Q4 on Amazon is by far the busiest time of the year for sellers, encompassing October, November and December. Not only does it include the entire Christmas season and post-Christmas sales, but there’s also Black Friday and Cyber Monday, huge events in the Q4 calendar. So, how can you prepare for Q4 on Amazon to maximise your sales?
Benefits of preparing efficiently for Q4
A well-planned strategy for Q4 is key. The more preparation you do, the more benefits you’ll gain. Whilst Q4 is a short window, the long-term impact can be quite lucrative. Sellers report gaining 2-4 times more order volume than in other quarters. The increased traffic on Amazon can:
- Enhance your brand visibility
- Allow you to scale revenue
- Produce a higher Average Order Value
- Help clear excess inventory
- Reduce long-term storage fees
So, how do you best prepare for Q4 on Amazon?
Preparation for Q4
It’s best to start planning your sales strategy from July. This may seem early, but Amazon offers multiple promotional events throughout the year and shoppers are looking for Christmas gifts as early as September nowadays.
Research
The first thing to do is look into your products. Check what products sell well and what don’t. What’s your current keyword strategy and how effective is it? How many organic sales are your listings gaining? How have your previous advertising campaigns fared in terms of sales? What about the competition? Who’s at the top of the search results and what are they doing to get there? You should also look at what you did last year – what worked? What didn’t? What sold well? Could you do anything differently?
Inventory Management
Probably the most important aspect is ensuring your inventory is up to date. Demand is higher in Q4, so restock the products that you know sell well, and make sure you have some backup products just in case. The last thing you want to do is sell out and potentially disappoint customers or lose a sale because you haven’t prepared your stock in advance. We recommend restocking 2 months in advance to ensure stock is fully received and at its final fulfilment centre.
For FBA sellers, Amazon can often limit capacity in their warehouses to prevent overload. If you think you might need additional warehouse space for Q4, it’s good to apply early so you don’t miss out. You can keep an eye on the Amazon Capacity Monitor and use the Capacity Manager to request additional space.
Promotions and Bundles
For products that are sitting and not selling, start considering what sort of promotions you can run to shift those extra goods. If you use FBA, Amazon actually charge a long-term storage fee for products stored in their warehouse for longer than 240 days. To avoid these unnecessary costs, consider offering 7-Day Deals, Lightning Deals, or why not create Bundles of multiple products to shift excess products. It not only helps avoid storage costs, but it also frees up storage space and can increase your Average Order Value. A minimum promotion of 15% tends to grab attention. Combine this with ‘Buy X to get X’ promos, Brand Tailored Promotions, Vouchers, or Subscribe and Save for additional visibility.
For holiday-specific deals, like Black Friday or Cyber Monday, it’s also important to secure your promotions early. In previous years, submissions have been required up to two months in advance. You want exposure at peak times in those sales periods, so you don’t want to miss out by submitting your deals late.
Update your Listings
It’s easy to think that once a listing is up and running, that’s the hard part done. But have you optimised your listing to maximise your visibility? Have you filled in all the bullet points? Have you added keywords to your product descriptions and title? Do you have high-quality imagery, lifestyle images or video content? Are you using A+ Content to enhance your product descriptions? Should you also consider using seasonal content? For example, switching from summer imagery and copy to winter or Christmas-themed, such as adding in Santa or Christmas trees? Take a look at our blog on how to improve your PDPs for all the latest tips on what you should be doing.
Prime Eligibility
Customers trust in Amazon Prime delivery. They want products delivered to their doors as quickly as possible. If you don’t already sport the Prime badge, it’s worth looking into Seller-Fulfilled Prime. It allows you to offer Prime benefits to customers while shipping directly from your own facilities. Not only does this improved shipping time encourage customers to buy, it also naturally builds their trust in your brand.
Competition
Although it’s good to research your competition, you should only do this to help inform your planning. There’s often increased competition in Q4, so you need to stand out by having informative listings, competitive pricing and irresistible offers. Your pricing should reflect the market. Price it too high and you’ll price yourself out. Price products too low and customers may not trust you, plus you’ll lose the margin. That’s why you need to use adaptive, data-driven pricing models that can respond in real time to Q4 dynamics.
It’s easy to want to make reactive adjustments to your listings, brand stores or advertising campaigns. But early keyword optimisation and structuring of promotions are more effective for long-term discoverability. Basically, if you don’t promote your products effectively, your competition will, and visibility on your products will drop as you’ll look unappealing compared to others.
Brand Store
One thing not to ignore is your Brand Store. Should customers find your product, they may well head through to your Brand Store, so make sure it’s in top condition. Just like your listings, make sure you use high-quality images and copy, complete with keywords, and an easy-to-read layout. It’s also worth putting any promotional deals you have on the main page of your Brand Store. People will only give a page a few seconds to see if it gives them what they want, so grab their attention straight away.
Another great thing you can do on the Brand Store is create multiple versions of it, with only one of them live. That means you could not only get to test out what works, you can also create seasonal-specific brand stores, such as a Christmas theme or Black Friday store. It’s slightly more time-consuming, but it looks to customers like you’re more active and really care about what you’re selling.
Off Amazon Efforts
Amazon particularly likes it if you bring people to their website from external sources, such as from your own website or social media. The algorithm takes notice and essentially rewards pages that encourage customers to go to Amazon. Is there any email marketing, social promotions or Google/Meta Ads you can do during Q4 to generate awareness and boost traffic to your PDPs? You could do a shout-out for any planned promotions you have coming up and redirect traffic back to Amazon. You can then monitor any of the traffic and sales you make through Amazon Attribution.
Sellers who succeed in Q4 aren’t just lucky. They’re prepared. Focus on high-demand products and start planning your Q4 sales strategy today. For more tips on preparing for success, check out our blog.