Q4 is the busiest time of year on Amazon – and the earlier you prepare, the better your results will be.

In this episode, we’ll talk about what you can do right now to make sure your listings, stock, and ads are ready for the increase in traffic and competition.

You’ll learn:

• Why last-minute changes might not get indexed in time
• How to optimise titles, bullets, and images for the season
• The role seasonal keywords can play in increasing visibility
• How to plan your stock levels and avoid costly delays
• Setting up and refining your ad campaigns for Q4 success
• When and how to use promotions to stand out
• The benefit of testing before the busiest weeks hit

If you want to go into Q4 confident and prepared – rather than scrambling to fix things – this episode is for you.

Mentioned in this episode:

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My membership, Amazon Made Easy is now open. It’s a membership for people who are selling on Amazon (or planning to) and want regular access to support, somewhere to ask questions and talk things through, and a bit of structure and accountability as they grow. Inside, there are live Q&A calls, optional co-working sessions and a small, supportive community. Find out more: https://vickiweinberg.com/membership

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Welcome to the bring your product idea to Life podcast. This is the podcast for you if you're getting started selling products or if you'd like to create your own product to sell.

I'm Vicki Weinberg, a product creation coach and Amazon expert. Every week I share friendly practical advice as well as inspirational stories from small businesses.

Let's get started. Hello and welcome to another episode of bring your product idea to life to carry on with the theme for this month's episode.

If you've been listening to any of the previous episodes, you will know that I am talking all about quarter four. Why am I talking about Quarter four?

Well, because it is the biggest sales season on Amazon, and from October through to December, Amazon sees a huge spike in traffic. As we do everywhere else, customers are ready to buy, which is amazing, but also the competition increases.

So this series of podcast episodes is about helping you prepare to have an amazing Quarter four. And in this episode I want to talk about your product listings.

So last week I suggested some things you could do to your Amazon account to get you ready for quarter four. So some small things you can look at, some tweaks and changes you might like to make. My suggestions of things you might want to consider.

But today I am thinking about all of this from a perspective of one your product listings. We're just going to be talking about listings today and also getting them ready for the sort of Christmas gift gifting season.

So that's really what we're going to be focusing on. Listings need time to rank and build momentum as we've spoken about in previous episodes.

And this goes for any changes that you make to your listings as well. So when you make any changes to your listing, so maybe you are tweaking your keywords to show your product is giftable.

For example, these changes don't get indexed immediately, so you need to act a little bit, a little bit ahead. And that's the reason I am sharing this episode with you right now. So the earlier you prepare, the better, really.

So some of the things that you might want to think about doing this month to get ready for quarter four on Amazon is having a look at your first of all, your product listing text. So we've spoken a lot in last week's episode.

You can go back and listen to that about your product title, about your bullet points and about your images. But what I want to talk about today is about how to make them a bit more seasonal. So, for example, is your product a great gift?

Would it be an ideal stocking filler? Is it a Gift to a grandparent? Is it a gift for a teacher, you know, whoever. And are these keywords in your product listing?

So does your title tell people this is an ideal gift for a grandparent, for example, or this is a great stocking filler for a five year old, for example. Is this text in your bullet points? It might be that your product is, isn't something that you would necessarily consider giftable.

Although I think I'd say to be honest, most products are gifts.

I think I've shared this story before that my husband asked for the craziest things for gifts and often when I like friends and family say oh, what should we get him for Christmas? And I tell them some of the things he's like. I can see them going, that doesn't seem like much of a, much of a present.

But anyway, anything can be, can be a gift. So think about the fact that even though you might not consider your, your present a gift.

Is Christmas coming up or the, or whatever holiday it is that you're celebrating, People will be looking to buy things for people and they're not always going to be buying the things that we traditionally think of as gifts. So if you think your product makes a great gift to somebody, put that in your, put that in your text. Make sure it's actually in there.

Also in your back end keywords, if you don't have gifts and present stocking fillers and all of these relevant words and phrases in there, make sure you put them in there.

