12 Ways to Compete With Big Retailers on Cyber Monday 2019

Cyber Monday, an idea conceived by Shop.org in 2005, encourages consumers to shop online also helps online retailers generate earnings. E-commerce retailers lure shoppers by offering appealing cost discounts and enticing deals and packages on this particular day. It is celebrated on the Monday following Thanksgiving.

This year, Cyber Monday drops on November 27, 2017 and will be expected to be the largest shopping day of this year, exceeding Black Friday in sales revenue.

Revenue Trends for Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday earnings continue to grow year after year. More people wish to avoid crowds, and want to shop online. In addition, Thanksgiving weekend is the time when many people traveling. Cyber Monday gives travelers the advantage of doing their holiday shopping and receiving great discounts without seeing a brick and mortar store.

Every year because 2009, Cyber Monday earnings (which includes purchases on cellular devices) have been rising, as the chart below shows:

What Consumers Buy on Cyber Monday

Widespread support is just one of the reasons why Cyber Monday sales continues to grow. A 2016 Perk report shown that nearly 6 out of 10 consumers plan to shop on Cyber Monday.  It outpaced Black Friday, when only 5 out of 10 consumers plan to store.

The report also showed that the most in demand merchandise categories. While the study was created for Cyber Monday last year, the information gives small business owners tips on which items to include within their holiday inventory this year:

Apparel, consumer electronics, and home products were some of the most wanted items on Cyber Monday in 2016. Small business owners should take note of these categories and think about building packages and deals around them.

12 Ways Small Businesses Can Crush It This Cyber Monday

In 2017, a little e-commerce firm can compete with big box retailers. It is not about just how much money you spend. It is about just how you invest your money and how you appeal to clients who are searching for your services and products.

Here are 12 ways to get the maximum from Cyber Monday this year:

1. Come Up With The Most Popular Offers & Deals

Large retailers will probably be coming out with big reductions and enticing deals on Cyber Monday. As a small retailer, you can stick out by featuring unique products and best sellers. Focus on these items, and come up with offers and packages to attract customers. Here are a few popular Cyber Monday offers:

• Buy one get one free offer
• Discounts on best selling things
• Average order reduction ($10 off purchase of $150 and over )
• Freebies
• Free shipping brink (Free delivery on $200+ buy )
• Discount coupons on next purchase

Putting together excellent deals and packages is a good first step. In addition, you need to rev it up in terms of boosting your visibility and enhancing user experience.

2. Step Up Your Advertising

Once you produce awesome deals, the next step is to get the word out on the road. Invest in paid ads, and tap the online marketing avenues mentioned below. We’ve Got complete guides on many of these things that can help you maximize your Cyber Monday effort:

• Email Marketing
• Facebook Advertising
• Instagram Advertising
• Advertise on Google
• YouTube Advertising

A significant portion of your own Cyber Monday traffic and earnings will come from mobile devices. In 2016, cellular devices accounted for $1 billion in earnings, up from $782 million in 2015. Make it a point to optimize your website for mobile users, or you may miss out on serious gains. The very last thing you want on Cyber Monday is to allow users to abandon their carts just since the checkout method isn’t mobile optimized.

3. Use Email Marketing Together With Search Advertisements

For Cyber Monday 2017, combining search ads with email marketing can help give you the greatest returns, especially in the Event That You run your campaign weeks before the big day.   The National Retail Federation found that in 2016, a third of vacation weekend customers made purchases as they were driven by promotions. When you market your products just before the holidays, it is difficult to stand out from your competitors. Your customer’s inbox will most probably be popping with dozens of promos and deals on the times leading to Cyber Monday.

Instead, build anticipation in both lookup advertisements and email advertising. You can do this several weeks ahead of the event. Offer a peek of your upcoming packages and deals to generate excitement. More to the point, a sneak peek allows customers to take note of your offers. On Cyber Monday, you might not have to exponentially improve your advertisement spend because shoppers are already coming to you.

4. Purchase SEO

You can have the most amazing site and bargains, but if no one sees them, you are likely to miss out on Cyber Monday. This is where Search Engine Optimization (search engine optimization ) comes in. Even though SEO and paid ads are usually seen as mutually exclusive, both approaches can actually work well together, especially in circumstances when there’s a considerable uptick in demand like Cyber Monday.

To increase your visibility using SEO, you have to learn what customers are searching for. Keyword research enables you to observe how people are searching for products and services on Google (e.g. are more people searching for’virtual reality headset’ or’vr headset’?) , which means it is possible to optimize your site and ecommerce stock for those keywords.

Stop by Google AdWords, also use the Keyword Planning tool to search for keywords. Enter your product or service and click ‘get ideas’. Then click the key word ideas tab to determine typical monthly searches for your product or service. AdWords also supplies key words by value so you want to choose the ones that post higher searches.

5. Get Online Reviews

Online reviews help build trust among consumers. Additionally, they assist shoppers know what makes your product or service stick out from the competition. A BrightLocal study shows that 9 out of 10 customers read product reviews before making a buying decision. You require genuine reviews to help convince your customers that what you’re selling is worth their money, whether they are buying something for themselves or a present for somebody else.

Here are a few tips to get reviews:

• Offer an incentive in the shape of loyalty points or discount vouchers to current customers who write reviews. Adagio Teas rewards customers with five loyalty points for each review written and it has helped them generate hundreds of reviews per item.
• You can also supply raffle entrances to clients who leave product reviews. Prizes may include gift certificates or best-selling things in your shop to convince shoppers to write an overview
• Ask walk-in clients for reviews. If you provide good customer service, you’d be astonished how many happy clients will write a review for you.

