10 last-minute Amazon advertising tips for El Buen Fin

El Buen Fin is one of those dates circled with a red marker on every online seller in Mexico. In the last three years, data showed that Amazon has become more and more the marketplace where Mexican e-shoppers look for hot deals, especially during top shopping seasons like El Buen Fin.

Listing optimization, keyword research, and tracking are actions to keep in mind to secure success during El Buen Fin. But in this article, we want to focus on another opportunity: Amazon Ads.

Who is buying during El Buen Fin? 

First things first: we need to have a clear idea of our potential buyers before we even start thinking about our ads. This will shed some light on an adequate strategy and effective language for marketing campaigns during el Buen Fin. According to AMVO — the Mexican Association of Online Selling, for its acronym in Spanish — 6 out of 10 Mexican internet users bought something during El Buen Fin. Both men and women are shopping, but the most substantial age range of shoppers is people from 25 to 34 years old. Here is a summary of the buyer’s profile based on AMVO’s report:

Amazon’s relevance: How many buyers use Amazon to look for deals during El Buen Fin? 

The last few years have presented clear trends in terms of buying behavior during El Buen Fin. More shoppers prefer to visit multicategory websites and marketplaces to find the best offers. Actually, Amazon positions itself as one of the most visited websites during this hot shopping season, followed closely by the Mexican marketplace giants: Walmart and MercadoLibre.

Half of the annual sales in Amazon Mexico are made during El Buen Fin, New Year, and the Reyes Magos Day (January 6). Most of these sales belong to small and medium businesses, underscoring the relevance of crafting an intelligent strategy for these months.

How to create a roadmap for El Buen Fin

With such big opportunities, it’s vital to consider priorities when building your strategy. That’s why we asked Stefano Souza, New Business Development in LATAM for Sellesta, to offer a free webinar about how to prepare for this massive ecommerce event. With over ten years of experience managing ads on marketplaces, Stefano shares more about the power of keeping suitable ads to sell more. He goes over the fundamentals of advertising strategy for seasonal events:

• How to make the most of your budget during El Buen Fin.
• Keys to keep a good position on leading marketplaces (Amazon and Mercado Libre).
• A detailed analysis of the Mexican buyer profile for El Buen Fin.
• The difference between Google and marketplaces during the buyer’s journey.
• How to allocate your global campaign budget throughout the year.

He ends up with a compilation of the best practices for ad campaigns based on his years of experience. He talks about how to reach break-even and a profit point or why you should never turn off your campaigns. He even discusses after-campaign analysis and how to remarket after El Buen Fin.

Best practices

Inspired by Stefano’s webinar, we put together some tips to help you craft an advertising approach towards El Buen Fin.

1. When to start advertising and for how long? – The shopping peak is during the El Buen Fin event, but shoppers start searching much earlier. You can extend your special offer 2 or 3 days before the weekend begins to gain some sales.

2. Increase your budget – Events like El Buen Fin call for bigger budgets: during the El Buen Fin, many sellers increase their ads budget by 3x. Amazon Ads works on a bidding scheme, which means the CPC will be higher amongst competitors. Stefano suggests you concentrate your year-long budget on events like this: you can’t afford to go dark during this season. You can also play with your bids throughout the day: cost-per-clicks decrease as other advertisers’ campaigns go dark. Usually, over 30% of sales happen after 7 p.m. on these shopping days.

3. Expect increased conversion rates and CPC – Conversion rates tend to rise during El Buen Fin, particularly if you have a product discount. Cost per click grows as people check out more products, so you should raise bids on high-performing keywords by 1.5x-2x during those days. If you use tools with automatic optimization, follow the results more carefully during this period. Changes in user behavior may lead to mistakes in automation. Tools like Sellesta Amazon Ads use AI to ensure this doesn’t happen.

4. If your budget is limited, prioritize El Buen Fin – Small businesses lacking a budget for triple advertising spend during El Buen Fin can explore flexible cost management strategies. Prioritize spending on this event as shoppers anticipate specific product sales.

5. Protect your brand – To avoid letting competitors steal your clients, bid higher on your brand keywords, especially with the Sponsored Brands top-of-search placement. If you need help keeping track of who is out-bidding you, tools like Sellesta Ads can help. Apart from its multiple campaign and ad management features, this tool will constantly refine keywords and give you a detailed analysis of what is going on with your competition regarding keywords, stock, and sales performance. We talk more about this below. 

6. Make sure your ads communicate adequately– Your ads should always be on point, but it’s critical to have them polished for these dates. Based on recent surveys, we know that shoppers click less on ads during El Buen Fin, but they are more likely to buy when they click. Your ads should give shoppers the information they’re looking for. Titles should be informative, easy to read, and give potential buyers the key facts. Use high-quality images and promote products with positive reviews.

7. Check for ASIN gaps and issues – Check your ASINs quickly. Make sure the ones you want to advertise are in stock and eligible. Fix them before you start advertising.

8. Ensure targeting parity across campaign types – Make sure the keywords and products you’re using in one campaign type are included in the others. If certain keywords are performing well in your Sponsored Products campaigns, add them to Sponsored Brands campaigns too. Similarly, if certain ASINs have converted in auto campaigns, add them as Product Targets in Sponsored Products and Display campaigns.

9. Take a breather the day after the peak season – After big sales days, costs per click go up, and conversions drop. Reallocate your budget after El Buen Fin and prepare for year-end campaigns. Be ready to change your strategies, too – buyers’ behavior shifts after these events.

10. Remarket to shoppers who checked out your products  – Sales don’t end with El Buen Fin. Amazon Ads/Kantar conducted a survey and discovered that 67% of holiday shoppers complete their shopping after Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and we can hypothesize that the same applies to Mexican buyers after El Buen Fin. This means it’s a great opportunity to remarket to people who may have viewed your products but didn’t buy during El Buen Fin. You can engage them to buy during Black Friday or pre-Christmas shopping.

Tools that will make the difference

Evaluating ad performance, checking ASINs, upgrading campaigns, and monitoring keywords can become an impossible task during El Buen Fin. Some brands have giant teams to manage their campaigns during these days. However, some tools help simplify and enhance these important actions.

For example, Sellesta Amazon Ads is a full-cycle ads management service that combines AI and human talent to provide customized ad strategies, campaign monitoring and optimization, keyword research and analysis, insights on your competitors, and detailed visual reports on your performance. We’ve seen companies have a 3.7x increase in Ad sales and reduce their ACoS by 45%. Sellesta’s tool can manage 100% of your main keywords successfully, which gives you a competitive advantage. The best part is that the AI is not left alone to act as it may: a whole team of experts is monitoring your performance, ensuring you’re reaching and surpassing your goals.

If these tips were helpful, sign up for Stefano Souza’s free webinar to build a comprehensive framework and tackle El Buen Fin with a successful sales profit.