A Guide to Selling profitably on Amazon: Holiday Season 2022

Unlike the past 2 years, Amazon Holiday Season 2022 is no longer clouded by the pandemic and global lockdowns. Which instantly improves your chances if you decide to sell on Amazon this Holiday Season 2022. All you need is a plan in advance to stay on the top of your game with intelligent inventory and order management. Explore this ultimate holiday Season 2022 guide to know about important dates, tips, and strategies to make the most of the holiday season 2022. Also, find out about a suitable Amazon Shopify integration for the Holiday season.

Dates to remember: Holiday Season 2022

August onwards, the frenzy of logistics and sales begins with little time to jump from one festival to another and come up with dramatic changes. So before you get into all that, start by marking your calendars. So the first thing you need to manage selling on Amazon from the Shopify store this Holiday Season is to have a calendar set beforehand.

• September 5: Labor Day
• September 9: NFL season begins
• September 22: First day of fall
• October 10: Indigenous Peoples Day/Columbus Day
• October 10: Canadian Thanksgiving
• October 31: Last day to order inventory before Lunar New Year
• October 31: Halloween
• November 1: Start of National Native American Heritage Month
• November 1: Last day to get inventory to Amazon warehouse for Black Friday/Cyber Monday and the holiday season
• November 6: Daylight Saving Time
• November 8: Election Day
• November 11: Remembrance Day (Canada)
• November 11: Veterans Day and Singles’ Day
• November 24: Thanksgiving
• November 25: Black Friday
• November 26: Small Business Saturday
• November 28: Cyber Monday
• December 17: Super Saturday
• December 18-26: Hanukkah
• December 21: First day of winter
• December 24: Christmas Eve
• December 25: Christmas
• December 26-Jan 1: Kwanzaa
• December 26: Boxing Day (Canada)
• December 31: New Year’s Eve

For years, celebrations of Holidays have nicely infused eCommerce sales. People know about them, expect great deals, have specific products in mind that they intend to buy on particular holidays, and love the ease with which they can shop for holidays from the comforts of their homes. So it is unsurprising that more than 50% of annual sales occur in the fourth quarter. More important than any of these facts is that only last year, over 93% of the shoppers in the US confessed that they plan to shop for gifts and other essentials on Amazon in preparation for the holidays.

Holiday Season Stats, you should know!

Why is the Holiday Season 2022 so important for Amazon Sellers? The answer is simple. It is the first year post-pandemic when pretty much all parts of the world have successfully opened up for business. Logistics barriers, supply chains, and other connected challenges are completely out of the picture.

• GenX generation is the highest spender online, with Christmas being the most popular holiday for shopping (avg. $780 in the US). When it comes to apparel also, GenX is the most likely spender (70%).
• Men not only shop as much as women do but also spend $150 more than women do on average.
• The second highest spender online is the generation of Millennials. They are the people who are more likely to do all of their holiday shopping online. As a matter of fact, in the US, more than 80% of people between the age group of 26 to 38 choose eCommerce to do all of their shopping.
• The shoppers are extremely demanding nowadays. Over 24% of US shoppers expect deliveries on the same day or at least within one day.
• 60% of shoppers in the US begin shopping online for Christmas before December. During the week before Christmas, over 60% of shoppers buy gifts.
• Over 50% of Holiday shoppers report feeling pressure and anxiety if they choose to shop in the store during this period. Around the same percentage of the drop has been monitored in the traffic in brick-and-mortar stores during the season.
• 50% of shoppers do not want to pay shipping charges. While 80% of shoppers prefer free shipping, 15% want free and fast shipping.
• 20% of shoppers look for Shopping inspirations on Instagram, Gen z being the largest lot of this group.