I really think it's worth updating your search terms to consider what people are searching for right now because they are going to be searching for more gifting items as we get later into the, into the year.

And I think it's, you really need to tell people what your listing is and who it's what you thought you're listing, what your product is and who it's for. So as I said, is it a great food gift for. For. I don't know, for whoever. Is it who, who, who's your product?

Who's your product going to make a great gift for? I should have had a better example there. So is your product a great food for men? Is it great food gift for men and women?

Is it a great food gift for wine lovers? Is it a great gift? Yeah. Is it a great gift for people who love chocolate? Is it a great gift for people who love baking?

Is it a great gift for cyclists, for example? Have a think about who your product is ideal for when we get into this gifting season and update your listing accordingly.

Once you have your listing set up, I then really suggest thinking about your inventory.

I touched on this a little bit in last week's episode that especially if you're using fba, you need to make sure you have enough stock to cover these peak months. Fact, make sure you factor in delays. So there might be manufacturing delays, there might be shipping delays.

It takes a lot longer to send stock into Amazon in quarter four, particularly the closer we get to some of the key dates coming up. So the actual delivery time can be a bit longer.

The time it takes between Amazon receiving the goods at the warehouse, checking them in, then getting them on the shelves all takes a little bit longer to process. So fax all of that in and send in your stock. Ideally now. Where are we? September?

Ideally sending your stock now, or if not, I would say by the beginning of October the latest and if possible send in enough to see you through the season. And I know that can be hard, particularly if you haven't been on Amazon that long and you're not sure, okay, how many am I going to sell?

If that's the case, I would not go crazy. Because what you don't want to do is go, okay, I'm going to send a thousand and then they're all still sitting there in January.

But look at, you know, your sales on other channels, other places you've been selling. If you don't have that sales history, I would just take your best guess, send in what stock you can.

And if you have a little bit held back, that's ideal because it might be that you still have time to replenish your FBA stock. Or if not, you can always set up an FBM option and fulfill some orders yourself if you need to.

The other thing I think it's worth thinking about now are setting up or reviewing your ads. And yes, I did mention this last year. Last year, last week. Gosh, yes, this is what happens when you record four episodes in once.

It just feels like a year. So you set up and review your ads. Now, ads are competitive in quarter four and bids get higher, but also so does traffic.

So I think a few things I want to talk about here. One is make sure that your ads point to listings are fully optimized.

So if you've got listings where you're like, actually this would make a great gift. But I haven't done anything about updating the text or the images. That's something else I should mention.

If you've got great gifting images or festive images or holiday related images Update your images, even if it's just for this season. I worked with a brand last year as a bit of an aside, and they do a really great job of every sort of key season.

So Christmas, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Easter, Father's Day, they refresh the imagery on their listings to kind of reflect that season. In case you're thinking, gosh, that must be a big photo, you know, be a big job.

I'm imagining I haven't asked them, but I'm imagining they got all these photos done at once or maybe some of them Photoshop, I really don't know. But anyway, they have great images for every key event and so they refresh them all of the time.

And they're also really good at updating their text, as we spoke about. So on their product listings they will talk about Christmas.

And then as we from January, their listings are suddenly talking about Valentine's Day and their mothers. You see? You see what I mean? As we go through the year, the images and text change to make it really relevant to that time.

So if you do have any product images, that would be great, you know, maybe that show your product beautifully gift wrapped. If that's how you send it, whatever it is, that is a great time to do that as well.

But coming back to ads, you don't want to be sending ads to listings that aren't fully optimized. So definitely do that. And then also think about the niche keywords you can use in your campaigns to drive traffic to your listings during this time.

The reason I say niche keywords is if you were targeting Christmas presents, for example, you will not be the only one.

However, if you are targeting cycling gifts for men, yes, you again, you won't be the only one, but there will be less competition for cycling gifts for men than there will be for Christmas presents or stocking fillers. And again, if you are targeting stocking fillers for girls and boys aged five, there'll be less traffic for that than for stocking fillers.

So think about, as I mentioned earlier in this episode, who your product is for, for who it would make a great gift for and target those keywords in your ads.

