Unlike Black Friday’s in-store chaos, Cyber Monday let’s you enjoy your shopping experience without the crushing crowds of Black Friday. Without the hustle and bustle of the in-store experience, many consumers prefer Cyber Monday.
In 2017, Cyber Monday hit a whopping total of $6.59 billion in online sales marking a 16.8 percent increase in comparison to 2016. This officially made Cyber Monday the biggest online shopping day in U.S. history. If that’s not impressive enough, sales completed from a mobile device marked a record high $2 billion.
So if you’re ready to dominate your industry on Cyber Monday, we have several ideas to help you elevate your brand’s voice to drive sales. Before you organize a marketing strategy, you need to get the fundamentals down first. Here’s what you need to optimize ahead of the holidays:
Cyber Monday Digital Checklist
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Get started on Google Ads. CM costs are lower and by getting started early you’ll have a competitive advantage when driving sales.
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Ensure your site works seamlessly and is able to handle a traffic surge on both desktop and mobile devices
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Test out your email campaigns to be confident they’ll flow smoothly
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Plan ahead on your social media content to promote your offers
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Consider designing a landing page for your promotions and lead capture pages
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Give your customers what they care about
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Integrate live chat support
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Track everything including site activity, ad performance and social campaign responses
Once all of these items are checked off your list, it’s time to generate excitement. But how do you grab the attention of today’s consumers? Especially when discounts alone are not as enticing as they used to be? Here’s how:
1. Create Special Interest Gift Guides For Your Email Marketing
Make it easy for your customers to pick gifts for friends and family. One way to do this is by making a series of gift guides for your target audience’s niches. So if you have an online store selling fashion apparel, you might include guides like “Styles for”:
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“The Chic Minimalistâ€
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“The Bold Print Loverâ€
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“Under $25â€
So, you can tease this in your mail marketing or create a landing page with the guides for easy shopping. This ensures a nearly effortless shopping experience that will boost your conversion rate. Generally, the least amount of clicks the user has to make, the likelier they are to stay on your site and possibly purchase.
2. Get Creative With Offering Discounts
Chubbies, a clothing brand, created an offer with a new gift every hour. Their signature shorts give your thighs some wiggle room, so they renamed their campaign to “thighber Monday.†With every hour that passed, one offer ended and another one began. Also, using flash sales helps create a greater sense of urgency to purchase before time is up.
3. Use Social Media Influencers To Promote Your Offers
Put a face to your brand to drive engagement, emphasize authenticity and possibly boost sales. Having an influencer take over your most high-traffic social platform for the day while showcasing merchandise can help drive even more sales from social media. Have your best influencers compile their favorite products from your brand. Then, market their list as a gift guide that your followers can use.
4. Drive Awareness To A Cause
In today’s world, consumers are hyper-aware of how their actions affect the world. If your brand is connected to a cause, it’s essential to use this as an opportunity to drive sales and also awareness to important causes. Consider donating a profit percentage to a charity or implementing a one-for-one special like TOMS where they donate a pair of shoes to people in need. Your customers will end up happy with their purchase and happy that they’ve done a good deed.
5. Host A Virtual Event Like MeUndies
Complete with a DJ and dance contests, underwear company, MeUndies, ran a late afternoon two-hour event on Facebook live. The live event amassed over 13,000 viewers. As more people would join, MeUndies would unlock larger discounts every time. This resulted in a 25 percent conversion rate. The rate was 13 times higher than the average rate for MeUndies’ Facebook shop.
Planning a live event can be difficult and it’s normal to expect a few hiccups with the broadcast. While scripting out some of the key moments of the event can be time-consuming, it will aid with successful delivery. Not many big brands broadcast live because they often don’t tolerate imperfections that come with it. This gives smaller & leaner businesses a competitive advantage to be seen and leverage the power of organic marketing.
Into the Blue can help you to build powerful campaigns for any goal your business has. Let us do the work to elevate your brand, email [email protected].
