Here's 5 Smart Ways to Plan Your E-commerce Sales Promotion

Ready for your next sales promotion?

For some ecommerce teams, it's a time-consuming task deciding which items to markdown and how to publicize a sales event. However, sales promotions play an integral role in attracting customers.

A survey found that up to 50% of consumers make a purchase only with a promotion. Shoppers desire a good deal before they invest in your products. Moreover, your business may want the additional revenue.

“Sales promotions can give you the edge you're looking for when it comes to revenue. Successful companies know that sales promotions are among the most effective methods of increasing sales and building customer satisfaction,” writes Emily Weisberg, content marketing manager at ThriveHive.

Take a strategic approach when planning your sales promotions. Below are five smart ways to help your team.

1. Select Specific Incentives

Sales promotions take various shapes and forms. Cater your incentives to fit your consumers' needs.

Start by using customer analytics. Historical purchasing habits can uncover what promotions performed well. Social media comments also provide first-hand details on whether customers possess interest.

Next, match your findings with a sales initiative. From mystery discounts to purchased-based donations to bundle sales, several options exist.

Monetate “found that 56% of businesses agree that flash-sale campaigns are better received than regular campaigns.” Limiting the timeframe creates urgency for the customer to act now.

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Thinking about free offers? PaySimple's Vice President of Knowledge Lisa Hephner explains the power of free incentives:

“Everyone loves free. Whether it's free gifts, free refills, or free service segments, free sells. One of the most powerful free offers is free shipping for online orders, as evidenced by multiple studies where respondents highlight it as the most important factor in making a purchase decision.”

Figure out the best promotions for your customers. Review your data before moving forward.

2. Cross-Sell With a Purpose

Every sales promotion doesn't need to involve discounting your signature product. Instead, it can focus on secondary items.

Cross-selling is another opportunity to provide value to your customers. Buyers love convenience, and they want to save time shopping at one place. And it eliminates the hassle of sifting through multiple ecommerce sites.

Align your promotions with products that complement one another. Give consumers the chance to buy everything they need from your store.

“Savvy marketers use this concept to increase sales by informing consumers how one product complements another. Cross selling can take several forms. Understanding your customers' motivations helps you choose which approach to take,” says Sara Huter, a contributor at BusinessBee.

For example, if your company sells cell phones, your team can offer a promotion on the accessories, like bluetooth earbuds, phone cases, or charging cables.

(Image Source)

Research found that “cross-selling was shown to be much more effective when presented on the checkout pages versus the product pages.” So, add images of promotional products in the sidebar menu.

Here's another example of cross-selling taking place immediately after a customer adds an item to their cart:

Plus, cross-selling aids with bringing in more cash flow for your business. Amazon credits up to 35% of its revenue to cross-selling.

Think differently about ecommerce sales promotions. Don't remove cross-selling from your list of possibilities.

3. Microtarget Your Customers

Micro-targeting isn't a new technique to your team. Nevertheless, you may be failing to put it into practice.

Segmenting your audience lets your business offer the right promotions to the right individuals. Customization speaks directly to consumers-signaling that you know exactly what they need.

Melissa Jenkins of Mel Jens Designs believes “running a successful promotion is all about finding that delicate balance between audience segmentation, great timing and setting the perfect price or placing the perfect offer.”

Examine your data to segment properly. Try geographical locations, buying habits, income levels, or even past purchasing behavior.

Dealers United Auto Group created mock ads targeted for car shoppers within 25 miles of the dealership that possess an interest in pets. Specificity is vital for effective micro targeting.

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A study reveals that 51% of marketers believe sharing data across their organizations is a major issue. Avoid data limitations that will hinder segmentation for your sales promotions.

Create an open dialogue across departments to gather all data about your customers. You'll have more knowledge to build an accurate buyer persona.

Pinpoint who needs to know about your sales event. Micro-targeting is a benefit to your company.

4. Hype Up Engagement

Draw attention to your sales promotions with social media and email campaigns. This extra engagement will get people interested in your sales incentives.

