As the fourth quarter shopping season draws near, the eCommerce industry starts preparing for the upcoming holiday seasons and sales events. Amazon Black Friday and Amazon Cyber Monday are two of this quarter’s highly anticipated eCommerce sales events.
Whether you are selling on Amazon or other eCommerce platforms such as Walmart or eBay, obtaining success during Black Friday and Cyber Monday requires more than mere luck. A successful Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaign demands sufficient preparation and a calculated approach.
To help you boost your sales and enhance your overall Amazon business performance, we have compiled insights and valuable tips on pre-event, actual-event, and post-event strategies.
Overview: Black Friday and Cyber Monday Shopping Events
In the consumer industry, Black Friday occurs the Friday after Thanksgiving Day. Initially, this event was only an in-person shopping event. However, as technology evolved, Black Friday extended beyond brick-and-mortar stores and into online shopping platforms like Amazon.
While Black Friday’s origin can be traced back as far as the 1950s, Cyber Monday, on the other hand, was introduced in 2005. Cyber Monday describes the Monday after Black Friday when consumers continue to shop online.
The main difference between Black Friday and Cyber Monday is that Black Friday deals are offered online and in physical stores, whereas Cyber Monday deals are more online-focused. Nevertheless, the difference between Black Friday and Cyber Monday is almost negligible, for both holiday shopping events offer huge discounts and great deals.
Important eCommerce and Amazon Data
Knowing vital information that drives the marketplace is crucial when preparing your Amazon Business for Black Friday and Cyber Monday events. From factors influencing shoppers buying decisions to sales reports, these data points can help you quantify your results, determine trends, identify products & categories that attract consumers, and more.
Factors Influencing Buyer’s Decisions
Understanding the factors influencing online shoppers to purchase items can significantly enhance your strategies for the upcoming Amazon Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024. To provide you with a clearer understanding of the triggers that lead shoppers to click the “Add to Cart” button, here are some of the key factors influencing buyer decisions:
• Product Reviews
Before making purchases, most shoppers tend to navigate to the review section of the product listing to gain insights and recommendations from fellow shoppers who have previously bought the same item.
When shopping online, most consumers read reviews. It is estimated that 77% of shoppers look for online selling platforms with ratings and reviews. In particular, Amazon is one platform where 94% of consumers tend to read reviews. This emphasizes the essential role of product reviews for every eCommerce enterprise, including your Amazon business.
Consider product reviews when unveiling your Amazon Black Friday deals. As early as today, respond to reviews on your listings or websites, and 88% of consumers would favor businesses that reply to all of their reviews.
• Free Shipping
When shopping online, shoppers prefer listings that have free shipping options. Around 75% of consumers would instead choose free shipping over expedited shipping. Online shoppers view shipping costs as the essential information sellers should share over the average shipping time.
Online businesses that do not offer free shipping often experience cart abandonment. Shipping costs often discourage shoppers from continuing their purchases, contributing to the average overall abandonment rate of 70.9%.
Hence, when developing your Black Friday or Cyber Monday strategy, you should consider free shipping options for your product listings. Free shipping has been proven to increase sales and store engagement, so Amazon likewise adapted the free shipping option to its platform.
• Discount Offers
Many shoppers anticipate discounts and promotions from eCommerce sites, like Amazon, as the holiday season draws near. With that in mind, offering price discounts to consumers can help influence their buying decisions in your favor. In fact, more than 60% of US consumers are proactively searching for discounts or promo codes when shopping online.
When offered a discount, online shoppers are likely to complete a purchase even if they did not initially plan to buy the product. Furthermore, discount promotions reduce shopping cart abandonment, with 54% of shoppers choosing to buy items in their cart after being presented with discount offers for those products.
• Website Interface
An eCommerce site’s design and functionalities also significantly impact consumers’ shopping behavior. Hence, online sellers and business owners should take time to optimize their websites or listings.
A mere 1-second delay in page response could lead to a 7% drop in conversions. Additionally, if a listing page or website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, around 40% of visitors are inclined to abandon it.
Furthermore, an alarming 88% of online consumers are unlikely to revisit a website after encountering a negative user experience. Hence, you should optimize your website for the upcoming holiday season, focusing mainly on its mobile responsiveness, navigation, security, search function, checkout process, and product details.
