Black Friday 2.0—the Cyber Monday Phenomenon

Forget waking up at 2am to get in line at Best Buy; or ending Thanksgiving dinner early to get to Victoria’s Secret at 9pm… All you have to do is turn on your mobile device or tablet and shop from the comfort of home.

The tradition of Black Friday shopping has now been officially replaced with the relatively new phenomenon that will continue to grow—Cyber Monday.  Black Friday retail sales last year declined for the first time in more than a decade!  This decline is in part due to more retailers opening on Thursday evening, according to analysts at the Piper Jaffray & Co investment banking company.  It used to be that stores would save their best discounts on popular toys, tech gadgets, TV’s and fashion for the day after Thanksgiving; when shoppers would pull out their newspaper marketing inserts, circle the items they want, cut out coupons and head out at the crack of dawn determined to get their hands on the year’s most intangible items.  But with online rivals aggressively trying to get a step ahead of the annual shopping frenzy tradition by offering deals on Thanksgiving Day or earlier, the Black Friday tradition is now a remembered past time.  And on November 5^th, 2005, the beast that stole Black Friday made its debut—never looking back and changing the way we all shop forever…Cyber Monday has made it clear it is here to stay!

Cyber Monday set new records this year, with numerous researchers proclaiming it to be the biggest e-commerce spending day in US history.  Data (from comScore* December 3^rd, 2013 Insights press release) indicates that retail e-commerce spending from desktop computers ALONE totaled $1.735 billion, representing the biggest single-day total yet by comScore’s tabulations!

Some more highlights from Cyber Monday include:

• Social media referrals led to $150 million in revenues from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, reports Adobe.  They also note that Twitter referrals have increased by 24% since last year; with Pinterest growing 17% and Facebook growing 12%–all solid growth.

• The top gaining product categories (in no particular order), per comScore, for the Cyber Monday period were: consumer electronics; video game consoles and accessories; home and garden; apparel and accessories; and sport and fitness.

• One out of three female shoppers say they are influenced by offers on Facebook, per Ampush, a Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer.  Ampush also notes, Facebook is the most influential online platform when it comes to purchases of baby products.

So what does all of this growth with Cyber Monday mean to you?  It’s very simple, start growing your digital marketing presence and influence TODAY for next year’s Cyber Monday extravaganza!  How effortless and obtainable is it to create a social media account for your company brand?!  Building your social media presence is the first step towards creating a permanent place for you in the Cyber Monday phenomenon.  Digital marketing is not only affordable to any business, no matter their size, but buyers are more mobile now than ever.  Microsoft has been quoted saying that mobile internet usage will overtake desktop internet usage by 2014.  Many consumers use their social media constantly, looking for updates and/or information to share.  So build a good social media following, and then let your digital supporters and customers do the heavy lifting.  One way to not only build brand awareness, but customer loyalty and lead generation, is to give your digital supporters a unique deal to share to their friends and a benefit of engaging with your business.  An example would be to create a custom hashtag, and have your Twitter followers retweet the hashtag in order to gain access to an extra special discount or deal.

The last thing to note and remember, as you prepare for Cyber Monday 2014, is that customers are looking for the best deals.  This is why they will stand in line at a major store for 12+ hours for that new gaming system.  Shoppers want to feel like they got the best deal and most bang for their buck!  So you need to do more than engage consumers to your brand—you need to create a shopping experience so special and unique, shoppers feel like they made out with the best deal of the day.  To accomplish this reaction, which will only lead to revenue and not lost money, you need to get creative—offer and position the deal in a unique way that the consumer knows it is one of a kind and can’t be found anywhere else.

Look at the premium content below if you would still rather stand in the cold for hours, versus shopping online in your warm cozy bed next holiday season…