Tips to Ace the sales this Holiday Season on Amazon and Shopify

Owning a Shopify- Amazon multi-channel business, if done right, can bring you hefty profits. Some of the tips that can help you through the planning process and at the time of the peak Holiday season are

1. Plan for all Holidays at least one month ahead.
2. Get in touch with your store development team to prepare the theme templates that can go live at a moment’s notice. Research well and utilize the expertise available in the market if you don’t have an in-house team. A themed store brings the audience immediately in the mood to celebrate and hence shop for the holiday.
3. On a calendar, sketch out not just the holidays but your deadlines concerning launches, stocks, and other key aspects.
4. Get in touch with manufacturers and suppliers in advance to share your needs. Prepare the catalog to contain Holiday season bestsellers in the generic and specific category levels, quantity, and a reasonable cost benefitting both parties.
5. Also, if you do not already have a Shipment and Logistics provider, get on with that immediately. Partner with a suitable, trustworthy Shipment company that is also cost-effective for you. Remember, free and fast shipping takes away the maximum number of sales. So your shipment and logistics partner has a vital role to play.
6. The battle between FBA and FBM is a long one. FBA is a sure-shot way to get your product listed with a Prime badge, instantly improving your game. Providing free shipping and managing hassle-free logistics is a given in FBA. Also, you can leverage the FBA services for your Shopify store.
7. Pre-plan your budgets, promotions, catalog pricing, other funds, contingencies in case of returns and refunds, etc.

Manage your Shopify Amazon business smartly!

If you manage a multi-channel Shopify Amazon business alone, you simply put yourself through avoidable pain. Partner with an experienced third-party solution provider who can simplify multi-channel sales operations on a single platform offer inventory and order management, synchronization and centralization of your critical data, and more. Amazon by CedCommerce is one of the most popular and in-demand Shopify Sales Channel apps that offers all the above features and a few more.

Strategies to make Holiday Season 2022 profitable for Amazon Shopify Sellers

Make the most of your multi-channel Amazon Shopify business this year during the Holiday Season.

Manage your Catalog

Before you get too busy with the season rush and onslaught of orders, start by appropriately managing your catalog. Thoroughly analyze your listings and their variations to put them in proper categories and subcategories. Additionally, ensure all variations and their identifying attributes are updated along with correct ASINs.

Plan your inventory

Get your inventory organized and ensure it arrives at Amazon warehouses within the time constraints. Refer to the dates below:

Holiday	Inventory Send-In Date
Holiday Shopping Season 2022, October 1- January 1	Sep 3, 2022
Halloween	Sep 3, 2022
BFCM	Oct 21, 2022
Valentine’s Day	Dec 27, 2022

When you plan your inventories, start by analyzing which products are in demand and the bestsellers, then which ones do you need to market heavily. The products that were hit last year are likely to perform well this year once again. Thus, refer back to the stats of the previous year.

Of course, there are certain exclusivities to this as some best performers of the previous years might not be as effective if they were temporary trends.

While those non-seasonal trends might not work for this year, you can just as easily discover trends that people are crazy about this year. Then perform the SWOT analysis to determine which products need which form of marketing and the degree of aggressiveness, budgets, and campaigns. Based on the analysis, decide the inventory count you want to hold.

Get in touch with your Shipment partner and suppliers

Connect with your suppliers to understand their bandwidth and negotiate profitable deals. Sometimes, Suppliers offer discounts and other liberties to early birds. Beforehand plan the contingencies with them in case of unexpected delays or roadblocks that can break your performance.

Additionally, straighten things with your shipment service provider if it is FBM that you are interested in. In the case of FBA, you already have the best deal, which yields the most hassle-free results. Nonetheless, both FBA and FBM bring the issue of ever-changing policies. Considering that, experts offer two pieces of advice. The first is to have a backup fulfillment partner, and the second is to always keep yourself updated on the policies. With a nimble and flexible plan, you can immediately update your operations if a policy changes.

Secure your funding

Your stocks and sales all depend on the initial funds you can acquire. Consider some unavoidable payments you make to your suppliers, subscriptions, and solution providers. Logistics is expensive, and order processing also reserves a portion of your funds. Make sure you cover all avenues and decide if your in-hand resources are sufficient or not.

