Black Friday Sales Boosted Online

While many stores opened at midnight on Black Friday in order to offer shoppers the option to start their holiday purchasing early and beat the rush, it seems many shoppers decided to skip the crowds altogether and start their holiday shopping online.

Courtesy of Jay Lopez

While Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving, has traditionally been the day set aside for great online deal, this year Black Friday online sales were up by 24.3% over last year, according to an IBM study of 500 retailers.

As part of this, sales on mobile devices increased to 9.8% this year, up 5.6% from 2010. And there was a large increase in shoppers using mobile devices to research in-store and online bargains, as mobile traffic surged to 14.3% from 5.6% the year before.

It should come as no surprise that the majority of this mobile shopping was done on Apple products, with the iPad and iPhone accounting for 10.2% of all online retail traffic on Black Friday. As other studies have shown, iPad shoppers were more likely to complete a purchase than those using other devices.

Walmart Launches Holiday Apps

Walmart seems to be investing a great deal of time and money in mobile and digital media these days.

Last month they launched Facebook pages for their local stores through a social media app.

Now, just in time for holiday shopping, Walmart is launching new iPhone and iPad apps that link online and in-store shopping. They store is only one in a number of retailers that have realized the important role that mobile devices play in shopping and are trying to capitalize on it for the holiday season.

McDonald's Sweden Adjusts Prices for Student Budgets

If McDonald’s latest ad campaign in Sweden tells us anything, it is that student loan worries are not only plaguing the minds of Americans.

American students are borrowing twice what they did a decade ago, after adjusting for inflation, according to the College Board. In 2009-10, 56% of full-time undergrads at public colleges had student loans and 65% of undergrads at private universities had student loans, according to The Huffington Post. And for the first time, student loan debt exceeded credit card debt.

Retailer May Be the Next Big Winners with Tablets

Courtesy of eConsultancy

Tablet owners love their news apps, but as it turns out they also love to do something else on their tablets: shop.

63% of tablet owners have made an online purchase with their device, according to the study Understanding Mobile Audience from Jumptamp, a mobile ad network. In comparison, only 31% of mobile phone owners have used their device to make a purchase and 83% of PC owners who have spent some dough online.

Walmart Launches 3,500 Local Facebook Pages

Walmart launched more than 3,500 store-specific Facebook pages on Monday, allowing their 9 million fans to receive offers and updates via newsfeed from their local stores and allowing Walmart to make their stores more locally relevant.

Encouraged by customers asking for access to more local deals, the retail giant created the “My Local Walmart”  Facebook application, which will keep fans informed of new products, rollbacks and events in their hometown stores.

“Our innovative approach with Facebook allows us to bridge the gap between local and social, giving millions of customers the personalized shopping experience they expect from Walmart,” said Stephen Quinn, Walmart CMO, in a statement.

Customers can access the application through the Walmart Facebook page where they will  type in their zip code, and then “Like” their favorite stores. Once the customer “likes” a store, their newsfeed will be updated twice a week with specific offers.

"My Local Walmart" will also allow fans to download maps of their favorite stores to their smartphones, something Walmart wanted to launch before the holidays so that shoppers could use the maps to find discounted merchandise in-store come Black Friday.

Walmart hopes to use the application to grow its site-to-store e-commerce program into an individualized marketing program, but right now it is allowing the company to "make stores relevant locally at scale," said Quinn, according to AdAge.

To Stay Global or Go Local

Many marketers are debating whether they should take their social media campaigns local, like Walmart, or keep them global, asking whether local pages will really be a more effective and efficient in communicating with consumers.

According to research by Syncapse, a provider of social media technology and strategy, local Facebook pages drive 36% higher engagement than single global pages.

On that fact alone, many may decide to test the local waters, but there is more to consider when choosing between global and local campaigns.

An organization like Walmart that has physical stores with different promotions and offers lends itself to the local campaign, but a larger brand like Campbell’s or American Airlines may not since their products are the same whether you are in Iowa or Florida.

But even if your business structure lends itself to this kind of targeted local campaign, it may not be the best choice. Marketers must really think what they are hoping to achieve with a local campaign, and whether they have the human resources to power it, before they embark on one.