WHITNEY LEMON: The holiday season
kicks off with a bang earlier and earlier every year.
And the Google Small Business Community
would like to help you prepare.
My name's Whitney Lemon.
I work on Google's Get Your Business Online team.
And today, joining me in the Google Small Business Community
is Joe DeMike.
Joe leads a team of marketing consultants at Google
who help small and medium sized businesses across North America
become successful online.
He's got an MBA in marketing from the Wharton
School of Business and owns two small businesses himself.
Joe and I will be chatting today about building your game
plan to ensure business success this holiday season.
How's it going, Joe?
Thanks for joining me.
JOE DEMIKE: It's going great.
Thanks for having me, Whitney.
WHITNEY LEMON: First things first, mobile.
We know that consumers are increasingly
turning to mobile for their research and shopping.
How can a small business take advantage of this potential
to get in front of customers on mobile devices?
JOE DEMIKE: I mean, you said it right.
Consumers are performing more and more research online,
looking for products and services
that they can purchase way before they actually
make the purchase decision or even decide
if they're going to go to a store
or which store they're going to go to.
So it's really important now, more than ever,
to make sure that you have content up there--
words, pictures, and videos-- that you have content online,
that you have advertising online that draws them into your store
or to your online store to make sure that they make a purchase.
And mobile is a really interesting platform
because everyone has a mobile device now, smartphones
or tablets.
And the content that appears on a mobile device
has to be optimized for a mobile device.
It's got to be in the right size and shape.
So one of the things you want to look for there is short form
content and product descriptions that really describe
the products you're selling very well,
but without too many words because people
are really interested in getting to the point
quickly on a mobile device.
It's one of the things they use when they're sort of in a hurry
or in between things, waiting in line at the doctor's office,
or waiting in line at the grocery store.
WHITNEY LEMON: Let's go more into that.
How is a customer that is looking
on a mobile device different than a customer that's
looking in the store?
JOE DEMIKE: Yeah.
A customer who's on a mobile device most likely
wants to purchase something pretty soon.
So 55% of the people who do a search
for a product on a mobile device would
prefer to purchase that product within the hour.
And about 83% of the people would
prefer to purchase it within 24 hours, within the day.
And so this is the get it now crowd.
They really want it right away.
So you have to make it easy for them to do that if that's
what they want to do.
WHITNEY LEMON: So we have you on today because we're
talking about holidays.
It's really timely right now, what things business owners can
do to prep for the holidays.
But the first holiday that's upcoming is Black Friday.
What about the evolution of Black Friday?
How is it different than it used to be?
JOE DEMIKE: Black Friday is going
to continue to change now that more and more people have
different devices that they use to shop.
And different shopping experiences online
are getting better and better.
And so what we saw last year was this concept
of Gray Friday, where people are starting
to think about Black Friday as more than just one day.
It gets a little diffused.
So Black Friday, like all other days, only has 24 hours.
And unfortunately, people still need to eat and sleep,
which I know on Black Friday is not a priority.
So what's happening is it's actually
inefficient for a retail location
to try and do all their business on one day.
There's stockouts in the shelves,
and you've got really long lines.
And you're really competing hard to get store visitors.
So it's better to spread that out over a period
and maybe generate hype that's over a slightly larger period.
We're also seeing a really interesting increase
in product searches that happen about two weeks before Black
Friday.
And so these product searches are most likely
related to display advertising and TV
advertising that's being done.
And then people are going online and searching for the products
that they're seeing.
Those are happening earlier and earlier,
as more people are trying to get people interested in products
earlier and earlier.
So you're going to see a lot of activity
online in terms of searching and display advertising that's
done prior to Black Friday.
And interestingly enough, about 29%
of people actually start their holiday shopping
before Halloween, which is really--
WHITNEY LEMON: Wow.
JOE DEMIKE: Yeah, it's really early.
WHITNEY LEMON: You mentioned customers
specific to Black Friday customers,
but how are customers today different during the whole span
of the holidays than they used to be?
JOE DEMIKE: Well, customers during the holiday season
tend to purchase products that are more high involvement
versus low involvement.
And I'll explain the difference between those things.