I work with another brand who sells products that are great for grandparents and in the next couple of weeks those keywords will be going into the campaigns.

At the moment we do have gift for grandparents and we'll be changing that to Christmas gift for grandparents, Christmas gift for grandma, Christmas gift for granddad, etc. Just to get some really relevant traffic. So think about that.

Now, do your keyword research now and get your campaigns up and running and then you'll be ready to go.

You might also want to consider running some promotions either now to give yourself a little bit of a boost in sales, or perhaps at the beginning of quarter four, I will do an episode at least I will talk at some point about Black Friday and how I don't feel like you should participate necessarily, unless you want to, but you definitely, in my opinion, do not have to. But you could do something now, perhaps.

So whether that's a voucher, whether that's a quick discount, whether that's a lightning deal to get you some, hopefully a bit of a boost in sales now, because remember, Amazon rewards sales and reviews. If you have a little bit of boost in sales now, you'll be ranking a little bit higher when you go into quarter four.

Obviously, you can only do this if you're. If the pricing works for you, if you can take the fees and the. And the slight.

And the slight discount, whether you can factor that in and still be making enough margin. So that's something to consider, but that is definitely something you could do.

And actually doing it now is quite nice because a lot of people will be obviously running their discounts and promotions for Black. For Black Friday and won't be doing anything now. So there should be a little bit less competition. So that might be something you want to consider.

As I said, while we're on the subject, I don't believe you have to take part in Black Friday if you don't want to. And even if you do want to and the margins don't work out, don't. Actually everyone is discounting their products now.

Not everyone, but you know what I mean. A good proportion of sellers on Amazon are offering fantastic discounts at that time of the year, which is amazing.

However, it just makes your offer harder to see.

And I actually like either standing your ground or not doing anything, or maybe doing your own sale or discount a week before or a week after, or as I say, why not do it now? Why not offer a great discount at the end of September if you.

If you can afford to, or a promotion, whatever it is you want to do, and then give yourself a little bit of a boost in sales and really help yourself going into quarter four, this is a really great time to test all of the things I've suggested. You can either take or leave, or you might want to try some of them out.

We've still got a couple of weeks where you can try things out without it having a Huge impact. So it might be that you want to run a B test on images.

Maybe you're like, well I could add some gifting imagery but I don't know if that will make a difference. Why not try it and do some A B testing, See what works. Basically this is a great time to see what converts before things get really busy and just.

Yeah, and see what, see what helps, See what improves your click through rate, see what improves your sales and just use this time to do a bit of testing to get yourself in a really great position. So hopefully this has helped and given you a little bit of an idea about some of the things you can do for your listing.

In particular going your listings perhaps Conan Going into quarter four I've deliberately kept this episode fairly concise because there isn't a lot more to say on top of what I shared last week. But as hopefully as you've seen, this episode is more focused on your listings rather than your account.

If you have any questions, you know where to find me. Vickyckywineberg.com and next week I'm going to stop course talking about quarter four.

You'll be pleased to know I think I've said all there is that needs to be said or if there's something I haven't said that you want to know, you can email me. Vicky vickyweinberg.com Next week I'm actually going to share something quite personal that I've actually really enjoyed thinking about.

I'm going to share an episode on what I would do differently if I were to start on Amazon now because as you may know, I used to sell on Amazon, I think it was nine, ten years ago. I'll obviously have that information to have before I start recording.

And it was a really different time on Amazon and so I really want to talk about my experience of selling on Amazon now versus you know, my experience setting up accounts for clients at the moment.

What's, you know, what's, what's the same, what's different and yeah, what I would do differently and what obviously I do differently now when I'm working for my clients. So hopefully I will see you back here for that episode and have an amazing week.

Thank you so much for listening right to the end of this episode. Do remember that you can get the full back catalogue and lots of free resources on my website.

Vickyweinberg.com Please do remember to rate and review this episode if you've enjoyed it and also share it with a friend who you think might find it useful.

Thank you again and see you next week, Sam.