Facebook users spend an average of 50 minutes a day on its multiple platforms. Work with your team to promote sales on your social pages. Or even enlist the help of industry influencers to spread the word.

User-generated content (UGC) is also another way to lure shoppers toward your brand. An actual consumer enjoying your products authenticates your value to hesitated buyers.

“User-generated photos are a great way to generate social proof. Prospective customers see that your products are regularly being purchased people just like them, and feel more comfortable doing something that others are doing,” says Dan Wang, a content specialist at Shopify.

Big box retailer Target retweeted a post from loyal shoppers who made a funny video in one of its stores. Encourage customers to submit UGC of them unboxing your products.

when @Target is having a sale pic.twitter.com/RIUu6p3zLs

- spooky addie |-/ (@blurrytylerjosh) October 15, 2016

Also, keep your email subscribers in the loop about promotions. Craft engaging emails that explain the benefits, provide social proof, and use a distinct call-to-action.

“When it comes to creating a high-converting marketing offer email, the final piece of the puzzle is using a prominent call to action button. This is important because buttons make it clear to the reader what the next step is and encourage them to click-through,” states Aaron Beashel, director of demand generation at Campaign Monitor.

Shout your sales promotions from the rooftop. Get shoppers excited to participate.

5. Move Toward Customer Loyalty

Returning customers spend on average 67% more than first-time customers. Consider promotions as a pathway to retaining customers.

Give your customers an opportunity to discover your brand's values and culture. Sign up shoppers for your weekly newsletter, or enroll them in your rewards program.

Customer loyalty centers around building worthwhile relationships. However, buyers may only be interested in your promotions.

“The use of sales promotions can be positively utilized in order to encourage brand loyalty and brand switching by companies. However, academic research suggests that consumers can become loyal to sales promotions rather than a brand,” states Zhorna Ali, a sales and marketing assistant at M3.

To avoid consumers from brand switching, companies must thoroughly personalize their sales promotions strategy. Focus on specific product categories to remain competitive within the market.

Rather than giving sales incentives to everyone, Bare Escentuals limits its promotions to its loyal fans called Beauty Insiders. In the example below, customers received three free items with any order.

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Create plans to engage customers beyond your sales promotions. Earn their loyalty.

Prep for Sales Promotions

Planning for your next sales event involves lots of time and decision-making. You want to boost your revenue and satisfy customers.

Choose buyer-specific incentives that will attract people. Cross-sell products that complement one another. And think beyond the promotion by focusing on customer loyalty initiatives.

Upgrade your sales promotion. Prepare for it today.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

How to Find the Conversion Drivers of Your Website with the Funnel Report

There may be a lot of unanswered questions you have about some the big-picture questions with your website. Perhaps you're asking:

Do demo requests or signups lead to more paying customers?

Does that product video lead to more signups?

Does the self-service onboarding plan lead to more customers?

Does offering a buy one, get one sale increase purchases?

In cases like this, there are options that a visitor can take to reach conversion. But, it's often difficult for marketers to know which one has a better effect on the funnel.

The Kissmetrics Funnel Report answers these questions. Here's how.

Finding the Biggest Conversion Drivers on Your Site

The traditional SaaS Funnel looks something like this:

• Visited site


• Signed up for a trial


• Used product


• Upgraded to paying

But what if a visitor could sign up or schedule a demo before using the product? The only solution to knowing which one converts better would be to create two separate funnels and compare the results. That is, until now.

The Kissmetrics Funnel Report allows you to add and/or statements in a step. So our hypothetical funnel could look like this:

• Visited site


• Signed up for a trial or Scheduled demo


• Used product


• Upgraded to paying

Here's how to set that funnel up, and how to view the results:

View the Funnel Results

I'm not going to bore you with the details of setting up a Funnel Report. We've covered it before here and here. As long as you have your events and properties set up, creating a Funnel Report is as easy as putting shoes on. Let's get straight into the results.

We'll first look at the people that signed up:

And scheduled a demo:

Notice a difference?

Looks like signups drive significantly more product usage and customers (54 compared to 0). If this was your data, you'd know you should remove demo requests from the website so 100% of users go straight to signing up.

