Christmas, the hottest festive period on every brand and advertiser’s marketing calendar. The cost-of-living crisis has now lasted a good 18 months with little prospect to change anytime soon. This begs the question – will consumers be taking a relatively cautious approach to spending this Christmas?
Looking at the most recent monthly GB TGI data, we see that while there is indeed a similar proportion intending to spend less compared to last year, there is also a similar proportion of adults who intend to spend more this year on Christmas presents. Google has shared a similar view of their expectations for this year’s online shopping behaviour, labelling 2023 “a year of profitable growth”. This is based on data for the first half of 2023 with interest in the retail and consumer goods space trending +7% above 2022 for the UK, hinting at the potential we can expect from peak this Christmas. This is positive news and there is likely to be an opportunity out there to engage an audience eager to spend.
A lot of the leg-work should have been done already, throughout the course of the year: building brand awareness; improving product proposition; determining pricing and optimal sales channels for getting in front of potential customers and creating capacity in operations to take advantage of the opportunity.
However, to ensure success, we need to remember the brilliant basics. Here we detail four top tips for achieving the best outcomes possible, improving performance along the way and opportunity spotting
Key tips for advertisers to make the most of peak this year are to:
Look back to move forward, i.e. identifying what has worked well in the past and what hasn’t to inform the strategy and understand wider context as brand loyalty is decreasing.
Find profitable pockets of growth, i.e. AI is key to driving powerful and efficient marketing campaigns and advertisers should lean into AI-powered platform solutions (e.g. the likes of Meta and Google) to maximise performance and avoid blind spots.
Demonstrate deep understanding of the audience who are planning to spend more this Christmas. Based on insights, parents and new parents continue to be a big opportunity segment. But also, younger demographics who have new nieces or nephews or friends who are having their first-born index highly as well. Tailoring creatives or activating on platforms that can reach these specific groups should be considered. Relevance is key.
Smart optimisation/changes to influence consumers’ decisions by leveraging behavioural science principles across multiple touch points of the user journey. A classic marketing example is social proofing whether it’s engaging with influencers or tweaking the site to show how many users are looking/have bought the product in the last hour.
Winning in the attention economy and trust building game. Christmas will be an extremely noisy period and brands who can capture consumer’s attention to drive strong brand engagement can expect to benefit. Drawing on contextual solutions to align content during critical shopping moments and delivering personalised messages can help cultivate deeper connections and foster trust. For most industries and brands, the mere difference in trust level can have a significant impact on brand’s campaign success.
The brands that will come out top this holiday are those who are not only successful in reaching audiences with the capability to spend but also convincing those who are being more selective to see the value of buying their products.
