Festive-season ad planning for Amazon and Flipkart sellers

The big festive sale events on Amazon and Flipkart compress months of demand into days. Sellers who prepare tend to be the ones who benefit; sellers who start on the first day mostly pay for the competition.

1Before: the preparation window

• Inventory: estimate demand honestly and make sure stock is in the right place with some buffer. Running out in the middle of the event is the costliest mistake.
• Listings: refresh images, titles and content for your top products. Fix any listing errors or suppressed variations now.
• Promotions: decide which products carry deals or coupons, and what discount your margin can bear.
• Campaigns: build and test them ahead of time so they already have history. Keep proven keywords in exact campaigns and have budgets ready to raise.

2During: monitor, do not just spend

During the event, search volume and bids move quickly. Agree beforehand:

1. The daily spend ceiling for the account and for each key product.
2. The efficiency level below which you will pull back.
3. Who checks the account, and how often, each day of the event.

Check that your best campaigns are not out of budget early in the day, and that products getting ad spend are still in stock.

3After: do not switch off blindly

Demand falls after the event, and so should spend, but do it deliberately. Reduce budgets in steps, review which products and search terms actually delivered, and write down what you would repeat. The learnings are the real asset going into the next season.

4Keep expectations grounded

Event-period results are not a forecast of normal months. Judge the event on its own terms: total sales, TACoS and what it did to your organic ranking afterwards, not only on ad-attributed return.