Christmas is here! Finally, and if Covid allows us, we are going to be able to enjoy Christmas traditions again!. The Christmas spirit is everywhere and it has been remarkable in our end-of-year shopping.
2021 has been a year with its ups and downs, but also with the desire to return to living as we did, before the arrival of the virus and the pandemic. If 2020 was a year of uncertainty, of many Records of Temporary Employment Regulations, of any doubts as to when this chaos was going to end, this 2021 and thanks to the vaccine and the good work of the citizens, we see some light at the end of the tunnel. This can be seen, among other things, in the desire to enjoy again and, therefore, to want to consume and give gifts on these significant dates.
And now, when we are beginning to see that people are encouraged to consume, we find ourselves with a year in which one of the most relevant problems has been the lack of raw materials, the problems of logistics, and the increase in the price of both items at prices that no one could have imagined. This has a radical influence on product purchases, as there is less stock, or it does not arrive on time, or simply the price of these products has increased so much that we can no longer afford to buy them.
Having made this consideration, let’s indicate some highlights of this Black Friday on Amazon 2021.
1.- An 11-day Black Friday
This year 2021, department stores and large e-retailers decided to bring Black Friday forward. Amazon did not lag and did the same. The offers started on Friday, November 19, and ended (including Cyber Monday) on Monday, November 29.
For more than 10 days, the user could enjoy a large number of offers in all categories, thus extending a 3-day event to a longer duration and therefore, to a staggering of offers that help the seller to have a greater chance of selling. When the event was only 3 days long, offers with a moderate discount did not appear easily and many users did not even know they existed. In 10 days, the range of opportunity is opened, and it has been a very well-received decision by sellers.
2.- Many promotions, but with more moderate discounts
Indeed, the problem of raw materials and logistics costs have played a leading role in this Black Friday on Amazon. The fact of not having all the volume of product required plus the increase in the price of the products in our possession has had a significant impact on the discounts that could be applied to the products.
In Amazing we have tracked the average discounts that vendors apply in events of this type in addition to those that were applied in the last three years and if we can say that they are lower than in other years. The average discount is around 20% this year while in previous years it was much higher.
But even though the discounts are lower, they have increased in number. Retailers have been encouraged to include more products from their portfolio in promotions and thus take advantage of both the increase in traffic during this period and the increase in sales.
3.- The top products are promoted on Black Friday
Some things do not change and even if we want to extend the Black Friday on amazon event, in the consumer’s mind Friday is the day of the event and the traffic is still incredible. That is why this year, what the big manufacturers have done, is to include their star promotions on their Top products on the official Black Friday day, limiting them either by maximum units to be sold or by duration (only on sale with that discount on Friday, November 27th).
The results have been good. There was indeed less product available, but in the case of Amazing clients, they have been a success.
4.- Not everything is sold on Amazon on Black Friday
Buyers know very well what they want. In this type of event, they begin to research the products they are interested in buying and add them to their “wish lists” so that when the promotions are activated they can check if they are on sale or not.
This year, what we have been able to observe in Amazing is that there are many sellers that either because they did not have new products due to the problems we have mentioned or because they wanted to get rid of stock, have tried to activate promotions of products that are not very relevant in their portfolio.
The consequence of this has not been very positive. The fact taking advantage of traffic to eliminate excess stock is a good option, but in these events, the consumer looks for top products, and given that there is a lot of supply, the discounts on these products go unnoticed. If the objective is to eliminate stock, do it much more in the long term with some of the promotional options offered by Amazon, eliminating it progressively and not trying to get it just in these days.
5.- A lot of promotional products with product detail pages not prepared for conversion
We never get tired of repeating how important it is on Amazon that the product detail pages are prepared to receive traffic and that it converts. This year, we have been very surprised that many products that were on promotion had very poorly optimized and complete detail pages for conversion.
If a promotion is activated and the products are also pushed with advertising to generate traffic to the detail pages, the minimum is that this product detail pages has good product images, a title with the appropriate taxonomy, some bullets with product information highlighting its virtues and its differentiation from its competitors and a good A+ so that the customer does not have the slightest doubt on the purchase of the product.
6.- The advertising campaigns have had an important weight in the final results
If there is something that is clear to us at the agency and that we never cease to insist to our clients is that advertising is a very powerful tool that must be activated in the relevant events of the year, such as this one in question. It is true that in this period, higher investments are needed because traffic increases, and all vendors want to occupy the best locations. Therefore, the cost of occupying these spaces is much higher than at other times of the year, but if you have done your homework well, following the appropriate strategic guidelines for this type of event, it should not have been a problem to achieve your goals.
Advertising continues to be crucial to achieve our goals. This year it has been relevant again and those marketers who have activated their campaigns following the right strategy have achieved exceptional results.
Now it’s time for Christmas, another crucial moment for Amazon. We recommend you to analyse well what happened on Black Friday and extract learnings that can be applied to these dates.
From activating retargeting in all its formats to get that user who finally did not buy from you or who visited your competitor and did not buy indicating that he has a clear intention to buy, to work well the detail product detail pages, activate the store with Christmas images, bid on relevant keywords in this period (gift, party, set, pack …) and many other things that will make you close the year as you deserve.
Somos una agencia especializada en ayudar a los vendedores en Amazon en la gestión de marketing y publicidad.
