The holiday shopping season is upon us. This guide shares insight on how holiday marketing is changing and how to adapt to it.
The holiday season is a time to celebrate, take a step back, and reflect on the year that went by.
But not if you run a marketing agency.
The holidays are the busiest time for any agency, especially if it has B2C clients. While everyone else is planning vacations setting up “out of office” emails, you have to roll-up your sleeves and set up new campaigns.
For most of your clients, this two month period will make or break their business for the year. The pressure on agency-side marketers, understandably, is immense.
So in this post, we’ll do a deep dive into holiday marketing. We’ll share what works, what doesn’t, and what you can do to ensure a smashing holiday season for your clients.
How Holiday Marketing is Changing
All marketing changes rapidly, but holiday marketing changes more than most.
Blame it on the immense competition for customer attention this time of the year, or the incredible budgets brands shell out, but a successful holiday marketing campaign in 2019 looks
Blame it on the immense competition for customer attention this time of the year, or the money brands are willing to shell out for innovative campaigns, but a successful holiday marketing campaign in 2019 looks very different from one in 2015.
This is particularly true in the digital medium where new trends can emerge out of nowhere. Snapchat would be the main course on your menu in 2015 if you wanted to be hip and relevant, but in 2019, you’d have to switch to TikTok.
Let’s look at some of the biggest changes in holiday marketing right now:
1. Black Friday is Now a Global Phenomenon
Black Friday is still the most important shopping day of the year (unless you’re in China – more on this later), but it is far from a US-only affair in 2019.
As Hult University points out, global interest in Black Friday has witnessed an average growth of 117% over the last five years. There is a surge in traffic and sales across Europe on Black Friday, as Criteo’s research shows.
image: https://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Workamajig-What-Every-Agency-Needs-to-Know-About-Holiday-Marketing-4.png
What’s leading this change? The increasingly global nature of retailers, for one. Amazon now has a presence in most major European markets. Walmart owns a majority share in India’s larger e-commerce company, Flipkart.
As retailers – and the customers they serve – become more global, expect US-based shopping days, like Black Friday, to continue to grow.
Which also means that…
2. Black Friday is Becoming Increasingly Irrelevant
The reason why Black Friday became such a massive phenomenon in the first place was because it was a singular event. You could always be sure to get the best possible deals on this day, no matter what part of America you were located in.
But with month-long sales preceding Black Friday, and mega discounts on Cyber Monday, Black Friday isn’t that unique event anymore.
In 2017, for instance, shoppers spent $3.5B online on Black Friday. But they also spent $2.9B on Thanksgiving, thanks to the steep discounts on offer.
As Josh Elman, a retail analyst at Nasdaq points out:
“The whole idea of Black Friday and Cyber Monday…is becoming less relevant as the consumer is generally accustomed to getting great deals.”
Effectively, instead of a single day, Black Friday is morphing into a month-long sales event leading up to Christmas. You’ll have to modify your ad budgets accordingly.
3. Don’t Forget About Singles Day
If Black Friday is going global, the reverse is happening as well: international shopping festivals are coming to America.
Take China’s massively popular Singles Day (November 11, or 11/11) as an example. This day celebrating single people has already eclipsed Black Friday as the single largest shopping event in the world (in GMV – Gross Merchandise Value).
image: https://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Workamajig-What-Every-Agency-Needs-to-Know-About-Holiday-Marketing.jpe
Total retail sales for China’s Singles Day have eclipsed Black Friday and Cyber Monay combined (Image source: Forbes)
This growth has been spurred, in part, by American consumers. In 2018, they spent $1.82B on Singles Day, some of it stateside, some on Chinese retailers.
American companies have jumped on the phenomenon as well. Brands as varied as L’Occitane and Kenneth Cole offer discounts, often in line with the event’s theme (such as “11 percent off”).
If you want to stay globally relevant, it might be time to consider
4. Dropping Out of Holiday Sales Can be a Viable Alternative
It might have been sacrilegious a decade ago, but more and more businesses (and their customers) are asking: is the holiday rush, especially Black Friday, necessary?
Consider it from the customers’ perspective. As I’ve already mentioned above, Black Friday discounts now stretch entire weeks and even months. There is no real reason to rush to the store to buy that latest TV; you can just as well get it a month later for nearly the same price.
The store experience around Black Friday itself leaves a sore taste in the mouth. Customers might walk away with a deal, but they also walk away with a poorer perception of the brand.
As Bain’s research notes, brand Net Promoter Score (NPS) goes down in the holiday season rush, indicating that customers feel unhappy about the brand experience.
Given that millennial consumers care more about the experience than the product (3 out of 4 millennials prefer experiences over products), the damage to your brand experience can be irreversible.
The situation is far worse from a business perspective. The holiday rush plays havoc with supply chains and inventory management. When you have to process a month’s worth of orders in a single day, it can leave your employees overworked and dissatisfied. The net impact on your company culture is entirely negative.
It doesn’t help that non-price based promotions don’t seem to be as effective anymore in the era of free shipping and Amazon Prime. You will have to take a financial hit if you want people to come to your store.
As Denise Lee Yohn points out in Harvard Business Review:
“By adjusting their marketing, sourcing, and inventory management, retailers can free themselves from the daunting task of fulfilling unpredictable demand during an intense period and instead provide a more customer-centered experience for their shoppers.”
5. Customer Decision Making is Changing
You might have read countless articles talking about how customers now start their shopping research as early as September.
image: https://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Workamajig-What-Every-Agency-Needs-to-Know-About-Holiday-Marketing-1.png
The catalyst behind this phenomenon is the internet. More specifically, how the internet has changed the way customers approach shopping.
Product discovery and analysis don’t depend on store visits anymore. Customers can research products all through the year online. Their shopping decisions aren’t influenced by a single campaign or store visit. Rather, it is influenced by the collective weight of their own self-controlled research.
In other words, customers are in a perpetual shopping mode. They indulge in “couch tracking” to check prices, especially for big purchases, jumping in as soon as there is a drop.
In this customer-controlled buyer’s journey, one-off events like Black Friday don’t have as big an impact. After all, if your customers are in a perpetual shopping mode, your marketing should be perpetually active as well.
As more and more customer dollars move online, this perpetual shopping experience will only become more dominant. If you want to win these customers, you have to retool your marketing approach.
Which is exactly what we’ll cover in the next section.
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