Black Friday has long been recognized as one of the busiest shopping days of the year, but it’s no longer the only day worth focusing on during the holiday shopping season.
Cyber Monday offers businesses an opportunity to boost their online sales even further. With this in mind, you need to make sure your e-commerce business is ready for Cyber Monday and all of its challenges.
As Black Friday is still a few weeks away, now is the prefect time to start planning your Cyber Monday strategy and making sure that you are prepared for all eventualities.
With plenty of shoppers waiting until this point in the shopping calendar to buy their gifts, getting ready for Cyber Monday is essential if you want your business to have a successful holiday season.
The holiday season is the perfect time for ecommerce merchants to sell more products and make more money. However, this is also one of the busiest times of year for online shoppers, which means they have even less time to shop than usual.
As a result, retailers need to find ways to stand out if they want their sales to be profitable. To succeed in your Cyber Monday sales, you need a strategy that balances between being aggressive and playing it safe.
You also need tactics that are smart, sustainable and scalable so you see returns on your investment again next year and beyond. Here are 18 tips to help you succeed in your Cyber Monday sales:
1. Change up your ad game
As with all marketing campaigns, it’s important to explore all avenues when it comes to your ad game. PPC, social media ads, email campaigns and other forms of paid media can help you boost your sales, especially during the high-pressure season.
For example, you can use PPC ads to target customers based on their location, search history and more. Doing this allows you to ensure your ads are only shown to people who are likely to buy.
Even if you only have a small budget, this can help you get your products in front of the people who need them most. Social media ads can also be a great way to reach new and existing customers.
You can create ads that go straight to your website, or you can use social media as a place to host special sales. This way, you can get your products in front of large audiences without having to pay for advertisements.
2. Create a sense of urgency
One of the best ways to boost sales for your Cyber Monday sales is to create a sense of urgency around certain products. This doesn’t have to be anything drastic, but you can include something in your advertisements that subtly reminds customers they only have a limited time to buy.
For example, you can say that the product is only available for a limited time, or that there are only a certain number of units left in stock. You can also use phrases like “limited time only” or “only until supplies last” in your advertisements.
Whatever way you go about it, a little bit of urgency can go a long way when it comes to boosting sales. And since you aren’t being drastic, customers are less likely to ignore your ads. Even if you don’t see an enormous boost in sales immediately, you’ll still be increasing your overall sales.
3. Leverage email automation
Email automation is one of the best ways to stay in touch with customers throughout the entire year. It’s an excellent way to build relationships with your customers and keep them coming back for more.
However, it’s particularly helpful during the holiday season. You can use various automation strategies to boost your sales and bring in new customers. One common strategy is promoting your best-selling products.
You can do this by creating an automation sequence that sends an email highlighting your best products. This is a great way to bring significant sales to your business and increase your revenue.
You can also create an automation sequence that sends an email to your customers before each sale to remind them about upcoming sales.
4. Feature products with high profit margins
If you want to make the most of your Cyber Monday sales, you need to be careful about which products you highlight. You want to show off the products that are going to make you the most profit, and that may not always be your best sellers.
For example, if you sell outdoor clothing, you may have a fleece jacket with a high sales rank. However, it may only have a profit margin of 25%, while another jacket in your inventory only has a 10% profit margin. In that case, your high-profit-margin product would make a better choice for a featured product.
5. Rotate product ads to show different products
One of the easiest ways to increase your overall sales is to rotate your product ads. Instead of constantly showing the same products, switch them up every few days or every week. This way, customers have new products to look at and new products are more likely to get bought.
Rotation also allows you to feature products that might not otherwise get purchased. Furthermore, by rotating product ads, you’re essentially buying more ads for the same amount of money.
This can significantly increase your overall sales, which can help you make up for the money you spent on ads for the products you initially featured.
6. Add new functionality to your site
Another way to stand out during your Cyber Monday sales is to add new functionality to your site. This can be something as simple as adding a map to your shipping information page to show where items are coming from, or something more advanced like adding a live chat feature.
