5 Thumb Rules That Online Marketers Should Follow This Diwali

With India’s biggest festival week round the corner, when Indians go out on their annual shopping spree, marketers are all geared up to reap as much benefits as they can,. This is no surprise as Diwali and the weeks around it are the highest spending period by Indian consumers. What’s interesting is that this year Diwali marketing is expected to be hacked by online retailers.

Diwali to see biggest flip for online Shopping
According to the Associated Chambers of Commerce & Industry (ASSOCHAM) of India’s ,survey titled Indian Online Retail Sales Surge in Festive Season, Indians will spend more than Rs 10,000 crore in online shopping this Diwali, 350% more than previous year online sales on this occasion. This is also supposed to hurt the brick and mortar sales, as the report claims mall footfalls will go down by 50-55%.

Surging online sales: Boon or bane?
Experts are touting the online retailing to see its biggest flip ever this Diwali. But the question is: are Indian online retailers ready to make the most of this opportunity. Well, if the Flipkart’s much touted Big Billion Day is any indication, it seems festivals are a great opportunity for online retailers only if managed well, or else they may become a big marketing mess. Undoubtedly, Indian consumers’ trust and spending both has grown exponentially for the online medium this year, and so has their expectation on seamless shopping experience with a fall in their tolerance level for service failures.

5 Thumb rules for online marketers for this Diwali
Here we present some thumb rules that online retailers should follow for the Diwali sale to ensure happy customers and boost top lines, avoiding any ‘Big Billion Sale’ like fiasco.

1. Keep your sale target in line with your marketing strategy: It is easy to get carried away with the thought of clearing inventories on a shopping frenzy occasion like Diwali, but don’t lose sight of your marketing strategy and business goal for short term benefits. If you do, then that may do more harm than good to your business. Like it happened in Flipkart’s Big Billion Day (BBD). The online retailer had a sales target of $100 million in GMVs (Gross Merchandise Value) for the BBD sale. Unfortunately, the huge target wasn’t in sync with the company’s stated marketing objectives (as mentioned by them at various points of time in media interviews and reports) which were: retaining and growing market share by strong and aggressive brand building; and growing category awareness for online retail. Strangely enough, the Flipkart sale communication talked only about unbelievable discounts; there was no attempt of reinforcing the brand and trust. Same was reflected in their preparations for the day, where focus seemed more on clearing inventory without much focus on consumer experience. The technical glitches and too frequent ‘sold out’ tags are an example of that.

2. Advertise real deals: One of the biggest complaints of online consumers has about is that online retailers overhype deals in their advertisements, but don’t offer as lucrative real deals. What online retailers shouldn’t forget is that their consumers are well-informed, Internet-savvy people. They can easily and quickly find out how real is their deal/discount. If they aren’t happy with the deal you offer, they’ll shout out their grievances on social media platforms, informing thousands and millions of people about the gap in your deal promise and the actual deal, and thus tarnishing you brand name and trust. So, don’t lie or camouflage deals and discounts.

3. Keep expectations real: If you expect huge traffic and are not sure if the product inventories would be enough to meet the demand, it is always a good idea to keep the consumer’s expectation realistic in your communication. For instance, while advertising about the sale (or on your website itself) mention limited units of products available, so consumers know beforehand that the product may get sold out in less time.

4. Up your technological standards: There is no excuse for any big online retailer to have technological glitches like site crashing, products not getting added to cart, etc.. Keeping in mind the ASSOCHAM numbers, positive sentiments and boost in sales this festive season, as an online retailer you should ensure your technology team prepares well for the big days ahead. Losing customers and brand name because an online company couldn’t handle the traffic is the worst thing it can do to itself.

5. Learn from others mistakes: Be smart enough to study major issues and failures in online sales in the last few months and adapt. For example, products glaring at consumers with ‘sold out’ written on them in big glaring letters is something which has infuriated consumers a lot in the past (be it Xiaomi smartphone flash sale or the Flipkart BBD). So, as a smart retailer, have a system where products out of stock don’t show in the list to consumers. That will bring down consumer fury. Moreover, the consumer will spend the precious time browsing through product that they can actually buy, and that way you will be able to make most of the consumers’ footfall on your site.