Q4 is your big chance to sell a whole lot of product, so most FBA sellers spend the quarter focusing single-mindedly on unit sales.
But if you do that, you’re missing some prime opportunities. And you may also be in danger of slackening control of the business just when you really need to be at the top of your game.
For instance, managing inventory is absolutely crucial this quarter. You need to ensure you have enough to sell all the way through the festive season and into January. If you have a buffer warehouse, you need to be right on top of your game getting stock into Amazon quickly.
But you also need to be aware of the higher charges for storage during Q4, so if something’s not selling, you need to take action fast.
That action might be reducing price (unless you think a couple of competitors are about to run out of stock). It might be running a bit of promotion, or it might be liquidating stock if you realize that the product has come to the end of its life cycle (for instance, Blackberries are now no longer a thing).
Q4 is also a fantastic time to take action to boost your brand and your review rankings. The higher your sales are, the greater your opportunities to capture client feedback. But customers have other things in their lives besides reviewing your product, so it’s super important to use Seller Central to ask every single customer for feedback.
Ask them for feedback and also ask them, if something’s wrong, for an opportunity to fix any problems they may have had. You’re doing two things there – first of all inspiring customers to leave a review, but also hopefully managing to stop negative reviews by sorting out any glitches first.
In fact if, for whatever reason, someone ended up with the wrong size pullover to give someone this festive season and you manage to get the right size to them just in time for Santa to deliver, you have gone from zero to hero. And that means you may manage to pull a five star review out of what otherwise would have been a ‘Meh!’ situation.
Don’t forget that reviews are one of the components Amazon’s algorithms use to decide your ranking. So working a bit harder in Q4 to get reviews could give you a clear advantage over your rivals in 2023.
Let’s stress, though, you shouldn’t break Amazon’s rules. Don’t ask for good reviews and don’t offer any remuneration for reviews. Doing that can get your account suspended right away.
If you use channels other than Amazon, such as your own website, higher sales also mean more chances to sign customers up to your email newsletter. It’s worth putting some extra effort into the job; have a festive offer, for instance. This might not be a bad time of year to give your customers a sponsorship offer, too – pass on a coupon voucher to a friend, for instance, and get 10% off.
Having all those customer details lets you notify them when you have new products, or when you have sales. And of course it lets you build your brand. For instance, if you sell cat products, you can deliver cat-related news and fun every month or so, then when you do have a new product, you have customers who already love and trust your brand, prepped and ready to buy.
Final thing to remember about Q4: make sure that you organize things so that you can spend some uninterrupted time with your friends and family these holidays. Because FBA is just a business, but your life is yours to live!