Note: This was featured as part of our Web Wednesday segment on Charleston’s 105.5 The Bridge with Box in the Morning. You can catch us every Wednesday morning at 8:20 am ET for your dose of social media & digital marketing news. You can listen to the segment below:
Black Friday has been the biggest shopping day of the year for over a decade. Since then, we’ve also had the emergence of Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday to bring the whole weekend full circle. To learn about consumer shopping patterns, we took a look at a few of the lessons we were able to learn from this year’s Black Friday weekend.
1. Shoppers aren’t talking about Black Friday.
Although Black Friday remains the biggest shopping day of the year, online mentions of the day have dropped 72%. There were still hundreds of thousands of mentions of the shopping event in 2015, but this has dropped drastically.
What does this mean? Well, it could be that businesses and consumers are talking about Cyber Monday more online since that event takes place, well, online. As a business owner, you might want to think about implementing some offline promotion for next year’s Black Friday sale.
2. Shoppers feel negatively about Black Friday.
When social media users do talk about Black Friday online, more than 50% of their conversations have a negative connotation. Since 2008, shoppers have encountered a number of violent acts each year by people fighting their way through crowds to get deals and doorbusters. This has decidedly put a damper on the shopping event. Interestingly enough, Cyber Monday also faces a more negative connotation even though its deals are all online.
However, shoppers feel much more positively about Small Business Saturday, with nearly all conversations about the topic expressing joy. Good news, small businesses: consumers like the idea of shopping small and shopping local. Next year you might want to put more of an emphasis on Small Business Saturday for your big sales instead of Black Friday.
3. Even Black Friday is shifting towards online.
Cyber Monday was started to give the people who hate crowds a chance to still take advantage of huge sales. Essentially, it was a way for people to reach even more customers: those who go shopping all night Black Friday as a tradition, and those who would rather purchase their Christmas gifts from the comfort of their homes.
However, many companies are moving all of their Black Friday sales to their online stores as well, so that everyone gets a shot at savings. This is a great change for all of you business owners to make sure that your website is working, it’s mobile-friendly and user-friendly, and your eCommerce shop is working (if you have one). In the future, it’s likely that camping out in front of stores will be extinct and nearly all sales and shopping will be done online.
Do you have a plan for 2017? If not, give us a call at (800) 759-7996 or fill out our free consultation form and we’d be happy to help you put one together.
