With the holidays almost here, it’s essential to have your marketing strategy sorted sooner rather than later. Cyber Monday is critical for eCommerce stores because it’s seen as the kick-off for the holiday shopping season and can set the tone for the remainder of Q4. One of the main benefits of digital marketing, at this time of year and beyond, is its relative affordability, helping small and mid-sized businesses compete with big-box stores.

How Google Business Management Tools Can Help

For eCommerce companies, Cyber Monday is a massive day for sales and often it’s the most profitable day in the year. You can expect larger companies to launch sales campaigns well in advance of Cyber Monday in the hopes of building hype and moving inventory. Because of all the money being poured into marketing by large eCommerce companies, it can be challenging for smaller stores to compete. We suggest drawing up a holiday marketing plan with specific strategies for days like Cyber Monday, Christmas, and Boxing Day. To stay competitive, make sure you’re using every tool in Google’s free toolkit to maximize your sales over the holiday season, starting with Cyber Monday. 

Before setting up your marketing plan, you need to identify your primary goals for this year. Are you hoping to achieve record sales? Would you like to increase your customer base and brand awareness? Or is your goal to gather customer data and lay the groundwork for Q1? Once you’ve determined your objective, you need to define what success looks like and select your key performance indicators. With this in place, it’s time to make the most of the digital marketing tools in Google’s free toolkit.

Leveraging the Google Toolkit

Google offers several tools that can help eCommerce businesses grow and improve their sales. Here are some of the most powerful tools that can help you reach your target audience: 

• Google Merchant Center offers businesses a place to sell their products in addition to their own eCommerce store. 
• Google Shopping Ads ensure that your product appears at the top of the Merchant Center.
• Google Search Ads make sure you appear at the top of the Search Engine Results Page in the ads section.
• Google My Business is an excellent tool for local search. It helps people in your geographic area find you and get a snapshot of your business. It can also be an effective channel for communicating deals and news to your target audience.

You can effectively compete with much larger eCommerce stores by pairing these with other Google tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, URL Builder, and Trends.

Using Google Analytics to Optimize Your Cyber Monday Marketing

We always recommend that our B2C clients use Google Analytics because the truth of the matter is eCommerce thrives on data. Ignoring or misinterpreting data can cost you thousands of dollars in misdirected efforts or even put you out of business. 

If you want to make the most of the holiday season, and I can’t stress this enough, you need Google Analytics. By using this free tool that aggregates data, you can:

• Optimize your content with onsite search
• Gain insights into your buyers’ journey and identify major touchpoints
• Gain insights into your target market, such as demographics, psychographics, geographics, devices, and behaviours.
• Identify your conversion rates to set realistic goals and identify opportunities for improvement
• Map onsite engagement
• Gain insights into your customers’ lifetime value
• And identify traffic sources

It’s essential to track performance for all your marketing efforts so that you can figure out what’s working and what isn’t. In Google Analytics, a “property” is any website, app, blog, newsletter, or advertisement. Each property can be associated with a unique tracking ID that can tell you how it performs in terms of users, screen views, sessions, etc. 

Each property needs its own tracking ID so Google Analytics can match the incoming data with the corresponding property. That said, you might want to group multiple websites under one ID. 

For example, suppose you have the same website in different languages. In that case, you may want to aggregate that data under the same property and then analyze the data at the report level with a tool like Segments. Ultimately, how you set up your properties depends on what information is most valuable to your business.

Putting It All Together

If you want to make the most of your Cyber Monday and holiday campaigns, your preparation should start now! Identify your goals, draw up a marketing plan, and then utilize the range of free tools available from Google. If you’re in eCommerce, Google Analytics is likely your most powerful digital marketing tool. Setting up Analytics now and then aligning your other marketing activities with your goals will help you figure out where to invest your resources and prepare you for a successful Cyber Monday. 

When it comes to Google’s business management tools, we have experts who work in these each day and are skilled at setting up and tracking campaigns to maximize revenue. We are a certified Google Partner, and we can help you leverage these tools to create high-impact marketing strategies. Contact us for a free consultation for your eCommerce business.