A quarter of UK shoppers expect to have spent over £250 by the close of Cyber Monday, following research by GlobalWebIndex in the run-up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Searches with the term ‘deals’ included increase 5X, reviewing Google trends, and visits to retail websites will increase by around 30% (source: Hitwise) from the final week of October to the final week of November seeing approx. 1.2bn users visit an e-commerce website in that week alone.
Who will be the big media winners? GlobalWebIndex latest social data shows that 49% of the UK population now class themselves as comfortable buying through social, with Facebook topping the charts and 39% have already bought through the platform with creative formats such as carousel ads, offer, canvas and dynamic ads all positioned to help drive multi-product retail sales. Google has started a campaign to bring smaller advertisers into Google Shopping with educational posts, tutorials and tips – and of course Google Comparison Shopping Services (CSS) will enjoy its first year of being able to tap into the search volumes available. The competition for those advertising pounds and pence is very much on.
Are consumers getting value for money, are these really the deals we all want? Last year Amazon launched their deals a week early primarily across their own ranges – Fire TV, Kindle, Echo, however, they received some criticism across social media and Forbes published an article comparing before, after and during prices showing that the perceived value or discount wasn’t as high as customers originally thought often seeing the post-sale prices then remain.
What’s changing for 2018? Amazon for one seem to have taken note of the criticism received last year and already have in place a ‘price promise’ message throughout their ‘today’s deals’ customer journey showing the products have the best price in the last 4 weeks – a very distinct change to their customer journey in an attempt to reassure and give confidence to customers that they are in fact getting – a deal.
All Response Media viewpoint
While this surge in traffic is a huge opportunity for most retailers, it isn’t the end, Q4 traditionally holds strong after the surge in traffic as it prompts consumers that Christmas is coming.
During the mad rush, be smart – use the data you have on both your existing customer data, website visitation and layer in 3rd party signals to by hyper-competitive on media channels where you can fight hard for consumers with a much higher propensity to convert.
Post-Black Friday / Cyber Monday don’t let those non-converters go – retarget across media while you have an increased pool of people who have seen your products but be mindful that they were, only a week ago, looking for an absolute bargain.
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