2014 HOLIDAY SHOPPING SEASON

Five Predictions and Prep List

The holidays can make or breaka retailer and 2014 brings the added challenge of a compressedshopping season: only 26 days between Black Friday and ChristmasThis challenge plus the growth in consumer usage of onconsumer usage of online, mobleand social media channels makes it essential that every retailer has its digital presence optimized in orderto compete and capture sales.

A Placeable research study of thelargest U.S. brands shows that manyretailers fall short on location-basedmarketing efforts. What is your brand doing now to prepare its digital presence for the 2014 holidayshopping season?shopping season?

While overall 2014 holiday sales will grow by just 4 to 5% over last year, online holiday sales will experience growth of 15+%, continuing online’s push to capture a bigger shareof the shopping season’s revenue

The best local marketing brands have online locators, locallanding pages for every location, and moble optimized locators. Only 13% of leading retailers have all three.

During the holiday season, 58% of shoppers will shop at a national retailer they don’t normally visit, and 90% of holidaysales will still take place in brick & mortar stores.

The retail industry has the poorest performance when it comes to the accuracy of the location data is presents viaits online and mobile presence.

20% of online sales and more than 43% of online traffic will come from mobile devices during the holiday season

76% of the largest retail brands in the U.S. have implementedmobile locators.

Online ratings and reviews influence of 50% of online purchases. Social media channels influence 15 to 20% of online sales and 10 to 15% of in-store sales

A review of leadingretail brands revealedthat NONE of themincluded consumer/social media reviews and feedback on local lanlanding pages

Across all industries,brands that add richcontent to their locallanding pages capture27% more page onesearch result listings.

The importance of third partydirectory sites will continue to diminish during the holiday season.

The retail industry scores higherthan average when it comes todistributing their location datato third party sites.

However, the industry may beplacing too much emphasis hereor spending unwisely, as data from all industries shows that only 6 third party sites really matter.

Customized landing pages are essential to win search results and online traffic so that your brand can capture its share ofboth online and in-stores sales.

New visitors to your retail locations need accurate directions:check everyone of your locations to ensure online location datais correct. Consider using a marketing automation platform to batch geocode locations, plot locations with correct longitudesand latitudes, and drag and drop location pins with precision.

Consumer and competitors are increasingly mobile savvy - so if you lack a properly implemented mobile locator, invest now to get one in place before the holidays.

Influence and win more online and in-store purchases by enriching the content on your local landing pages with reviewsand feedback from consumers and third party social media sites.

Reevaluate your syndication strategy. Distributing your locationdata to thrid party directories should only be done after your own digital presence is optimized and syndication should focuson the few thrid party sites that deliver the most traffic and referrals.