Cyber Monday, combined with Black Friday, is the beginning of the holiday shopping season. It’s is a critical event. Here’s some proof. Last year this part of the post-Thanksgiving sales frenzy accounted for $6.59 billion in sales. That set historic records with smartphone sales peaking at 1.59 billion.
Research tells us this was first used as a way to explain the e-commerce boost in the 1990s. The term Cyber Monday was first used by the National Retail Federation around 2005 to introduce and entice shoppers to making purchases online.
Take Advantage of Cyber Monday Traffic
Smart business owners are looking at both the Black Friday brick-and-mortar sales and the online spikes that come with Cyber Monday. Here’s what you need to know and how you can prepare your small business to take a big bucket out of that huge sales well.
First off, keep in mind that Cyber Monday isn’t just for ecommerce stores. If you are brick-and-mortar enterprise, this might be a great time to look into some crossover and put up a website to draw people to your location.
This year, Cyber Monday falls on November 26. Every small business needs a strategy that’s going to put it out in front during this shopping frenzy. Here’s a few ideas that can help you accomplish that goal and a bit more of what you need to know if your asking what is Cyber Monday.
Keep Things Simple Sales Wise
Less is always more when it comes to Cyber Monday sales. It’s important to remember that online shoppers get wary when they’ve got to sort through a whack of conditions and terms. It’s understandable that you want to sell a bundle of product on this day, but you’ll need to narrow down your offerings to around five and put them on your homepage where they will be front and center.
Check Your Website
it’s a good idea to give your website the once over before Thanksgiving so it will be ready for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Preparation might even mean calling your hosting company to make sure they’ll be able to handle a spike in online traffic.
If you’re sole proprietor, try and find a trusted source to look over your site. You’ll want to make sure that all of your products and services are there and all the information is up-to-date and accurate.
Stay in Your Brand Lane
The idea is to sell and Cyber Monday is a great day to experiment with the way you get the message out on your sales event. In other words, it’s not the right time to tweak your brand image. If you’re a brick-and-mortar retail store, this might be the best time to dive head first into social media if you haven’t before.
However, you need to remember that you are still selling to a target audience even if you’re looking for some new digital sales. That means not changing your brand image or your voice—at least not for this one day. You want new sales without alienating loyal clients.
Try Loyalty Gifts and Incentives
Loyalty gifts and incentives will help to offer new value and draw in both loyal customers and new prospects. There are several tried-and-true ways to make this work including a digital rewards card that will keep people coming back after Cyber Monday and even free access to things like movie tickets or specialized content.
Offer Free Shipping
You can ruin all the momentum you can build up on Cyber Monday with good prices and excellent deals if you tack on a few extra dollars for shipping. It’s the bane of the small online enterprise, but you need to compete with the bigger box stores that can offer this service for free.
Even if you only offer free shipping for this one 24-hour period, you might be able to draw in enough new business to cover the costs you incur by offering free shipping on Cyber Monday.
Focus on Keywords
Finally, any small business asking what is Cyber Monday needs to remember this is a digital experience. Making sure your written content includes keywords that bring people surfing the Internet to your site is critical. There are a few keyword tools you can use to find the best ones like this one from Google.
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