It’s just the beginning of August and most brands are already working on their upcoming Holiday advertising and marketing plans – but this should come as no surprise, especially to the retail industry. Each year, the season comes and goes quickly and with that social media has become a very valuable player as new updates and features offer extensive full funnel tactics for marketers to take advantage of.
Here at PMG, we take Holiday very seriously and are willing to put our money on a few insights and trends we see coming.
1. Mobile Spend On Social Will Increase
According to Facebook, Holiday purchases on a mobile device increased by nearly 30% YoY and not just in the US, but across 15 other countries. Why? Consumer behavior on social has shifted entirely with the technology advancements and convenience of mobile allowing users to accelerate the entire shopping journey. There’s more means of discovery and review, and there’s a sense of efficiency when adding all these items to a virtual cart quickly and checking out. Which is why we anticipate brands to take this new consumer journey into consideration when building out plans by putting the majority of their funds into making sure they capture their customers and prospects in an area they expect a lot of traffic and conversions. Facebook has even dedicated time creating new products to help facilitate this mobile-first shopper like collection units and dynamic ad upgrades.
2. Offline Conversion Measurement Will Be Important
Let’s not forget our brick and mortars! As mobile and online purchases increases incrementally, the retail stores will likely and more often enough see a correlated decrease in traffic. Many brands are taking counteraction by slotting their Holiday plans with drive to store initiatives. Additionally, Facebook and Snapchat have not forgotten this need and have provided new methods of measurement to track offline purchases and attributing them back to where the person may have seen a brand’s ad on social. This type of measurement offering has been delved deeper in a previous blog post by other team members and can be read here – ‘Innovative Methods To Measure Online to Offline Conversion Rates.’
3. Video Will Be At The Forefront
In the last couple of years, video has been pushed across all social media whether it’s to publish 24-hour disappearing stories, live-streaming, or to even see a 360-degree viewpoint. It often gives brands the ability to provide a full screen experience, or what we like to call 100% SOV, and it’s great to leverage in generating brand awareness across a broader target audience. We’ll likely see video as more of an upper funnel tactic, but it’s sure to be incorporated across major brand campaigns for Holiday this year.
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat all offer the capability of sequential messaging which allows brands to reinforce exposure to the same audience who previously saw the original creative. For example, if a brand has a large Fall campaign with a hero video, this can be promoted to introduce potential new customers to the brand and products without any hard selling. As Holiday gets closer, this new audience segment who have seen the original creative will be pooled together in the backend and can later be retargeted with a carousel or collection of those products seen in the hero video. Ultimately, this will likely drive conversion rates up and see a positive effect on ROI as user would have had repetitive touch points in the customer journey.
4. Niche Audience Segmentation Will Be Used More
While we’re on the topic of audience segments, whether it be based on past engagement like video, CRM data, or just general traffic to the brand’s website – all of this becomes very key during Holiday. We have experimented and tested out our fair share of audiences, and even have our own tools to help us segment and deploy across several channels. To keep up with existing customers and reengage with them during Holiday, we’d expect brands to tailor their digital tactics with creative customizations and personalized messaging across niche audience segments. These types of custom audiences could largely be based on past transaction history and includes repeat holiday purchasers, Black Friday purchasers, or gift guide purchasers. By using this tactic on social media, we’re simply making sure we put dollars on ads for people who are more inclined to purchase at the right time or with the right products. And again, with this type of targeting efficiency sales should only keep growing.
All in all, these insights and trends will likely take place this season and we’ll continue to see these changes rapidly as consumer behavior and technology advance forward. PMG as a whole has is prepped and ready to take on the next Holiday!