A high involvement product is something
that you might regret if you don't get the right one.
So a good example is like if you're buying
furniture for your house.
If you purchase the wrong couch, and then
you pay to have it delivered, and someone brings it
in and sets it up, and you've already gotten rid
of the old couch, and then you realize, well,
that couch really doesn't work with this room,
I don't like it, that's a problem for you.
But if you get the wrong deodorant,
you can always just go back to the store
and get another $2 deodorant.
WHITNEY LEMON: Hopefully before you used it.
JOE DEMIKE: Right.
Exactly.
So what's important here is that during the holiday season,
products become more high involvement because you're
buying gifts for other people.
And because of that you want to really make sure
that you get the right one.
When you have high involvement products
you have people who do more research for that product
before they purchase it.
And they want to read reviews about it online.
And they want to read articles about it, even things that you
might not otherwise do a lot of research before you buy it.
WHITNEY LEMON: There's been a lot of talk about remarketing.
What's remarketing?
JOE DEMIKE: A remarketing is a great way
to get and keep buyers' attention.
So the concept of remarketing is with a website, when someone
comes to the website and looks at something,
or perhaps puts an item into a shopping cart,
later on, when they go back around the web,
whether they purchased or not, you
can show them an ad for your business again.
And you can do this by placing an anonymous cookie
on their browser, which expires after 30 or 60 days,
or whatever number of days that you set.
And so during that 30 or 60 day period
you can show them related ads or ads for your business.
You're showing them to people who have already
come to your business once, and so they're really
likely to purchase again.
And that's a method called remarketing.
It's really effective.
WHITNEY LEMON: Can you give me an example
of how a small business would use remarketing?
JOE DEMIKE: Sure.
So if a small business had a website where
they were able to get traffic in through either online
advertising or social media or a local listings page,
and someone comes to that website--
let's say they put a pair of shoes into the shopping cart.
But then the customer forgets all about the shoes,
and they go off to a bunch of different websites,
or they get distracted by--
WHITNEY LEMON: All the things.
JOE DEMIKE: --all the things online.
Maybe a week or two later, they might see an ad
that you've created in your AdWords account that shows them
those same shoes again in a display advertisement.
And they're far more likely then to go in and complete
the purchase because they've already shown a lot of interest
in that product because they put it in their shopping
cart at least one time.
Or say they purchased the shoes the first time.
Later on you can show them an ad for something else that
goes really well with those shoes or something else
that you sell.
And because they maybe are happy with their shoes
or that they know that you're a trusted online advertiser
or online retailer, they'll go back
and purchase from you again.
WHITNEY LEMON: I was recently looking up Halloween invites.
So the reason that I keep seeing these Halloween invites
that I was so close to buying keep popping up
is because of remarketing.
That's what they're doing.
JOE DEMIKE: That's right.
But you have to be very careful because you
don't want to have a bad experience for the searcher.
So if you're seeing too many of those ads
it's because they're not using a very simple tool called
frequency capping.
Frequency capping is just something you set that says,
maybe I'll show this person that ad two or three times,
but then after that I don't want to be creepy.
I'll just shut that ad off.
WHITNEY LEMON: OK.
Frequency capping?
JOE DEMIKE: Yep.
WHITNEY LEMON: So we talked about mobile.
And we talked about online customers.
Are customers still visiting stores?
JOE DEMIKE: Absolutely.
So it's really interesting.
Between 2010 and 2013, "The Wall Street Journal"
published that the number of in-store visits
during the holiday sales period dropped from 38 billion
to 17 billion.
And any brick and mortar retailer
would be scared to hear that number.
But at the same time, the revenue from the fewer visits
was much greater.
And so overall, the in-store brick and mortar retailers
actually made more money off of fewer people.
Now, what that means is that the people that do
come into your store, even if it's fewer people,
they have to get a really good experience while they're there.
And you can't lose them to the showrooming effect, where
they would go on a mobile device while they're shopping
and get lured to purchase the item online.
WHITNEY LEMON: Showrooming effect?
What is showrooming effect?
JOE DEMIKE: The showrooming effect
is where people will come into a store or a business,
and they'll look around and touch and feel
the items to see if this is something I want.
