Black Friday on Amazon: What Sellers Need to do to Prepare

by Travis F.posted on 08.12.2023

If you’re a seller on Amazon Black Friday is arguably the most important day for you. This is the biggest shopping day of the year in the USA, so you’ll want to have a strategy in place to maximize your sales.

This year, Black Friday falls on November 25th, which means now’s the time to start pre-planning the deals and promotions you want to run during the upcoming holiday season.

Table of contents

Why is Black Friday So Important for Sellers?
How to Find the Right Products
Check Your Inventory and Your Competitors’ Inventory
Optimize Your Product Listings
Create an Amazon Coupon
Create Product Bundles
Run an Amazon Advertising Campaign

Here’s everything you need to do to take advantage of all the Amazon Prime shoppers who will be online during this day.

Why is Black Friday So Important for Sellers?

Black Friday is when most people get an early jump on their Christmas shopping. It’s the day right after Thanksgiving and many stores and retailers have special offers to entice shoppers.

Naturally, this trend has moved online and now Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping days on Amazon as well.

Because of the extra traffic, you can make more on this one day than you would in a week during a slower time of year. A successful Black Friday can be a great way to cap off the year and could help you reach your annual sales goals.

With that said, below are our tips for preparing for this very important day.

How to Find the Right Products

You can offer all the discounts you want, but if you’re not selling items that people want then you’re not going to make any sales. That’s why the most important part of preparing for Black Friday is to make sure you’re offering the right products.

During the rest of the year, you want to choose products that will provide you long-lasting sales. However, when it comes to Black Friday it’s all about the trends. You need to figure out which products are trending up so you have what people are looking for when they go shopping.

AMZScout’s PRO Extension is a great way to find these types of products. After you install the extension, go to Amazon and type in an item you’re interested in. Then when the search results come up click on the PRO Extension icon in the top right corner of your browser to open it.

You’ll see a wide array of valuable sales information here, but what we’re most interested in this time of year is the sales history. Click the arrow to the left of an item, then click “Product History.”

Here you’ll see a graph of the product’s sales over the last year. There are two things you want to look for:

Sales that are Trending Up: Ideally you want to see sales that have been increasing over the last few months. This means it’s gaining in popularity leading up to the holidays and could peak on Black Friday.
High Sales During Last Year’s Black Friday: If it’s an older product, look to see what kind of sales it generated last year on Black Friday. If it was really popular a year ago there’s a good chance it could be in demand again.

Don’t just leave it to chance when trying to pick products for Black Friday. Use trends and statistics so you can make an educated decision when it comes to what items you should be carrying.

Check Your Inventory and Your Competitors’ Inventory

The worst thing that could happen to any seller on Black Friday is to run out of stock. It doesn’t matter how great your lightning deals are, no one can buy your products if you have nothing to sell.

Here are a few tips when it comes to inventory:

Order Extra: You’ll likely want to order more than usual for Black Friday, as things can get a little crazy. Don’t order too much obviously, but having a little extra stock in the warehouse will give you a nice cushion if there’s more demand than you anticipate.
Check Last Year’s Sales: If you were selling on Amazon last year check to see how much you sold. This will help you plan for this year. You can also use the Pro Extension to check the sales for similar products during the last Black Friday. This info should help you figure out how many items you need to have in stock.
Check Your Competitors’ Inventory: You can also check your competitors’ inventory by using AMZScout Stock Stats. If you see your competitors are running low on an item you can stock up on it so people have somewhere to buy it if they run out.

November can be a busy month, so it’s a good idea to keep an eye on your inventory leading up to Black Friday and order more if you start running low on any of your items.

Optimize Your Product Listings

Your listing has a huge impact on how much you’re able to sell. A listing that has the right keywords will show up in multiple relevant searches which will drive more people to your page. And listings with great content and photos will produce more conversions and sales.

