This one will probably only be of interest to my fellow Amazon sellers. I’ve been asked a lot lately about promotions – how and when to use them and how to promotions up in Amazon Seller Central.
Firstly, here’s what it looks like, when a listing has a promotion applied:
Why would I want to use promotions?
You might want to use promotions to either sell units in multiples (i.e. encourage customers to buy more than one of the same product), or to encourage a cross-sale (where they get a discount on one of your products if they buy another).
If you have a low-cost item, you’d like to get moving, you could also set up a promotion where a customer gets that item for free, if they purchase another of your products.
How to set up your promotions in Amazon Seller Central
The example I’m going to use here is a multi-buy offer. i.e. you want to offer a sliding scale discount if people buy more than one of the same product.
- Log into your Amazon Seller Account. From the Inventory menu, select ‘Manage Promotions.’
- Here you’ll see three options. For a multi-buy promotion (the type we’ll be using in this example), you want to select ‘Money Off’. Click on the create button to get started.
- This is the screen you’ll see. You need to choose:
- The quantity of items a customer has to purchase before the discount is applied
- Which products this promotion relates to
- The percentage (or monetary – amount in £) discount they’ll receive
- Whether the discount is applied to the item they’ve purchased, or an additional item. (I know, you want this applied to the item they’ve purchased, so keep this option as it is.)
- The first thing you need to do is set up your product selections.This enables you to choose the items you want to apply the promotion to.Click on the link shown here.
- This is the next screen you’ll see.You have couple of ways of setting up your selection. The easiest is by ASIN or SKU.
- On this page you need to set up a tracking ID – I suggest using the relevant product name. (Internal description is just for your reference. You then need to type/paste in the SKU(s) you want applied to this promotion.
- This is what your ‘Manage Product Selection’ page will look like. You can see the tracking IDs and internal descriptions that you set up.You can click on the tracking ID to update the ASIN/SKU list and/or update the internal description at any time.
- You can now select the product(s) you want to apply your promotion to – as you will have now set up your selection(s) and they’ll be available in this drop-down list.
- See my example here. I’m offering a 20% discount, to anyone who buys 2 of my bamboo hooded towels.
Advanced options
You can set up some advanced options. (Optional.)
In my example, you will see I’ve offered a tiered discount depending on the number of products purchased.
As you will see, you have the option to set up items to be excluded from this.
As a example, you might offer a product in 5 colours, but only want 4 of them included in this promotion. This is where you select any ASINs you don’t want included. (Note: you’d have to create the product selection for them, as shown.)
Back to the steps…
10. Next you need to schedule when your promotion starts and ends.
Please note, Amazon won’t make the promotion live for 3-4 hours from the time you set it up – so you might as well select a time after that.
Again, set up an internal description and tracking ID. (Internal description is for you, tracking ID can be seen by the customer.)
11. Additional options for claim codes – The default setting here is none (meaning the discount is applied when the customer adds the products to their basket, without the need for them to enter a code).
I suggest keeping this, as it is MUCH simpler for your customers.
12. Additional options for customising messaging.
Here’s where you can change the wording a customer sees (if you wish to)
The only thing I suggest changing is the Detail Page Display text.
To do this, you check the box beside it. You can then enter exactly what you’d like the customer to see under ‘Promotions’ when they look at a qualifying item. I’ve highlighted the text I’ve added.
13. Next, select ‘Review’ (right at the bottom of the page), read through your details and then select ‘Submit.’
Managing your promotions
You can manage your promotions, at any time, using this tab.
From here you can view, edit (including end, or extend) or clone a promotion.
Cloning is really useful if you want to set up similar details for different products as, once you’ve set up one promotion, you can clone it and then go in and just amend the product selection and % discounts you’re offering, without having to start from scratch.
I hope you found this helpful and experiment with setting up some promotions of your own!