How to Survive (and Win) the Post-Christmas Lull

 There’s always a sting in the tail with the annual Christmas ecommerce frenzy. Things are just about as peachy and positive as it gets for a couple of months, after which comes the inevitable lull. 

One of the biggest (and most common mistakes) made by smaller businesses is focusing too heavily on leveraging shoppers’ appetite to spend over the festive period. And in doing so, losing sight of the importance of compensating for what happens next.

Consumer spending always dips massively in January and February – a fact and a reality there’s nothing you can do about. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty you can do to survive and even thrive during this post-Christmas lull.

A few suggestions on how to make January and February slightly less painful for your online business:

1. Launch a Sale

It’s a pretty old-fashioned concept in this day and age, but consumers still cannot resist the prospect of the classic ‘January Sale’. They’ve already overspent during November and December, yet are attracted to January discounts like moths to flames. Don’t forget that your closest competitors are probably planning major January sales of their own, so it’s worth doing likewise.

2. Leverage the New Year Attitude

New year, new start, new opportunities etc. – the New Year attitude that temporarily motivates the masses. At the very beginning of the year, people become determined to improve their personal productivity, clean and sanitise their homes, improve their health, do something charitable and generally become ‘better’ people. All of which can and should be leveraged in your sales and marketing strategy for the New Year.

3. Launch Something New

Most businesses time their new product and service debuts for the spring and summer. They instinctively avoid times of diminished spending, for reasons rooted in logic. However, this also means there’s a glaring gap in anything new and interesting hitting the market at the start of the New Year. If you’ve been sitting on something you think your audience will get a kick out of, why not take advantage while your competitors are hibernating?

4. Get Serious with Email Marketing

Ideally, every single sale you made over Christmas will have resulted in another email address making it onto your list. In which case, there’s no better time than right after Christmas to start working on a serious (and appropriately segmented) email marketing strategy. Too soon to start bugging those who only recently shopped with you? Not at all – it’s always best to reach out to satisfied customers while they remember why they shopped with you in the first place!

5. Stay Active and Communicative

Last up, don’t make the mistake of going quiet and temporarily vanishing into thin air. Due to a combination of fatigue and the fact that business is slow, countless brands go dormant and largely inactive after Christmas. In doing so, they overlook (or are oblivious to) the fact that social media use skyrockets during the darker and gloomier months of the year. Hence, there’s really no better time to engage your audience and take your social media marketing strategy a step further.

October 2020 Latest Digital Marketing Statistics

The time has come for us to once again share a few interesting and important facts and figures regarding the world of digital marketing. This time, there are snippets in their regarding livestreaming, personalisation, the travel industry and more. 

So we’d like to think, something for everyone…with a bit of luck! 

Here’s how things are looking right now in a few key areas of digital marketing:

Live streaming is growing in popularity

First and foremost, new research suggests that live streaming engagement is in the midst of something of a meteoric rise. Compared to the same period last year, the number of social media users engaging with live streaming content has jumped by around 8%. More than ¼ Internet users stated that they have now engaged in at least one live stream on social media.

72% of consumers turn to Amazon to research products

Despite the fact that it may not be used for quite as many purchases, evidence suggests that Amazon has become the number one resource for researching products. In fact, almost ¾ (72%) of people stated that they use Amazon to research products before purchasing them. While 51% stated that they use Amazon to compare prices, around 26% use the information available to compare similar products, read reviews and so on.

Personalisation generates 50% higher email open rates

Once again, there’s strong evidence to support the importance of personalisation when it comes to marketing emails. Even when something as simple as the subject line is personalised, click-to-open rates have been found to increase by a full 58%. Which would seem to suggest that those who are not using personalised e-mail marketing could be letting significant amount of time and money go to waste.

Live TV is on the decline

While the issue itself is far from a new development, it’s becoming clear that live television is experiencing an even faster decline than before. The CTA reports that more than half of all millennials are now watching recorded or streaming television services rather than standard live TV. For over 35s, around 35% prefer this time-shifted content.

Millennials respond better to sales outreach via social media

A study carried out by Bambu found that a growing proportion of millennials respond better to sales tactics in general that are performed using social media. A 35% stated that they would be more likely to make a purchase when product information or industry news are shared by representatives via social media – the total percentage preferring this kind of outreach having increased to 45%.

Only 9% of people use high-street travel agents

Last but not least, it would appear that the long-predicted and somewhat inevitable death of the traditional travel agent has taken a significant step towards becoming a reality. According to a recent study carried out on UK consumers, just 9% of those actively planning and booking holidays now visit traditional travel agents in any way, shape or form. As far as younger audiences go, the figure falls to an even lower 4%. Nevertheless, the same study found that if traditional travel agents were to fully embrace modern technology like virtual reality, close to half (48%) said that they would be more likely to revisit them once again.

The Rise and Rise of mCommerce

 Once again, the extraordinary value and importance of mCommerce has been illustrated in the numbers alone. As of right now, approximately 1.6 billion people are known to be using mobile devices to make purchases online. Or to put it another way, that’s more than 25% of the entire population of the world. 