What's Holding Back Your Marketing Site?

How many elements are on your website, seemingly harmless but actually detracting people from signing up or converting? They're there, but you don't know how they're affecting the rest of your funnel.

Using the Or statements (like we did) in the Funnel Report is a great way to find the best performing elements on your site. Best of all, you don't need to run an A/B test. All this data is already in Kissmetrics, and as long as you've been tracking it, you can see the performance.

Happy optimizing!

About the Author: Zach Bulygo (Twitter) is the Blog Manager for Kissmetrics.

The Ultimate Guide to Getting Sky-High Conversions From Twitter Ads

Will anyone actually click my ad and buy my product?

It's a terrifying question, but an important one. Turns out that everyone (including you) wants to get more conversions from a Twitter ad campaign.

You spent countless hours writing lead magnets, creating landing pages and sales pages, and then later you set up a Twitter ad campaign to get some traffic.

While running ads is a great way to get some quick exposure, Twitter is a different ad platform. If you don't understand the way it works, you might be wasting your money as well.

In today's post I'll be sharing some killer tips and resources to get sky-high conversions from Twitter.

So, would you like to know how to advertise on Twitter?

How about more advanced approaches to getting more followers, more leads, and more customers for your business?

But let me make it clear…

If there are secrets or special formulas that can magically unlock the power of Twitter advertising out there, I don't know them.

What I do know is exactly what the experts are doing - day in and day out.

And now, you will too.

But first let's take a look at why you should invest in Twitter ads.

Why You Should Invest in Paid Twitter Ads

Twitter is a great social media channel for marketers, as it unofficially has 310 million monthly active users. Twitter ads are an incredible way to complement your social media efforts. With Twitter advertising you can reach thousands of targeted customers and followers.

But why do you need to invest in paid twitter ads?

Organic Reach is Declining

Recently, Twitter made changes to their feed. Now, instead of getting all the recent tweets, Twitter only shows the tweets that they think are relevant to you.

Much like what Facebook did with their platform.

And just a few months ago, Twitter launched Engage, which is for celebrities, influencers, and public figures that'll curate the most popular tweets, mentions and replies.

This clearly shows that the reach of social media is plummeting day by day. Considering this scenario, Twitter paid ads is a way to go.

AdWords and Facebook Ad Costs Are Rising With Each Passing Day

Just last year, Search Engine Land reported a 20-25% increase in Google AdwWords CPCs. More and more brands are investing in the same keywords, which, of course, increase the competition and thus, the cost.

While Facebook ads were pretty cheap when they first started offering it, nowadays due to millions of advertisers, its platform is also becoming expensive.

For instance, Forbes reported a 21% increase in Facebook average ad pricing and the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) increased by an incredible 29% rate.

Considering both these reports, Twitter now looks like the promising ad channel. Facebook still beats Twitter on average cost per ad, but with some optimization and targeting options you can lower Twitter ad costs, even lower than Facebook.

Your Customers Spend a Ridiculous Amount of Time on Twitter

With each passing day, we're getting more attracted towards social media. While Facebook is a beast with 1.2 billion monthly active users, Twitter's 310 million monthly active users can't be neglected.

According to DMR stats, 34% of active Twitter users log into it more than once in a day.

Looking at all these points, you'll know that Twitter advertising is the way to go if you're looking to make profits online.

Now let's learn how to set-up the perfect Twitter ad campaign.

How to Setup the Perfect Twitter Ad Campaign

Twitter has a robust advertising platform. However, it is quite difficult to understand if you're just starting out.

But don't worry. Here's how to setup your first Twitter ad campaign.

Step 1: Choose your primary objective

To advertise on Twitter you'll need to log into your Twitter Ads account. For that head over to ads.twitter.com and enter your credentials.

Now, you'll need to choose your primary objective. Whether you want to get more leads, more traffic, or just more followers.

Twitter has 6 types of campaigns to choose from, these are:

1. Followers


2. Website clicks or conversions


3. Tweet engagements


4. App install or re-engagements


5. Leads on Twitter


6. Video views

Choose a relevant campaign type and click on it.

