Holiday internet sales continue to soar as consumers demonstrate their increasing preference to make online purchases. The result: merchants are discovering that Black Friday marketing strategies can be modified and extended throughout the holiday shopping season.
Recent data by leading retail analysts indicates that holiday shoppers are continuing to choose Cyber Monday deal surfing over Black Friday in-store shopping. As consumers continue to show mounting reliance on using their mobile devices and desktops to fill their shopping orders, merchants are learning that they can maximize profits by offering door-busting deals 24/7—even on Thanksgiving Day.
For example, Adobe Digital Index (ADI) reported that online sales were up 25 percent in 2015 from the previous year just on Thanksgiving Day alone. For Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the year over year increases were 14.3 percent and 12 percent respectively. What ADI found was that this translated into the average shopper spending $162 dollars on Thanksgiving, $137 dollars on Black Friday, and $133 dollars on Cyber Monday.
Any Day Can Be Black Friday
The shorter lines in brick-and-mortar stores on Black Friday is not, however, necessarily a harbinger of Cyber Monday replacing the historic shopping day as the champion of the holiday season. Instead, it would appear that it is actually more a victory for the rising importance of digital shopping in general, with perhaps no single day figuring more prominently than another. As one leading industry analyst recently concluded, “The more stores can use data and analytics, the less important any one particular day is.”
Amid the news that Black Friday sales are down this year, retailers are offering more portal-buster bargains for online promotions as the holiday shopping season progresses. With consumers increasingly opting for the convenience of online shopping, merchants can realize lucrative gains by accommodating the expanding appetite of shoppers for virtual buying.
Cyber-Building on a Budget
Once upon a time, it was sufficient for retailers to have a website that merely legitimized the existence and credibility of their business. No longer is this true.
Engaging shoppers in the current marketplace demands that merchants optimize their websites for user-friendliness, search capability and performance. Even for small retailers, missing this key marketing component can mean losing a significant chunk of business.
This is especially true during that critical shopping period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. While every day does not need to offer sweeping Black Friday or Cyber Monday super-deals, small retailers can leverage e-commerce with a variety of promotions.
For instance, offering free shipping during a certain period of time is one approach; or promoting certain items on different days—perhaps combined with free shipping. What small retailers are learning is that the internet is elastic enough to accommodate any size retailer—with or without a budget.
Smart Strategies for Small Retailers
Here are some helpful tips retailers can use to improve their online sales reach:
- Invite shoppers to register on your website. Modern consumers expect to receive digital advertisements about sales. Your website, therefore, needs to offer customers the ability to add their names and email addresses so they can receive sales, promotions and other valuable information from you. Ensuring they receive the information is part of the critical follow-up.
- Have an online shopping cart. Adding an ecommerce shopping cart application to your website has never been easier or more cost effective. Again, this is a staple of business—even for the brick-and-mortar store—that shoppers have come to expect.
- Engage social media. A budget is not required to use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other sites. Determine which networks your customers are most likely to frequent, then start sharing your products and services, using hashtags such as #BOGO (buy-one-get-one free), #StockingStuffers and #Xmas. Learn more about how to use business-boosting hashtags here.
- Use Promotional Posts. What you promote, when to promote, and how to measure your success has never been more simple. You can learn more here about how to successfully, inexpensively and easily use Facebook for enhanced shopper engagement.
- Implement multi-channel selling. Businesses that sell on eBay, Amazon and other online marketplaces in combination with using their website shopping cart have been shown to make 38% more revenue on average. Using two marketplaces can increase revenue by an average 120%.
The Fundamentals Still Apply
Promoting strong customer relationships remains fundamental to any dependable marketing plan. Creating a reliable online presence is vital to nurturing those relationships and fostering customer loyalty, not only during the holidays, but also all year long.
If you are interested in purchasing Fixtures and Displays, shop our website, Specialty Store Services, for all your Retail Store needs. If you have a question that you would like answered immediately, you can Live Chat, or phone us at 800-999-0771.