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Sears, Kmart and Others Begin Holiday Sales Ahead of Time as Shoppers Start Early Search for Deals

By Jack Neff and Natalie Zmuda
Published: November 22, 2009

http://adage.com/article?article_id=140669

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) -- Black Friday 2009 has become a massive game of chicken among retailers and consumers, as the closely watched post-Thanksgiving sales data will largely decide who succeeds at outsmarting the other.

Consumers are planning more and earlier to get the best deals this holiday season, starting their shopping and online price comparisons weeks ahead of last year. Retailers, meanwhile, have been more conservative with inventory even if they're offering what some observers see as the best Black Friday deals ever, hoping to avoid big late-season and post-season markdowns. Black Friday will go a long way toward deciding which side comes out on top.

Google data show the upswing in searches for "Black Friday deals" started about two weeks earlier this year than last, beginning in October. Search on that phrase actually hit a short-term peak Nov. 13 and declined through last week, though it may pick up again this week. Experian Hitwise is now seeing searches for Black Friday starting as early as August.

Thriftier consumers are making Black Friday more important, said Kohl's CMO Julie Gardner. "The environment has never been more difficult," she said. "The interest, from a consumer standpoint, on how to be the smartest shopper will be amplified."

Interest is intense enough that the traditional boundaries around Black Friday and Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) are breaking down fast. Amazon announced last week it will begin Black Friday deals starting Monday Nov. 23, essentially a week before online retail's traditional "Cyber Monday" shopping peak. Black Friday, however, already had become an online phenomenon, with ComScore reporting last year that traffic to online retailers was up 98% over the previous year's Black Friday.

Circular leaks
Meanwhile, early online leaks of retailers' offline Black Friday circular ads have become so pervasive that Walmart, which for years has threatened to sue the small websites that preview them, finally relented last week. It let BlackFriday.info publish a leaked version of its entire Thanksgiving Day circular, though it still declines to confirm or deny its veracity. That came a day after Walmart confirmed six of its Black Friday prices to CNN.

Realistically, Walmart may have had to cave rather than lose buzz to other retailers that let their leaks flow more freely. Price wars over what might have once been "Black Friday" deals, such as books and Xbox 360 gaming consoles, broke out weeks ahead of Black Friday among Walmart, Amazon, Target and Sears.

Sears, sibling Kmart and Kohl's were among retailers that started rolling early "Black Friday" themed holiday sales in early November. These early deals, combined with signs of unusually early shopping and planning by consumers and surprisingly strong October sales numbers for many retailers, raises the question of whether retailers have stolen some of the thunder from Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Sara Kleinberg, head of marketing for retail at Google, doesn't think so, pointing to survey research by Google and OTX showing 32% of consumers plan to do most of their shopping during Thanksgiving weekend. Another 40% plan to do so in early to mid December, according to the survey, based on data from the week of Nov. 2.

A poll by the International Council of Shopping Centers found 16% of shoppers plan to begin their holiday gift shopping on Black Friday, up from 10% last year.

By all appearances, the deals, including LCD HDTVs from Walmart and Target for $248 and $246, respectively, $3 small appliances at Target and a $59 Garmin GPS at Walmart, are better than ever, said Scott McCollum, managing director-shopper marketing at Ogilvy Action. But the question is how successful retailers will be at getting people they lure in with sweet deals to buy higher-margin items, and whether consumers will have anything left to spend by mid-December.

"We are definitely seeing more people shopping from lists," Mr. McCollum said, "and less impulse shopping." Adding to consumer discipline, he said, is that more people plan to buy holiday gifts with cash, not credit.

Layaway has accordingly gotten new life, particularly among retailers looking to differentiate themselves from Walmart, which did away with it more than two years ago. Sears, Kmart and Best Buy are among retailers that have added online layaway this year. Google actually shows a steady increase in searches for "layaway" plans the past five years, with an 8% increase this September-November period vs. a year ago and a 40% increase in searches for online layaway.

Seemingly Black Friday and the holiday season should be better for retailers this year, if only because last year's same-store sales were so dismal. Going into this holiday season, most retailers were reporting surprisingly strong sales momentum in October or the third quarter, with Walmart -- last year's standout -- being one of the few to see deceleration this year.

Dismal projections
But most projections for overall holiday sales are gloomy. The National Retail Federation forecasts a 1% decline. Nielsen's annual holiday retail survey fielded at the beginning of November found 42% of respondents plan to spend less than a year ago vs. only 4% who plan to spend more. NPD Group was slightly less gloomy, with a 30% to 11% split.

