How to use Amazon Marketing Cloud for Black Friday in 2024?

Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping events of the year, offering a prime opportunity for Amazon sellers to boost sales. We have recently published an ultimate black friday guide for amazon sellers to maximise holiday sales in 2024.

With so many shoppers eager to grab the best deals, standing out from the competition is crucial. But how can you make sure your ads reach the right audience at the right time? The answer lies in leveraging the Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) during the Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) sales event. 

Recently, at Unboxed 2024, Amazon announced that AMC is now accessible to all advertisers running Sponsored Ads, including Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands, without needing a DSP account. This update makes AMC more accessible than ever, empowering sellers of all sizes to gain a complete view of customer behavior and optimize campaigns effectively.

Learn more about How to get started with Amazon Marketing Cloud, eligibility, process.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through a checklist you need to prepare for Black Friday, how to create custom audiences using AMC, explore specific use cases to maximize your advertising impact, share best practices to boost sales and common mistakes to avoid during Black Friday & Cyber Monday (BFCM)

Checklist for Using AMC for Black Friday

Before diving into your Black Friday strategy, ensure you’ve met these key AMC requirements and prepared effectively:

1. Minimum Budget

Ensure a minimum annual budget of $5,000, a baseline requirement for effective AMC use and data insights.

2. Be experimentative

While you have specific objectives like increase sales by 20%, acquire 500 new customers, increase top of funnel etc.., remember to be experimentative while using AMC insights. AMC is a database, which means you are only limited by your imagination on the data you deep-dive on. 

Atom11 will provide you with all the ammunition to deep dive on AMC insights, so make sure to bring your deep-dive hats on!

3. Ensure Inventory Readiness

Confirm that you have sufficient stock and that your fulfillment processes are ready to handle increased demand.

Use Atom 11 to monitor inventory levels in real time, helping you align stock with ad performance to avoid stockouts during peak Black Friday sales. Using inventory aware automation on Atom11, you can also automatically pause ASINs that are low in stock. Here is how a US reseller prevented out of stock by pausing ads when low in stock. 

4. Familiarity with SQL

While AMC provides pre-built queries, having SQL knowledge is helpful for deeper, customized analysis. SQL proficiency allows you to run tailored queries for more specific insights, especially useful during BFCM when detailed data can shape real-time decisions.

With atom11, we can eliminate the need of complicated SQL queries by automating AMC queries for you. Get in touch for more details. 

How to create and target Custom Audiences for Black Friday using AMC

Custom audiences enable you to segment your customer base and personalize your marketing campaigns. This helps you reach the right audience at the right time with the right messaging - this in itself is the most powerful trio to achieve in any marketing campaign. By targeting specific audience cohorts, you can increase engagement, improve conversion rates, and make your advertising spend more efficient.

Here’s a breakdown of five essential custom audiences to consider for Black Friday and specific strategies to target each one effectively.

1. Window shoppers who have visited your Product Detail page multiple times but not purchased yet

Window shoppers have seen/ clicked your ad and visited your product detail page more than 1 times but have not purchased yet. These are on-the-fence audiences. Repeated ad exposure to such an audience can help them convert them to your customers. 

Use bid boosting for such audience and retarget them with sponsored products or brand ads.

2. Customers interested in seasonal gifts or specific niche search terms

You can target customers who have viewed your ads and have also searched for either holiday specific keywords or seasonal gifts, or just any specific keyword like “shoes for pregnant women”. This is particularly powerful during BFCM due to high shopping intent for specific products. 

AMC lets you segment customers based on their search or purchase history and seasonal buying patterns, allowing you to identify those who are most likely to be shopping for gifts.

Use Sponsored Brand Ads featuring seasonal keywords like “holiday gifts” and “Christmas deals” to re-engage this audience. 

3. Engaged Shoppers Who Viewed or clicked Ads but Did Not Click or Purchase

This audience has engaged with your product by either viewing your ad or deeply engaged by clicking on your ad, but did not take the next step. These shoppers might need more retargeting to remind them of their interest in your product, or an additional nudge in the form of an attractive offer. 

AMC allows you to track these clicks and identify patterns, such as repeated ad engagement with no follow-through.

Retarget these customers using high-placement Sponsored Product Ads and dynamic retargeting ads that bring them back to the products they clicked on. You could test offers like a bundled discount or product comparison to help overcome any hesitations they may have had.

4. Cart Abandonment: Shoppers Who Added to Cart but Did Not Purchase

This is the lowest funnel audience in all the 4 discussed in this section. This audience comprises high-intent shoppers who added your products to their cart but did not complete the transaction. By focusing on these customers, you can re-capture a segment already interested in your products but who may need additional motivation or convenience to finalize their purchase. 

You can be creative and combine this AMC audience with brand tailored promotions. So - you can create brand tailored promotions for this audience and then target the same audience using Sponsored Product ads with AMC’s Bid boosting feature. 

