Your brand’s key to holiday success: Prepare early with proven strategies

Holidays can be both high-risk and high-reward for ecommerce brands. The data shows that competition for advertising space and consumer attention drives promotional budgets up during key seasonal shopping times. Delayed planning can lead to wasted advertising budgets, unmet sales goals, operational headaches, and lost opportunities to win big at key moments (like the last-minute shopping rush just before Christmas). The savviest brands — and those set to reap the most significant rewards — plan early so they can spend the season focusing on optimizing strategies and driving sales rather than making up for lost time.

Six tips for holiday planning and promotion

By leveraging critical data to prepare early and more accurately, brands, agencies, and sellers can drive more conversions, connect with new customers, and earn higher returns on advertising spend during seasonal shopping days and holidays.

1. Start inventory planning and preparation early

Increasing inventory levels for the holiday season is a given, but don’t sleep on seasonal shopping days if your brand sells relevant products. Ensuring you have enough inventory during high-visibility, high-competition shopping times could make the difference between a consumer choosing your brand over a competitor that goes out of stock.

At the same time, you want to avoid having too much leftover stock cutting into your inventory limits post-holiday — especially for end-of-year holidays, after which Amazon returns skyrocket. Review past years’ sales numbers to estimate how much inventory you need to strike the right balance with your seasonal and holiday inventory. If you have new products you did not sell last holiday season, refer to the sales history for a similar product from a competitor to gauge expected consumer interest. If the amount of inventory you need exceeds your Amazon limits, consider outsourcing to a third-party warehousing partner to ensure you don’t go out of stock during the busiest shopping days of the year.

2. Allocate holiday-specific advertising budgets

Ad spend on Amazon can as much as double during seasonal shopping times, so holiday-specific research for paid advertising campaigns is crucial for anticipating a realistic budget that will effectively drive conversions amid heightened competition. With more advertisers and higher spending across the platform, your brand should expect different RoAS and advertising cost of sale (ACoS) targets than during non-peak times.

Once you know your seasonal RoAS and ACoS targets, you can enlist the help of an automation tool like Downstream by Jungle Scout to actively update bids to help you reach those targets with the best possible ROI. As your seasonal campaigns run, you can activate tools like Dayparting to push extra holiday promotional spending to the highest-converting times of the day or week.

3. Perform holiday-related keyword research

Brands should adjust keyword strategies for holiday-focused campaigns to compete for the attention of seasonal shoppers. Look at historical search volume for seasonal and holiday-related keywords to find opportunities to win placements by integrating lower competition targets (such as broad match and long-tail keywords like “Hanukkah gifts for dad,” “gifts for mom,” or “tech gifts for men”) into your campaigns. Once you have identified multiple seasonal keywords to target, use cascading bids to set different bid amounts based on keyword match type to determine the most effective bidding ratio for your campaigns.

You should also inject your brand’s organic presence with holiday-related terms by adding them to the front end copy and back-end keywords on your product listings. If your brand is enrolled in Brand Registry, you can use Amazon’s Brand Analytics tool to see which keywords your products (or a competitor’s products) ranked for during specific times the previous year and use the most high-performing keywords in this year’s listing optimizations and sponsored campaigns.

4. Create memorable experiences for new customers

As many as 4 out of 5 consumers opt to shop online for gifts and 67% turn to Amazon for holiday shopping. With an influx of consumers searching for products, seasonal shopping days are a significant opportunity for brands to connect with new customers. Optimize your product listings, A+ content, and Amazon Storefront to ensure that consumers who discover your brand during holiday shopping have a memorable and seamless shopping experience.

While many consumers will start their product search directly on Amazon, others will find their way to the platform through outside channels like social media. Consider leveraging DSP advertising, working with Amazon Influencers, and promoting products on Amazon Live to lead off-platform shoppers to your listings and provide them with a social-media-like experience once they arrive.

5. Perform holiday-related keyword research

Planning can help your brand beat the competition, but so can staying agile to continue driving sales after competitors have run out of stock, pulled back on promotions, or exhausted advertising budgets. Jungle Scout data shows that last-minute shoppers tend to spend less and buy fewer items, so late-in-season discounts could help draw them to your products. They are also typically less brand-driven, which means with the right price, product description, or ad placement you may be able to attract new customers more easily at the end of a holiday shopping period than at the beginning.

As a holiday or seasonal shopping day draws closer, perform additional keyword research to see how last-minute shoppers’ product searches differ from those earlier in the season. Last-minute shoppers are less likely to be focused on things like holiday grocery items, decor, or party supplies, so pull back your promotional strategies for those categories and focus instead on gift items. During longer seasonal promotional periods, like end-of-year holidays, monitor the performance of your advertising campaigns closely to identify the products driving the highest conversions. As the season progresses, you can funnel advertising spend to your best-performing products to stay competitive and optimize RoAS.

6. Don’t neglect post-holiday planning

Your brand’s seasonal planning should extend beyond the holiday or shopping day itself. Product returns typically reach an annual peak from December through January, and the number of return packages being processed during this time continues to surpass previous records each year. As you begin pre-holiday planning for major seasonal shopping days, anticipate any additional customer service support you may need to process Amazon product returns post-holiday as well.

An increase in product returns and leftover seasonal stock can quickly begin cutting into your inventory limits post-holiday. Plan for end-of-season sales and accompanying advertising spend to help clear out inventory, especially after the December shopping season when you need to restock for the new year.