While it's clear people have done more research online in advance of the holiday season, it's far less clear they'll be buying more online as some may trade the convenience of online shopping for deals they hope to find on Black Friday in stores.

Research released last week by Digital Research and ThinkVine showed 39% of consumers plan to spend less online this holiday season, compared to 20% who said they'll spend more. That jibes with Nielsen's survey, which found the percentage of consumers who plan to do at least some holiday shopping online declined 10 points to 63%.

On the other hand, Forrester projects online retail sales will actually rise 8% this year, breaking out of a funk that saw third-quarter e-commerce sales down 2% according to ComScore. One factor in favor of the online retailers, according to Forrester, are those tight offline inventories retailers are using to avoid late markdowns, which could drive people online to find what they can't in stores.

Either way, freebies will be big drivers of online success, as Google reports strong double-digit increases in searches for free shipping and coupon codes.

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Social media divides opinion in more ways than one. Some businesses see it as a revolutionary new way to talk to their customers and approach recruitment, others have barely even registered its significance, and a few hold it in contempt. But the growth of this technology has consequences that no-one can really avoid. Just about every business will have employees who are on social networking sites. All it needs is for someone to put their place of work on their profile, and you immediately have an online company representative. Their behaviour then reflects on the business – and in the most extreme cases, misdemeanours can create a PR nightmare for their employer.

How should IT staff cope with this, and what should they do if the worst happens? Social media is too new to have a standardised approach, and companies are taking their own line on the problem. Some trust their employees fully, although they might keep an eye on what they say. Others ban entire sites at work, in the hope that will prevent any accidents – apparently forgetting most people have internet at home. There’s a whole range of possible options, and that’s before customers have even been considered.

Consumers have always been able to say negative things about a company, but now there’s potential for bad-mouthing poor service on a much wider scale. Experts agree that many companies who have previously felt comfortable ignoring consumer complaints might not be able to get away with it so easily. Sites like Twitter give consumers and employees a “voice”, they say, and executives are going to be under increasing pressure to listen to this voice.

So what’s the best way to deal with social media, and the effects it might have on your company? Each case is different and it generally requires some thought – the approach will depend on the type of company and its working culture. Paul Taylor, co-founder of social media monitoring company 6Consulting, said monitoring software can be used for a range of things – from finding out what employees and consumers are saying about your brand to providing better customer service.

“People use monitoring software to get an understanding as to what people are saying on social media, and what they’re saying about your company or one of your competitors.” He says companies employ monitoring firms to improve customer service by talking to people who mention their brands, or for sales, by subtly interacting with people who seem interested in buying a product like theirs.

It may all seem a bit Big Brother, but Taylor says it can take some of the initial fear out of experimenting with the technology. “At the very least, there’s no reason not to listen and gain insight from the enormous amount of conversations taking place.” Recruitment is one area that has really embraced social media – it provides an easy channel to talk to potential talent.

Along with the opportunities, there are the problems, and errant employees are a big worry for some. Dominos Pizza is one of the most well-known examples, after two workers filmed themselves doing unpleasant things with people’s food, before uploading it to YouTube. It got 600,000 views, but it’s worth noting that the company’s response video, which they uploaded 48 hours later, eventually got 1 million. By understanding the technology and reacting as quickly as possible, most mistakes can be countered.

Despite the scare stories, IT bosses we spoke to don’t seem too worried by the risks. David Wilde is chief information officer (CIO) at Westminster City Council. He says the council is using Twitter and wikis to actively engage residents, and added, staff are not blocked from social media sites.
He adds, “We do monitor and take action if staff behave in an inappropriate manner, in the same way as we do on any engagement on service delivery or with the public. This is not about technology tools, just good management.”

Fin Goulding, CIO at online travel agent Lastminute.com, says he wants his staff to be innovative and work in collaboration with each other – restricting access or monitoring them, he says, wouldn’t encourage that. “People are going to slip up and make mistakes, but we are not a controlling organisation,” he says. “A lot of our team on mobile apps have created their own videos, put them on YouTube and tried to create viral interest. We encourage it. And anyway, there will be something else that comes along soon enough. We want to be at the cutting edge. If you start restricting people they’ll stop being innovative.”

Online clothing retailer Asos.com also takes a relaxed attitude to employees using Twitter and Facebook. E-Commerce director James Hart actually asked staff already using the sites to add the company name to their profiles, and let people know what they were up to at work. He does follow what they say but says it’s good for the company’s brand. He said at the recent Media140 conference, “We have 55 people on Twitter. I trust them and I see what they say because I follow them. We like to be where our customers are, and we adapt to the environment. I'm not really sure what to do with the official account. People search for Asos.com so we need something, but we don't really push products at them. I just want to talk to and learn from them.”

