Black Friday Guide for Amazon Sellers 2024: 6 Tips to Maximize Sales

The Ultimate Black Friday Guide for Amazon Sellers in 2024: 6 Essential Tips to Maximise Holiday Season Sales 

Black Friday is one of the biggest events on Amazon, providing sellers with a chance to boost their sales and reach new customers. To make the most of this high-traffic event, it’s essential to plan every detail from inventory and pricing to advertising and brand visibility.

This guide will walk you through the essential tips to ensure you’re fully prepared to capitalise on the opportunity of Black Friday (a.k.a BFCM, short for Black Friday Cyber Monday) on Amazon. We have bifurcated this post into 3 parts: things to do 1 month before BFCM, 1 week before BFCM and during BFCM.

3 Weeks before Black Friday Cyber Monday Sale (BFCM)

Tip 1.1: Setting Up Your Retail Metrics

1.1.1 Monitor Inventory 

Ensure you have sufficient stock to meet increased demand from discounts and high traffic during Black Friday. During Holiday events, the inventory sells out fast. Running ads on low inventory can lead to penalties from Amazon, reducing your visibility.

If you are an Atom11 user, you can compare this year’s daily run rate during Prime Day and plan for the same for BFCM’25. You can also monitor inventory levels in real time through dashboards and alert mechanisms and avoid stock outs. 

Quick Inventory Calculation Formula for Black Friday

Total Inventory = Prime Day Units Sold × % Growth (PD to BF)*

*Note: If additional growth expected due to higher discounting, consider that instead of growth from PD to BF

PD: Prime Day
BF: Black Friday

1.1.2 Set up trackers for Best Seller Rank (BSR)

Track BSR in your primary categories to keep a close eye on performance, it can quickly indicate how well your product is competing. Sudden increase in BSR might suggest increased competition or a need to adjust your ads or listings.

1.1.3 Monitor Category changes & listing suppressions

Amazon can reassign products to different sub-categories, or may cause unexpected listing suppressions which impacts visibility. Set alerts to track any shifts, allowing you to quickly adapt your strategy. 

Atom11 provides real-time alerts on any significant changes in your category or sub category placements, BSR, listing health helping you respond immediately to product performance & maintain competitive placement.

Tip 1.2: Focus on Hero Products for Black Friday

1.2.1 Identify High-Priority Products

• Prioritise Best-Selling and New Products for NTB Impact: Focus on top-selling items and recent launches that drive new-to-brand (NTB) customers, as these products are likely to perform best during Black Friday. Allocating resources here can yield the best returns.

• Optimise Listings for Focus ASINs: Enhance the visibility of your Focus ASINs by refining titles, bullet points, and descriptions with high-ranking keywords. Atom11’s keyword insights help ensure your listings are optimised for terms that resonate with Black Friday shoppers, boosting both organic reach and ad effectiveness.

1.2.2 Leverage Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) Insights

AMC data offers a full view of the customer journey, combining insights from various channels and campaigns to show how your ads work together to drive sales. Leverage AMC to identify which keywords and ad formats impact each ASIN’s performance, helping you pinpoint the keywords that lead to the most conversions for your hero products and understand how different customer segments engage with your ads.

Learn more about AMC and how you can use it to its full potential during Black Friday Sale. 

1 week before BFCM

Tip 2.1: Launch New Ad Campaigns Early

2.1.1 Create Amazon Ad Campaigns for Black Friday

It is important that you create your BFCM specific ad campaigns early on, so that you can (a) handle and navigate campaign rejections and ensure campaigns are live on time (Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display campaigns have a 32% rejection rate, making it really hard for brands to launch these campaigns on short notice) (b) start building campaign history before BFCM starts. 

• Focus on High-Converting Keywords: Set up ad campaigns targeting your highest-converting keywords and top performing ASINs. Run these campaigns at low budgets initially to build performance history before Black Friday.
  
  

• Use a mix of Ad types: Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display Ads: Set up Sponsored Brands (SB) and Sponsored Display (SD) campaigns early to maximise visibility across placements and avoid last-minute rejections. Atom11 enables bulk setup, making it easy to launch campaigns for multiple ASINs and manage them efficiently.

2.1.2 Bring External Traffic to Boost Amazon Rank

Bringing external traffic to your Amazon listings during Black Friday can give you a competitive edge. (a) It signals higher demand to Amazon’s algorithm, boosting your product’s search rank. (b) Ads on platforms like Google and TikTok drive high-intent shoppers directly to your listings, increasing visibility and potential conversions beyond what internal Amazon traffic alone can achieve.

• Run Ads on Google and TikTok: During Black Friday, use external platforms like Google and TikTok to drive traffic to your Amazon listings or Brand Store. This external traffic boosts your Amazon search rank, increasing visibility and potential conversions.
  
  

• Use Brand Stores as Landing Pages: Direct external ads to your Brand Store, providing a synchronous shopping experience and showcasing your key products. Atom11 can help track performance from external sources, allowing you to optimise budget for maximum reach and impact.

  
  

During Black Friday Cyber Monday Sale (BFCM)

Tip 3.1: Campaign setup strategy for Last-Minute Black Friday Success

3.1.1 Set Up a Dedicated High-Bid Campaign

Maximize Reach with Strategic Bidding: Group these high-impact keywords into a separate campaign with exact-match targeting and increase bids to capture more impressions. This setup ensures your ads reach motivated shoppers as Black Friday approaches.

3.1.2 Scale Ads for Peak Visibility

Increase Budgets in Final Days: Gradually raise bids and budgets for these targeted campaigns to boost visibility. While ACOS may rise initially, the resulting increase in add-to-cart activity can drive strong returns when the sale begins. 

Tip 3.2: Track and Adjust Campaign Performance in Real Time

3.2.1 Monitor Key Metrics

Focus on ACOS and Conversion Rates: Put the trackers you created 3 weeks ago to use, so that you know what actions to take on important ASINs and keywords. For ex. do you want to go aggressive on an ASIN whose BSR is dropping or capitalize on an ASIN whose BSR is increasing. Atom11 integrates ad data with retail metrics, enabling you to track these KPIs at the ASIN level for faster, data-driven adjustments.

3.2.2 Adjust Bids for Maximum Efficiency

Optimise Based on Performance: Lower bids on high-ACOS keywords, and allocate more budget to keywords with strong conversions. Reallocate budget from underperforming ads to those generating higher returns, maximising impact across campaigns.

Atom11’s automated bidding helps you reallocate and adjust bids in real time, improving cost efficiency without manual effort.

Tip 3.3: Leverage Automation for Consistent Ad Management

3.3.1 Automate  Budget adjustments with Retail aware controls

Use automated custom rules to keep high-performing campaigns active during peak hours while adjusting spend based on inventory and pricing changes. Atom11’s retail-aware automation monitors inventory and pricing in real time, ensuring your ads remain efficient and profitable throughout Black Friday.

Final Thoughts

After the Black Friday season, take time to analyze what worked and review any adjustments needed to optimize your strategy for future events. Our next blog will cover essential things you need to do post BFCM, including using custom reporting and metric breakdowns to pinpoint top-performing keywords, strategies, and ad formats, helping you prepare for even better results next time.

Contact us or Book a call as early as possible to conduct a free Black Friday set up audit. We will evaluate focus ASINs, campaign structure, alert set up and automation set up and more, as a part of this audit process.