Step 2: Select your targeting options

Once you've determined the campaign type, it's time to set up the rest of the campaign. Name your ad campaign, choose all the relevant options, and select your targeting options.

Targeting is an extremely important feature for you to reach to your ideal customers. Twitter has 11 targeting options. These are:

1. Location


2. Gender


3. Languages


4. Devices, Platforms, and Carriers


5. Keywords


6. Followers


7. Interests


8. Tailored Audience


9. Behaviors


10. TV Targeting


11. Event Targeting

I recommend you choose relevant targeting options so you don't end up wasting your time and money marketing to the wrong audience.

Step 3: Adjust your bid to make your campaign profitable

This is the place where most people get Twitter wrong.

Twitter sells its advertising via auction. That means the more you're willing to pay, the more likely your ads will be shown, but if you set the bids too low, you'll get no impressions.

So Twitter provides an option for that. It's called automatic bidding.

This is how it works: you set a daily maximum budget and set the pricing to automatic bid, and Twitter will make sure your budget is spent very quickly. It might help you in winning auctions, but you don't want to or have to win every auction.

So, avoid using automatic bid in most of the cases.

In fact, I recommend you to start with $2, then test with the ads, analyze the results and finally scale the campaign.

After doing all the steps, finally launch your campaign.

How to Make Your Campaign Go Viral

You've setup your first Twitter campaign. You now understand the platform and know its basics. You also know the way it works.

Now it's time to optimize your campaign to make it viral. Here's how:

1. Get High Quality Score to Lower Ad Clicks

First of all, you obviously don't want to pay higher for ad clicks, when it's possible to cut them down. Like Facebook and Google, Twitter also has it's own quality score, which sometimes it refers to as “Quality Adjusted Bids”.

Larry Kim, the founder of Wordstream, actually found that the higher your engagement rate will be, the lower your ad will cost.

Here's how Twitter determines a quality-adjusted bid:

1. Resonance: This is a metric to measure your engagement. Basically, the more likes, retweets, and comments you get, the higher your quality score.


2. Relevance: It checks whether a user is interested in your tweet.


3. Recency: This metric checks the freshness of the tweet. If your tweet is fresh, then it's going to get higher priority.

Here's how to get a high quality adjusted bid:

Keep your tweets fresh

Like I already mentioned, Twitter keeps a check on the freshness of your tweet. That means Twitter is less likely to show your older ads. Here's an example:

(Image Source)

This is a snapshot of Larry Kim's Twitter ad dashboard. Notice how the impressions go down with each passing day.

Twitter wants to show fresh content to its users. So you'll want to test different variations of each ad and consider replacing them with newer ads, instead of running the same ones for lengthy periods.

Promote your best stuff

The best possible way to get a high quality score and lower your ad costs is by promoting your best stuff i.e., the tweets which organically gained more exposure.

(Image Source)

This tweet by Larry Kim resulted in 1488 retweets and 1284 favorites.

Larry got these amazing results because his post was truly epic. So, when you write epic content like this:

• How do colors affect purchases?


• The Complete 101 List Building Strategies


• The Science of Social Timing Part 1: Social Networks

Your content has 100x better chance of going viral.

Narrow your audience

Relevance is another important metric in Twitter.

You don't want to promote your content to the audience that shows little or no interest. Instead want to narrow your audience, target a smaller but precise audience who is interested in your content.

This not only helps get high conversions, but also helps you get higher engagement.

2. How to Find Your Best Content to Promote

Tweet engagement is a pretty important metric when it comes to advertising in Twitter. Not only does Twitter determine the pricing based on the tweet engagement but it also decides the exposure it's going to get.

High engagement posts is the way to go in this scenario. Here's how to find high engagement tweets:

1. Login to Twitter Analytics


2. Once you're in there, click the tweets tab and then click export to export all your tweets





3. Twitter will take a few seconds to process it, depending on your account, then it will send a request to download CSV file


4. Open the file and sort the “Engagement Rate” tab by descending order





5. Now, the top tweets you get are the ones that are the most engaging. This is where you should spend your dollars

Once you find your top engagement tweets, head back to Twitter and start the advertising campaign for those top tweets.