So most aren’t too worried, but some companies may want to take the simple option. Ted Hunt, digital communications manage at drinks company Innocent, just manages one Twitter account under the company name. Employee accounts don’t have the Innocent brand name attached to them.
“We keep it as a single Innocent drinks account. Otherwise it fragments too much and it's hard to control the message. It's easier to get a message out in one go. But we don't moderate blog comments strictly,” Hunt said.

Perhaps the best approach is to be open-minded, while educating users. A morning with the sales team telling them why it’s a bad idea to post pictures from last Friday night on their work Twitter accounts will ultimately be cheaper and easier than expensive monitoring software. And while social media gives employees and consumers a voice, it also gives businesses one too. What’s important is learning how to use it.

Posted by Jon Aspinell.

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Are you ready for the future of search marketing? It's going to creep up on you if you are not. In fact, it's already creeping. How long have you spent worrying about keywords? Is that all you worry about? Hopefully not, because there's a lot more to successful online marketing than that, even search marketing.

This is the basic plot of a keynote speech delivered by Charlene Li, co-author of the book Groundswell, and Founder of Altimeter Group, at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose.

The big picture is largely about social media and interaction. This is nothing new right? You've had social media marketing talk rammed down your throat for a while now, but that's separate from search engine marketing right? Well, yes and no. Social media may play a bigger role in search engine rankings that you realize, and that could even become truer in the future, and probably will.

Here's the thing. Searchers want relevant results. It's all about relevancy. That's all the search engines strive for, and that's what users want. As Li says, "There is a new type of relevance called engagement." People must be at the center of your search strategy. Not keywords.

There's a reason that real-time search is such a hot topic. Some think it's just a buzzword, but it's more than that. It's an ever-growing element into what people want to know.

Now we're not talking about real-time search taking over traditional search. Right now is not always more relevant than something from three years ago. In many cases, it is more relevant though. User intent might be considered the holy grail.

There's a reason Google is working toward updating its algorithm to incorporate a faster indexing speed. People want freshness. That's why Twitter has become such a hot source of buzz that seemingly all radio and television programs cling to these days. It's up to the minute info about what people are saying.

Facebook is doing it now too, and Li mentioned the importance of this in her keynote as well. One very important thing to keep in mind is that outside search engines aren't indexing the information that can be found in Facebook updates. Facebook is huge now, by the way - way bigger than Twitter. We're talking up there in Googleland in terms of users.

Social is an important element of search. We still have to look at it as a thing of the future though, because we are still so early in the evolution of the social web. The major search engines are still trying to make sense of it all. Li noted that the real time web presents many challenges to search engines, because how do you place value on things like retweets, @replies, short URLs, etc? There are a lot of new elements to consider.

Now think about search engine advertising. Li asked, "What if search engines augmented my search ads based on knowing who I am?" Think about data like influence, and number of friends. The number of influential friends could influence search results and search engine ad targeting.

The web has largely become a very social environment, and will continue to become even more so. This is why marketers should focus on people rather than keywords. If you want an example of how this plays directly into Google results already, Li mentioned how the YouTube video called " United Breaks Guitars " ranks number 4 in Google when you search for "united". United doesn't own that keyword anymore, because people have lifted this video up.

The synopsis of Li's book reads, "Right now, your customers are writing about you products on blogs and recutting you commercials on YouTube. They're defining you on Wikipedia and ganging up on you on social networking sites like Facebook. These are the elements of a social phenomenon."

Well, it's the truth. You've got to engage out there. There are watchers, sharers, commenters, content producers, and curators. Focus on the sharers and the watchers. Focus on people and relationships, and listen to customers. 

Li says you should also get you back end data in order. By this, she means having a single place where people can sign in to your site, and integrate off-site behavior and data. Figure out the value of specific visitors. Integrating social into your site is a good way to do this.

"Prepare to tap into 'chain of intent,'" she says. "Google now combines chains of searches to determine intent." (Emphasis added.)

Know that customers can take their social networks anywhere with them at this point. Thanks to all kinds of tools from the networks themselves, as well as browser plug-ins, etc. people always have their social functions a click away. You're going to have to accept this and realize that you have less control over your brand than ever. That's why you need to deepen relationships and get engaged. It's even important than ever for search.

