By Jennie Gilbert, Chief Operating Officer of Retailer Web Services

The year’s most exciting promotional period has extended to fill almost the entire month of November as Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday converge. It’s more important than ever [that] retailers execute strong, timely and effective digital marketing strategies during this critical selling season. But how can small independent retailers get their piece of the plentiful Black Friday pie?

1. Go mobile. Based on last year’s significant increases in mobile traffic during (and leading up to) Black Friday, expect a higher percentage of visits to your site will be from smart phones. Make sure you have a carefully crafted mobile experience that recognizes and meets the different needs of mobile web visitors. Your phone number, hours and directions should be front and center at all times, not buried in the footer or on the Contact page as is often the case when viewing a website from a computer.
2. Manage your online reputation. While it’s always important to monitor and respond to your online reviews (positive or negative), the stakes are higher during the busy holiday season. Responding to a negative review shows ALL of your potential customers you care. This can earn you a lot of business; not responding could cost you a lot. Don’t let one bad customer experience ruin hundreds of potential sales because you didn’t respond publicly until the busy Black Friday holiday had passed.
3. Leverage national promotions. Your vendor partners are spending huge advertising dollars this November. Leverage their investment by highlighting their promotions on your own website. Make sure to use their official artwork for maximum recognition.
4. Don’t hide pricing. It’s not always easy, but it’s always important to show pricing on your website; if you don’t provide prices, research shows more than 80 percent of consumers will leave your site and go elsewhere. Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) policies are increasingly complex, especially during the holidays. Make sure to check your brands’ MAP policies carefully for exceptions that may only be applicable during the Black Friday period.
5. Direct your online pricing strategy. Don’t assume it’s business as usual; plan to review and adjust your website pricing strategy for November. If you don’t have tools that allow you to set and adjust complex pricing strategies—which automatically help you to remain competitive and in compliance with vendor policies—it’s time to consider switching to more intelligent software that can do this for you. If you find yourself ill prepared to handle the complexities of online pricing during this Black Friday holiday, resolve to solve the problem before next year!
6. Prioritize multiple promotions. Every vendor has Black Friday promotions, but that doesn’t mean they are all equally as important to your store. Review their offers and identify which ones will help you win the most. Then elevate those in your digital strategy: Put promotion banners first in the rotation on your homepage, promote those posts more often than others, concentrate paid media buys, and pay attention to and adjust those brands’ pricing strategies first in case you run out of time.
7. Consider marketing automation. Your prospects know every retailer—not just you—will be offering Black Friday promotions; they will compare multiple retailers before deciding which to buy from. If your digital strategy works harder to connect with and re-engage prospects during their research than your competitors, you will win more often. Black Friday is the most important time to use marketing automation tools, like automated re-marketing and abandoned cart email, to draw prospects back in and keep your store top of mind.
8. Update your store hours. With holidays come special holiday store hours. Expect prospective customers to check your store’s website and social media pages before taking time out of their busy schedules to visit you. Make sure your holiday hours are up to date on your site and social media pages. The same goes for Google which displays your hours in Google Maps; sign in to Google My Business to update your holiday hours and any other information.

Based on a nationwide survey conducted by Retailer Web Services (RWS) to understand online shoppers’ purchasing patterns of durable goods for the home, consumers will visit an average of five to 17 websites along their purchasing journey. Last year, RWS retailer customers’ websites recorded the highest overall traffic volume of the year during Black Friday and the weeks leading up to it. That traffic was from a significantly higher percentage of mobile devices than the surrounding weeks—a 10.79 percent increase.

“The lines have blurred between Black Friday and Cyber Monday,” said Gilbert. “This holiday season, digital consumers will shop early and from multiple mobile devices. It’s imperative that independent retailers leverage the major brands’ national campaigns and employ technology to reach prospects with visually-compelling and engaging offers on the products they’re interested in buying.”

To learn more, please visit retailerwebservices.com.

About Retailer Web Services: Founded in 2006, Retailer Web Services (RWS) is a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based provider of proprietary e-commerce, web design and other high-performance software solutions to help independent retailers achieve success. A champion of independent retailers, RWS is an authoritative source on durable goods product data and consumer purchasing habits. RE:THiNK: 11 surprising things you should do now to win retail customers in the digital age (RWS, 2015) provides actionable advice grounded in the way consumers shop for durable goods. RWS serves more than 2,000 independent durable goods retailers across North America.

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