3. Use Relevant Keywords to Narrow Down Your Audience

Keyword targeting is an amazing feature in Twitter that lets you to find the people based on the words and phrases they've tweeted or searched for on Twitter.

Each keyword has 6 options to match your ideal customer:

1. Broad Match: Broad match searches for all the tweets containing that keyword independent of the order.


2. Phrase Match: When you select phrase match, Twitter will search all the tweets that contains the keywords in exact order plus there may be other keywords present between those tweets.


3. Exact Match: It searches for the tweets with exact keywords in the exact order without any word in between.


4. Negative Match: Negative match will remove all the tweets with that keyword in any order.


5. Negative Phrase: Negative phrase will remove all the tweets that contain the keywords in the exact order.


6. Negative Exact: It removes all the tweets with exact keywords in the exact order without any keyword in between.

4. Use Behavior and Demographic Targeting Options to Boost Engagement

Like keyword targeting, Twitter offers behavior and demographic targeting which is a strong metric to find the relevant audience.

You can use behaviors and demographic targeting options to target the people who want to, and can afford to buy your products. Here's how:

You can select their behavior like business type, industry, and sales revenue to find the customers who might be interested in your offering. You can then select their demographic options like their income, education, and employment to find the customers who can afford to buy your products.

5. Create Tailored Audience for Each Buying Stage

Twitter also offers website tags, which is similar to the Facebook pixel. With this tag you can track different types of conversions for the customers visiting your audience, like:

• Site visit


• Purchase


• Download


• Sign up


• Custom

Once you've captured these visitors, you can then advertise to these customers in Twitter. And the best part?

You'll get higher engagement for your tweets, meaning high quality score and low cost of the ads.

6. Leverage Twitter Lists For Best Results

Twitter lists are a great way to organize your followers, clients, influencers, and your team members. Many people know this feature but very few actually utilize it.

In Twitter advertising, Twitter lists are a great way to advertise. Here's a great example of this:

Larry Kim wrote a blog post for WordStream.

He shared the post throughout his social media account, and then promoted the post to the list of influencers using Twitter Ads.

(Image Source

Within 48 hours, the post picked 500+ press mentions and 100K visitors. All of this with just a $50 budget and 10 minutes of campaign setup.

Pretty cool, right?

Your results may vary.

7. Upload Your Email List to Create Your Own Audience

In Twitter, you can upload your email list to create your own list of audiences. With this feature, you can advertise to your email subscribers.

This is a great feature especially when you want to nurture your leads or promote your products. Here's how to get started:

1. Head over to Twitter ads. Select Tools and click audience manager.





2. Click create new audience. Then, select upload your own list.





3. Fill out all the information, upload your email list and click create list audience.

This list audience is extremely beneficial in Twitter. You can promote your blog posts, lead magnets, and promote your products.

8. Use Retargeting to Promote Your Content

Remarketing is an incredible way to advertise to your website visitors or your email subscribers. In Twitter, you can either use promoted tweets, Twitter cards, or promoted tweets.

All of them give you a great option to get more exposure. To use retargeting, here's what you should do:

1. You must upload your email list to retarget your email subscribers


2. You must create a website tag and install it in your website

I recommend you set up a website tag and install it. It's buried deep in Twitter, but it's actually the first thing you should do before running any ad. Here's how to generate a Website tag:

Login to Twitter Ads. Then, click tools, followed by conversion tracking.

Next up, agree to the Terms and Conditions and then click generate website tag for conversions.

In the next page you'll get the website tag. Install the tag in your website to setup conversion tracking.

Once done, you can advertise to your website visitors based on their behaviors and their purchase.

Measure your Strategy's Success

You've created your first ad. You've also optimized your ad to get sky-high conversions. Now, finally it's time to analyze your ad's performance and tweak it, if needed.

Let's start…

1. Test With the Different Variations of the Same Ad

Twitter loves fresh tweets and that's the reason it gives high preference to fresh tweets. You don't want to continue running your old ads; instead, you want to create new variations and test with them.