The key is to identify what your customers want and then come up with a way to give it to them. This is the best way to show customers that you care about their experience and want to make their shopping journey as positive as possible. Doing this can help you retain customers and turn them into repeat customers.
7. Incorporate freemium ad offers
If you don’t have the budget for expensive ads and sales, you can still help boost your sales with freemium ad offers. This is where you give away a free product or service in exchange for an email address.
Doing this allows you to build an email list of potential customers who want to receive your products and services. As a result, it gives you a way to market to your customers and also places you in a position of power.
You can use freemium ad offers in a number of ways, including giving away free shipping, a free product or some type of digital subscription. This can be a great way to drive sales and also monetize your email list.
8. Offer exclusive discounts only to email subscribers
Another way to monetize your email list is to offer exclusive discounts only to email subscribers. This puts those customers in a position of power, as they can get discounts that aren’t available on your site.
It also gives your customers something that they can’t get anywhere else. This will help you increase your sales and also keep your customers happy. If you offer exclusive discounts, make sure you offer them for a limited time.
This will help you avoid problems with the law, and it will also give your customers a sense of urgency.
9. Clear & Concise Product Descriptions
Product descriptions are incredibly important during your Cyber Monday sales, but they aren’t used as often as they should be. You should make it a priority to write clear and concise descriptions for all of your products.
This gives you the opportunity to stand out from the crowd and get your products viewed more often. It also gives customers a chance to read about your products and decide whether they’re right for them.
10. Stickers and Decals to Increase Click-Through Rates
Another way to increase your click-through rates is to add stickers and decals to your products. This is a fun and interactive way to show customers that your products are cool and worth buying.
It’s also something they can do while they’re waiting for their purchase to arrive. These stickers and decals should be related to the product, but they don’t need to be directly related to the product name or description.
For example, if you’re selling toys, you can give each toy a sticker or decal that has the name of the toy on it.
11. Know your audience and know your business
The starting point for any successful marketing campaign is understanding your audience. You need to know who your customers are and what their pain points are. What channels are they using to shop?
What are their shopping habits and preferences? What do they like and dislike about your product or service? If you don’t know any of these things, you’re setting yourself up for failure. To better understand your audience and their needs, you also need to know your business inside and out.
What are your company’s strengths and weaknesses? What sets you apart from your competitors? What is your go-to-market strategy? What are your profit margins? What is your customer acquisition cost?
What are your sales goals? How do you plan to achieve them? You may not have all the answers right away, but you will need to find them as part of your holiday marketing strategy.
Understanding your customer, your business and your sales goals will help you prioritize your efforts and ensure they are aligned with your long-term goals. This, in turn, will help you make important marketing decisions in the moment while ensuring they are the best use of your time and resources.
12. Adopt a lean marketing approach
Successful marketing is often about more than just throwing money at advertising. It’s about measuring ROI and finding ways to drive profit with the resources at your disposal.
This is especially true during the holiday season, when many consumers are looking for ways to save money. If your approach isn’t focused on driving sales and customer acquisition, it’s not worth the investment.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest in paid advertising or marketing programs, but it does mean that you should focus on doing so in the most cost-effective way possible. This can include using channels like Facebook Messenger, where you can send one-on-one messages to your customer base or even create and send an automated campaign.
It can also include working with influencers who can help drive traffic to your website or collecting data about your target audience to inform your future marketing strategies.
13. Offer exclusive incentives to retain customers
Customers are much more likely to make a purchase from a retailer they’ve purchased from before than from a retailer they’ve never purchased from before. If you can get your customers to buy from you again, you’ll likely make a bigger sale than if you were trying to get new customers.
To do this, you need to offer them something exclusive like an additional discount or an added bonus. When you offer an exclusive to your existing customers, you’re telling them that they are special to you.
This fosters loyalty and helps you retain your current customer base, which is crucial during a busy sales period like the holiday season. You can also use this to segment your customers and tailor your marketing efforts to each segment, which will help you find new ways to sell your products.
