Amazon Black Friday 2021: Strategy & Recommendations

In this blog post, we reveal what to expect for Amazon Black Friday 2021, how the 2020 sales event went and what measures brand manufacturers should take to prepare for the November deal period.

Review: Amazon Black Friday 2020

On Amazon, as on many other online marketplaces, the fourth quarter is the busiest time of the year in terms of sales. This is mainly due to the numerous deal events that are scheduled during the “Holiday Season” just before Christmas and attract many shoppers to the platforms with attractive offers. As a retailer, a high increase in sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be achieved with the right preparation. 

After Amazon Black Friday 2020, we conducted our own analysis based on more than 400,000 products to examine the success of the deal event. Compared to the previous week, Amazon Black Week 2020 saw an average 51% increase in sales across all European and American Amazon marketplaces. Overall, the increase in sales during this period was greatest on amazon.co.uk and amazon.es, at 70%. This speaks in favor of preparing for Black Friday not only on the German marketplace, but if possible throughout Europe or even globally. A particularly exciting result of our analysis is that sales did not drop again directly after Black Friday 2020. Due to the extension of the deals in the form of Cyber Monday and positive long-term consequences for their own ranking, the increase in sales for vendors and sellers on Amazon has lasted longer than it did after Prime Day, for example.

The dates: Amazon Black Friday, Cyber Monday & Deal Weeks 2021

To get in the mood for Black Friday, the first promotions on Amazon will take place from November 15, 2021. Black Friday itself is on November 26, 2021, but already on November 19 Amazon starts the Black Friday week, which ends with Cyber Monday on November 29. On Black Friday and Cyber Monday itself, the number of daily and flash offers will be increased significantly compared to the other days. 

Already from the beginning of November, brand manufacturers should be prepared for an increasing demand due to the different deal weeks.

Our recommendations for Amazon Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2021

Customers have learned over the past few years that during the Amazon Black Friday weeks, many promotions, deals and flash offers are switched. Therefore, in addition to smaller impulse purchases, it is mainly larger purchases that are made on Amazon at this time, which have been saved up until Black Friday. User numbers on the platform rise sharply during this time. 

Since the “normal search behavior” on Amazon is interrupted by numerous advertising offers and banners during Black and Cyber Week, it is important to make special preparations.  The following tips on actions to take before, during and after Black Friday are intended to help vendors and sellers achieve the greatest possible success on the promotion days.  

Before Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Check your own profitability

The first thing every brand manufacturer should check is whether they can and want to afford to post Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals at all. Deals always mean giving up margin. In the case of this big deal event, the pressure to give a deep discount is even greater. Moreover, just this year, Amazon has once again tightened the conditions for posting deals on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. One’s own profitability should therefore be realistically assessed in advance and, in the event that the risk is too high, deals should rather be dispensed with.

Select deal products and offers

When selecting products for Black Friday deals, the following questions should be asked:

Which of my best sellers can be sales drivers during Black Friday week?

Which of my new products can I promote during Black Friday week to give them more visibility in the long run?

Once this has resulted in a list of products that should be prioritized for promotion during the sales events, it is also important to ensure that the products are sufficiently optimized. This hygiene factor should always apply on Amazon, but is to be emphasized once again for the increased traffic on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Only if the following points are in place, it is ensured that the products benefit from the increased traffic through advertising on Amazon and that the conversion rate increases:

• SEO optimization (title, bullets, description) incl. relevant keywords
• A+ content (ideally mobile-optimized) incl. cross-selling table
• mobile-optimized images
• a video 
• good to very good rating
• sufficient number of reviews

These factors can be measured using the Retail Readiness Score in our Amazon tool Remdash.

Customize advertising media in Amazon Advertising and ADSP

When considering which advertising measures to run during Black Week, it is crucial to know whether the products will be participating in the Black Friday offers. It makes sense to use existing Amazon Advertising campaigns and adapt them for the upcoming events in order to benefit from the historical data of the keywords. Automatic campaigns are also useful to bridge the possible lack of Amazon history and especially highlight the products in Amazon deals.

It should be ensured that products promoted with deals are played out preferentially in the Sponsored Product and Sponsored Display campaigns. In Sponsored Brands campaigns, it is essential that the products on offer are displayed in the first two placements. Only there the label “offer of the day” appears, which is an absolute click and performance driver. Since the promotion badges are only displayed in campaigns without custom images, the image should be removed from the campaign for the duration of the deal period.

