As one can easily imagine, Black Friday in a newfound digital world was much different this year than it was a few years back. However, this huge growth in mobile shopping by consumers is the sole reason that this year’s Black Friday has provided so much insight for digital marketers. A Black Friday 2012 report from IBM shows all the numbers from Black Friday, all of which can show marketers where they should have and maybe should in the future put their money and faith. A single chart in the report gives all the information one needs to measure the success of certain platforms in terms of making shoppers shop.
The overall percentage of digital sales, according to IBM, has increased a total of 20.68% since Black Friday last year. That is some good news right off the bat. People are continuing to quickly convert to online shopping as a major portion of their overall shopping experiences.
Now, when it comes to actual digital marketing statistics that marketers can use, the chart provides information regarding some of today’s more prominent advertising platforms. The overall conversion rate from all forms of digital marketing on Black Friday hit 4.58%, which is only up 0.22% from last year, leaving little to get too excited about. The shopping cart conversion rate, from consumers who actually act upon items they put in their carts was 34.34%, down 0.38% from 2011.
The chart, comparing primarily mobile marketing tactics and social marketing tactics, shows mobile as the biggest contributor to Black Friday marketing success. The percentage of total digital sales that occurred on Black Friday that came from mobile was at 16.26%, while last year it was only at 9.84%. The percentage of overall site traffic around the web that came from mobile was about 24.04% on Black Friday this year, which is up 67.76% from last year. The mobile conversion rate was down this year, resting at about 2.72%. Although these statistics may not seem too impressive, the poor performance of social marketing on Black Friday shows that mobile surely takes the win.
The percentage of total site traffic that came from social media was at 0.81% on Black Friday. The big problem that social media saw was with referral traffic, one of the main uses for social media. Facebook only presented a referral rate of 0.68% last Friday, while Twitter referral traffic hit rock bottom at 0.00%. It seems that social media was just about useless on Black Friday, in terms of people actually using it to shop and being referred to places to shop.
The report did not provide too much in the way of specifics in marketing statistics, but as for the statistics it did provide, they show how mobile can be immediately beneficial. With the span of time being reduced to a single day, mobile showed impressive results. This is simply more proof of the need for mobile to be considered in marketing campaigns, as it is beneficial in more than a few ways.
The full report can be found here.