In cases where your products are featured on an eCommerce platform like Amazon, where you lack control over the technical setup, directing your efforts toward listing optimization becomes essential. This ensures that Amazon shoppers obtain precise product details that they can use to evaluate your product better.
Conversion by Devices
As you gear up for the holiday season, you must gain insights into the conversion rates across different devices. This information holds significant value for your eCommerce business, enabling you to fine-tune your marketing strategies based on customer device preferences.
Furthermore, this understanding can show device performance trends during peak shopping periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Identifying these trends allows you to pinpoint areas of your business that may require improvements or updates, such as optimizing content presentation and enhancing user experiences.
Ultimately, comprehending device-specific conversion rates empowers you to shape a tailored approach for the upcoming holiday sales events. Below showcases last year’s conversion rates that highlight the varying performance of different devices during the critical shopping days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2023.
Consumer Spending
Knowing what consumers have purchased previously on Black Friday and Cyber Monday gives you an idea of the possible purchases for the upcoming Cyber Monday and Black Friday 2024. Most shoppers spent their money on gift items in anticipation of the gift-giving season. Some of the popular items consumers spent their money on include the following:
Social Media Platforms Demographics
Social media platforms have become essential for promoting products and driving traffic to a website. Social media platforms allow you to give consumers early access or exclusive access to your listings. Understanding the user demographics of top social media platforms can help you improve the effectiveness of your Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns.
Instagram: Instagram is popular among younger audiences aged 18 to 34. It has become a top social media shopping destination, with 2 billion monthly users, including those who engage with Instagram ad posts.
If you offer steep discounts for your listings, you can capitalize on this younger age group, for they are the ones who tend to seek a discount code or items at bargains.
Facebook: There are more than 3 billion active Facebook users each month. Most of its users fall within the 25-34 age group, with video content as one of the primary drivers of engagement on the platform. Contents containing personalized recommendations or new products can help redirect FB users to your eCommerce listings.
TikTok: TikTok is a popular social media platform among users aged 18-24. The average time users spend on TikTok per day is almost 55 minutes. You can maximize this engagement by creating videos highlighting holiday decorations to entice audiences to your Amazon store.
Pinterest: Over the past year, Pinterest has enjoyed remarkable user growth, boasting almost 500 million active monthly users. The platform’s most prominent user demographic falls within the 25-34 age range, while an impressive 77% of its users are female.
With these statistics in mind, it is crucial to capitalize on Pinterest’s user base by creating irresistible Black Friday and Cyber Monday pins that cater to women’s interests. This presents a tremendous opportunity to tap into the platform’s thriving community and drive engagement with your Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.
Snapchat: Just last year, Amazon and Snapchat teamed up to offer users the ability to buy products directly from ads. This partnership presents an incredible opportunity to access Snapchat’s massive user base of 414 million daily active users and showcase your unbeatable Cyber Monday and Black Friday deals.
By optimizing your Black Friday ads or Cyber Monday deals on Snapchat, you can specifically target Gen Z, Snapchat’s largest user demographic, and drive substantial sales.
Each social media platform has its distinct users, behaviors, and features. Based on the above data, you can tailor your Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns to intensify their reach. Thus, helping your business thrive in the competitive landscape of eCommerce.
The Amazon Holiday Shopping Weekend
To further refine your approach for the forthcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales events, delving into Amazon’s statistics from last year can be a game-changer. These crucial data insights will be instrumental in shaping your strategies for Amazon Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024.
Key Insights from Amazon Black Friday and Amazon Cyber Monday
Amazon’s holiday shopping event 2023, which spanned from Thanksgiving through Black Friday and Cyber Monday, was a monumental success. Amazon reported over 1 billion items purchased globally during the event, with 500 million coming from independent sellers, primarily small and medium-sized businesses.
While Amazon did not disclose specific year-over-year (YoY) growth, it announced that its 11-day shopping event was the largest compared to similar sales periods in previous years.
Key Sales Highlights:
Amazon shoppers took advantage of the discounts and deals during Black Friday 2023, and here are some of the most discounted products from last year’s Black Friday sale:
- Toys
- Apparel
- Televisions
- Appliances
- Sporting goods
- Furniture
NBC News also reported that some of the best sellers during last year’s Black Friday event were all electronics, including the following:
- Apple AirTags.
- Anker Nano Power Bank.
- Kasa Smart Plug Mini 15A.
- Nintendo Switch Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Bundle.