14. Don’t rely on just one channel for sales
This is something many retailers overlook when preparing for their Cyber Monday sales. If you’re only investing in Facebook ads or targeting Amazon shoppers and expecting your sales to skyrocket, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.
You need a diversified marketing approach that includes paid advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing and more. If one channel starts to flounder, you have other channels to fall back on.
If you’re only investing in paid advertising, you run the risk of burning through your budget and hitting a wall when you can’t spend any more. If you’re only investing in organic social media marketing, you’re not driving any sales and you’re not bringing in any revenue. It’s important to remember that your marketing efforts are cyclical.
You’ll want to use different tactics at different times during the year because your customer base shifts over time. You may see more customers on Facebook in October because they’re shopping for Halloween costumes. You may see more customers browsing your website in February because they’re looking for Valentine’s Day gifts.
15. Leverage data to inform your decisions
As part of your lean marketing approach, you’ll want to collect data about your paid and organic marketing efforts. This can help you determine what’s working and what isn’t so you can make adjustments accordingly.
Depending on the channels you’re investing in, you’ll be able to track your efforts through different platforms. If you’re using Facebook ads, you can use the platform’s built-in analytics to see how many people clicked on your ad, how much they spent and where they came from.
You can also use an external tool like Facebook Insights or a social media management platform like Hootsuite to track your efforts and provide you with more detailed data. You can also use Google Analytics to track your organic search efforts.
You can use Google’s keyword planner to see what terms your customers are searching for and where they are coming from. This will help you better target your marketing efforts to customers who are most likely to make a purchase.
16. Don’t forget about SEO and digital marketing
You also don’t want to forget about SEO and digital marketing during the holiday season. If you invest in a strong SEO campaign throughout the year, you’ll likely see benefits during the holiday season.
This means that when consumers are searching for gifts, they’ll likely find your website at the top of the search results. Both Google and Bing are showing more intent-based advertising during the holiday season, which means that if your website isn’t optimized for SEO, you could get pushed out of the customer’s way when they are ready to buy.
And even if you are optimized, if your competitors are investing in SEO, you won’t be the only site that shows up in the customer’s search results.
17. Make sure your product catalog is up to date
If you sell physical goods, then you’re likely already aware of the importance of having a current and accurate product catalog. However, you need to be more diligent than ever during the holiday season.
If your website is riddled with inaccuracies, it will turn off potential customers. This can lead to missed sales, frustrated customers and poor reviews. If your product catalog is out of date, customers will have to go through the hassle of returning their purchase and having it replaced.
If you have inventory issues, you can lose customers. If you have pricing issues, you can lose customers. If you have a mix-up in inventory or if you have inaccurate pictures of your products, you can lose customers.
If you want to avoid these issues, it’s important to keep your product catalog up to date and upscale your product photos. You may also want to consider hiring a professional photographer to take product photos if you don’t have the skills or the time to do so.
18. Detect and prevent fraud with AI
Fraudulent transactions can have an impact on many levels: revenue, customer satisfaction and brand reputation. They can also have an impact on your bottom line, as you may be liable for any fraudulent transactions that are charged against your account.
While you can’t prevent all forms of fraud, you can detect it and prevent it from happening in the first place. One of the best ways to do this is by detecting anomalies in your customer data.
If your customers are placing orders from places they don’t live, spending amounts they shouldn’t be, or using payment methods they don’t typically use, you can take action to prevent those transactions from being successful.
You can also prevent fraud by implementing a multi-layered approach, including using a fraud detection service. These services use artificial intelligence, machine learning and other advanced techniques to detect fraud and
Conclusion
The holiday season is the perfect time for ecommerce merchants to sell more products and make more money. However, this is also one of the busiest times of year for online shoppers, which means they have even less time to shop than usual. As a result, retailers need to find ways to stand out if they want their sales to be profitable.
To succeed in your Cyber Monday sales, you need a strategy that balances between being aggressive and playing it safe. You also need tactics that are smart, sustainable and scalable so you see returns on your investment again next year and beyond. Follow these tips and you will be well on your way to success this holiday season.
