Every seller knows that Q4 is the biggest quarter.
Yet very few sellers know their customers ’ buying trends for the other three quarters. Not only that. Most sellers don’t know when their individual product trends within their market.
For example, if you sell swimsuits, they’re naturally going to sell the most in Q2… right before summer. When you know this kind of information, you can buy more stock. You can advertise more on PPC during hot times. In short… you can make more money.
In today’s article, we’ll show you how to identify secret trends with your product and use them to grow your sales.
Know Your Customer’s Behavior
I always recommend we start with the customer. Because when you treat your customers as real humans, instead of just numbers in seller central, you find out a lot of secrets you never would otherwise.
For example, you might think that EVERY product increases in sales in Q4. Well, it isn’t always the case. For example, some products are not good gift items. For example, if you’re selling a women’s hair regrowth solution, it’s not a good gift idea. A lot of women are self-conscious about it. So if you stock up huge on Q4, you’re going to be left with dead inventory.
This is why you must start with the customer first. Know who the 20% are who make up 80% of your sales. This will give you trend data better than any tool can.
Identify Product Trends
Once we have our customer firmly in mind, the next step is to figure out when our product trends. Because the truth is, you’re probably not going to be able to just use your gut here. There could be reasons why your customers buy that you’ll never uncover, no matter how much you research them.
So now is the time to turn to tools. And the best and easiest one is, fortunately, 100% free. Google Trends!
All you have to do to start finding trends is to plug your product keyword into the Google Trends search bar.
You can see the graph below for “Bikini”:
This is the number of times people search for the phrase “bikini” on Google. Now, at first, it seems a little bit obvious. The queries skyrocket between May – July, and begin to plummet in August.
But there’s also some data that isn’t so obvious here… do you see it?
Sales also spike in late December, early January.
Now, just because you see a spike, does NOT illustrate a trend. In other words, if there is a spike this year, that doesn’t mean there was one last year, too. So let’s go deeper.
Confirming a Trend
Underneath the search terms for Google Trends, you can set the time period you want to see. By default, it’s usually on “Past 12 months”. So click on that, and scroll all the way to the bottom where it says “Custom Time Range”. From here, select the “year” button, then select the previous year. Here are trends for “bikini” in 2018:
Awesome… we can see the spike is also on 2018’s graph. Now, to be sure, go through as many years as you can to confirm. If the spike stays there over all of these years, congratulations, you’ve found a new trend.
Put On Your Detective Hat
Now that you’ve found a new trend, we want to figure out why. The first reason is because of Christmas. However, you’ll also see that the trend continues after Christmas. In this case, bikinis always go on sale late December and early January. This causes a major spike.
You might need to dig deep to find the reason for your product’s trend. But I promise you, it’s absolutely worth it. Because once you know why a trend is happening, you can organize your entire sales strategy around it, printing money for your Amazon store!
Monetizing the Trend
So we’ve found a new trend. Great!
Now you need to take steps to maximize sales during this time. In general, this boils down to making sure you have enough items in stock, potentially lowering prices during this time, and advertising with PPC.
Can you see how powerful it is to advertise “Bikini Clearance” after Christmas? It’s almost like we get an extra few weeks in Q4 to pump out more sales than ever before.
Closing Thoughts
To be honest, many sellers are afraid to look for new trends. Because they feel like it’s too complicated to figure out how people act. Well, as you can see, finding a new trend is actually incredibly simple. And when you have your entire sales year mapped out with trends, you can make sure to nail inventory. Just like that, you’ll grow your sales without relying on ranking higher on Amazon.
