Every year the same question pops up in Amazon seller groups: “Should I run a big Black Friday / Cyber Monday deal or just keep my price steady and protect margin?” The short answer in 2025:
If you don’t run a meaningful BFCM deal, you are voluntarily giving your competitors at least a two to three months head start on BSR and organic ranking. Here’s the cold, data-backed truth: Amazon’s algorithm is a momentum machine — and BFCM is rocket fuel Amazon still heavily weights:
- Unit session percentage (what % of all searches for your keyword end with someone buying YOUR product)
- Conversion rate
- External traffic → sales velocity spikes
During BFCM week, search volume for almost every keyword explodes 3–10×.
If you run a 20–40 % off Prime Exclusive Deal, you can capture 5–15× normal daily units in just four days. That single velocity spike does three permanent things:
- Pushes you to page 1 (often top 3) for your core keywords
- Locks in higher click-share and conversion rate weight for months (the algorithm remembers the “new normal”)
- Triggers thousands of new reviews in December/January (review velocity is the second-biggest ranking factor after sales velocity)
Real example from a client (8-figure brand, Nov 2024 data):
- Main keyword was sitting at position ~14
- Ran 30 % off coupon + lightning deal on Black Friday
- Sold 4,800 units in 96 hours (vs normal ~120/day)
- Keyword jumped to position #2 by December 3rd
That single weekend bought them ~8 months of top placement. The brands that skip BFCM deals lose the “snowball” forever effect. Look at any mature category on Amazon right now. The listings sitting in the top 5 almost always had a massive BFCM 2023 or 2024 spike. The ones stuck on page 2–3 are still trying to claw their way up with 50–100 units a day PPC — and the algorithm simply won’t let them past the entrenched players. It’s basic physics: the flywheel that’s already spinning fastest keeps spinning fastest.
Example of not running a deal:
Vs Running a 20% off Prime Exclusive Discount:
The “I’ll protect margin” argument is short-term thinking. Yes, you give up some profit on those 3,000–10,000 extra units.
But the lifetime value of owning page 1 from December through next Black Friday is worth 5–20× the margin you “saved”. Average client ROI we see from a properly executed BFCM deal:
- Extra profit in Q4 alone usually covers the discount cost
- Extra organic sales from December–June = 3–8× the discount cost
- You enter 2026 already ranked instead of starting from scratch
You don’t have to slash price 50 % to win. Winning deals in 2025 that still protect healthy margin:
- 25–35 % off coupon + Prime-exclusive discount (stacked)
- “Buy 2 get 20 % off” or bundle deals
- Lightning Deal + 20 % coupon (Amazon pushes you hard in the deals tab)
Bottom line: Skipping a real Black Friday deal in 2025 is the equivalent of letting your competitors bench-press PR stay the same while everyone else in the gym adds 100 lbs to the bar for one weekend. You can still grow without a deal — but you’ll be grinding 50–100 sales a day with PPC for the next 12 months trying to match the organic ranking your competitor locked in over four days in November. Don’t spend 2026 chasing the ranking you could have owned for free in 2025.Run the deal. Take the short-term margin hit. Dominate the long game.