Here are some ideas to test your ads:

• Test changing the headline of your tweet


• Test changing the call-to-action button copy


• Try moving the URL to the front or in the center of your tweet


• Add relevant hashtags to your tweet, to see if it helps


• Try adding, removing, or changing the image

2. Use UTM Parameters

UTM parameters are simply the tags to measure your online marketing campaigns inside Google Analytics or Kissmetrics.

It helps you analyze and measure your online marketing efforts.

For instance, if you're offering an eBook and want to track the number of users who visited the landing page from your Twitter ad campaign, then you simply ad this tag to your URL.

http://yoursite.com/free-ebook/?utm_source=twitterad&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ebook

Then, you can track every conversion in Kissmetrics. But, it's quite a headache to create URL every time you create a new ad. For this, you can use Google's URL Builder, which does a pretty decent job in generating UTM tags for your URL.

3. Analyze, Tweak, Repeat

Finally, it's time to measure your ad performance.

(Image Source)

Pay close attention to your Twitter Ad dashboard, view your engagement rate, clicks, replies and likes.

Make sure to double-check this data with Google Analytics or Kissmetrics (a more robust option). This will help you find the actual number of clicks you're generating.

With these results, check which campaigns are working and which aren't. Delete the campaigns that aren't working and double down on the stuff that's working.

Conclusion

Twitter ads can be profitable; they can help you generate great ROI. But you must allocate your time to test with the platform.

Remember, Twitter can be misleading (hello, automatic bid) and at times their suggestions won't work for you. Forget everything that Twitter told you, forget the best practices they told you.

Instead go by this approach, avoid the major pitfalls that Twitter offers and you'll get incredible ROI from Twitter ads.

About the Author: Aman Thakur shows marketers and bloggers, simple and effective ways to build their mailing list super-fast. Download his exclusive bonus 101 list building strategies to grow your email list. A writer by day and a reader by night, he can be found online tweeting about marketing, or watching Cricket matches.

5 Online Holiday Shopping Trends You're Not Prepared For (Yet!)

It's not even November yet and here we are, already talking about holiday shopping trends. Too soon? Not at all. The truth is, the more foresight you can have to prepare for what will be the biggest shopping season, the more you can adapt to customers' habits and be ready to adjust to meet their needs and exceed their expectations.

Just how big will the 2016 holiday shopping season be? Let's take a look:

Holiday shopping between November and December is expected to reach nearly $700 billion. Consumer confidence is higher and 41% Of people surveyed plan on spending more on gifts this year than they did last year – a 10 billion increase in total sales from this time last year.

What's more, the emphasis on traditional shopping days like Black Friday and online-only Cyber Monday are lessening – especially because transactions can happen anywhere at any time thanks to the rise of mobile. So what kinds of trends should you prepare for this year and how can you get started?

1. Before the Shopping Begins: “I Need Some Ideas!”

Shopping for gifts is supposed to be a time of fun, relaxation and entertainment. Instead, as many of us can attest to, it's nerve-wracking, frustrating and stressful. According to Google's own research, there are three moments that the customer goes through before they ultimately make a purchase:

1. The “I Need Some Ideas” moment


2. The “Which One's Best” moment and the


3. “I Want to Buy It” moment.

We'll get to all of these shortly, but as you might expect, how you handle the first two will ultimately determine whether or not you are rewarded with the last one. Also, depending on your industry, you may see a larger percentage of your target audience heading to YouTube for ideas:

(Image Source)

Gift guides are a huge presence online, and around 70% of the time, these kinds of videos are watched on mobile devices. Want to know how big of a presence online gift guide videos are? In the time people spent viewing them on YouTube last holiday season, you could watch “It's a Wonderful Life” well over 300,000 times.

Google calls these types of searches “micro moments” – essentially “being there” for a customer when, where and how they need you.

