Black Friday and Cyber Monday in New Zealand. Do you have a plan?
With the two biggest days for online spending in New Zealand just around the corner, its a good time to check in on your plan to make the most of them. Whether you’re an online retailer that wants to grow ecommerce in 2019, or a publisher with an audience leaning on you to cut through the noise and hype, here’s the low down on these two days, and Singles Day, with some ideas on how to stand out.
Black Friday sales in New Zealand
Black Friday in New Zealand is Friday 29 November. Where did Black Friday came from? In the US, the day after Thanksgiving is when Christmas shopping season kicks off. The phrase Black Friday was earliest traced to Philadelphia in the early sixties, where it was used to describe the chaos, traffic jams and parking on that day. While the shopping event transitioned to the internet a long time ago, like some other US traditions (trick or treating anyone?) it’s gathered momentum here in recent years, with The Full Download by NZ Post reporting Black Friday ecommerce grew 20.3% last year.
Cyber Monday sales in New Zealand
Cyber Monday in New Zealand is Monday 2 December. This event began much later, in 2005, when online retailers wanted their own day, as typically Black Friday sales were in store (back then many big retail brands still had poor online capability). While it is on the other side of the same weekend as Black Friday both days are, in their own right, each greater than Boxing Day sales for online shopping in New Zealand. The chart below (Credit: The Full Download, visit NZ Post for full report) highlights not only are these two days the biggest online shopping events but also that they are seeing the strongest growth.
Singles Day sales in New Zealand
How about Singles Day, what even is that and does it happen in New Zealand? Singles Day happens on Monday 11 November, and is China’s holiday for young people to celebrate being single (note the date 11,11 consists only of the number one which represents singularity). It turns out single people decided the best way to celebrate not having a ball-and-chain relationship, is by shopping, as its grown into a shopping festival and the world’s biggest retail day for online and offline shopping. Last year a record $46 Billion was spent online in 24 hours and New Zealand was the 9th best performing country.
Advertiser strategies for key shopping events
So, for the biggest days of the year for online shopping you’ve decided on your offer and have a plan in place to promote them. Here’s 7 simple ideas to help stand out.
Build a sense of anticipation
Start dropping hints across all of your touch points, let shoppers know what to expect so they’re ready to jump on and grab what they need when the sales kick off. If you have good email data, try teasing out deals relevant to each shopper segment so they know exactly what’s in it for them. If your loyal shoppers get a deeper discount (which they deserve!), let them know in advance too.
It’s 2019, be smart and sensitive
Young people are mindful of careless excess and you should be too. Supply chain, packaging, what shoppers do with the old things that their new purchases will replace - make responsible choices and don’t be afraid to communicate them. Offer strong incentives for environmentally friendly products, or email tips on how to responsibly redeploy or recycle old items post purchase.
Go deep on the discount
While regular sales are part of the value proposition for some brands, others work hard to avoid dropping their margin. If you fall in the latter camp, well this is the time to offer up your deepest discount on distressed stock. Having a day dedicated to heavy discounts lets you get away with it without shoppers coming to expect it year round. Give the bargain hunters what they want.
Get your online store in order
Its a good time of year to triple test your ecommerce platform and make sure its fighting fit and ready to handle a deluge of shoppers with short attention spans. Check regular search terms from last year, run those queries and see what comes up. Are popular sellers tagged correctly? How’s your page speed? Is check out seamless? Do you need short term help with fulfilment?
Be where the shoppers are
With the launch of The Market in New Zealand, Trade Me’s Stores enabling retailers to sell new products and Amazon in the headlines every other day as more than half of all product searches commence on their platform, marketplaces can be worth exploring if relevant to your business. You can read about setting up on Amazon marketplace here, or Trade Me Stores here.
Don’t forget singles day
While Singles Day originated in China, like the other days it’s quickly become a global phenomena. Last year 700 New Zealand brands participated, with some like Ecostore, seeing material sales into China. Clearly a big day for those shipping to China, but with the latest (2018) census showing that 230,000 Kiwis identify themselves as Chinese origin it’s also an opportunity for local retailers.
Align with a good cause
Mainstream media, social media and Kiwi shoppers’ inboxes will be awash with sale day offers. So how can you stand out from the crowd? One way is to align with a good cause. If you don’t have any charitable sponsorship in place, you can add your brand to Rewardhub, our online shopping platform that Rewards charities, clubs and schools by donating a percentage of whatever their supporters spend with you. This give shoppers a strong incentive to support your brand and shop with you online.
Publisher strategies for key shopping events
For publishers, the big sales days are the perfect time to help your audience cut through the noise and be the trusted taste-makers that you are by sharing your picks of the best brands, products and deals. Your audience may already be primed to shop, so it’s also a good opportunity to promote affiliate links. Here’s a few things to think about when providing the annual run down on sales day specials.
Find the SEO opportunities
There are plenty of tools out there, including free ones, that will help uncover where the search action is going to be. The table below was pulled from Google trends and shows the massive growth in New Zealand search volumes for “Black Friday”, the number of people searching for Black Friday more than doubled between from 2016 to 2018. So that’s a good territory to start exploring using tools with more insights.
Run a few google searches for your brand and Black Friday, if you’re in the habit of covering the sales each year you may have older urls which rank well but are out of date. There are various things you can do like update the stronger, older ones or redirect them all to your latest story. The main thing is to be sure your top results are presenting shoppers with a guide to this year’s Black Friday sales, rather than 2016!
Generic Black Friday search terms are going to be dominated by the retail brands, so trying to compete on those may be futile. Think about identifying product niches for Black Friday that work best for your brand. Further SEO analysis will give you an idea of the which ones to focus on.
2. Ask your audience
You might take the opportunity to learn a little more about your audience and gain valuable intel not just on what they’ll be shopping for, but what problems they’re looking to you to solve. Depending on how engaged your social communities are you could run an Instagram poll, pose questions on Facebook or run a competition to reward your audience for sharing ideas on what they want you to cover.