Buckle Up for the Holiday Shopping Craze!
Winter is approaching slowly but surely, and while in some places it may still be too warm to bother – the global affiliate community ought to keep a close eye on the cycles of life in order to accurately predict and meet the market’s demand on time.
If summertime bides close-to-inevitable revenue slumps for digital marketers, the colder season is a herald of sales bumps and elevated profits, to which there’s a couple of reasons:
First off, nature prompts people to spend more time inside [read: on the internet] and prepare for the changing weather conditions – a quest that begins with a raincoat in mind and ends virtually never…
Secondly, this time of the year is rich in holidays, both ethnic and those of world-wide significance, which means that in general that the market is willing to spend.
Last year, the period between November and December presented online retailers with a stunning $108.2 billion revenue total, which gets even more intriguing when you learn that a third of all sales happened during the Cyber week!
Here’s a graph to visualy grasp the tendency picking up in the recent years:
With that in mind, this year the numbers are expected to gain another 13%!
Add it to the fact that over 30% of all holiday purchases in 2017 was made via mobile devices, with Thanksgiving and Christmas pushing almost half of the consumers to shop mobile – and the winning holiday promotional strategy begins to take shape.
After all, this is the direction the world is moving in and this holiday season we’ll see smartphones dominate even more, with a stunning 68% of all traffic and 46% orders estimated to come from mobile devices, according to Salesforce.
That’s some food for thought, isn’t it?
Now, online shoppers’ behavioral patterns vary greatly from niche to niche, and when it comes to the holiday season driving ecommerce revenue – Apparel & Accessories and Computer & Electronics are the segments that are especially affected.
This helps narrow down the range of offers you are choosing from and focus on the most lucrative products to promote.
Nevertheless, keep in mind that super sale days like Black Friday offer discounts across the entire spectre of market inventories, accumulating unparalleled volumes of online shopping activities.
End of the year is indeed rich with holidays, some of them more revenue-influential while others simply require a special approach and accurate targeting.
While most marketers are focusing on the retail bombshells, this is an opportunity to leverage creativity and strike the unique user segment hiding under the radar!
Here’s our take on the most relevant holidays affiliates can benefit from:
- Black Friday – (23.11)
- Cyber Monday – (26.11)
- Hanukah – (02-10.12)
- Christmas – (25.12)
- New Year – (31.12)
- Orthodox Christmas – (07.01)
- Lunar New Year – (14.01)
As stated above, proper geo-differentiation and understanding of the holidays’ nature and the routine they are associated with actually makes magic.
For example:
- The Lunar New Year, which you definitely should consider with Asian consumer in mind, is virtually pointless within any western-focused campaigns.
- Similar principle works for the Orthodox Christmas, held on the 7th of January, where Eastern Europe, Russia and parts of the Middle East contain most of your targeting audience.
- At the same time, the New Year celebrated so big internationally (just think of NYC’s Time Square Ball Drop) on the night of December 31st – still lacks relevancy to jump-start a thematic promotion in China or other countries that stick to the lunisolar calendar.
Lots of ropes to be learned here, but as they say, he who walks shall reach, and in our case it is ‘he who puts in enough groundwork, creativity and split testing’!
In terms of preparation, it is recommended to start driving traffic to specific holiday-themed campaigns a week or two prior to the date, so to catch users’ attention up front and potentially steal a client from the B&M shops or your direct competitors.
Speaking of the local stores…
Google reports outfit-related “near me” searches increased by at least 600% over the last year, and there isn’t a reason to skimp on location-based search within your promotional strategy, especially in wake of the holiday hysteria!
Various AI solutions that become available lately must be mentioned as well, as they can help you to evaluate the data a lot more comprehensively and see hidden trends veiled from traditional methods of analyzation.
In general, deeper content personalization along with better understanding of your targeting audience’ true motives is the way to advertise this holiday season, a nd to think that nearly two-thirds of consumers say they don’t feel retailers truly know them is another clue towards experimenting with ad angles a little bit more.
As mentioned earlier, finding an individual approach is the key to catching those holiday shoppers by the dozen and if done thoroughly – will surely ignite your marketing campaign!
Remember that it’s Summer in the Earth’s southern hemisphere and sunscreen is in demand in Australia, enjoy the holiday retail craze to your best benefit and stay tuned in for further updates from yours truly!