How to Know Which Inventory Items to Advertise on Amazon

By now I hope you have come to the conclusion that advertising select Amazon inventory items will help you increase your sales and decrease your competition. It will also help increase your profits, raise your IPI, and improve your overall cash flow. If you didn’t know that before, then read this post for more details.

So do Amazon sellers just advertise their entire inventory?

No, that would definitely not be the best use of your advertising budget.

If your inventory item has a sales rank in the top 1% of its category, then (if you are priced competitively) you should get a quick sale without the need to advertise. But not all of our inventory items have a sales rank in the top 1%.

In the rest of this blog post, I’ll outline which items in your inventory are the best candidates for you to advertise on Amazon.

Advertise These Items on Amazon:

1. Stale or Slow Moving Inventory

It should be the goal of every Amazon seller to sell their inventory as fast as possible, but sometimes that just doesn’t seem to happen. Many times, an Amazon seller will send in their inventory to Amazon, maybe set up automatic repricer settings for that item, and then never think about that item again until it ends up in Excess Inventory.

If some of your inventory items have not sold in about 3 months, it might be a good idea to give your sales a little boost with advertising these slower moving inventory items.

How to Find Stale/Slow Moving Inventory

To find your slow moving inventory, go to your Manage Inventory Health page in Seller Central, and then sort your inventory by choosing to only see your inventory items that have been at an Amazon warehouse for over 3 months (91-180 days) From there you can see which items have been there that long and how many you have in stock. Start advertising the items that have been there the longest and start seeing them sell!

2. Excess Inventory

If you’ve done a decent job of advertising your slow moving inventory, then it’s very likely that you’ll never get to the point of having excess inventory. The weird thing about excess inventory is that Amazon has its own secret algorithm on determining which items it deems as excess. It’s some combination of how long you’ve had this item item in stock with the current sales demand on Amazon. The algorithm deems something as excess when Amazon thinks you have too many in stock at your current price in relation to the current demand for that item on Amazon.

How to Find Your Excess Inventory

To see which Amazon deems as excess inventory, again go to your Manage Inventory Health page in Seller Central and look at the column titled, “Estimated Excess Units.” You’ll see which units need a boost in sales with some advertising. Go advertise these items and start to see those items begin to sell.

3. High Quantity Inventory

If you went deep on an inventory item that has an average sales rank that is not within the top 1% of its category, is priced competitively, and is not selling (or not selling fast enough for you), then you can spend part of your ad budget on advertising these items. When you buy multiples of the same item, then advertising that item will help you sell faster and help you avoid too many months of storage fees that are only eating up all of your ROI.

How to Find Your High Quantity Inventory

To find your highest quantity inventory, go to your Manage Inventory page and sort your inventory based on quantity from highest to lowest. Pick some of those items and advertise them to sell them faster.

4. High Priced Inventory

When you have a lot of sourcing capital held up in one product, then that limits you from using that capital on higher quantities of lower priced items. That being said, if you have any higher priced inventory item that is not selling fast enough for you, then you might want to spend part of your ad budget on advertising these items.

How to Find Your High Priced Inventory

To find your highest priced inventory, go to your Manage Inventory page and sort your inventory based on price from highest to lowest. Pick some of those items and advertise them to get that capital back.

Advertising = Faster Turns

Remember, the key to success on Amazon is faster turns to grow your profits. The faster you can sell your inventory, the faster you can reinvest your profits into more inventory. That process will grow your profits over time like a snowball. This will help you grow your business and finally turn those part-time hours into a full-time income.

Now, I’d love to heard from you. Which types of items do you like to advertise? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.