Top 4 AMC Strategies to Optimize Black Friday Ads and Sales

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) provides powerful data insights that allow sellers to optimize their advertising strategies. For Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM), AMC enables sellers to analyze customer behavior, adjust campaigns in real-time, and allocate their budget strategically to maximise reach and drive more conversions. Here are essential use cases that Amazon sellers can benefit through AMC with an additional expert tip to make the most of the BFCM shopping period.

1. Cross-Channel Attribution for Optimised Ad Spend Allocation

Black Friday often sees shoppers interacting with multiple ad formats before making a purchase. AMC’s cross-channel attribution capabilities allow sellers to analyse the entire customer journey from the first ad view to the final conversion across all ad formats.  It helps them to identify which touchpoints are the most impactful for conversions. This insight is crucial for BFCM, where competition is high and budgets need to be allocated wisely.

Expert tip
Track customer interactions across ads to see which formats work best together. If Sponsored Brand ads followed by Sponsored Product ads drive the highest conversions, focus budget on these touchpoints during peak hours for maximum ROI.

Atom11 can help you with drag and drop path to purchase for upper and lower funnel ads, without having to use SQL queries.  

2. Purchase Latency and Frequency Analysis

Purchase latency and frequency analysis provides insights into how long it typically takes for customers to make a purchase after viewing your ads and how frequently they make repeat purchases. By understanding these patterns, you can optimize ad timing and frequency to match when customers are most likely to convert, maximizing the impact of your campaigns.

Expert Tip: Use purchase latency data to strategically improve retargeting efforts, reaching customers at peak moments in their buying journey which increases the chances of conversion.

3. Seasonal Trend Analysis for Optimized Black Friday and Holiday Planning

AMC’s seasonal trend analysis helps sellers examine how demand, engagement, and ad effectiveness vary across the year. For Black Friday, this analysis allows sellers to anticipate high-demand products, optimal ad types, and the best times to increase ad visibility. By understanding these seasonal shifts, Amazon sellers can tailor their Black Friday strategies to meet demand head-on.

Expert Tip: Leverage seasonal insights to manage inventory and boost bids on high-demand products as BFCM approaches. Focus on ad types that perform best during the holiday season, like Sponsored Brands for brand building or Sponsored Display for retargeting high-intent shoppers.

For example, if AMC indicates that a certain product type tends to surge in November, increase bids for those items to stay competitive.

4. Targeted Keyword-ASIN Mapping for High-Intent Shoppers

During Black Friday, shoppers often use specific keywords to find deals on products they’re interested in. AMC allows sellers to map which keywords drive the most sales for particular ASINs, enabling them to focus their efforts on high-converting keywords that align with Black Friday search trends.

Expert Tip: Increase bids on top-performing keywords like “Black Friday deals on Product Category to attract high-intent traffic. Track keyword trends in real time and adjust bids on high-demand terms to stay competitive.

3 Common mistakes & how to avoid them during Black Friday- Cyber Monday

1. Inconsistent Tracking of Ad Overlap

Ad overlap is when multiple ad formats target the same audience simultaneously which lead to unintentional competition between your own ads. This not only wastes budget but can also cause customer fatigue if they repeatedly see similar ads from your brand.

Use AMC’s audience insights to monitor ad overlap and adjust campaigns to avoid oversaturating specific segments. For example, if Sponsored Display and Sponsored Product ads are both targeting the same audience, prioritize one format or adjust placements to reduce redundancy.

2. Insufficient Testing of Ad Creatives and Copy

With increased competition during Black Friday, using generic ad creatives or failing to test your copy can lead to missed opportunities. Ads that aren’t optimized for high engagement risk underperforming, especially if they don’t stand out visually in the crowded holiday season.

Test holiday-themed visuals and festive CTAs in advance to see what resonates best. Use AMC insights to refine your Black Friday creatives, ensuring they stand out and capture seasonal appeal.

3. Not Utilizing Post-Purchase Data for Retargeting

If you’re only focusing on conversions during Black Friday without analyzing post-purchase behavior, you may miss valuable insights into which products are most likely to lead to repeat purchases. This data can be crucial for follow-up marketing aimed at Black Friday customers.

Analyze post-purchase trends in AMC, such as add-on purchases or customer reviews, to identify products with high repeat purchase potential. Use this information to retarget Black Friday buyers with relevant add-ons or complementary items during the holiday season.

Conclusion

Black Friday and Cyber Monday bring Amazon sellers a prime opportunity for growth, and Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) offers the crucial insights to make the most of it. With AMC, you gain a comprehensive view of how your ads perform across channels and how customers engage with them. These insights enable you to refine your advertising strategy, ensuring your campaigns work seamlessly together to maximize impact and achieve optimal results.

For even greater results, Atom11 is offering a free Black Friday setup audit- Contact us or Book a call. This includes a full evaluation of your ASINs, campaign structure, alert setup, and automation, ensuring that your strategy is data-driven, finely tuned, and ready for peak performance.