Gearing up for Holiday Sales

Have you heard of “Cyber Monday”? Boomers are a driving force in comparison shopping engines.

Why is this important? How is social media marketing an essential tool behind holiday gift buying? What type of revenue increase are e-commerce engines estimating within the holiday season? Some interesting questions not to say the least and valuable information for any e commerce owner. I have put together some interesting marketing charts and trend analysis for your viewing pleasure.

The National Retail Federation originally coined the term Cyber Monday for the Monday following Thanksgiving,” said Stuart Larkins, vice president of search for DoubleClick Performics. “This helped the industry understand that, while Black Friday is the biggest offline shopping day of the year, the following Monday brought much greater online sales volume, but they only scratched the surface with this finding. It’s more than just one Monday; it’s a Cyber Monday phenomenon, and the Monday following Thanksgiving tends to pale in comparison to the others that follow.”

Their research went on to say:

• 70 percent of respondents said they search before making any online purchase; 57 percent do so before making any offline purchase
• 64 percent use search engines to find out where to purchase products offline

  Black Friday continues to grow. See graph below:

  

  This is very interesting from a marketing point of view because this helps us drill down to the nano level on where to concentrate our marketing efforts. Obviously heavily front loaded for the weeks to precede Black Friday and Cyber Monday along with shifting budgets and shifting ad displays and focus through the following weeks. As the traffic lowers so can the ad budgeting.

  Boomers are the driving force within the comparison shopping engines. The reason this is important is that boomers are the yber Monday and Black Friday are crucial days within the fiscal year for any retail business. Keeping this in mind, it would be worth hiring an online firm to market your business during these crucial days. Also this season is looking to have a much Hitwise put together some great information worth reading. They talk about the growth rate in e commerce activity over the years and the importance baby boomers have played in this growth.
  Social media is an essential tool for holiday marketing! I’m not just saying this because my company specializes in it. When it comes to holiday shopping it’s all about getting the right people in front of the right advertisement. Of course this seems obvious, but how do you do this cost-effectively and efficiently? I recommend social media marketing. According to marketingcharts.com, here is how social media is being leveraged in order to produce higher results for their clients. See the chart below.
  

  Social media marketing is not just getting you on top of digg.com or putting you on stumbleupon.com. It is also leveraging social sites, like the ones listed above, in many ways, from media buying, brand building and promotions, video marketing, blogging and podcasting. If you are an online OR offline store and you are looking to increase your sales this holiday season be sure to find a company that can implement a hybrid approach for your campaign that involves using social media marketing and you will be sure to find success and a much higher ROI.

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