As we are within the two week run up to Valentine’s day, it seems fitting to provide the best insights into how to capitalize on the fulfilled hearts of millions of lovers. With Americans spending $21.8 Billion on Valentine’s 2021, this year we are likely to see a similar figure with a big impact on e-commerce.
While it used to be the norm for lovers to jump on google to find the best Valentine’s gift deals, it is becoming more common for people to search on Amazon for these things. This is primarily due to many consumers having trust in the delivery, quality and review scheme held by Amazon.
Which leaves the question: What will you do with this opportunity in 2022? We have collated some of our top tips to help your Amazon selling and advertising strategy this holiday season, so if you have a product that could be deemed Valentine’s gift ready, keep reading!
1. Forget the window to the soul, here’s the best advertising window!
It has been found that the most profitable days to advertise in Amazon are from the end of January to February 9th. Within this period, the cost-per-click (CPC) on targets is low, as it is early days for a lot of shoppers ordering their presents. However, you are likely to capture an array of eager beavers, alternatively known as prepared consumers, those who don’t rely solely on Amazon next day delivery to get their partner a present.
With a lower CPC at this point and a higher demand for products which can be gifted, you are likely to encounter a boost in sales with a potential decrease or maintenance of ACoS. In this time, you can increase spend, bids and placement bids in this time to capitalize on this special window of opportunity.
If you can begin ranking highly for Valentines related keywords before this peak time, you will have a head start on competitors. This will be exacerbated if you increase the top of search placement bids significantly at the same time.
From around the 10th of February, the CPC for all Valentines and Gift related keywords increases significantly. You may find it harder to rank and can experience a higher ACoS. You may decide to go back to modest bidding after this period.
By 22nd February, according to Helium 10s database, ACoS for Valentines day campaigns has increased significantly, at this point you can consider massively reducing/pausing campaigns and bids which are focused on Valentines sales.
2. Considering your targets and bids
So as mentioned, there is plenty of opportunity here, but what sort of targets should you be choosing for your campaigns? While it doesn’t need to be said twice, make sure that you add targets like ‘Valentine’s gift’, ‘gift for him/her’ and ‘present’, there are ways of making the hunt for other search terms more reliable than guessing.
One tip we can give you is using Helium 10’s tool ‘Trendster’ which analyses both ASIN’s performance and keyword trends over time. From this, you can work out which ASINs to push hard on for Valentines by analysing their performance in typical gift giving seasons like Christmas. Additionally you can forecast whether your competitors are likely to receive traction in this period and hence decide whether to include them in your campaigns. An example of the use of this tool can be seen below.
You may also build on this by using the Helium 10 tool Cerebro to check which keywords your product ranks best for and can then see how high their search term volume is. All of the Valentines/gifting related search terms with a combination of a high search volume and good cerebro score should be added to separate campaigns.
Following tip 1, as a result of the CPC rising by an average of 40% this holiday, to be competitive, consider increasing campaign/ bids on these campaigns. If you know your product generates high traffic around this time, this is your opportunity to capitalize on that, so if you can, increase your bids and budgets, your competitors probably are!
3. Maintaining Budgets
So you’ve set up all your campaigns with high bids and the perfect terms which are all relevant to your products and have a high search volume, what next?
Once these have been established, it is crucial to keep an eye on your products’ sales trends for the holiday, ensuring budgets are high enough at all times. The last thing you want is for your best performing, highly relevant campaigns to be rendered obsolete due to a lack of budget. With the increased CPCs it is likely that your spend will go up, hence this needs to be matched with a similar increase in budget.
There isn’t a set rule on how to go about this, it would be advisable to monitor your campaign spends, increasing budgets on campaigns that are getting close to maxing out.
4. Being Flexible and Optimizing
In tandem with maintaining budgets throughout this period, it is also important to ensure that you are being flexible with targets and bids. In high traffic periods like Valentine’s day, it is essential to optimize effectively. Proactivity and reactivity are equally as important in achieving success this holiday.
This doesn’t only include reducing bids on targets that are overspending and underperforming, but also increasing bids on targets that are acting in your best interest. With all optimization, you should allow time for your targets to perform before immediately adapting or pausing them.
Conclusion
At Clear Ads we hope you have lots of success this holiday season. If you have any questions or queries about what was covered please feel free to reach out to lucy.r@clearads.co who would be happy to assist you on your advertising journey.
And if you haven’t done already please do get your free copy of our new marketplaces ebook. It has lots of helpful information about how you can expand your business into new markets.
