If you’re an FBA seller you always have to think a couple of months ahead of the calendar. Most kids are just looking forward to the summer vacation, but you need to be thinking about ‘back to school’ right now!
If you sell any stationery products, or backpacks, or school sports kit, you need to think right now about restocking. August will be peak sales season, and you don’t want to be short of stock. Look at last year’s sales when you’re planning stock levels, and even boost your stocks a bit more if you’re planning more marketing this year. You’ll want to get your stock into the warehouse by the end of July, to be safe; searches for back to school goods skyrocket every August.
This year a lot of families will be looking for bargains, as the cost of a tank of gas has gone up and so have food prices. Help them out by thinking about how you can put together bundles of products, pens together with paper, for instance, or make multi packs which give them a discount. Multi packs can really help larger families where several kids need stuff for the new school year.
If you have older stock, this is a great time to make a killer discount in order to offload it. Put it on Vipon and you’ll be able to push stock out and make way for new product, and of course, you’ll be reaching the most discount-hungry buyers this way.
Have a good think about your marketing now, and tee up your campaigns. If you have a social media following, it’s time to start planning relevant posts and pics, you’ll want to ease the subject in gently and then ramp up as you get towards the end of July. TikTok is a particularly important place to market right now, so if last time round you didn’t use video, this ought to be the year you start.
Think about what useful advice you can give. For instance, “How to prepare for your child’s first day at school” is a great post; parents always find this a tough time and read as many posts as they can just to get a bit more confidence. You might also look at the different challenges facing different age groups, or checklists of what’s needed (and links to your products, where relevant).
Get your content made, whether that’s blog posts, videos, and get the posts scheduled. The more you can do right now, the less hassled you’re going to be over the next couple of months.
Plan your ad spend and couponing. You don’t necessarily want to put it all upfront. For instance, you might want to think about a special “last minute” offer for parents who have left things till the last moment, there’s always something that gets forgotten, and other sellers may have taken their foot off the accelerator by then. As always, the big brands will be pushing up the price of basic keywords, so look for long tail search terms you can bid for instead. Instead of “school backpack”, “stripy school backpack” or “school backpack for teens” or “cute school backpack for girls”.
And once you’ve done all this… well, you can sit back and wait for the sales to come in. Of course, before you know it, there will be Thanksgiving, and Black Friday, and the holiday season to prepare for. But you might be able to take a little break before then. You know, you could even do like other people do, and have a summer vacation!
