If you run an e-commerce business chances are you are currently mapping out plans on how you will execute your Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales with a bang.
Back in 2013, Yahoo released a report that shows how about 40% of sales were pulled in during the last two months of the year.
Again, in November and December 2017, Adobe Analytics puts the total of online retail sales in the United States of America as more than $108 billion dollars. These stats are a result of the annual Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping days.
Year in year out, these key days usually help smart entrepreneurs who are into either sell of digital or physical products to be able to close more deals and shoot up their ROI.
However, if you’re not avoiding the following Black Friday and Cyber Monday mistakes during holiday sales days I bet you, you won’t make much profit.
In this article, we shall be discussing the top online marketing mistakes e-commerce business owners make during Black Friday and Cyber Monday that limits them from reaching their sales goals.
Online Marketing Mistake #1: Not Following Up
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You see, there’s what is called buyers remorse or fear. It makes them change their minds on products they initially wanted to buy. Sometimes, it’s because they got carried away by other things and so, they don’t remember to come back to complete their order.
As a smart online marketer, you don’t just leave them to go like that when your website’s dashboard notifies you of an incomplete order. This is why you need follow-up sales letters to make them whip out their credit cards and make that purchase.
If you are like most serious e-commerce business owners you will be using artificial intelligence in your email marketing to help you detect anomalies that human eyes might not see and respond to it promptly.
Online Marketing Mistake #2: Thinking Your Prospects Know What They Want
Most times, eCom store owners make the mistake of showing lots of options to their prospects and expect their sales to go up the roof. Sorry, in marketing, it doesn’t work that way. In fact, it’s possible everything they told you about marketing is wrong if you believe otherwise.
The problem is, when you give your customers too many options it makes them get bored, stressed-out and tired of searching for the “best deal.” They didn’t come to your online store so you can leave them more confused than when they came.
People hardly come online with a long shopping list of what they want. Your task is to intercept them in their discussion and help them create a few, not too many holiday gifts ideas or items they can buy from you to ease off the stress of making a buying decision.
Giving your customers too many options to choose from might sound like a great idea to one that has zero mastery of persuasion and human behaviour and how they can be applied in marketing but in the real sense of it, you are stressing their brain to come to a conclusion. A confused man doesn’t buy – they walk out and never comes back again.
Related: How to Engage and Close a Prospect Over the Phone
Online Marketing Mistake #3: Using Only Holiday Discounts Alone
Don’t rely only on all those over-used cliches, “50%” or “33% off” tactics. It’s still working, though. Shopper’s response rates vary across niches, seasons and certain periods of the year. The trick is to use more than one shopping cart format.
Let’s say; you use one shopping cart that offers the addition of just one more item for free shipping and maybe another version that offers a personalized discount, you can split-test to see whether your target market prefers the free shipping or respond better.
When you now find the one that works, all you need to do is to channel your traffic to the most high-converting offer so you can stuff your pockets with more profits.
Online Marketing Mistake #4: Ignoring Data
If you still rely on the traditional market segmentation to increase your conversions, then you are leaving lots of money on the table.
The thing is, a modern customer research tool like the “Facebook Audience Insight” is a very reliable and helpful tool that helps you get your offers in the eyes of potential customers, way faster.
You need to join the trend to use it and increase your business revenue during holiday sales like Black Friday.
During Black Friday, Cyber Monday and every other period of sales, Facebook Audience Insight allows you to target prospects based on their interests, age, location, occupation, shopping history, previously viewed items, device type, products they probably bought before and what have you.
Online Marketing Mistake #5: Not Having a Responsive E-commerce Website
Seriously, if you don’t want your prospects to feel frustrated while browsing through your website or leaving their order incomplete, then, ensure that you talk to your website designer to check and optimize your site so as to make it very responsive such that the user experience is top-notch.
Related: Mobile Marketing: 5 Things You Were Not Told about It
Online Marketing Mistake #6: Not Being Ready to Handle Huge Orders
If you don’t want to see tons of unfulfilled orders during this Black Friday period where people even borrow money to buy and buy, then, you need to have an additional staff or helping hand to help you process and fulfill your orders.
To avoid unnecessary hiccups, fatigue and overwhelm. Try and hire part-time workers if necessary so as to also avoid disappointing your customers too. Unfulfilled orders can be so frustrating and energy-drilling.
Online Marketing Mistake #7: Not Running Paid Ads
The battle at a period like this gets fierce. If you are not willing to spend some money on running ads on social media to promote your brand and acquire new customers, then your competitors will likely steal your customers from you and keep you in the dust.
Paid ads help you reach your already buying customers and even new ones too. Another advantage is that it enables you to re-market or re-target those who didn’t complete their orders on their shopping carts and remind them to do so.
Online Marketing Mistake #8: Not Using Email Marketing
It’s funny how some social media “gurus” sometimes scream “email marketing is dead” and all those cliche phrases to get you to buy their social media courses.
Anyway, the truth is, email marketing is alive and will keep working for those who know how to sell using emails.
Not adding an email marketing strategy to your overall Black Friday campaign is not really a smart decision, especially if you want to add more zeros or reasonable digits to your revenue.
In fact, back in 2017, a Shopify report for the holiday season has it that email brought in more conversions than social media, search and even direct mail.
Now to really milk this method, you need to plan ahead by carefully crafting high-converting emails you’ll keep pushing in a sequence to warm up your list so as to easily close them when it’s Black Friday. This is will a lot easier if you know how to craft an attention-grabbing headline every single time.
Related: How to Grow Your Business Using Email Marketing Even If You Are Just Starting Out
Online Marketing Mistake #9: Lack of Mobile Optimisation
About 75% of web visitors, email subscribers, and social media users are using their mobile phones.
Not optimising your landing pages, emails and sales pages for mobile phone users is a big sabotage to your overall success on Black Fridays.
Now to utilize this, you need to contact your web designer to make your website easy to surf and mobile-friendly too.
Again, the email design template you are using needs to be a simple one and your email subject lines are not supposed to be too long.
Related: 5 Rock-Solid Ways You Can Optimize Your Site for Mobile to Boost Traffic
Online Marketing Mistake #10: Having a Bad Checkout System
One of the many reasons why customers end up abandoning their shopping carts is because of either slow or poor checkout experience.
You don’t have to bother yourself with adding a captcha form they have to fill. It’s boring and time-wasting. Allow your prospects to buy without having to register as users first and ensure that your webpage is not loading slowly so as to make even the impatient ones complete their purchase.
