testTag: shopping trends

Tis the Season for Holiday Shopping Trends

Posted on November 28, 2022 by - Trends

Holiday shopping is here. Both advertisers and consumers must be strategic about where they spend their dollars this holiday season. According to Insider Intelligence, advertisers will spend $1.3 billion between October and December this year. Even more importantly, research from 2021 has shown that only 4% of holiday consumers didn’t utilize digital channels to purchase goods. In 2020, retailers chose to deemphasize Christmas holidays in favor of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals due to the pandemic. Now, budgets are returning to both as holiday spending is expected to surge even amidst inflation.

Lean into Brand Loyalty 

To keep their brands relevant this holiday season, advertisers need to budget toward higher spending and scale across the internet and digital platforms. Native ads, high-impact ads, banner display, and video across all digital devices, from desktop to mobile, will be a crucial playground for those looking to be the king of the hill this holiday season with their profits. Last year, holiday shoppers started buying sooner rather than later, breaking the long tradition of last-minute gift-buying madness.

Brand loyalty programs had a lot to do with this. Brands are pushing customers to skip the door-buster deal fear and hedge their bets on earlier sales. 81% of consumers shopped for specific brands during the 2021 holiday season because they were a member. Notice an increase in ads offering Cyber deals, or even huge sales early, like right-this-instant early. It is no mistake that brands are activating earlier, more often, for the holiday season.

Retail Media 

This heavier spending is leading to the emergence of a subsection of advertising called retail media. Retail media is advertising within the retailer sites and apps that builds and feeds the brand story. This technique uses both a retailer’s omnichannel properties and data each time a consumer comes into contact with the brand –  from being on the brand website on their phone to being physically present in the store –  to serve them content relevant to their desired experience with the brand.

Brands like Amazon are embracing this advertising method and looking to capitalize on the digital-first experience by building their brand presence into worlds for the customer to inhabit. These worlds are filled with deals and media content that indulges each area where the customer wants to interact with the brand. Brands are expected to grow their retail media spending by 27% moving into 2023 as consumers seek more authentic connections with the brands they consume. 

What now?

What does this mean for digital marketers? Invest in your brands! This requires leveraging your brand’s first-party data to make informed decisions about where the customer wishes to adventure within the brand world. Building an omnichannel marketing campaign is the absolute baseline for success during the holiday season. Taking things to the next level by investing more in a specific brand’s retail media is a way to seal the deal and form a perfect digital-to-physical relationship between your brand and its customers. 

If you’re ready to put your first-party data to use, contact us today.

Preparing Your Black Friday Advertising Strategy

Posted on October 21, 2022 by - Trends

Black Friday and its sibling, Cyber Monday, are almost here. These two have become the premiere retail days of the year and now more than ever, it’s time for brands to prepare their campaigns. Curious about the best ways to approach campaigns for the biggest retail weekend of the year? Look no further.

Lead with Data

More important than any catchy slogan or meme is data. Does your brand resonate in market? Who are the customers? What do they want? Why do they want it? The foundation of any successful campaign is data analysis and segmentation to reveal the real customer story behind your brand. Figure out who your customers are, understand their behaviors, and build around these data points. 

Last year, despite the surging COVID variants, Black Friday and Cyber Monday broke several online retail records with over $200 billion spent online over the entire holiday season, another $100 billion spent during Cyber Week, and $9 billion spent on Black Friday alone. To put this into perspective, Black Friday sales figures clocked in at $6.2 billion in 2018, $7.4 billion in 2019, and $8.9 billion in 2020.

Although last year was a record-breaking holiday shopping season overall, the average eCommerce conversion rates dropped in 2021 by over 20%, landing just under the 2019 number. Curious about more? A deeper analysis of over two billion eCommerce store sessions every single week showed that the average conversion rate globally for Black Friday in 2021 was 3.2%, compared to 4.5% in 2019. While a 1.2% drop seems insignificant as a number, for marketers, this means brand messages need to speak louder to customers, lest a brand is left behind. The US scored slightly better than the global average, with conversion rates at 3.6% in 2021, vs. 4.3% in 2020. Nonetheless, that doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels. It’s hustle time. 

Be Seen or Be Left Behind

If you’re not first, you’re last, and absolutely no one wants to lose. The weeks before Black Friday and Cyber Monday are all about honing your brand’s perfect message and serving it over and over again. This isn’t the time to scatter-shot a hundred different ads with different messages. This is the time for a solid message and driving it home. Reduce your campaign budgets to focus on only the best-performing ads and maximize spend in those areas. It’s vital for your brand to produce and finalize creative early on and allocate budgets toward success. Is your brand worth shouting about? Prove it in your marketing campaigns. 

Many brands are shifting their Black Friday sales as early as late October, while others begin offering promotions in early November. 75% of retailers surveyed in 2020 said they offered deals before Black Friday, with some lasting several days or weeks. 83% of holiday shoppers stated that they started their holiday shopping earlier than Black Friday, and with the persistent economic uncertainty, it is likely that 2022 will bring in the same.