Holiday Confessions of an eCommerce Marketing Junkie

Andy Splichal  0:00  

Welcome to Make Each Click Count podcast. This is your host, Andy Splichal. And today's show topic is holiday Confessions of an E commerce marketing junkie. In today's episode, we're going to take a look at some numbers from last week's Black Friday Cyber Monday totals as well. And even more importantly, we're going to discuss some ideas to help increase your sales and profits through the rest of the holiday shopping season. Now before I begin today's topic, I wanted to point out a couple of things. Today is Make Each Click Count's 26th podcast episode and it is the end of season one. Our show will be on a short hiatus next few weeks. And we'll be back in early January with an all new season two, filled with new guests and new insights. It is sure to be bigger and better than ever. So make sure you tune in and join us. Okay, now back to the show, so to speak. So unless you've been living under a rock, you're probably quite aware that last week was Black Friday, and earlier this week was Cyber Monday. The experts whoever they are, had been forecasting some huge numbers and what to expect in terms of online shopping and it appears that the overall sales numbers have been through the roof. According to CNBC, online shopping during Black Friday increased a whopping 21.6% from last year, and came in a total of over $9 billion. This while shopping in store the day after Thanksgiving plummeted a staggering 52% less than last year. It's no surprise, right. With COVID-19. spiking, it makes sense that people would be staying put and shopping on their computers, their tablets, their iPhones this Black Friday. But what about cyber Monday? You know that traditional online shopping day?

Well, according to Google, Adobe analytics starring the numbers just came in consumer spent $10.8 billion on Monday, this number was spied all the early discounts with some online retailers beginning their Black Friday sales as early as the first week of November. The $10.8 billion is a new one day record for online purchases, surpassing the record previously set 2019 Cyber Monday. And although a new record, this number is on the low spectrum of what some predicted could be as high as 12 and a half billion. It's good news, bad news. Bad news is maybe consumers are not going to spend as much as predicted this holiday season. But I'm a half glass full type of guy. So what I'm going to think is is good news is there is much more holiday purchases to make. Maybe being at home and shopping online is actually going to be pushed even closer to the holidays than normal. Who knows? But either way, the 10 point 8 billion is a new one day record, which will stand at least until Cyber Monday 2021. Okay, so these numbers, they're all fun to look at and they give us and the online shopping business, a great sense of positivity since we're on to e commerce, but for those individual ecommerce businesses, these numbers don't really mean that much. What really is important is how did your business do? And what can you do to garner even more sales through the rest of the holiday shopping season? Now, well, some things like Black Friday and Cyber Monday specials are as finished is those Thanksgiving turkey leftovers. There are still actions you can take as well as lessons you can learn from the past week. These lessons can be used throughout the rest of 2020 as well into next year. First, let's look at what you might have learned from last week and how we can use that knowledge moving forward. First step is to make sure you are tracking specific results. If you're using email, what specific Black Friday email subject lines had the highest open rates, you track it. Did you run different sales for Black Friday or Cyber Monday? Which promotion was the most successful? Track it. If you only ran one promotion and combined Black Friday and Cyber Monday's is some stores do that. Compare that data to past years? How are your promotions comparing the last year or even 2018? Track it. Take the look and document what were your top 10 selling products through Black Friday weekend track it. Review your website traffic. Where was most of your traffic coming from this will show you how users are finding your products. How does this compare to last year track it? Review what device users are coming from? Is it mobile users versus desktop users or tablet users what percentage is driving your traffic? This will allow you to see how users are interacting with your website. And you guessed it, you should track it. Google Analytics is a terrific way to discover all of this data. And if you do not have Google Analytics properly installed, then shame shame, shame. You need this data to make effective marketing as well as inventory decisions now and moving forward into next year. If you don't have Google Analytics installed, do it and do it now. Well do it that 10 minutes after the show, but make sure that you have Google Analytics installed. So you have this data moving forward. If you do have Google Analytics installed, great. Make sure you're using the data. Have you found that more of your traffic is coming from one medium and a higher percentage than prior years? Example maybe you're receiving more traffic and sales from Google Shopping than you did last year. Great. If it is just as profitable as last year, consider increasing your bids. Maybe you're receiving traffic from a new Facebook campaign that you were testing this year, well, great. If it is profitable, consider expanding your campaigns and increasing your budget. Maybe you're receiving more traffic from email campaigns, since people are at home opening more emails will awesome. send more emails, the point is is know your data, what has worked over the last week, and then do more of it. It sounds simple, but you would be surprised of how many business owners do not do this. Instead, a common thought is man, I am so busy now, fulfilling orders, ordering inventory, answering calls. I will take a look at all that data. I'm collecting it and I'll look at all those numbers in January when the holiday crushes subsided. And if that is your plan, you may be no scratch that you will be doing yourself a huge disservice, as it would be too late to capitalize this year on valuable data. Concerning your website. If you don't look at it until January. Not the overall numbers we spoke about either but your numbers, what matters to you. There's a ton of data that you can reveal to increase your sales over the coming weeks. Maybe you're seeing conversion rates substantially higher or lower on mobile devices. If they are higher great, you may want to increase your paid ads for mobile bidding with Google or Bing. Instead, maybe you reveal the mobile conversion rates are lower. Well, you might want to decrease your bids or take a look and see if there's an issue with your website or your mobile for mobile. Place an order on mobile interact with your mobile website like you were a potential buyer. This will help reveal any roadblocks in the purchase process and will be very valuable if you uncover any problems. Again, my point is this. There is a ton of data and it is vital if you want to maximize your sales to evaluate that data in real time. Second, there is still time to implement new action items to help you generate more sales. Having a good start your holiday season even or having a bad start to your holiday shopping season.

