How to know if your marketing is delivering results on major shopping days

There are various events to keep up with, especially if you operate internationally. In Asia, Singles’ Day (November 11th) attracts the most attention from shoppers, while Black Friday dominates in places like the US and Western Europe.

According to research by PwC, more than eight out of ten consumers in South Africa (88 per cent), Ireland (84 per cent) and France (81 per cent) were interested in making a purchase or planning to buy something on Black Friday 2019 (November 29th).

UK shoppers were reportedly planning to spend 11 per cent more than in the previous year – an average of £224 per person.

Given the growing importance of occasions like Black Friday, you want to have maximum confidence that your investment in promoting these events is delivering results. Here are some of the steps you can take to gauge the success of your marketing on the year’s biggest shopping days:

Start with clear objectives

To draw clear conclusions about whether your marketing has yielded results on major shopping days, first you need to have a good idea of what success actually looks like.

Going into events like Black Friday with clearly defined objectives, which make sense in the context of your broader goals and ambitions as a business, will make it much easier to measure the impact of your marketing and calculate your return on investment (ROI).

One practice that works for many businesses when it comes to planning specific projects and campaigns is setting SMART goals:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Relevant
• Time-bound

One example of a SMART goal for Black Friday could be to increase email newsletter click-throughs to product pages by 15 per cent in the week leading up to the event.

Form a measurement plan

As well as having clear aims in mind, you need a measurement plan with which you can assess the progress you’re making towards your targets.

One of the most important aspects of your measurement plan will be your key performance indicators (KPIs) – specific metrics that improve your understanding of how you are performing against specific objectives.

Like SMART goals, one of the most valuable characteristics of KPIs is their specificity and relevance. These metrics are essential when it comes to assessing your marketing performance within specific timeframes or campaigns.

If one of your biggest objectives during events like Black Friday is to turn more website visitors into customers, cart conversion and abandonment rates could be two of your most important KPIs.

Know your benchmarks

The data you gain from your measurement plan won’t be of much use if you have nothing to compare it to. It’s important to collect pre-existing information so you have solid benchmarks to work from, which will give you an accurate picture of the impact your focused marketing efforts are having.

Being able to make informed comparisons helps you identify which aspects of your Black Friday or major shopping day marketing are delivering the best ROI and where there is scope for improvement.

Harness the power of analytics

Web analytics is important for ecommerce businesses at any time of the year, but it becomes particularly significant when you want to gain insights into how your various pages, marketing tools and pieces of content are performing at a specific time.

Services like Google Analytics offer dedicated ecommerce tracking functions for retailers, as well as the option to set up dedicated events with unique goals.

Other handy tools like UTM tags can help you identify the sources of traffic to your website and product pages, which could be anything from your own email newsletters and social media platforms to third-party sites.

Track results geographically

If you’re an international business, it can prove highly useful to track your marketing and sales performance by region.

Being able to see where your traffic is coming from and which marketing assets or products are attracting the most interest in certain destinations can help you better understand your target markets.

This data can also prove vital in informing your future marketing strategies and decisions.

If your business wants to expand across borders and take full advantage of events like Black Friday and Singles’ Day in the future, Locaria can help with services ranging from market research and testing to international SEO.

To find out more, request a quote online or call +44 (0)20 3948 6800.