The Holidays are here! Thanksgiving and it’s crazy shopping weekend have now passed – but Brands and Retailers have been planning for the, oh so crucial, Q4 for months. This digital sales season still has much left to leverage.
December’s digital traffic and sales account for more revenue for eCommerce than any quarter of the year. Insane right? It’s almost like the rest of the year is really just marketing for Prime Time.
This stat is incredible, but true!
As a modern consumer, a millennial and Silicon Beach resident who is saving up for an Overpriced House, I taught myself to second-guess purchases, meaning searching for a better deal, postponing a purchase, or simply passing on an “unnecessary” offer.
However, during the Holiday season that philosophy all goes out the window. Between my Girlfriend, her family, my immediate family, my extended family (I have 9 Aunt/Uncles and countless cousins.), business partners, staff, friends and neighbors, I have to buy lots of STUFF.
Do I have to purchase all these gifts? No. Do I have to try and buy thoughtful things my loved ones will actually appreciate? Probably not. Do I look at the Holidays as an opportunity to communicate my care for everyone on this list? Absolutely!
Personally, I believe money spent on the people who inspire, empower, and overall make my life more meaningful, is money better spent than spending it on myself. After all, isn’t that my duty as a good person? Ultimately these funds are a small percentage of income and, hey, there are deals everywhere! I get optimistic and start going down my list, but every year I run out of time and begin buying whatever is in front of me.
Legitimately, if I am in a physical retail store (yeah, goes against all Millennial codes) and I see something remotely acceptable for someone in my life, boom – it is ending up on the check-out counter. If I am online and see a good gift/price and the purchase leaves extra time for shipping arrival, especially if shipping is free, and I can count on the return policy, I am heading to the shopping cart. I cannot buy things fast enough!
As a Marketer, I have seen the best cost per conversion (sale) results year-after-year during this small window of time. It’s not even a question. I see eCommerce stores with an average order value of $60, produce new orders at a $2 cost. We have clients that see $250-$500 orders produce at $5-10 per order on Cyber Monday. The hype is real and if an eCommerce advertiser is seeing good results during the rest of the year – they can significantly scale if they planned properly.
Brands have so many channels and so many vendors to choose from on each digital touchpoint. Where, oh where can more traffic and more sales be found? My answer toward this question is always Test, Optimize, and Scale.
Ideally, testing occurs for months leading up to this intense time of year, but we have many clients who operated outside of that luxury, and they are still seeing strong results. We even took Start-Ups online for the first time this year (past couple weeks) and are seeing great responses from Social, Search, Programmatic Display, Influencers, and Native ads.
As a Brand, we highly recommend scaling your performing channels leading up to Christmas or testing the most promising new digital touch points of your Target Audience by reach, rate, and standard performance benchmarks. Engage these prospective consumers everywhere they go (am I hinting toward retargeting, of course) – as they are spending as we speak.