Your marketing is not set in stone either way your dye is not already cast, there are still three weeks a prime holiday shopping time left. Take a look at adding a new marketing channel. If you are not using Google Shopping, consider testing. Google Shopping ads with some of your best sellers. Not using Facebook, consider using Facebook to run some ads. This is the time of year to advertise because this is the time of year where your conversion rates will likely be at their highest and you will have enough data to be able to properly evaluate what works and what is not. Data that you could use for the rest of the 2020 Holidays well in to 2021. Another often overlooked way to effectively reach customers through retargeting ads. retargeting ads are ads you served users who leave your website and did not purchase. From my private clients I use Google to serve dynamic retargeting ads. These type of ads serve ads that contain the exact product that a user was looking at on a website, but did not purchase. In addition, Google has the ability to create different audiences. In order to segment campaigns and bid differently across based on how far along the conversion funnel a user may be. For example, you can bid more for user who visited your shopping cart and did not buy then for those users who merely spent a few seconds on a product page. Retargeting. The least effective retargeting seems to be overlooked by many. And that is why I have been working on a new book, Make each click count using retargeting to reach the 97% that don't immediately buy this new book. It's going to be available in early 2021. But it is available for pre order right now when you visit www.makeeachclickcount.com. Now you may be saying Andy, this sounds great, but I need help during the holiday season. Now, I understand. Now if you are currently using Google for your remarketing and I have a great tip on a pre release of my book, so to speak, I just released a chapter from the book for free on my blog blog dot true online presence calm. This chapter is named frequency controlling how often your Google retargeting ads are shown. Now details on how to increase your frequency of the retargeting ads as a subject of the article. Frequency is a term of retargeting means how many times an ad will be eligible to appear to an eligible user, and you can absolutely control the frequency. In fact, right now, I highly recommend increasing the frequency for users far along in your conversion funnel, because you know what everyone is looking to purchase. Now if you are currently using retargeting, check it out. It's a free article, and will most likely help you increase your conversions in the next few weeks without the need waiting for my book to release. Look, here's the bottom line. What I want you to take away from the show today, in order to make the next few weeks is profitable as possible. I want you to review your data over the last week, see what is working in terms of marketing, and in terms of product sales, and do what you can to increased traffic to profitable products. Whether that is increasing paid ads, increasing emails, it doesn't matter. If it has been working right now then right now is the time to do more of it. This holiday season is something we may never see again a season where not only is it more convenient to shop from home, that's always been the case. But where quite a few people are hesitant to even leave their home due to their safety. Given that is what happening it is our duty your duty to make sure you are able to serve as those potential customers. So go do it. That's it for today. And that's it for season one and Make Each Click Count the podcast. I will be back in January. Good luck with the holidays and quick reminder that if you liked this episode, please go to Apple podcasts and leave a five star review. And if you are looking for more information on how to successfully optimize your Google Shopping before or after the holidays, pick up a copy of my award winning book make each click count using Google Shopping. Or my soon to be released book make each click count using retargeting reach 97% That don't immediately buy. Both these books are now available on www.makeeachclickcount.com. In addition, if you have any questions for me, I'm always available within the private Make Each Click Count Facebook group. If you are selling products online, make sure you apply to join this free group as it is an invaluable resource. In the meantime, remember to stay safe, keep healthy and happy marketing and I will talk to you in 2021.