- Apple Watch SE (2023, 2nd Gen).
Sales Impact for Independent Sellers:
Last year’s shopping events were a game-changer for small and medium-sized businesses, with a staggering 60% of all units sold in the Amazon store coming from third-party sellers.
As mentioned earlier, over 500 million Amazon products were purchased from independent sellers during the Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales. The best-selling items from small businesses in the U.S. included:
- She’s Birdie Personal Safety Alarm
- Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza Game
- Crochet Kit for Beginners
Black Friday and Cyber Monday Advertising Trends:
Brand owners, online sellers, and entrepreneurs have significantly increased advertising investments during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
- Advertising costs for Sponsored Brands surged by 17%, while costs for Sponsored Products also increased by 4%. Regarding ad spending, brands increased their ad spend by 55% for Sponsored Products and 61% for Sponsored Brands.
- The Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS) for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday saw a notable increase. ACoS for Black Friday rose from 24% to 30%, and for Cyber Monday, it increased from 25% to 30%.
- In terms of CPC (Cost Per Click), CPC increased from $1.15 in 2022 to $1.63 in 2023 for Cyber Monday and from $1.18 in 2022 to $1.60 in 2023 for Black Friday.
Amazon Cyber Monday and Black Friday Selling Tips
To increase your success this holiday season, you need to optimize your strategies, especially your Cyber Monday and Black Friday marketing strategies. Here are some strategies you can apply to help you prepare your Amazon business for the upcoming holiday weekend and improve Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales.
Determine Priority Items
Since not all products will be in demand for the season, you must identify products or categories that will likely generate sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. You can check product ranking and sales history for reference.
You can further narrow your search by checking items under best-selling categories such as Home, Fashion, Toys, Beauty, and Kitchen. You can likewise review previous years’ Amazon Black Friday deals to help find deals that new customers will be interested in. By doing so, you can focus your resources to support strategic marketing campaigns for the said products.
Ship Inventory Before Your Amazon Deadline
Once you have identified priority inventory items, ship them before the deadline. Amazon’s deadline for receiving Black Friday and Cyber Monday inventory is October 19, 2024. To avoid delays or fulfillment congestion, ship at least a week before the deadline.
Consider Your Fulfillment Service
Amazon sellers can choose between independently fulfilling customer orders (FBM) or leveraging Amazon’s proprietary fulfillment service (FBA). Nonetheless, if you opt for FBA, having an alternative plan involving third-party logistics is highly beneficial. This contingency proves invaluable should FBA facilities become inundated with customer orders and fulfillment tasks.
Conduct Promotions Ahead of Time
Like your Prime Day deals, you should drive traffic to your listings ahead of Black Friday and Amazon Cyber Week. Driving organic traffic to your listings can help increase your listings’ organic ranking.
To market your product or listing before the holidays, consider introducing early bird discounts to pique customer interest and build anticipation.
Furthermore, you can employ another popular Black Friday marketing strategy involving newsletters or sharing compelling content on your social media channels to attract shoppers to your store’s Black Friday sale.
Manage Your Reviews
As you prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024, it is crucial to oversee the feedback and customer reviews featured on your listings. If possible, aim to address any negative feedback associated with your listings. The presence of negative feedback can dissuade potential shoppers from making purchases.
Accordingly, 86% of shoppers hesitate to buy products with negative reviews. Negative customer feedback can also damage your business’s reputation, as 50% of shoppers are more likely to share it with other potential customers.
Perform Listing Optimization
Optimizing your listings on Amazon before Black Friday and Cyber Monday can drastically improve the overall performance of your Amazon business. In particular, listing optimization leads to better product visibility, improved click-through rates, and enhanced conversion rates.
To optimize your listings, you should conduct keyword research to guide you when making engaging titles, persuasive bullet points, and compelling product descriptions.
Listing optimization also includes using high-quality images for your products. A well-optimized image should accurately represent your product. Accordingly, 60% of consumers tend to buy items from websites using high-quality product photos.
Before uploading your listing photos, ensure that the photos adhere to Amazon’s photo guidelines and requirements. For guidance, you may follow the specifications below:
Tips During the Holiday Events
Managing your Amazon Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaign does not end during the actual sales events. There are still important things to do to achieve a successful Cyber Monday and Black Friday campaign, and these include the following:
Monitor Your Amazon Business
Monitoring your conversion, stocks, and cart abandonment is necessary during the holiday weekend. It gives you insight into how your business performs during the holiday event and likewise allows you to make adjustments required for favorable results.
