Ready for the Holidays?

Now there are even more shopping days to reach your customers

Soon, it seems, every shopping day between Thanksgiving and New Years will have its own title.

For shoppers and retailers, the winter holidays aren’t just a fun few days, they’re an entire event that starts the day after Thanksgiving and lasts right up until the end of December. “The most wonderful time of the year” is right around the corner, so let’s highlight the key shopping days to look forward to after Halloween and Turkey Day are behind us:

November 27: “Black Friday”
Known as the biggest shopping day of the year, Black Friday has gotten even bigger thanks to the Internet. In recent years, numerous sites have sprung up, each dedicated to alerting consumers to Black Friday deals, which stores will offer which bargains, available discounts coupons, etc. Interest in shopping on Black Friday continues to climb among consumers; according to the National Retail Federation’s 2008 Black Friday Weekend survey (conducted by BIGresearch), more than 172 million shoppers visited stores and websites over Black Friday weekend in 2008, up from 147 million shoppers in 2007 and 140 million in 2006.

With the current economic crunch and saving more important than ever, it’s logical to assume that 2009 will see just as many (if not considerably more) shoppers embracing Black Friday and all of its savings goodness.

November 30: “Cyber Monday”
Interest in Cyber Monday has been growing stronger with every passing year. The theory is that when consumers return to work on the Monday after Thanksgiving, they’ll continue the shopping they started on Black Friday. As such, Cyber Monday has become the online equivalent of Black Friday, with retailers competing to offer the best deals to deskbound shoppers.

According to Internet researcher comScore, while online retail shopping fell 2% last November, it rose a whopping 15% on Cyber Monday. comScore also reported that Americans spent $846 million online on Cyber Monday, which proves that when it comes to online shopping, Cyber Monday is a day when consumers are ready, willing and able to load up those shopping carts and spend.

December 7: “Green Monday”
The moniker “Green Monday” (meaning green as in money, not Mother Nature) was actually coined by eBay, after the company discerned that its sales peaked on the first or second Monday in December. Other sites have chimed in to follow suit, and “Green Monday” has now become a genuine shopping event, widely recognized as the heaviest online shopping day of the season. This is likely due to the closeness of the holidays and because Green Monday is often the date on which online retailers begin their free shipping offers.

December 14: “Brown Monday”
Another newly minted descriptor, Brown Monday is the day that many retailers offer the heaviest, most aggressive promotions and discounts, such as last-minute free shipping with guaranteed holiday delivery (hence the “brown,” from all the packages going around).

How do you get ready?
As you can see, there’s more than enough holiday cheer to keep advertisers hopping all throughout the season. This means that advertisers need to get started now, to make sure that their campaigns are ready when consumers are. To help with that, we’ll follow up this post next week with tips and strategies for getting your holiday campaigns ready for the rush. It will outline what to do (and what not to do) to wrap up your ads up in a nice, neat package.

Until then, enjoy the calm before the storm, because the holiday madness will begin even before you eat the last of your leftover turkey.

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst