Sales promotions are a great way to get your sales moving. But to succeed, they have to stand out against a lot of competition, and they have to have a reason why customers should buy right now.
A flash sale is a great way to pull in orders. Keep your sale simple, with a clear call to action: “20% off if you order before Friday; click here to order”. You can do this on one product, or on all your products; if you flash sale a complete product range you may find your results are even better than having a sale on one or two discrete items.
If your flash sale did well, but didn’t quite sell enough, you can get double duty out of it by starting a new campaign, “Flash sale just extended!” In fact, you could even plan the extension as part of your original campaign. It gives you a second chance at those customers who didn’t buy first time round. You don’t want to be careful, though, that you don’t end up with your goods at permanent sale prices – that’s not a good look and can, over time, degrade your brand.
“Buy one, get one free” or “buy this, get that free” works well. Watch out though for the customers who buy one, get one free, and then return the one that was free for a refund. Another way to provide a ‘free’ item is simply to add something to the package – for instance a pen case with a pack of pens, or a “free” dog tag with a dog collar and leash. Even though you’ve costed for it and included it in the package, the customer will perceive it as a ‘free’ item that’s of value to them.
Free samples are a great way to get customers in. If you can include a free sample of another product in your packaging, why not do so?
Lifestyle discounts can be targeted at, for instance, seniors, teachers, students, veterans, or members of an association. That’s simple for you to do by finding a way to direct coupons to your selected group – in a relevant publication, through associations, Facebook group pages, and so on. You can then simply set up the coupons in Amazon and you’re ready to go.
You could offer an affiliate bonus, for instance to influencers or to well regarded websites that feature your products with a discount. If you use attribution codes on Amazon to identify the sales coming from that particular influencer, you can then pay a bonus based on sales volume.
For all kinds of promotion, include a countdown timer if you can. Split-testing the same offer with and without a countdown timer showed that when they knew the clock was ticketing, customers were nearly 10% more likely to buy.
A quite different type of promotion is giving a percentage of your product price to a charity. Plenty of businesses do this all the time, but you could run a short promotion for a particular period, for instance giving to a charity for the homeless or for children in care over the holiday season, or for military charities around Veterans Day.
Or, of course, you can just offer a deep discount. Many customers cannot resist these. And we know all about them at Vipon!
There’s just one thing that as an FBA seller you cannot, and must not, do, and that’s have a review discount program. Whether you provide products for free or at a discount, you are not allowed to do so in return for a review (unless it’s through Amazon’s own Vine program).
You can have your account terminated for doing that. Amazon takes the trustworthiness of its reviews very seriously!
