Articles in The 'cyber-monday' Tag

Black Friday and Cyber Monday – How Will You Compete?

by Marni Weinberg

Both online retailers and shoppers wait with great anticipation for these sacred two days to roll around, and for very good reason; Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of the biggest online shopping days of the year and as a retailer, you do not want to disappoint!  On the flip side, as a shopper, you do not want to be disappointed! The expectations are huge. What kind of promotions have you got up your sleeve? How will you compete with all of the retailers who will be aggressively marketing their websites? The answer is really simple: By advertising offers that are too good to pass up! Below are just a few of the most popular tried and true offers that statistically perform well year after year.

HINT: Be sure to include coupon codes in your ad copy. They work wonders in terms of tracking which ads/offers performed best.

Exclusive Time Sensitive Promos. Sort of like an “early bird gets the worm” deal. For example: 6 am to noon special savings. Most retailers make these the biggest offers of the day. Be sure to specify time zones.

Free Shipping. This one is a biggie, perhaps the biggest and shoppers have come to expect it. If you do not offer it year round you should definitely do so for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Sales will likely be lost otherwise.

Site Wide Discounts. Also a big one and very common. It gives your shoppers the freedom to purchase whatever they want and receive a nice savings.

Free Gift with Purchase. A great incentive – especially around the holidays. Shoppers are getting another gift they can either keep for themselves (if they are greedy, ha ha) or give to someone else.

Free Gift Wrap. Shoppers love this. Gift wrapping can be tedious and cumbersome and many wait until the night before to get it all done. This way — they get their gift shipped and wrapped. What could be better?

Take advantage of these two huge shopping days and capitalize on the increase in traffic and sales. Happy Holidays!

Only Four Months Until Holiday Season – Are Your SEM Campaigns Ready?

by Anne Garcia

While it seems like summer is still in full swing and fall is still around the corner, the holiday season will be here sooner than you realize it. Before the fall weeks quickly fly by, it would be ideal to take time now to plan for the upcoming online holiday shopping season.  Here are some recommendations on how to successfully plan your search engine marketing (SEM) campaigns.

• Check past campaign performance.  Do some research and see what keywords, ads and landing pages lead to the most amount of conversions. Additionally, what could have performed better? Taking the time to analyze your 2010 holiday campaigns will help you pinpoint the parts of your campaigns that need to be optimized and what you can re-use for this holiday season.
• Budget your advertising spend. Does your product or service have a long purchase cycle? If so, you may want to maintain a steady budget throughout November and December. If not, you may want to ramp up your budget early-on, when customers begin their shopping expeditions.
• Plan your Promotions Now. Do you plan on offering varied discounts throughout the online shopping season or will your promotions stay the same from when the holiday shopping season kicks off on Black Friday? 
• Target Different Devices. With the emergence of smartphones and tablets, more and more shoppers are using these new devices to shop and conduct price comparisons. Plus, these shoppers can be physically in front of a product and still do price comparison shopping.  SEM campaigns now have the ability to target different devices. You can optimize your campaigns for desktop, mobile and even tablet devices.
• Create Landing Pages Now. After putting in all of the time and planning into your holiday SEM campaigns, you would not want all that effort to go to waste if your online visitors land on a less-than-optimal landing page. Design your landing pages with a holiday theme and make sure that your promotions are clearly spelled out.

Positive Outlook for Online Retailers

by Emily MacNair

In 2005, the Monday after Thanksgiving was named Cyber Monday by the National Retail Federation trade group to kick off the Holiday shopping season. The idea behind this was that shoppers will visit stores over the Thanksgiving weekend, and then on Monday when they return to work, they will shop online for additional deals.

This year, there was no doubt that online retailers made great efforts to attract customers to their websites. Extraordinary discounts were promoted leading up to and throughout Cyber Monday. Through the numbers, it seems as though many retailers’ efforts have paid off.  Sales were up 19.4% this Cyber Monday, reported by Coremetrics.  In addition, the average order value on Cyber Monday was $194.89, higher than last year’s average of $180.03. In particular, luxury goods retailers in particular saw a significant increase in sales this year.

Although Black Friday and Cyber Monday typically are the two most well-known shopping days of the year, Thanksgiving Day was pretty successful as well. comScore reported that on Thanksgiving Day online holiday spending rose 28% percent to $407 million this year.  

Many retailers are not only focusing on email and paid search efforts to promote their deals. Social media is playing a much larger role than it has in the past this holiday season.  Large brands such as Amazon, Sports Authority’s and Sears are using social media to promote deals.  Facebook and Twitter in particular offer great opportunities to reach shoppers as they are spending time within their channel of choice.  As shoppers seem to be willing to spend a bit more this year, it would be advantageous to look to social media as another avenue to reach customers.