Handle Customer Queries and Support
Be sure to promptly respond to customer queries or concerns during the holiday weekends. This is especially true for Amazon FBM sellers who are primarily in charge of their business’ shipping and customer support.
If you run an ad campaign outside the Amazon website, promptly reply to customer queries, including questions about promos and coupon codes.
Boost Social Media Campaign
During the ongoing holiday weekends, you can further improve your Amazon store engagement and conversion by boosting your social presence. Be active and create engaging posts by showcasing attractive product videos and images.
You can also delve into influencer marketing as part of your social media campaign. You can offer a free gift to influencers so that they will promote your brand and products during the holiday season. However, any connection between you and the influencer receiving the gift should be disclosed as per Amazon guidelines,
Influencer marketing is based on psychology principles. Since the brain is inherently receptive to influencer marketing, this approach can bring substantial advantages to your Amazon business.
Digital media influencers, including Amazon influencers, can help influence consumers’ purchasing behavior. In fact, over the past years, 81% of consumers embraced influencer marketing, and 69% of consumers trust the recommendations they get from influencers.
Post-Black Friday and Cyber Monday Tasks
Your responsibilities do not end along with the conclusion of the holiday shopping events. Some tasks demand continued careful attention, and some might even require immediate action. Following Amazon Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales events, here are some essential things you should do.
Deal with Customer Returns
Along with your Amazon sales comes Amazon returns. Deal with product returns professionally, as this influences your performance. Since customers might already be frustrated, it is best to make the returns process more convenient by extending the return window or offering different return channels.
You may also offer a full or partial refund depending on the situation. If possible, make instant refunds to clients you consider VIPs or those loyal to your brand. If you wish to learn more about product returns, we prepared a separate article concerning Amazon Returns and How to Deal With Them.
Check Analytics
It is crucial not to overlook the necessity of comprehensive data analysis for your Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns. Delving into the numbers is instrumental in identifying potential mistakes and gaining insights into enhancing your business strategy for Amazon Black Friday and Amazon Cyber Monday events next year.
Ask for Customer Feedback
After Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Amazon sellers should ask for customer feedback. Obtaining favorable customer reviews can help you improve your seller metrics and credibility.
Although Amazon does not require sellers to request reviews, they may still do so, especially for specific orders. Instead of requesting via email or Buyer-Seller Messaging, you could request an appraisal from a customer using Amazon Seller Central’s “Request a review” feature on the Order Details page.
Amazon allows you to request a review from a customer once per order between 5 and 30 days after the delivery date. Alternatively, if you want a more convenient way to request customer reviews, you may also use a feedback management tool to automate requests for Amazon reviews.
Effective Amazon Seller Tools Approved By Amazon
Below are some essential Amazon seller tools crucial for optimizing your Amazon venture. These seller tools are Amazon third-party software partners, which means Amazon approves using these software tools. These software tools can help sellers automate, manage, and grow their businesses.
Seller Snap: An AI-powered repricing software that helps you automatically adjust your listing prices based on essential factors such as market trends and competitor prices. Thus ensuring that your products are competitively priced for maximum sales and profits.
Jungle Scout: This is a comprehensive tool for product research and competition analysis. It helps you identify profitable niches and products to sell on Amazon, especially for the coming Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
FeedbackWhiz: A feedback management software that helps you monitor and manage customer feedback or reviews. This Amazon software tool is important for building credibility and driving sales.
InventoryLab: As its name suggests, this Amazon seller tool can help you manage your Amazon inventory. It can help you track your inventory levels, sales, and expenses, thus preventing stockouts and overstock.
Helium 10: This Amazon seller software offers a wide array of functionality, including—but not limited to—advertising, analytics and reporting, order management, product research and scouting, and more.
Preparing Your Amazon Business for Success
Amazon Cyber Monday and Black Friday 2024 mark the start of the holiday shopping season. Significant consumer engagement, increased order volume, and challenges accompany these pivotal eCommerce events..
Proactive preparation is essential to preempt or mitigate potential issues within your Amazon business during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The insights provided above serve as a guide to preparing your Amazon business, ensuring customer satisfaction and optimal overall business performance. By embracing these strategies, you position your business for success amidst the holiday shopping rush.