Enhance Brand Store and Amazon Images with Black Friday Content

In order to make it easy for Amazon customers to search for products with deals and to collect all deals of the own brand, a “Deals” subpage should be created in the Brand Store. Ideally, this tab is created directly after the home page to be as visible and easily accessible as possible. Additionally, images or banners can be created for both the Brand Store and the PDP that pick up on the deal event.

Promote deals outside of Amazon

According to a recent study, more and more customers are shopping directly via social media. Therefore, it can make sense to promote one’s own Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals on Amazon also via social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Co. Other marketing channels such as the company’s own newsletter or website are also suitable for this purpose. With the new Amazon Attribution, the results of these campaigns on other channels that link to Amazon pages can now also be tracked in the Advertising Console.

During Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Check stock levels

Sufficient inventory is the main requirement when planning for Black Friday and Cyber Monday weeks. However, the stock level should always be kept in mind during the promotion period as well, since changes can also affect the advertising measures placed. For example, it makes sense to pause campaigns where it is foreseeable that the advertised products will be “out of stock” before the end of Black Week. 

Adjust advertising campaign budgets

Already during the annual planning, it is advisable to plan a little more budget or a buffer for Q4 in order to be able to be present with campaigns on the promotion days. 

A new feature in the Amazon Advertising console offers the possibility to insert a budget rule per campaign. This allows more budget to be spent on a specific event or time period in a campaign. This feature can be found in the “Budget” column of each campaign and can be edited by clicking the “Add budget rule” button. Before doing so, however, it should be decided for which products and campaigns this budget increase makes sense and how much ad spend can really be spent without spending the budget for the entire portfolio too quickly.

In general, the budget should be strategically increased when:

• Own Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals are active or.
• No own deals are active and also no deals of the competition are running

Caution: otherwise, increasing the budget can lead to spending more money but generating fewer conversions. So the budget is not used wisely.

Adjust keywords

This tip only applies to campaigns that contain discounted products. Here, it is worth using keywords such as “offer”, “deal”, “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” during the offer period, which often appear in the most searched terms during the event days.

After Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Be prepared for returns

Due to the increased willingness of consumers to buy, you should be prepared after the end of the event days that there may be a larger number of returns than on ordinary days. Especially in the seller model with fulfillment by merchant (FBM), an increased rate of returns can lead to greater logistical effort.

Measure results

Measuring the impact of Black Friday and Cyber Monday on product performance depends largely on whether deals were participated in and what goals were defined at the start of the events. In the first step, the results of the deals and promotional activities provide an overview of how performance has changed as a result of the sales events. If ADSP campaigns were run for the products, it is also possible to analyze how strong the halo effect of the individual products was on the brand as a whole. Whether the advertised products also benefited in the organic ranking can be derived from the Glance Views and the bestseller ranking.

From the measurement of the results, some conclusions can already be drawn as to which products benefited particularly well from the Black Friday weeks and which did not.

Extend promotions

Since Cyber Monday is coming up after the Black Friday week, promotions should continue both on 29.11.2021 and a little beyond. This is the only way to ensure that your own products continue to benefit from the increased traffic still prevailing on Amazon after the events.

Generate Learnings for Black Friday 2022

It makes a lot of sense to document and process the KPIs that were used to define the success of Black Week and Cyber Week. In this way, learnings about advertised products, campaigns, or inventory levels can be derived for the next year, which can be used to benefit the next deal events on Amazon.

Last Tips for Amazon Black Friday & Cyber Monday 2021

Since Black Friday this year already starts with early deals from November 15, 2021, it is important to create a strategy and target for these days as soon as possible. Here, the focus should be predominantly on products that are optimized for promotion and have a good stock situation, especially during the current delivery difficulties. 

If your own products do not participate in deals, there is still the possibility of using Sponsored Ads and ADSP to draw attention to your own products and thus benefit from the increased traffic of the event days on Amazon. In order to be as present as possible during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, brand manufacturers should constantly keep an eye on advertising and adjust budgets with a view to inventory, competition and consumer needs. 

We wish you a successful Black Friday & Cyber Monday!