Posts Tagged ‘Black Friday’

 

2012 Holiday Season: Record Breaking Online Activity (Already)

Monday, November 26th, 2012

The term “Cyber Monday” made it’s debut in November of 2005, ushering in a new era of online marketing, promotions and early-bird specials. Six years later, it seems Cyber-Monday is trumping Black Friday, but not just in the area of online sales. A multitude of records have already been broken during the start of this year’s holiday season.

Staggering Stats

The National Retail Federation reported in a press release that “a record 247 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend, up from 226 million last year. Making sure to take advantage of retailers’ promotions to the full extent, the average holiday shopper spent $423 this weekend, up from $398 last year. Total spending reached an estimated $59.1 billion.”

Forbes listed the top five most-visited online retailers on Black Friday (with auctions sites excluded from the rankings) as follows:

1. Amazon

2. Walmart

3. Best Buy

4. Target

5. Apple

Forbes also offers a Cyber Monday cheat sheet for bargain hunters who will, no doubt, help shatter the previous online sales record of  $1.25 billion dollars (up 22% from Cyber Monday 2010). More on that here. 

Instagram’s Busiest Day

Photos of beautifully brined and browned turkeys exploded on Instagram this past Thursday.

From the Instagram blog: “Over 10 million photos that mentioned Thanksgiving-themed words in their captions were shared yesterday. For several hours throughout the day, more than 200 photos about Thanksgiving were posted every second.”

“Overall, the day broke all Instagram records as we saw the number of shared photos more than double from the day before, making it our busiest day so far.”

Cyber Monday Mania

As noted above, 2011 brought sales over over $1.25 billion with a 22% increase from the year prior.

With consumer confidence increasing as well as Zillow posting home values had their biggest monthly jump in value in seven years, we may see a the perfect storm for spending this year.

 

 

 

 

Get a Jump on Black Friday with Social Media

Monday, November 14th, 2011

This holiday season, you’re more likely than ever to interact with social media while hunting for gifts.  Every major retailer will have some sort of social campaign, and taking advantage of them can mean big savings this year.

It all starts with Black Friday, and, in a tradition that has started in recent years, continues the following week with Cyber Monday. However, retailers have already gotten a jump on the action.

When I think of Black Friday, it conjures up images of people standing out in the cold in the wee hours of the morning while fighting a turkey hangover at a Walmart or Best Buy.  When I think of Cyber Monday, I see people sitting at their desks at work searching Amazon.com for deals. So, we’ll focus on how these three retailers are putting social media to good use this year.

When you think of Facebook pages to “like”, is Walmart one that makes your list?  No?  What about Best Buy?  Maybe?  If you said no to either, you could be missing out.  Over 10.3 million people have liked the Walmart page, and over 5 million have liked Best Buy.  Thus they receive updates about the retailer daily.  This past week, Walmart and Best Buy released their Black Friday ads to their Facebook followers before anyone else.

Although Amazon.com doesn’t have any physical stores, they’re not going to wait around until Cyber Monday to get in on the holiday shopping action.  As a matter of fact, they aren’t even waiting until Black Friday.  Amazon is taking advantage of the buzz that builds as Black Friday approaches and announcing daily “Black Friday” deals several days before the actual day after Thanksgiving.  Naturally, you’ll need to follow them on Facebook to see them.

Of course, if all of this is too much to keep up with, you could simply follow @blackfriday on Twitter for all of the latest deals.  They’ll keep you up to date on when stores release their ads, as well as many of the promotions like we’ve mentioned here.