A Facebook Merry Christmas Last year, during the height of recession induced consumer panic retailers took the battle for budgets online. From Black Friday, considered one of the biggest shopping days in the US (the day after Thanksgiving) right through to Christmas day, retailers did their utmost to attract online shoppers, from online coupons to special offers that varied from 10%-90% off, the race was on to negate the wariness of cash-strapped consumers.

This year, there is less recession-related panic but online is still where it’s at for retailers, only this time the battlefield is social media.

Facebook and Twitter were around last year, and some companies put them to good use (Starbucks for instance Raised money for World Aids Day via Facebook), but the social hype wasn’t nearly as big then as it is now. In an article for Reuters, Nicole Maestri said that social media provides retailers with the perfect opportunity to interact directly with consumers and also provides an avenue for immediate feedback. She cites Chris Bruzzo, vice-president of brand, content and online for Starbucks, who said, “This is going to be a really interesting holiday season with social media.”

And he’s not wrong, because, also according to Maestri, a Shop.org survey has found that 47% of online retailers plan to increase their focus on social media this holiday season.

In case anyone thinks that social media campaigns lack the effectiveness of traditional marketing, think about the sheer volume of active accounts on Facebook and Twitter. The growth in new accounts every month is phenomenal (even though Twitter’s growth is rumoured to have stalled over the last month or so), and if only a small percentage become active participants, i.e. use their platforms more than two or three times per week, the potential to reach a wider audience is enormous. And if only a small percentage of those convert into purchases, the numbers still make any investment in social media worthwhile.

Of course, you can’t just slap a social media campaign together and expect the conversions to start rolling in. Assume the best and that your site will be flooded with traffic once your campaign launches. First, you need to be able to cope with all the extra visitors, it’s no good attracting consumers and then having your site go down. Second, you need to make it easy for your visitors to make it all the way to your “Thank you for shopping” page. If you’ve enticed traffic with online vouchers or coupons, make it easy for visitors to use them, don’t complicate the checkout process any further than you have to.

Then there are the obvious things: make sure you have enough stock for increased demand in special deals. Keep consumers on the purchase path with more enticements, such as free delivery. If free delivery by itself will stretch your profit margin to breaking point, consider free delivery for purchases over a certain amount. Kalahari.com in South Africa takes that approach and I know people who order extra products just to get free delivery (even if the extra products cost more than the delivery fee).

And, very obviously, ensure that “proceed to checkout” is as clear as possible. Nothing frustrates shoppers more than filling a shopping cart and then not knowing how to get to checkout. And specify delivery areas. If you deliver internationally, say so, and if you don’t, say it even more clearly.

Social media is big and powerful and growing bigger and more powerful all the time. But unless you get the basics right, no social media campaign will save you this Christmas.

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