As an Amazon seller, staying ahead of the competition in the dynamic e-commerce landscape is crucial. To achieve success, you need to understand and leverage the power of seasonality.
Seasonality plays a significant role in shaping consumer demand throughout the year, and it can be your secret weapon for gaining a competitive edge. This comprehensive guide will explore the concept of Amazon seasonality, its impact on sales, and strategies to optimize your ad campaigns for maximum results.
What is Seasonality on Amazon Marketplace?
Seasonality on the Amazon Marketplace refers to the changing patterns and trends in consumer demand for products throughout the year. Various factors influence these patterns, including public holidays, weather conditions, cultural events, and shopping events such as Amazon Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.
You will often find that as you come into the various seasons different products will increase in popularity. For example, hot seasons will see mini fans and sun cream become far more popular. Sellers who have products specific to a season should prepare for stock changes and adjust their advertising strategy accordingly.
Understanding seasonality will allow you to align your marketing strategies with the needs and preferences of your shoppers.
Analyzing Amazon Seasonality
Amazon has provided sellers with numerous ways to analyze the data from their campaigns to understand their customer’s shopping habits. It can be beneficial to assess your data from previous seasons to understand the changing trends your customers present.
This information will prove vital for planning your advertising strategies, maintaining stock, and staying within your budget. You can use various reports like the search term report or ask your account manager for their input.
How Seasonality Impacts Sales
Understanding the relationship between seasonality and success is vital for crafting a winning strategy. Here are a few ways in which seasonality can influence your sales:
Peak Seasons
Certain times of the year correlate with a surge in consumer demand. For instance, Black Friday and the holiday season experience significant spikes in sales. For many sellers, Prime Day is their biggest day of the year, so it is important to be prepared.
Identifying and preparing for these peak seasons allows you to allocate resources and optimize your Amazon PPC campaigns to capture maximum sales opportunities. You can prepare your advertising strategies to include seasonal language or specific promotional deals to attract customers to your products.
Seasonal Products
Certain products have inherent seasonality, like swimwear in summer or winter clothes during colder months. Recognizing the seasonal appeal of your products enables you to plan your ad campaigns accordingly, aligning periods of higher spending and increased activity with the relevant buying season.
Don’t forget that some products will drastically decline in their demand as well! For example, a winter coat will have very little demand during the summer season! Because of this, lower your bids on these products so you’re not wasting any budget on products unlikely to convert.
You could also consider unique promotions for unseasonal products like a big discount to influence shoppers in the off–season!
Consider launching eye-catching Sponsored Brands Video Ads during key months or adjusting your spending as the seasonal window approaches its end.
Search Results
Achieving good search visibility leading up to peak seasons is crucial. To improve your visibility, create a seasonal keyword list tailored to the most lucrative periods for your business. Use this to target keywords with higher search volumes that are highly relevant to your products.
For example, if you sell gardening tools, focus on keywords like “spring planting essentials” or “gardening gloves” during the spring season. Aligning your keywords with the specific needs of consumers during prime seasons will attract eager customers searching for the right products.
Optimizing Amazon Ad Campaigns for Seasonality
To fully leverage seasonality on Amazon and maintain an acceptable total cost of sale, it’s important to adjust your ad campaigns accordingly.
There are different solutions you could use to optimize your ad campaigns for the varying seasons! Sellers could either choose to only run ad campaigns for seasonal products during the on-season and bid on your seasonal keywords or include seasonal keywords and targets within your regular ads, but increase the bids when the time comes.
Good product research can help sellers identify which strategy to incorporate within their PPC campaigns.
Budgeting for Seasonality
Remember to allocate an appropriate portion of your advertising budget to ride the wave of seasonal demand. During peak seasons, increase your budget to account for a higher volume of search queries. Conversely, lower your budget during slower periods for more efficient resource utilization.
Your budget is more than just your bids, sellers should also consider the cost of storage and supply considering the variation in demand for their products throughout the year. If you find your product will be less popular you may want to put less in Amazon’s warehouses to prevent any aged goods fees.
Yearlong Campaigns Vs. Pausing Campaigns
Instead of pausing your Amazon PPC campaigns during off-peak periods, sellers could run yearlong seasonal campaigns with variations in messaging and targeting specifically to each season. You can then raise or lower bids as the demand fluctuates and maintain a brand presence throughout the year.
This approach ensures a consistent presence on Amazon and positions you to make sales even during slower periods. It will also give you a better understanding of your customer’s shopping patterns throughout the year, which can show you where to focus and what time of the year.
Seasonal Keywords
Before setting up your Amazon advertising campaign, conduct keyword research to identify popular keywords during specific seasons or events. A foundational knowledge of what works well for your competitors during these seasons will give you a head start. You can then optimize these keywords as your campaign progresses and you discover specific terms for your product.
There are numerous tools like Ahrefs that can help you discover relevant seasonal keywords with higher search volumes. Focus on highly relevant keywords to attract customers actively looking for products during specific seasons. You want your terms to be relevant but not highly competitive.
This may seem counterproductive, but if you bid on the most popular term with a new brand and product it is unlikely to convert against known brands. It would cause you to waste the budget on a sale you’ve lost to a competitor.
Tracking the Impact of Seasonality on Your Business
Measuring the effectiveness of your strategies is crucial for adapting and improving. Pay attention to the following metrics:
- Sales Performance: Compare sales figures year-over-year or month-over-month to understand how seasonality affects your revenue. Use this data to make informed decisions about budget allocation and marketing strategies.
- Advertising Metrics: Monitor click-through rates (CTRs), conversion rates, and return on ad spend (ROAS) to evaluate the success of your Amazon PPC campaigns. Adjust your campaigns based on these metrics to improve performance.
- Customer Feedback: Leverage customer reviews to gain insights into how your products are perceived during different seasons. Address any seasonal concerns or issues raised by customers promptly to enhance satisfaction levels and boost sales.
- Competitive Analysis: Keep an eye on your competitors’ ad campaigns, product offerings, pricing, messaging, and promotions. Use this information to offer a more compelling experience through your campaigns.
In the ever-changing world of e-commerce, understanding and capitalizing on Amazon seasonality is crucial for your success as an Amazon seller. By analyzing historical data, aligning your campaigns with peak seasons, and optimizing your strategies, you can stay ahead of the competition and maximize your sales opportunities.
Incorporate these seasonality optimization techniques into your Amazon ad campaigns and witness the positive impact on your business growth. If you would like to understand how this could affect your business then consider getting in touch with us today.
As Amazon advertising specialists we have helped hundreds of businesses navigate the shift in seasons, and we are confident that we could help yours too.
For further information about what we could do for you, request a callback today for a free consultation.
