You can’t rely on Twitter to bring in the sales — not even on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Research proves social media isn’t where all the buzz is.
In fact, social media will probably drive in very few sales, if last year was any indication of how consumers behave
Social media drove in .34% of online sales on Black Friday last year, according to post-mortem research of the annual big sales day by IBM. It didn’t get much better on Cyber Monday either, when social media drove in just .41% of online sales. Yep, for every 1,000 online transactions, about four could be attributed to something that was posted on Twitter, Facebook or the like.
Take it with a grain of salt, though. The data is based on last-touch attribution. So customers could’ve heard about a sale or product in their social media musings — either directly from a company or indirectly through their friends, family or colleagues — and gone online independently of a social link.
What you can do
So what should you do to increase sales on these traditionally crazy shopping days (or any others that are important to your organization or industry? Try these ideas, based on more of the IBM research:
- Be mobile. About 25% of all e-commerce purchases on Black Friday were done from a mobile device, and another 18% happened that way Cyber Monday. Make sure your website — or at least the most visited parts of it — are optimized for mobile devices so customers can make purchases from anywhere.
- Ship for free. Amazon set this bar. Customers will shop elsewhere if they have to pay for shipping. Behind price, it was most important factor in customers’ decision to make a purchase last year.
