Whether it is Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the upcoming holiday season or any other special holiday, if you are an online seller, there is one thing you need to be: BE READY. Because one thing is certain: These days are an excellent opportunity for you to boost your sales and compete with your rivals.
Why ready? You need to be ready and prepared to churn out those shipments in time for Black Friday (27th November 2020) and Cyber Monday (30th November 2020). After all, these two days are only two of the biggest sale days in the e-commerce.
Black Friday alone churned out a whopping US$6.2 billion in online sales in 2018. That is an uplift of 23.3 percent compared to US$5.03 billion in 2017. Due to these numbers and the fact that even non-American retailers are participating in this sale: These two days are the biggest days in the year which no e-commerce seller should miss.
But if you are an online retailer based outside of the USA, you may know how stressful it could be getting ready for these two days to sell as much as you can.
To sell your products in the best way possible, you have to get the stock out of your warehouse or factory, find the right freight service provider, and choose the most cost-efficient mode of transport to get your goods in time beforehand.
You can overcome this and succeed by following four simple steps given below in this blog article:
- Plan
- Assess & Understand
- Optimize
- Manage
Step 1: Plan
A lot of planning needs to be done if you intend to sell on special days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. As the majority of the sales are done online, you need to plan your sale in advance including
- How your PPC campaigns and promotions should work,
- How you will drive traffic to your online sale site like your own shop or your Amazon channel, and
- How to handle your order fulfilments and stock so you don’t run out of stock at the crucial period.
Once you have your special offers define that you want to sell on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s time to start telling your customers about your products and promotions. Contrary to popular belief, email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to reach shoppers. Bloggers, influencers, and various social media channels are also great ways to spread the word.
A lot of businesses prepare for these days well in advance. Some, as early as the back-to-school season is over. And they do that for a reason. Shoppers start thinking about these two days and searching for deals months before the actual day.
True to the adage “the early bird gets the worm”, businesses that do well over these two days are those that start early. But of course, since Black Friday and Cyber Monday happen every year, even if you take this year to prepare and analyze the market, you could also be better prepared for it the following year.
Step 2: Assess and understand
Assess and understand your competition, their pricing methodology, and their marketing strategies. While prices remain constant much of the year, during the last quarter of the year, prices do tend to fluctuate quite dramatically. For greater success, you need to ensure that you set the right prices depending on the goods that move and those that stagnate.
You need to ensure that your products reach the customers in time – especially for these two days, because this is where the action is and will prove most lucrative to you.
Especially Amazon is a great marketplace to use for these holidays. Amazon was not only able to continuously increase its worldwide turnover, the company also generated increasing turnover in Germany in recent years after a slight decline in turnover in 2015. Most recently, sales in Germany amounted to just under 19.9 billion US dollars. In 2018, Amazon generated around 232.9 billion US dollars worldwide. Amazon.com (US) is the most established marketplace for the retail giant with the greatest number of current sales. Once you have decided to sell on Amazon, it is often only the logistical layer of sending goods from your suppliers or your warehouse in Germany to the Amazon fulfillment centers that may hold you back or seem daunting. But there are service providers who can provide integrated solutions to you for that as well.
Step 3: Optimize
These two days are one of the best time to optimize your inventory, move goods that haven’t been selling for the rest of the year, bring in more stock and reduce storage costs. You can use tools such as Amazon’s Seller Central to maximize the orders, reduce storage space and reduce fulfillment costs.
But you can also check if your products are overstocked, in stock, understocked or out of stock in other ways, too. Warehouse management software utilizes the data you already have to scale your business in regards of your products. Neat!
Step 4: Manage
Finally, you need to bring all of the above together and manage the whole process efficiently and timeous to ensure that you are ready for these two most important days in the e-commerce industry. One of these steps is finding a reliable and efficient freight forwarder that can help you track your transports in real-time.
Summary
Media IQ noted that purchases by American customers on Black Friday add up to six times more than any normal Friday. So, if you don’t want to miss out, get ready, be steady and prepare for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2019. Plan the sale well and in advance, and prepare for your competition by assessing and understanding what they do pricing and marketing wise. Next you should work on and optimize your inventory. And lastly, you should try to manage this entire process as efficiently as possible.
Happy selling, everyone!