And then they'll check the price,
and they will price comparison shop on a mobile device that's
in their hand.
And they'll find it cheaper online,
perhaps because of the lower costs
of not having to have a brick and mortar establishment.
And then they'll make the purchase online instead.
And what happens is that the retailer incurs
all the costs of having a retail location,
but they get none of the revenue from the sale.
So you want to avoid that if possible.
When someone goes online to search for that product,
you want to have your ad for that product show
up with potentially a high-low pricing deal or a deal where
they can get 10% off their entire purchase,
or they can get some other deal.
You want to show them a promotion at that time.
WHITNEY LEMON: OK.
So there are ways to combat that showrooming effect.
JOE DEMIKE: Absolutely.
WHITNEY LEMON: What about incentives?
How important are incentives to small businesses
this holiday season?
JOE DEMIKE: Well, incentives in the showrooming effect,
as I just said, are really important.
You definitely want to offer an incentive
to get people to purchase all the things that they put
in their cart, both in the store and outside the store
and online.
And so incentives are really critical.
The other thing is that there's more and more-- so remember
I talked-- there are fewer people out there that
are doing in-store visits, but each person
is spending more money.
So the competition for each person who does
go to each store and visit, that's
much higher, that competition.
And what you use there is something
called the hyperlocal marketing, where
you want to target people who are doing local searches,
so people that are searching for products that they
can buy in their area.
And they do that by saying, if you live in, maybe,
Tulsa, Oklahoma, you might see searches online
that are buy pet items in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
That's a search with a local intent.
One out of five searches on the desktop has local intent.
One out of three searches on the mobile device has local intent.
So it's really important to get the local intent
when they're on the mobile phone,
especially, as I said before, because they're
so interested in purchasing right then.
So they'll drive to the store and get it right away.
WHITNEY LEMON: So how can small businesses
take advantage of these local purchases
if they want those local customers?
JOE DEMIKE: Yeah.
The best way to do that is to run geo-targeted advertising
online, search ads, where you've got location-based keywords,
and also to have a mobile bid modifier, which
is really easy to set up.
They just increase the amount of money
they're willing to spend to show an ad when someone's
on a mobile device and searching really close to where
their business is.
That's a very valuable traffic.
WHITNEY LEMON: So those are options that cost money.
Anything free that businesses can
do to reach local customers?
JOE DEMIKE: Absolutely.
I mean, businesses should definitely
have a really thorough local listing on Google My Business
so it appears on Google Maps for local businesses.
They should have photos and offers and reviews
that are plainly and clearly written out.
And that sort of thing really drives traffic to their site
or to their store.
WHITNEY LEMON: So that the small businesses watching
are definitely prepared for the holiday season, what
are some tips to leave them with for how
to prep their website, or specifically
their mobile website, for the holidays?
JOE DEMIKE: Yeah.
A website is a really important tool for any small business,
whether you're an online retailer or a local brick
and mortar business.
And it's really important that when
people come to your website they do the things
that you want them to do and that they can intuitively
figure those things out when they look at the site.
So it's really important to have a very prominent call to action
on the site.
It should be at the top of the page.
It should also be at the very bottom of the landing page.
And it should be throughout the site.
Another thing that's really helpful--
and this applies to the mobile sites and full desktop sites.
Another thing that's really helpful
is filters and search on the site
so people who know exactly what they want
can go in and go right to that item.
And also breadcrumbs, which is where
when I'm on a very specific product page,
I want to be able to back out to the landing page
and find other things that you might sell because if I'm going
to give you my credit card information once,
I want to maybe put all the things in the shopping
cart that I can.
WHITNEY LEMON: Is breadcrumbs a technical term?
JOE DEMIKE: Breadcrumbs is a technical website term.
It's how you lead yourself back out to the landing page
to look at other categories of things that you sell.
WHITNEY LEMON: OK.
JOE DEMIKE: Another really effective technique
is to allow people to check out as a guest.
If people can check out without creating an account
on your site, while it's less convenient for you
if you want to market to them again later
and send them offers later, it will
increase the amount of sales that you get on that site.
