Diluting and Confusing Is Hardly A Smart Holiday Marketing Strategy

We’re the all-powerful marketing team and when we say that something is a deal, then it darn well is.

Unless it’s not.

The slow-pitch, knock-it-out-of-the-park prediction was that mobile would set sales records Black Friday (whenever that is – more on this is a second) and Cyber Monday. More have smartphones, brands have made mobile a focus, mobile web sites aren’t buffering like they did on BlackBerry devices in 2005, and we’re a society that craves convenience. Or is lazy.

Or both.

What seems to have caught many by surprise is that much like a giraffe is a giraffe even if we tell others that it’s a rhino, Black Friday is a day. Not a week. Not a month. Heck, someone might try to call all of 2015 Black Friday.

Except that it’s foolish to extend a dedicated shopping day to a longer period and then to whine about a dip in Black Friday sales. Ummm, you asked them to buy on what everyone else calls a Monday. They were done by Friday – or didn’t believe that the “deals” were few and fleeting.

We might look back and say that extending the “special days” to longer periods made sense because overall sales were up, but it strikes me as dumb to have a Black Friday sale commercial during an NFL game two days after, ummm, Friday. And who’s to say it won’t continue next weekend?

If I’m wrong, let’s just say that Christmas lasts six months. Then we’ll have to read about Santa getting tired due to 182 consecutive days of chimney entrances and the kids will be bored by having to open presents when they could be playing spring-time Little League or soccer.

Here are some other things that caught my eye at the traditional start of the holiday buying season (which now begins in September, by the way):

The hyping crowd pointed to mobile’s advances in light of Best Buy’s online and mobile web outage on Black Friday. But did it say more about a lack of proper preparation from the shopping giant?

As background, according to company spokesperson spokeswoman Amy von Walter, "a concentrated spike in mobile traffic triggered issues that led us to shut down BestBuy.com in order to take proactive measures to restore full performance.”

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter (maybe a hipster) told CNBC that the outage is a testament to Best Buy's traffic, and a testament to the fact Amazon is never down.

"This shows how hard it is to manage a website when it's busy, but props to Best Buy for being busy," Pachter told the financial outlet. "Their Black Friday deals are quite competitive."

Still, the attention given the problem did not serve Best Buy’s’ interest.

Said one consumer via Facebook: "Well, after a good few hours of setting up what I'm gonna get for my first potentially amazing Black Friday..... you crash. If you intend to be one of the leaders among sales in technology and electronics. ....... maybe, just maybe you should know how to run tech."

Separately, we’ve heard about the tablet slump/demise/near extinction, but tablets outperformed mobile phones for sales. Marketers, take note.

According to IBM: for the first time, online traffic from mobile devices outpaced traditional PCs on Thanksgiving Day. Browsing on smartphones and tablets accounting for 52.1 percent of all online traffic. Overall Thanksgiving online sales were up 14.3 percent compared to 2013.

Black Friday online sales were up 9.5 percent year-over-year with mobile devices accounting for one-in-four of all online purchases.

Smartphones drove 34.7 percent of all Black Friday online traffic, more than double that of tablets, which accounted for 14.6 percent of all traffic. Yet, when it comes to mobile sales, tablets continue to win the shopping war – driving 16 percent of online sales compared to 11.8 percent for smartphones, a difference of 35.5 percent. Tablet users also averaged $126.50 per order compared to $107.55 for smartphone users, a difference of 17.6 percent.

And all tablets aren’t created equal - iOS once again led the way in mobile shopping this holiday season, outpacing Android across three key metrics on Black Friday:

Average Order Value: iOS users averaged $121.86 per order compared to $98.07 for Android users, a difference 24.3 percent.

Online Traffic: iOS traffic accounted for 34.2 percent of total online traffic, more than double that of Android, which drove 15 percent of all online traffic.

Online Sales: iOS sales accounted for 21.9 percent of total online sales, nearly quadruple that of Android, which drove 5.8 percent of all online sales.

(article first appeared on imediaconnection.com - http://blogs.imediaconnection.com/blog/2014/12/01/diluting-and-confusing-is-hardly-a-smart-holiday-marketing-strategy/)

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The "What's Cooking" Edition

Visits to allrecipes.com from mobile are 40 percent of total traffic, up from 8 percent a year ago. That makes sense - you’ll find devices used in kitchens and shopping aisles. And folks go to them day after day, unlike many apps that get downloaded, then forgotten.

Headline: Coming in 2013 – Targeted TV Ads. A century after television was invented, you wonder how "mass marketing" made it this long.

24 percent of cellphone owners say the worst thing about them is they make you constantly available and reachable at any time: Pew. It’s simultaneously the best and worst thing, IMO.

On Black Friday, Groupon’s mobile transactions were up 140 percent, 4X a normal Friday A.M. That’s a lot of eyelash enhancement sales.

Mobile LTE subscribers are expected to double by 2014. That means more mobile video consumption.

Mobile app sales are projected to exceed $30 billion this year, 2X to 2011. The death of apps has been greatly exaggerated.

In 2012, mobile accounts for 10 percent of sales and 20 percent of new customers for HSN, the 26th largest retailer.

Of course, it's too soon to know, but you have to wonder if marketers view mobile differently now vs. before Black Friday and Cyber Monday numbers came in large. How can they not, if they are paying attention.

Samsung is the latest to be under scrutiny for factory working conditions. We want our devices, but not at any cost.

In 2008, 25 percent of cell owners used their phone to access the internet. Now: 56 percent, according to Pew.

Embark, a free public transit app, was downloaded 100,000 times after the Apple Maps were revised/screwed up.

Are you mobile shopping if you have you are on phone but don't buy anything? Analysts disagree. I say yes, just like if you go to the mall and come away empty-handed.

iPhone 5 is down to a week shipping time. That’s good compared to where it's been but bad because it’s unavailable on demand more than 2 months after launch.