6. Get Focused on YouTube

Video product reviews are gaining popularity. A Google investigation  reveals that holiday shoppers turned to YouTube stars such as the Kid President to find gift ideas. Some of these videos rack up countless perspectives. As a small business owner, you want to present your best selling products a chance to be showcased by those influencers.

You may contact video writers on YouTube and make them review your merchandise. You would like to reach out to bloggers who get high view counts and possess a sizeable following. Their contact details are often found on the hyperlinks to their site or at the end of the video. What is better is that you could even ask them to make a link to a product page within their description. If your merchandise becomes showcased, you have a massive chance to be seen by millions of viewers.

7. Give Multiple Payment Options

Many people don’t feel comfortable entering sensitive credit card information in sites that they’ve never encountered before, especially if the site isn’t secure. A research  discovered that 65.8 of internet shoppers will only shop on websites that provide PayPal as a payment option. Adding PayPal as an alternative payment option can relieve customer concerns about safety and help enhance the odds of making a sale.

8. Streamline Checkout

If your customer is ready to cover, follow these suggestions to prevent shopping cart abandonment:

• Reduce the observable navigation options on checkout. Eliminate headers, footers, and sidebars to eliminate distractions while diminishing loading time and encouraging shoppers to proceed forward.
• Offer express or guest checkout so shoppers do not need to register with a username and password.
• Contain a progress bar when you have a multi-page checkout procedure. You want to show shoppers their progress so that they won’t become frustrated and abandon their carts.
• Clearly show closing cost before checkout. Be transparent and provide a synopsis of total costs including transport, taxes, and penalties. Otherwise, shoppers will probably abandon the buy.

Together with the typical online shopping abandonment rate standing at 69.23 percent, streamlining the checkout experience lessens the probability that customers will drop out before the end of the trade.

9. Migrate Your Ecommerce Site to Https://

Google began marking a number of http:// webpages  as not-secure back in January of the year. The activity created an impact on pages which take or send sensitive customer information, including emails, credit card data, and login info. Starting in October 2017, Google intends to ramp up its effort against not-secure websites. All http:// pages which require users to input any info will be supplied a”not protected” tag in Chrome.

Https:// is the upgraded version of HTTP that provides more security.   With HTTPS, you’ve got greater defense against hackers. Small business owners should migrate to HTTPS now in preparation for the holiday season. Clients might back out and shop on a competing website should they see the’not secure’ label on Chrome. You may start the process by purchasing an SSL Certificate from the hosting supplier .

10. Acknowledge that the Growth of Google Shopping

Google Shopping enables small companies to compete with big box retailers. Sellers can upload their items on Google’s Merchant Center and create a effort on AdWords.

This will help Google match your things using a client search query. Let us say that the consumer searches for”shoes”. The combination of an AdWords campaign and Google Merchant puts merchandise related to sneakers at the top of the screen.

That is huge for small companies as it levels the playing area. Significant box providers can rely on their own brand name and press advertising to increase visibility. With Google Shopping, small retailers can receive their products displayed with a picture and short description before the first Google search result.

In terms of earnings, Google Shopping proves to be a rewarding investment.   According to Google Shopping Cyber Monday Report, total return on advertising spend almost doubled and gross revenue during 2016’s Cyber Monday climbed by 105 percent in comparison to 2015’s performance.

11. Prepare for Voice-Enabled Shopping

For Cyber Monday this year, you might want to think about catering your advertisements into voice-enabled shoppers. According to the recently published Salesforce Connected Shoppers Report, 40 percent of millennials (age 18 — 36) use voice-enabled assistants like Google Home and Amazon Echo to research products before purchasing online. Additionally, a Report Linker online survey shows that almost 1 out of 5 users polled use voice assistant devices to create shopping lists. Those who attend this segment could capture a significant portion of the holiday buying market.

To get ready for this new fad, you need to first know that people use different vocabulary when writing and talking. For instance, a shopper can write”PS4 Guru” in the search box, however, the exact same person may request the helper,”Where do I get the very best gaming console?” Those using voice-assistants tend to talk in a conversational manner for their devices. Hence, you need to put together content and advertising efforts to adapt this new search vocabulary.

To begin, you can use services that offer free keyword suggestions such as Ubersuggest to seek out applicable keywords. What you need to capture are tail keywords which are somehow like conversational language. Using”the best gaming console” keywords for instance, here are some interesting hints:

When shoppers use voice supporters to perform product research, you have a higher probability of ranking utilizing long tail keywords.

Also, the of use voice assistants fits well with our suggestion above on deploying advertisements weeks before the holiday season. When shoppers are curious about your promotions, they will probably tell their voice-enabled apparatus to save your promotion to be retrieved later.

12. Consider Offering Deals All Of Holiday Weekend

Although much of what was dealt with in this article prepares you for Cyber Monday, there’s no reason why you can not use these strategies on Black Friday and Small Business Saturday. Black Friday used to be dominated by physical shops, but that changed this past year after 10 million more Americans shopped online than in shops.

If you choose to provide deals all holiday weekend, think about changing up your offer for different days. As an instance, you may want to focus on your best-selling items to kick off the holiday on Friday, then mix it up and come up with various bargains for Saturday and Sunday based on newer products. In the end, you can market another line of products with fascinating offers on Cyber Monday. Or, you provide wide across the board discounts on Monday to finish your vacation season sales on a high note. With this approach, you are able to rotate items in your inventory and probably sell most of them, if not all.

Bottom Line on Cyber Monday 2017

Cyber Monday has been see record highs concerning sales each year. It is likely to be the biggest shopping day this season.   As more individuals avoid crowds and shop from the comfort of their homes, Cyber Monday turns out to be a shopping tradition where small ecommerce companies have the opportunity to compete with large retailers on equal footing.

Have you got other Cyber Monday insights? Share them in the comments below!