Here’s what you need to do to create a high-performing listing on Amazon:

Choose the Right Keywords: A great listing starts with the right keywords. Use the AMZScout Amazon Keyword Search Tool to get a list of relative keywords. Choose the ones that best describe your item and have the highest amount of searches. Then include those in your title, bullets, description, and backend search terms.
Write Great Content: Describe your product in as much detail as possible. Talk about all the item’s features and explain the ways the product will benefit the customer. The better you explain your item the more comfortable someone will be buying it.
Use Lots of High-Quality Images: Upload HD-quality images and use all six of your photos to highlight your product’s various features.
Price Your Items Competitively: Black Friday is notorious for its specials and promos, so this isn’t the day to try and increase your price. Look at what your competitors are charging and price your products accordingly. Your profit margins will shrink but you should make up for it with a higher volume of sales.
Increase Your Reviews: When Black Friday hits you want to have as many good reviews as possible. Reach out to customers via email and ask them to leave you feedback if they haven’t already to try and boost your scores.

Your listing is where people decide whether or not they actually want to buy from you, so do everything you can to ensure it’s optimized before the big day.

Create an Amazon Coupon

Everyone loves a coupon because it makes them feel like they’re getting a special deal. This is probably why Amazon created its own digital coupons that people can use on the site.

When Black Friday comes everyone will be going to Amazon’s coupon page, so take advantage of this and create coupons for your product.

Here’s how to create an Amazon Coupon:

Go to your Seller Central account.
Select “Coupons” under the “Advertising” menu.
Search for your products and then add them to your coupon.
Choose whether to offer a dollar discount or a percentage discount, and set your discount.
Choose whether you want to limit how many times a coupon can be redeemed by a customer.
Set a start and end date for your coupon.

Make sure your products are priced aggressively to begin with because not everyone will use a coupon. However, adding a coupon on top of that could generate even more sales for you.

Create Product Bundles

If you’re looking for another way to increase sales on Black Friday consider creating a product bundle. These types of offerings provide several benefits:

They Give You the Buy Box: If you’re selling a competitive item it might be hard to win the buy box. However, if you include that item in a unique bundle then you’ll have your own listing and will always have the buy box.
They’re Convenient for Shoppers: If you sell two products that are usually bought together you can bundle them and allow customers to buy them both in the same place.
Higher Perceived Value: A bundle is usually perceived to have a higher value than individual items since you’re getting multiple products in one purchase. Try to price your bundle aggressively to reinforce this.

Creating a bundle is the same as creating any other product listing on Amazon. Just make sure to follow the guidelines for bundles.

The only thing you need to consider is how you want to package your bundle. Simply using a cardboard box or poly bag will work, but if you really want to leave an impression on your customers get creative. Higher quality packaging like a gift basket or a tote will help enhance the value of your offering.

Run an Amazon Advertising Campaign

Amazon ads are a great way to drive additional traffic to your listings. Since traffic will already be up on Black Friday a strong ad campaign could mean even more sales for you.

To start, choose which items you want to promote. Ideally, you’ll want to advertise all of them but if your budget is limited choose your 1-3 best sellers. Once you’ve selected your products you’ll need to decide what keywords to target with your ads.

To do this, use the AMZScout Amazon Keyword Search Tool. Follow the same process described above to find the very best keywords to use.

You’ll also want to submit some negative keywords. These are keywords that you don’t want your ads to appear for. For example, if you sell a blue fleece blanket you don’t want your ads to show up in searches for “green fleece blankets.” This may be a related keyword, but it doesn’t accurately describe your product.

There are three different ad types you can choose from when creating your campaign:

Sponsored Products: These ads show up at the top and bottom of Amazon search results.
Sponsored Brands: These appear at the top of Amazon search results and feature a custom headline and logo. You can also use these ads to promote multiple products.
Sponsored Display: These ads appear throughout Amazon’s sites, including related product listings.

Experiment with a few different ad types to see which ones work best for your items.

Conclusion

Don’t go into Black Friday unprepared. Follow the tips above to maximize your sales and get the most out of the busiest shopping day of the year. And if you need some help take advantage of AMZScout’s wide range of tools and set yourself up for success.