And there are always going to be opportunities
later on to collect their email address that you can send them
offers and promotions if they're interested.
And you definitely want to do that.
One really effective technique is to collect their email
address before the last page of the shopping
cart because a lot of people abandon their shopping carts
on the very last page when they're
asked to put in their credit card or press Submit.
So if you ask for their email address right before then,
you'll actually get to keep that email address
for a little while and send them offers and say, hey, come back.
We really want your business.
And make it worthwhile for them.
So those are some of the techniques
that are really handy.
Along with one more that I think is really also
useful is the opportunity to email themselves
a link with their shopping cart so that if they get interrupted
during the shopping process, especially for people
on a mobile device, who are constantly interrupted,
they can now see that link later on in their email
and just click on it and go right back to the shopping cart
with all the stuff in it that they had in it before.
It makes you able to reclaim those sales so
that you don't lose them.
It's a really great tip.
WHITNEY LEMON: How can a small business
ensure that that's available to their customers?
JOE DEMIKE: Yeah.
If a small business is using an e-commerce platform,
most of them have that capability.
They just have to turn it on.
And if they have any trouble or anything like that,
there's a lot of tools online, like videos
that they could watch on YouTube, on how to set that up.
WHITNEY LEMON: OK.
So I wrote those down because they're really good.
The call to action was the first one.
Make sure your call to actions are prominent.
And this is true for mobile optimized sites as well.
JOE DEMIKE: Yeah.
And if you're confused about whether or not
your call to action is that good, try doing this.
Flip your website upside down, and look at it
where you can't read the words.
And can you figure out, just by looking at it
upside down, exactly what you're supposed to click on,
what you're supposed to do?
Another great trick is take your product that
has the highest margins, and try and purchase it
on your cell phone.
And see how that experience is for you.
A lot of people don't do this.
They just assume the mobile version of their site
is just as good or just as easy.
And it can be very difficult, especially if the fields are
small or the text is small.
WHITNEY LEMON: Or have a friend do it and watch them
as they do it to see how that path looks.
JOE DEMIKE: Yeah, and see where they get hung up.
See where they get stopped.
Those are all great techniques.
WHITNEY LEMON: So that's the call to action.
The second one was filters so that they
can make sure to easily search and filter
to what they need to quickly.
The third one you said was breadcrumbs.
I'd love an example of that of how a small business might
change their website so that they
ensure that there's breadcrumbs there for their customers.
JOE DEMIKE: Sure.
If a potential customer does a search, say, for a rubber
ducky, and they land on a page where
you're selling a rubber ducky, they
may also want to buy other toys for their child
or their neighbor's kid, or whoever they're purchasing for.
And so after they get right to the page with the rubber ducky,
and they can add it to their shopping cart--
because people are more likely to put things in shopping cart
when the landing page matches the search term exactly-- so
then they put the rubber ducky in their shopping cart.
And now they think, well, maybe there
are other things I want to buy from this online retailer.
And so now they back out of the page.
And they go from rubber ducky to bath toys,
from bath toys to children's toys ages two to five.
And then they can back out to the home page.
And by doing that, they can stay in a category
where they're likely to make another purchase.
WHITNEY LEMON: The fourth one you
said was the ability to have your customers check out
as a guest instead of signing up for email.
And the last one was kind of piggybacking off of that.
Ask for their email before the checkout process.
JOE DEMIKE: Yeah.
And make sure that they have the opportunity
to, if they're interrupted, continue
where they left off, regardless of what screen they're on.
So if they're going from a desktop to a tablet or a tablet
to a mobile device, you want to be
able to give them the opportunity
to pick up where they left off.
And collecting their email address ahead of time, ahead
of the last phase of the shopping cart, that's
really critical to do.
WHITNEY LEMON: Thank you so much, Joe.
A lot of great information to help our businesses
get prepared for the holidays.
JOE DEMIKE: Thanks, Whitney.
WHITNEY LEMON: That's all the time we have today.
And thank you for tuning in today.
How are you gearing up for the holidays?
Let us know in the Community.
And on behalf of the Get Your business Online
team and the Google Small Business Community,
I wish you great success growing your business.