Get Your Black Friday Ecommerce Plan Right

Once it was confined to holiday-makers in the USA, but Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become firm fixtures on UK marketing calendars. Black Friday is on 27 November 2015, so you still have plenty of time to create a masterful marketing plan.

What can you do to jump on this American bandwagon and maximise your Christmas revenue? We’ve put together a list of our top tips for Black Friday and Cyber Monday:

1. Cart Abandon & Order Confirmation Emails - Add a juicy promo code to your order confirmation emails to see if you can get customers to buy again or return on Cyber Monday. Change the messaging on your cart abandonment emails to remind users there is a time limit on your Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. 
2. Stock - People want great discounts and if you get it right, you can shift huge amounts of stock. Pick products where you have lots of stock and good margins. 
3. Servers - If you get your marketing right you can expect a big jump in site traffic. Make sure your servers are ready for the onslaught. 
4. Paid search - Optimise your ad copy and increase your bid prices to ensure you get the biggest share of Black Friday traffic. 
5. Mobile - More than 50% of all email opens occurr on mobiles. Make sure that your email, landing page and checkout are all easy to use on Mobiles. 
6. Christmas Decorations & Messaging - Does your email, site and social media content offer a consistent message? Have you added some 'christmas decoration' to your normal site imagery? 
7. Timing - Don't wait until Friday before sending your first email. Many sites get a head start and start their sales on Thursday. Why not try offering exclusive offers to existing customers on Thursday to make them feel special? 

Got any questions or need a hand with your Christmas ecommerce plan? Drop us a line at info@moneyspyder.co.uk.

How to Reap Rewards with YouTube SEO Best Practice

Why is YouTube important?

So you don’t sell cute cats? What use could you possibly have for YouTube?

Many people are unaware that YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. What’s more, approximately 35 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Not only does this show that marketers need to be engaging with YouTube, but it also means that competition is fierce and you need to be engaging well, paying close attention to the SEO of your videos.  

Top Tips for YouTube SEO

The Basics

·      Give your video a relevant headline, with proper keywords. Using a colon allows you to ‘double name’ it and therefore to double your keywords. Give as much information as possible in the title as this is the first thing looked at.

·      Maximise use of the description box. Write a couple of paragraphs of good descriptive copy. At the very least, fill it with keywords or put the script from the video in. Don’t forget to add links to your website and social networks.

·      Optimise the channel that you’re posting your videos from. Post regular high quality videos on similar topics. Videos that come from a well-regarded channel will rank higher. Create Playlists, fill in the ‘About’ page and start discussions with your users.

·      HD videos will rank higher than SD videos – So make sure you upload your best quality versions.

·      Use the YouTube Keyword Tool to find the areas of high volume. 

Advanced

·      Use the closed captioning as YouTube searches through the content of your captions in order to rank videos. Since the introduction of speech recognition technology, adding your own closed captions is no longer the laborious process it once was.

·      Submit a transcript of your video so that Google know what it’s about.

·      Make sure you grab viewer attention within the first 3-5 seconds of the clip. YouTube ranks videos based on how long they’re watched for on average.

·      Submit a ‘Video Sitemap’  to Google and use mark up to let Google know about videos on your website.

Other ideas to consider when marketing through YouTube…

·      Use Annotations to give a call to action for liking your video or subscribing to your channel. This helps to promote regular engagement.

·      Promote your videos through all your other social media and email marketing channels.

·      Host your videos on your website and make sure they are easy to browse and well presented.

Want to know more, or would like some bespoke advice for your own business? Drop us an email or visit the MoneySpyder site.