2. The Importance of “Micro Moments”

If you think micro moments are simply a customer going through the stages of Attention – Interest – Desire – Action, you'd be doing a huge disservice to what's actually involved in the process. Google took a look at one shopper's behavior to determine precisely how they interacted with various digital touch-points once they decided to do a basic search. Here's what they found:

(Image Source)

In this case, the shopper was Leena (a pseudonym), a 32 year old married woman from Washington state who looks for discounts and specials online. As you can see from the chart above, in a one month time period she hit over 1,000 digital touch-points. In taking a closer look at her search query, we can focus on a micro-moment. Leena had run out of mascara and was looking for an alternative to her regular brand.

She had narrowed down her decision to two choices. Then, her mobile search went like this:

(Image Source)

So as you can see, even on mobile devices, it's not a “once and done” process. It's a lot of back and forth, a lot of different devices, searches and comparisons being made.

Cross-device analytics tracking

Kissmetrics ties all devices back to each user. Track user acquisition by understanding where customers found you, and when they signed up.

3. Shoppers Ask: “How Will I Buy This?”

If you sell tangible goods, you may be worried that the holiday season is all about showrooming – trying on a product in your store, only to actually buy it on Amazon. But the truth is, whether you're serving customers locally or you're letting them shop on mobile (or both), the stores that offer the most convenience are the ones that ultimately get the sale. It is, in short, “frictionless shopping” – being there for the customer, right when, where and how they need you.

(Image Source)

Contrary to popular belief, most of them don't even know what particular brand of item they want, which is why you need to be there during those micro-moments to help guide their decision: not in an overly sales-pressuring way, but in a helpful, convenient way. Google's own micro-moment inspiration guide shows how major brands like Swarovski crystal and catalog retailer Williams Sonoma do just that, by way of their online Style Finder (how to accessorize depending on the occasion) and rich media presentations of products respectively.

Helping customers make buying decisions will be key this holiday season and beyond.

Free shipping is the biggest conversion booster we all know about. But “buy it online and pick it up in store” is another big one. Having multiple ways to get the product is great, but having multiple ways to pay for it is even better. Having the ability to not only accept credit cards, but Paypal and mobile pay systems like Android and Apple Pay are going to get you more conversions than sticking to a single system.

4. Consumers Only Want the Best

(Image Source)

When buying online, you can't (yet) feel, try on or gauge the quality of a product. That's when shoppers are seeking out reviews and ratings – but even those can be bought. These days, consumers are shopping smarter by looking for the “best” of whatever gift they have in mind. Google reports that shopping queries with “best” have increased 50% in the last year. But simply claiming your product is the best isn't enough to win people over. Instead, show them.

For example, you could talk about what goes into making it or the features that truly make it stand out from the competition. What ingredients or qualities does it have that competitors tend to “cheap out” on? What makes your version worth their time and attention (and ultimately their wallets) and perhaps more importantly – are those differences the kinds of things that customers actually care about?

5. The Power of Cross-Device Targeting

As you can see from the touchpoint illustration above, there are a lot of back-and-forth choices to be made from mobile to desktop to mobile again. Throw in other items like TVs, gaming consoles, on-demand streaming, tablets and smart watches, and you get what marketers are calling the “multi-screen explosion”. Cookies just aren't enough to satisfy the hunger to glean info on customers anymore, so ad networks are ramping up their work on letting companies target customers across devices. Call it cross-device or multi-channel or omni-channel – it's changing the way we'll be shopping this holiday season.

But make no mistake – consumers are keen on privacy. There's a delicate balance between being personalized and convenient, and being too “in your face” with the messaging. Smart companies looking to reap the benefits of the holiday shopping season know that the best way to leverage upcoming trends is to hone in on customer behavior and preferences without that creepy stalker vibe.

In short, it means keeping customers (gently) informed, helping to guide them where possible and making things exceedingly convenient while providing the best possible experience as a whole. Sound like a tall order to fill? It is – and being able to juggle it across multiple customers and devices is no small feat. However, you can do wonders with this information by looking beyond the trend and brainstorming ways to turn your own products into the kind of convenient, accessible, relevant and engaging items that people won't hesitate to buy – for others, as well as themselves.

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!