Black Friday and Cyber Monday is fast approaching! What is your strategy for Amazon?
Black Friday and Cyber Monday is fast approaching! What is your strategy for Amazon?
written by Gillian Waddell MD, Fuel For Amazon
Mark the 23rd November 2018 and 26th November 2018 in your diaries as these are pivotal dates for commercial sales on the global platform – aka Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Did you know Globally 60% of all online transactions on Cyber Monday last year (2017) happened at Amazon which is staggering (Tech Radar)
- A whopping £1.4bn was spent on online sales in the UK on Black Friday (2017) – up some 11.7% on last year (2016) according to online retailer’s trade body IMRG (BBC)
- Spending rose some £4.2bn in 2017 up 13% compared to previous year (Mintel 2018)
- 51% of Black Friday shoppers say that most of their purchases during the event were Christmas gifts (Mintel 2018)
- 74% of Black Friday shoppers say some of their purchases were Christmas gifts (Mintel 2018)
- Pure play online retailers took 52% of online sales in 2017 (Mintel 2018)
- Smartphone usage on the increase: up 25% in 2016 to 36% in 2017 driven by under 35s – 63% of which were buying Christmas gifts in 2017 compared to 44% in the previous year (Mintel 2018)
- When are we buying Christmas gifts? 12% make a purchase before September (so organised!) but December remains the month when most of us purchase and spend more doing so.
- Christmas gift buying in November – because of the growing importance of Black Friday 47% spent the most for Christmas in December compared to 32% in November.
The point is this. Whether you are spending for yourself or on others Black Friday and Cyber Monday provide crucial marketing opportunities for your brand. It could be the opportunity that someone gifts your brand to another or simply indulges themselves.
In addition, Amazon is growing with new Sellers selling their wares.
In 2018 over 80,046 new sellers joined Amazon UK.
Together with existing accounts they amassed some 1.97 million feedback reviews each month on the platform.
That’s a lot of people buying and reviewing products. And all the reviews matter because they feed into the ever growing A9 algorithm which, as we have said before, keeps a track on our every searched for, purchased, liked or disliked item that we care to buy.
To some extent any advertising campaign devised for Amazon cannot come into effect until a review or two is aligned to your product listing. Effectively the A9 will ‘know’ your product is in existence from a listing, purchase and review and against this your advertising has a better chance of eliciting an impression and ultimately click through to achieve a conversion (sale) – a virtuous cycle.
This year Amazon are offering 10 days’ worth of Black Friday deals 16th – 25th November across must- have items including toys, tech, beauty and household appliances and items. And with an Amazon Pop up 22nd – 25th November ‘Home of Black Friday’ in east London (oh the irony of bricks and mortar) it is fair to say that Amazon has the seasonal period all wrapped up.
So how does this affect your brand? No doubt you are already planning 2019 marketing initiatives. This would be a good moment to have a conversation with www.fuelforamazon.com as we can begin to fathom the potential for your brand, yearly marketing opportunities and have you perfectly poised with a Black Friday Cyber Monday campaign come November 2019 (because it will really need to be in place by September). So, come January 2019, nine months is not long – ok, enough to grow a human – but time enough to get your Amazon strategy in order and grow commercial success to even greater fruition.
Call www.fuelforamazon.com on 0207 498 8211 or contact Gillian Waddell – gillian@fuelrefuel.com – and find out more about what the new year holds!