Marketplaces

Preparing your marketplace account for the festive season

India's festive sales — Flipkart's Big Billion Days, Amazon's Great Indian Festival and the Diwali run-up — can do a big share of a seller's annual revenue in a few weeks. The brands that win are the ones that prepared weeks earlier. Here is the run-up plan.

6–8 weeks out: inventory and forecasting

Festive stockouts are the most expensive mistake you can make — you lose the sale and the ranking momentum. Forecast demand per SKU using last year's data and current velocity, then build a buffer. If you use FBA or WFS, get stock into fulfilment centres early, before cut-off dates and inbound congestion.

4 weeks out: deals, pricing and listings

• Nominate for platform events and lightning deals where the numbers work — visibility during the event is worth a tighter margin.
• Model your festive pricing so discounts do not push you into a loss once fees and ads are counted.
• Refresh listings — festive-relevant images, updated bullets, and A+ content. Traffic will spike, so convert it.

2 weeks out: advertising and budgets

Cost-per-click rises during festive periods as everyone bids up. Raise budgets on your proven campaigns so they do not cap mid-day, and make sure your best products are the ones getting the spend. Warm up campaigns before the event so the algorithm is not learning on day one.

During the event: watch and react

• Monitor stock levels daily — reprice or pause ads on anything about to sell out.
• Keep an eye on account health; a spike in orders can bring a spike in issues.
• Answer buyer messages fast — responsiveness protects your metrics when volume is high.

After: capture the momentum

Post-event, you often have a higher organic rank than before — defend it. Keep a sensible ad presence, gather reviews the compliant way, and analyse which SKUs and channels performed so next year's plan is sharper. We run this playbook across Flipkart, Amazon and more as part of marketplace management.