Focus on Content and SEO strategy

Elevate all of your campaigns with powerful Content well-infused with SEO to yield the best results. The whole game is about targeting the right audience, which then makes the conversion an effortless task. Right Keywords are your weapons. Research thoroughly to find keywords most relevant to your products that have shown significant value in the past few months. The keywords that displayed excellent results in a few sales during the Q2-Q3 also work for holidays in the Q4. Keeping your budgets significantly high during peak events has been extremely effective in almost all cases. Therefore if you run a campaign with a high budget, you need it to give expected returns. Thus, the significance of the right SEO strategy is immediately apparent here.

Leverage Amazon Tools

Selling on Amazon is procedural. There are several things to consider, including policies and constraints. Amidst all this, there are tools that can elevate your operations offered by Amazon. Discover some of the Amazon tools to sell better on Amazon from the Shopify store this Holiday season:

Brand Registry

Register your brand on Amazon to protect, build and grow your brand on platforms beyond Amazon. Brand Registry also allows you to leverage A+ Content, Build Amazon stores, Brand Analytics, and more.

A+ Content

Utilize rich images, videos, and infographics to best showcase your products to your customers. Let them see, connect, and feel what they will experience with this product.

Sponsored Brands

Leverage Ads that can show your name to your customers enough times before the Holiday Season even peaks so that they know where they can get their preferred products from.

Amazon Stores

There is nothing that brings you better recognition than your personal brand representation on Amazon in the form of Amazon Stores. This tool allows you to build a multi-page microsite-like structure where you can independently showcase your brand without external influence.

Amazon DSP

Amazon’s Demand-side Platform functions by deeply targeting the Customer’s journey funnel. The program is divided into a bottom-funnel strategy and an upper-funnel strategy. The classification signifies if you want to address the audience in the Awareness stage or drive sales. Amazon analyses and divides the customers based on whether or not they have engaged with a category yet. Then the customers are targeted depending on the stage of the journey they belong to. This strategy aids you in advertising and remarketing strategies alike.

Influencer Strategy

Be heard. This reduces the communication gap between your audience and your brand. Utilize influencers to talk about your brand, preferably in a holiday-themed session on YouTube, Instagram, Amazon Live, or other platforms.

Amazon’s Influencer program has been significantly successful in helping customers make decisions about products they would like to get inspired for or see in real pictures to judge.

Get help when needed: Amazon by CedCommerce

The most important element of soothing your troubles is getting help. Consider employing an Amazon Shopify Integration for Holiday Season sales. The Amazon by CedCommerce is a one-stop solution for sellers looking for easy, fast, no-fuss selling from a single space without an intermediate platform to deal with. With the app, enjoy optimal multi-channel selling, focusing more on profits while saving a ton of time. Automated Inventory Management and Order Management are designed to allow operations to occur in one spot with minimal manual effort. Leverage unique high in-demand features that will help you stand above your competition:

• List new ones or Link Existing Amazon Inventory with Shopify: For all your existing Inventories on Amazon, it is possible to connect them to the corresponding Shopify Inventories in just a few clicks.
• Simplified Order flow from Amazon to Shopify: Without switching platforms, manage your Amazon Orders from the Shopify store and perform all essential operations required from here itself.
• Real-time Product Data Synching: Synchronize your Shopify Product Description, Price, Stock, and other relevant information in near real-time for effortless listing.
• Intelligent Bulk Editing with predefined Templates: List your Shopify products on Amazon through predefined Product Templates and save yourself from performing repetitive category mapping and other redundant steps every time.
• Steady Multi-Account Connectivity: If you have multiple Amazon Accounts within the same country, then effortlessly sell through them from your Shopify Store. Individually tackle all Inventories and Orders from different accounts at one spot, i.e., your Shopify store.