I’ve seen about 30 posts and articles so far about the varying success or failure of retailers to match the projections of holiday shoppers, about half of which I’ve read, and a handful of those beyond the first and last paragraphs. (That’s how people read on technology, after all.) After this bombardment of news and opinion reading I’m left as perplexed as the analysts seem to be, but for different reasons.
I fully understand the desire, even need for the unique nugget of interpretation and the ever present push to positivity on the economy, but the past should have taught us something.
We are the shoppers we write about.
It’s time we get real. The mobile economy? Social media shopping? Stop it just stop.
The Black Friday-Small Business Saturday-Cyber Monday stretch is about deals. The only content marketing is advertising, hawking. Where the sales took place digitally doesn’t matter, at least in the analyses and opinions spewed forth. No one is saying if that mobile purchase was driven by a well-developed content ad placed in social media, and therefore while representing 1 sale is counting as 3 in the summaries.
But to all those who claim to know what the shoppers are looking for, here’s how one marketer-by-day shopper-by-night did it.
I sat on the couch in my pjs, with my phone accessing one site while using my 2 in 1 laptop in tablet mode to make a purchase. I ask you, is that sales attributed to a desktop or mobile?
I assure you, the full extent of my mobile activity was when I brushed Captain Crunch Berry crumbs from my shirt where they dropped as my parrot munched on them from her perch on my shoulder.
Retailers have to support mobile customers to play in the world today. Beyond that, stop pretending you know who they are, and remember we are them, too.
Marketers and Sales folks are in a frenzy this time of year. Interjections from C-Suite commentary results in frantic reactive activities. Take a breath, calm down, and don’t forget to think.