Amazon Black Friday Promotions: How to Create Each One, Screen by Screen

Black Friday calendar

In Seller Central, Black Friday and Cyber Monday appear in the list of upcoming events with their own window and submission deadlines. Amazon sets those dates every year — check Seller Central for the current event window and deadlines. Three milestones organize the work:

• Several weeks before the event: inventory in FBA or on its way. Seller Central itself warns that inventory should be available or in transit well before the event.
• By the deal submission deadline: submit the recommended deals for Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
• During the event: coupons and percentage-off promotions are your quick adjustments, to back up an ASIN that is selling below expectations.

Event deal slots are limited and competitive. Submitting early gives you a better chance of getting in.

The promotion types and which to choose

Seller Central gives you separate creation flows for Deals, Coupons, Prime Exclusive Discounts and Promotions. The Promotions flow is where you'll find Percentage Off and Buy One Get One.

Schematic reproduction of the promotion creation screens in Seller Central. Labels may differ slightly in your account.

A practical rule: if you can't reach the deal price, use a Prime Exclusive Discount. Coupons and Percentage Off work as an extra layer on top of either one.

How to get to promotions in Seller Central

In the US Seller Central menu, promotions live under Advertising:

Path: Advertising → Deals / Coupons / Prime Exclusive Discounts / Promotions.

Along with the creation flows, Seller Central shows recommended deals and, at times, deal offers where Amazon shares part of the cost, plus the list of upcoming events (Prime Big Deal Days, Black Friday, Cyber Monday) and short Seller University videos about each promotion type.

Submit through the event (not on the side)

There are two ways to schedule a Black Friday promotion:

1. From the event: pick Black Friday or Cyber Monday as the event when you create the deal or discount. The dates are locked to the official event window, and the product appears on the event page with the event badge.
2. With custom dates: useful when you don't want the whole window — for example, only Black Friday week.

The safer path is the first one. Going through the event guarantees the product was submitted for that event, which matters even more if you sell through FBA.

Creating deals: Best Deals and Lightning Deals

Deals are pre-qualified: Amazon chooses which products are eligible and suggests the maximum deal price. The first screen lists your eligible products. Each ASIN can appear twice, once as a Best Deal and once as a Lightning Deal.

Products appear twice because each one can run as a Best Deal or as a Lightning Deal.

1. Select the product in the format you want. For many ASINs, use the download and bulk options.
2. Schedule: choose one of the upcoming events (Black Friday) or a custom date. Set the audience, which can be all customers or Prime members only.
3. Lightning Deal on Black Friday: choose the event window. Your exact time slot is only set a few days before, within that window.
4. Set the price: the deal price comes with a cap. You can keep it or go lower, never higher. The screen shows the discount per unit.
5. Set the committed units for the deal. The column next to it shows current inventory for each SKU.
6. Include as many variations as possible. In some cases Amazon requires a minimum share of the variations to be in the deal.
7. Click Submit deal.

Example: a $49.99 product with a $29.99 deal price and 50 committed units.

During the event, Amazon's deals page is branded for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. That's where your deals appear.

Creating Prime Exclusive Discounts

Prime Exclusive Discounts also carry a lot of visibility (strikethrough price and % off for Prime members on the product page and in search) and are far more flexible than deals.

1. In Prime Exclusive Discounts, choose the Black Friday or Cyber Monday event. The dates lock to the event window. You can also set custom dates.
2. Choose the discount type:
   • Price discount: the shopper sees "was $25, now $20."
   • Percentage off: the shopper sees "20% off."
3. Fill in the internal description, which is only for you to identify the promotion (e.g., "BF26 – pet line") and isn't shown to shoppers.
4. Add products by SKU or ASIN. For many products, use the bulk upload option.
5. Review the price shown for each product and submit.

If a product shows a minimum price error on this screen, see the errors section. The fix takes a minute in inventory.

Creating coupons

A coupon shows up in three ways: on the Amazon Coupons page ("Save $10.00 with coupon"), as a coupon badge on the product page that the shopper has to clip, and as a discount applied at checkout.

1. Search for and add the products by name, ASIN or SKU, and click Continue.
2. Remember that a coupon has a single discount. To give 5% on one group and 10% on another, create separate coupons.

Steps 6 to 11 of the coupon form. Dates and amounts are examples.

The budget isn't a charge, it's a cap

This field causes more confusion than any other and is usually set too low. The budget isn't charged to your card. It's a planning cap that covers the discount given plus redemption fees. The promotion is deactivated when it reaches about 80% of the amount you set.

Example: a $500 product with a coupon and a $500 budget. The coupon shuts off at the first redemption. With a $1,000 budget, it shuts off at the second. For Black Friday, size the budget by your price point and the volume you expect to sell during the event. High-priced products may need $5,000 to $15,000. For low-priced products, $500 to $1,000 is often enough.

The title is shown to shoppers

The coupon is displayed as "Save 12% on [your title]", and the start of the phrase is fixed. Write only the product group, short and not in all caps. Use "Wet Cat Food Pouches," not "Coupon on wet cat food pouches," which would become "Save 12% on Coupon on wet cat food pouches."

Stackable promotions

With stacking turned on, the coupon can combine with a Percentage Off or Buy One Get One promotion running at the same time. Without stacking, the shopper gets only one of them. Before turning it on, run the margin math with both discounts combined.

Review and submit. The confirmation screen has shortcuts to Create another coupon and to the Coupons dashboard.

Creating Percentage Off promotions (with tiers)

For the shopper, it works like a coupon without the clip: a "Promotion" message appears on the product page and the discount applies in the cart. The advantage is that you can apply it to the whole catalog and build tiers. You'll find it under Promotions → Create a promotion → Percentage Off → Create.

Example ladder: buy 2 and get 10% off; buy 3 and get 15% off.

1. Buyer purchases: the condition (minimum amount in $, minimum quantity of items, or any purchase).
2. Purchased items: ASIN list, SKU list or the entire catalog.
3. Buyer gets: the percentage.
4. Applies to: the purchased items themselves or an additional item.
5. Budget: same cap logic as the coupon.
6. Tiers: build your discount ladder.
7. Step 2: dates, promotion title (shown to shoppers) and internal description (only for you).
8. Promo code: don't use one on Black Friday. A code limits the discount to shoppers who know it. Keep it open to all customers.
9. Decide on stacking, review and submit.

Buy One Get One (BOGO) promotions are created in the same Promotions area and follow the same steps.

Monitoring your promotions

After you submit, each promotion (deals, coupons, discounts) shows up on its dashboard in Seller Central, with status, schedule, terms and performance (sales, units, spend). A promotion usually starts as Upcoming. If there's a problem, the status changes to an error and the row shows the reason: SKU, inventory, minimum price or a price above what's required.

Check this screen every day during November. Deals change and can drop off in the middle of the event.

The mistakes that take promotions down

1. Minimum price error

Cause: the minimum price set in the SKU's inventory (the Minimum price field) is higher than the promotion price. Example: the deal runs at $29.99, but the minimum price is set to $39.99. The system blocks the promotion.

Fix: Inventory → Manage All Inventory, search for the ASIN and set the minimum price to a value equal to or below the promotion price (in the example, $29.99).

2. Reference price error

Amazon calculates a reference price from recent selling prices and uses it to measure the discount. The error happens when the product is too new (not enough sales or reviews) or when pricing is missing in inventory.

Fix: make sure the product has a valid, regular selling price in inventory — your normal market price, neither raised nor lowered. Inflating the price right before the event is the fastest way to get the promotion rejected.

3. A promotion option doesn't show up

It's a user permission. Sign in with the primary account user, go to Settings → User Permissions and grant access to whoever creates the promotions, or the user can request access from the permission request button.

4. A coupon that "disappeared" mid-event

Almost always it's the budget: the promotion reached about 80% of the amount and was deactivated. Increase the budget on the coupons dashboard. Next time, start higher.

Final Black Friday checklist

• ☐ Inventory in FBA or in transit well before the event (check the inbound deadlines in Seller Central).
• ☐ Minimum price and regular price checked in inventory for every event ASIN.
• ☐ Margin calculated at the deal price, including referral fees, FBA, deal fee, taxes and product cost.
• ☐ Deals (Best Deal/Lightning Deal) submitted through the event before the deadline.
• ☐ Prime Exclusive Discounts for ASINs that can't handle the deal price.
• ☐ Coupons with a short title, a generous budget and a stacking decision made.
• ☐ Percentage Off with tiers to lift order value, without a promo code.
• ☐ Recommended deals and any Amazon-funded offers checked (they appear and expire within a few days).
• ☐ Ads pointing to the promoted ASINs, with a bigger budget during peak week.
• ☐ Promotion dashboards checked every day in November.

How EcomVision helps

The form is the easy part. The hard part is knowing how far each ASIN can drop its price without losing money and how much to send to FBA in time. The Black Friday Plan calculates how much to send and by when, and splits your ad budget across the phases of the event. Net Profit and Margin shows the real result per ASIN (product cost, referral fees, FBA and taxes), and the Promotions and Coupons view tracks the cost and sales of each promotion during the event.

Sources

• Amazon Seller University
• Amazon "Promotions and Events" seller training (October 2026), consolidated and rewritten by the EcomVision team.