As the shopping mania that is Black Friday descends on the nation early this Friday, and in some cases the night of Thanksgiving, retailers who are effective in using social media are likely to be smiling much more when they ring up their cash registers at the end of the day.
According to a study from social media and digital analytics provider Socialbakers, as more consumers turn online for the best savings opportunities, Walmart is the retailer most likely to score big this coming holiday weekend, with the study claiming the shopping retailer offers the most engaged users throughout its social media platforms.
Socialbakers reports that Walmart offers the greatest number of fans heading up the list at more than 10 million fans, with more than 7,500 fan posts in October. The study goes on to note that Walmart has close to two times the number of fans who are actively posting.
According to Jan Rezab, CEO at Socialbakers, “Savvy retailers are combining traditional banner ads and web pages dedicated to Black Friday specials with Facebook posting and Tweets about deals, coupons, merchandise, and hot tips. This enables them to interact and respond to consumers instantaneously – offering them a massive competitive advantage that converts to increased sales and loyalty at Thanksgiving.”
For those retailers with the greatest numbers of Facebook fans and Twitter followers, they already have a leg up on the competition by actively engaging consumers, allowing retailers to share details regarding sales, special offers, and early opening times.
“Big name retailers who desire to meet or beat their sales targets know that they need to aggressively compete for the consumer’s dollar in this tough economy,” Rezab went on to say. “Many retailers have tapped social media to close the gap between getting the consumer to browse to actually buy. Our social media analytics help marketers better understand and orchestrate their social media presence to get the results they need.”
The results many retailers need this shopping season are massive amounts of expenditures by consumers.
Many of those expenditures are likely to be done over the Internet, as experts’ claim a large number of people will shop and spend online this Black Friday, as well as the remaining month or so of the shopping season.
So, is Walmart actually missing out on a potential gold mine at the end of the day?
According to an earlier study from 24/7 Wall Street, despite its position as the number one retailer in the world, Walmart actually got one of the worst ranks among all the retailers analyzed.
While ranking as the second most visited e-commerce site on the ‘Net, according to numbers from Hitwise, the amount of Walmart’s sales that actually register from e-commerce are very small – less than 2 percent, or $6 billion, according to analysts at Wells Fargo Securities.
eMarketer recently reported that U.S. retail ecommerce holiday sales are expected to jump nearly 17 percent this year, making up more than 8 percent of total retail sales, growing only some 3 percent. Overall, e-commerce sales for all of 2011 are expected to grow close to 17 percent to $195 billion.
For those retailers who don’t quite get it when it comes to how to use social media to propel more sales, here are some tips:
- Utilize social media from start to finish – There are a variety of social networking sites out there for retailers along with Facebook and Twitter. Using social media is essentially free, minus the time and effort. Post not only specials that your business is offering, but links to valuable articles on industry trends etc. so your customers and potential customers have lots of information at their fingertips;
- Interact in real-time with consumers – One of the advantages to having a social media presence is that you can interact on a real-time basis with both current and potential customers. Whether consumers respond with questions, concerns, complaints, etc. be sure you take the time to interact with individuals to maintain a dialogue;
- Be mobile – With more and more consumers having and utilizing mobile phones, it is important to use this venue to reach out to them. Even though not all consumers will purchase an item at that time, offering them sales, deals, coupons etc. over their phones can help make up their decision for them;
At the end of the day, your retail business should utilize social media in all its shapes and forms to reach out to, influence and complete deals with consumers.
Despite all the crowds and hassle of the holiday shopping season, it behooves retails to be social.
Photo credit: csmonitor.com
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