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All of the search engines are rushing to incorporate more social media elements into their interfaces. Examples of this are evident in things like Google and Bing's deals with Twitter and Facebook. You can see it in Yahoo's new Twitter tab for news results. You can see it in Google's Social Search lab. Really you can see it in everyday search results.

Do you consider a social presence an important element to your search campaign? Discuss here.

A lot of Internet users spend a great deal of their time socializing or using social media sites in one way or another, whether that is to connect with others or simply to obtain information. Information is a key component of social media that often takes a backseat to communication in discussion of social media tools.

The fact of the matter is that more and more people are getting more and more of their information from social sites. That could be in the form of following a news publication on Twitter, following company updates on a blog or a Facebook page, or something as simple as a friend sharing a link.

Given that people are getting more info from social media sites, of course search engines want a piece of that, because their whole reason for existence is naturally to help users find what they are looking for on the web.

So, it stands to reason that if you want people to find information that you are producing, it can help a great deal to publish information and participate in conversations on social media sites. Never mind that users of those particular sites will have access to it. The general public will as well by way of search, regardless of whether or not they are a part of any particular community.

In an interview with WebProNews, Vanessa Fox, who used to work for Google, talked about reasons that businesses should be thinking about social media with regards to search. It's about visibility. If you are having discussions out there about relevant topics, they could appear in search results not only in real-time search, but further down the road as well.

In other words, if you have a conversation with a peer on Twitter about some topic related to your niche, there is a good chance the resulting tweets of that conversation could appear in search results for that topic on Google, even a year from now, if that tweet happens to be relevant enough. That's just an example (note: it's hard to say at this point, just how tweets will impact search once the Google-Twitter deal starts showing results).

There are a variety of ways in which a social campaign can contribute to your performance in search engines, regardless of what these recent deals might produce. Like Lee Odden of Top Rank Online Marketing recently discussed with WebProNews, you can optimize your social content.

The web went blog crazy a few years back. Marketers found out that blogs were great for achieving search engine visibility because of the content and links that can come from them. It's not that different with social media now. The web has largely moved into a social media-heavy phase, as I'm sure you've noticed. Search engines obviously know this and care about it.

As Fox says in her interview, it's getting to the point where more businesses are starting to realize that they need to be involved with social media. However, surveys still frequently suggest that many are reluctant, and even if they do engage to some extent, they are still holding back, and not reaching the potential they could be.

You know search is important to marketing on the web. Really, it's important to marketing, period. If you operate on the web or off, your customers are on still online, as Fox noted. Social media is growing increasingly important to search. And search is only one aspect of online marketing. There are many more benefits to social media than that.

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Speaking at the event held last Thursday, November 12th were Chuck Hester from iContact in Durham, Julie Wade from Bronto in Durham, and Jeremy Smith of Twine Interactive in Raleigh.

Answering questions from the moderator, R.Gregg of the Telegram, and from members of the audience, the expert panel offered plenty of tips for businesses using email campaigns to reach current customers or for those hoping to acquire new ones.

Some of the tips included:

--Don't buy email lists to start your campaign. Often the lists include people who have not opted in to the list and also email providers often put special emails on such lists to see if they are used by spammers.

--Don't put too much information in an email. Try to keep it simple, with one message and one call to action per email.

--Keep it "above the fold". In other words, try not to make the message too longer and allow the recipient to read it entirely without having to scroll down.

--If you've got a video, be sure to put a "play" button on there. Including a play button in the email will dramatically increase click-through rates for videos as opposed to just including a picture or text link.

--Don't oversend emails. If you're sending out an email every day to your customers that's probably too much. Depending on your product, once a week may be the most you want to send a message to your customers.

--If you're trying to reach customers who haven't responded in a while, use an emotional appeal. Putting "We miss you" or "We miss talking with you" will get people to open up the email and it conveys a personal message that indeed, you do miss them both as a person and as a customer.

--Offers and giveaways don't hurt. It helps to have incentives for customers to open emails such as offers of prizes, discounts, specials, etc. Try to include something fun that will get their attention without going overboard.

SEE PHOTOS FROM THE CLASS:
click here

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Written by Resources for Entrepreneurs Staff
Published: 11/18/2009

SMBs plan to increase use of internet marketing in 2010.

It may not come as surprising news for small business owners that most entrepreneurs report internet marketing will dominate future sales campaigns. A new survey from Vertical Response reveals that 74.1 percent of SMB owners plan to increase their use of email marketing in 2010.

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Legislation targets unethical, aggressive sales tactics that result in countless 'mystery charges' for consumers. A Senate probe focused on online marketing firms Affinion, Vertrue and Webloyalty.

By Joe Markman

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