Not only this, but as the popularity of mCommerce continues to grow worldwide, traditional eCommerce by way of desktop and laptop computers is seeing something of a decline. Nothing particularly dramatic, but a 15% in 2019, compared to the year before. During the same period, transactions originating from smartphones doubled.

Quote these figures to the average business owner and chances are they’ll be anything but surprised. After all, mCommerce didn’t exactly come out of nowhere and nor is it a secret that the modern world is addicted to mobile. But what is interesting is the way in which so many business owners still seem entirely unsure as to how to adapt and engineer their content for success in the mCommerce era.

Smooth and Simple

As a rule of thumb, the key to success when it comes to mCommerce is to deliver a smooth, simple and seamless experience for every customer. Easier said than done, but nonetheless essential.

Speed and simplicity are the two most important attributes demanded by today’s consumer. For example, approximately 65% of mCommerce shoppers are unwilling to wait more than 4 seconds for any given webpage to load. If it takes longer than this, they’ll head elsewhere. When they do, close to 70% stated that they’d be far more likely to go through with a purchase, if the mobile experience as a whole was on-par.

By the end of 2020, total mCommerce value in the United Kingdom alone is expected to hit an incredible £42 billion. What’s more, mCommerce will also account for at least 45% of all online sales – its highest figure to date.

So it’s abundantly clear that mCommerce isn’t going anywhere but skywards for the foreseeable future. Hence, now really is the time to invest as heavily as necessary in creating a premier mobile experience, built in accordance with the following key principles:

• Creativity. However you choose to go about it, your mobile website needs to stand out from the crowd, delivering a strong and true reflection of your brand. It shouldn’t be a generic, watered-down version of your primary desktop website.

• Visuals. Most mobile shoppers expect the kinds of high-quality visuals that make it quick and easy to see what it is that’s on offer and whether or not they want it. Creative imagery having much greater impact than standard stock photography.

• Adaptability. It’s no good to provide a mobile experience that’s outstanding on the customer’s Samsung smartphone and pure garbage on their iPad. Quality mobile web design means ensuring your content and layout can adapt to all devices, without exception.

• Simplification. Ideally, the customer should be able to find whatever they’re looking for and complete the entire purchase process in just a few touches. The slower and more complicated the conversion process, the less likely it is to happen.

• Speed. Last up, capitalising on the value of impulse purchases and generally maintaining the attention of modern audiences means providing a lightning-fast mobile experience at all times. When mobile site speed isn’t up to scratch, it’s game-over.

Still Focused Exclusively on Search Engine Rankings?

 For much of recent history, it’s been the norm to focus on SERP rankings above and beyond everything else. Which of course makes sense, given the way in which a high position in Google or Bing can result in the most enormous traffic boost for any website. 

But here’s the thing – rankings never have been the be and end all of things.

What’s important to acknowledge is the way in which your current position in any search engine doesn’t accurately indicate the success of your wider campaign. There are three primary reasons why an unhealthy fixation on rankings is exactly that – detrimental to your business and your marketing strategy:

SEARCH RESULTS ARE PERSONALISED

First up, it’s becoming extremely difficult – impossible even – to accurately measure your own SERP performance. The reason being that search results have never been more meticulously personalised. From location to browser to device to language to personal preferences and so on, thousands of different search results are delivered by the hour for the exact same search terms. You cannot look how you perform for one or two specific terms and interpret this as a constant for all searchers across the board. It might show one thing for you, but could show something totally different for someone else. Particularly in the case of local businesses and local search, personalisation has never had a greater influence on both exposure and performance.

RANK FLUCTUATION

No matter what you do and how much you do it, you’re never going to hold onto the same ranking indefinitely. It just doesn’t happen. One day you’re third, the next you’re second, then you fall to page 5 and jump back to the first page once again. Why? For any number of reasons – being outperformed by competitors, algorithm changes at Google, flaws in your own SEO strategy etc. In any case, your position is always going to change on a fairly regular basis. As such, and given the fact that there’s often nothing you can do about it, you cannot gauge your overall performance by rankings alone. There are so many external influences that can affect your ranking – it isn’t all nearly as within your control as you might think.

RANK DOESN’T ALWAYS CORRELATE TO SUCCESS

Last but not least, traffic represents just one contributory element to wider success in business. Without exception, a solid Google ranking for a competitive keyword is going to win you a lot of traffic. But what then? What if just 5% of these arrivals stick around and less than 1% convert? You’d perhaps have been better-off with a tenth-place position and greater focus on improving conversion rates. If you focus all your time and attention on rankings, you cannot focus sufficiently on the quality of your website. Even a number-one ranking is all but useless if it isn’t backed-up by an outstanding user-experience. The problem being that far too many businesses seem unable to strike the ideal balance between the two, in terms of their own efforts and investment.

So if you are still focusing somewhat obsessively on rankings above all else, it’s worth asking:

What might you be allowing to suffer in the background?