When to Prioritize Amazon Inventory Over Advertising

Amazon Sellers, your low inventory situations should drive higher profits. Here’s my TACOS management strategy for this: Since I started selling on Amazon in 2018, many of my brands' biggest months of profit were when we had inventory problems. At GNO Partners, we constantly help many 7—and 8-figure Amazon sellers make more money from their inventory problems. The concept is simple: 𝐒𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐝. In short, if you see demand (sales) outpacing supply (your inventory), you should make more profit. I go crazy seeing Amazon sellers getting out of stock without making more profits. If your Amazon products ever go out of stock or close to it, keep reading… The process is simple: Every week, the team member responsible for the inventory levels does the following: • Check the sales pace of all products  • Check the inventory levels of all products • Send a report of all products that potentially have an OOS situation  • In the report, include how close they are (in days) from OOS. {𝘖𝘖𝘚 = 𝘖𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘤𝘬} Any product with less than 40 days of stock and no expected new inventory in the next 20-30 days is at risk due to Amazon and logistics delays. Now is the time to make more profits. If a product is close to going OOS, we will need to lower sales. We’ll lower sales by reducing our advertising spending (TACOS). The closer we are to OOS, the more aggressively we will decrease our advertising spending. For example, if we potentially go OOS in 30 days, we slightly lower our TACOS. If we will likely go OOS in the next 14 days, we will minimize our TACOS to 1%. Each percentage decrease in TACOS is worth an extra percentage in your bottom line. 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 6-𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐈 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞 𝐓𝐀𝐂𝐎𝐒: • Pause promo codes and promotions • Pause outside traffic • Pause any Lighting deals or Best deals. • Lower PPC TACOS; change campaigns budgets to 1$ • Start with the least important campaigns and finish with the most important ones. • Increase the product’s price. By using this system of checking weekly on the situation of all your products and reacting to potential stock-outs, you’ll be able to: • Make more profits before getting out of stock • Lower the amount of times you’re getting out of stock. All the extra profits will add up significantly on a yearly basis. It is a crime not to do this process regularly for any brand that has potential out-of-stock situations or, even worse, actual stockouts. If you find one of your listings in stock issues, you should act FAST with the above options. P.S. ♻️ Repost if you want to save your network some money and keep them in stock.

We tripled Amazon sales for a brand by mastering one overlooked metric that 87% of sellers ignore - SELL THRU RATE! Here's what we did: When products move slowly: • Run targeted ads across all customer stages • Drop prices smartly • Create special deals to clear stock When products sell at the right pace: • Focus ads on ready-to-buy customers • Keep prices steady • Let natural sales flow When stock is running low: • Target only customers ready to buy now • Raise prices to slow sales • Stick to organic sales while restocking The trick? Match your advertising and pricing to your sell-through rate. Don't waste ad money when prices are too high and you have too much stock. And avoid big sales when inventory is tight. We learned this the hard way - watching big brands succeed while smaller sellers struggled. The difference? They watched their sell-through rates like hawks. Start tracking this number today using the Trellis platform. It's the best way to keep your inventory and sales in perfect balance. Share your biggest inventory management challenge below - let's solve it together.

Rule 1 of selling on Amazon: NEVER Go out of Stock Rule 2 is like rule 1, no seriously - never go out of stock Going out of stock on Amazon is considered the cardinal sin of selling on the platform because it triggers a cascade of negative consequences that can devastate your business: Amazon's algorithm punishes you severely. When you run out of inventory, Amazon's A9 algorithm interprets this as poor performance and reliability. Your product rankings drop dramatically, and it can take weeks or months to recover your previous search position - even after restocking. You lose the Buy Box. Amazon heavily favors sellers who can consistently fulfill orders. Going out of stock essentially removes you from competition for the Buy Box, which is where 80-90% of sales happen. Other sellers will capture your customers while you're unavailable. Customer trust erodes. Shoppers expect Amazon purchases to be available for quick delivery. When your listing shows "Currently unavailable" or long shipping delays, potential customers move to competitors and may never return to your product. Advertising spend is wasted. If you're running Amazon PPC campaigns, going out of stock means you're paying for clicks that convert to nothing, destroying your advertising efficiency and wasting budget. Momentum is lost. Sales velocity is crucial for maintaining rankings. Every day out of stock means zero sales, which signals to Amazon that your product isn't in demand, further hurting your organic visibility. Recovery is expensive. Getting back to your previous performance level often requires increased advertising spend, potential price reductions, or other costly strategies to rebuild momentum. The most successful Amazon sellers treat inventory management as their top priority, often maintaining 60-90 days of stock and using tools to forecast demand accurately. They'd rather have slightly too much inventory than risk the business-killing effects of going out of stock.