, it’s important to keep in mind that there’s a minimum $100 budget for running a coupon.

Similarly, you can create Deals by hopping onto the “Deals” section under the “Advertising” tab.

Now, you can roll out these deals and coupons via email marketing, influencer marketing, or PPC – to maximize your conversions.

Proactive Inventory Management

The last thing you’d want is to run out of stock during the holiday season. Hence, it’s important to proactively manage your inventory – and this strategy shouldn’t be followed only during the holiday season but at any time of the year. 

Amazon stops accepting new FBA sellers somewhere around mid-October or November. So, if you are planning to tap into Amazon FBA, you need to send your first shipment of merchandise to the retail giant immediately (we’d advise as soon as you’re done reading the article). We hope you read this article before Amazon stops accepting new FBA sellers. 

As stated by Amazon, Amazon FBA sellers need to make sure that their products are shipped to the Amazon fulfillment centers by:

Sourced Via Amazon

Also, we’d advise you to use an Amazon Inventory Management Solution like Brightpearl or Sellbrite for the purpose.

If you prefer FBM over FBA, you need to ensure that your products are well-stocked for the holiday season. Also, you should set the handling times to something that you can actually achieve. Otherwise, it may result in poor customer experience, angry customers, and in turn deactivated product listing.

Brace Yourself! Holidays are Coming!

The holiday season is upon us. And as soon as you’re done reading the article – we’d advise you to implement the five Amazon holiday sales strategies we’ve shared with you.

And if you want to ace your Amazon marketing and advertising efforts – not just during the holiday season but throughout the year, feel free to reach out to our Amazon experts at Stack Influence. 

Our highly customized micro-influencer marketing campaigns are focused on helping you put your Amazon business in hyper-growth mode. Here’s what you’ll get with our growth plan:

• A-Z managed campaigns from sourcing/vetting to promotion/analysis
• Up to 5,000 Instagram feed posts in a month
• Only having to compensate influencers with products 
• Psychographic and demographic niche targeting
• Full rights license U.G.C. (image and video rights)
• Up to 7.5M social Impressions each month
• 7%+ average engagement rate on promotions
• Detailed campaign tracking dashboard
• Dedicated support manager
• Strategy consultation 
• Custom social analysis reporting

Don’t wait around!

Kickstart your holiday season preparation today.

By William Gasner

CMO at Stack Influence