The Holiday Shopping Season Delivers Early Lessons for Retailers

The Holiday Shopping Season Delivers Early Lessons for Retailers

Retail

The holiday shopping season is in full swing now. Granted, it’s a looking a lot different than it did in years past, with the pandemic influencing consumers’ moods and their shopping habits. But already, some important lessons are emerging that may affect retailing all year-round:

  • Online retailing is bigger than ever. During Thanksgiving Weekend, shoppers broke records for online purchases, with Cyber Monday 2020 becoming the biggest online shopping event ever in the United States. In addition, Black Friday broke a record for most online sales. Although e-commerce was already booming in 2020, it was not certain that Black Friday and Cyber Monday would be this big. Retailers such as Walmart, had been spreading out Black Friday sales online going back to early November, which raised the question of whether those sales might cannibalize the “real” Black Friday occurring November 27 this year. There was no need for worry.
  • Thanksgiving Day is turning into a huge shopping event. According to Adobe Analytics, Thanksgiving Day spending online rose by nearly 22 percent year over year to $5.1 billion, hitting a new record. Businesses that advertised Thanksgiving Day deals online probably benefitted from the fact that many big retailers closed on Thanksgiving Day, reversing a growing practice of launching Black Friday deals in stores on a day when families normally would be gathering to eat turkey and watch football. But Thanksgiving Day 2020 was different. People visited less with families and friends given the safety risks of in-person gatherings. Apparently, they had more time on their hands to go online. And they shopped.
  • Brick-and-mortar stores still matter. Even amid the pandemic, 124 million Americans shopped in stores over Thanksgiving weekend, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). But offline stores got less foot traffic – down 52 percent from 2019. Stores offering curbside pickup saw traffic increase by 52 percent, according to Adobe. The lesson for brands is to ensure that your digital advertising and organic content plays up the availability of options such as curbside pickup, as well as clear instructions for how to use curbside.
  • Mobile keeps growing. Shopping on smartphones rose 25 percent to $3.6 billion, making up 40 percent of total online spending on Black Friday. But people are using mobile in different ways now – searching and purchasing online but also booking curbside pick-up services offline. All told, cross-channel shoppers – those who visited websites and brick-and-mortar stores — spent an average $366.79 over the holiday weekend, which exceeded by 25 percent the spend generated by people who shopped in a single channel, according to the NRF. Stores that integrate a complete cross-channel mobile experience are in the driver’s seat.

What Businesses Should Do

Retailers need to be nimble. They need to plan ahead for the holiday season as they’ve done in the past, but they also need to be ready to adapt to changing consumer behavior. For example, it’s clear now that Thanksgiving has arrived, but only retailers that paid attention to shopping trends and adapted their online advertising strategies benefitted from that shift. In addition, consumers have shown a remarkable penchant for suddenly wanting to buy products ranging from chess sets to puzzles in 2020, as they manage the realities of social distancing. But how many retailers adapted? Fortunately, tools such as Google Insights help advertisers monitor changes in consumer behavior and adjust their advertising strategies accordingly.

Contact True Interactive

To succeed with online advertising, contact True Interactive. Read about some of our client work here.

Photo by Roberto Cortese on Unsplash

Three Trends from Black Friday Weekend 2019

Three Trends from Black Friday Weekend 2019

Retail

Black Friday weekend (aka Thanksgiving weekend) 2019 gave many retailers to celebrate.

According to the National Retail Federation, a record 189.6 million U.S. consumers shopped from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday, a 14 percent increase over 165.8 million in 2018. Consumers spent $361.9 billion, a 16 percent increase over $313.29 billion spent in 2018. Adobe said that online sales during the weekend totaled $28.4 billion. At True Interactive, we watched spending trends, took a close look at how we’ve worked with our clients to prepare for Black Friday weekend, and analyzed reports to understand the big trends affecting the weekend. Here are three trends that stand out:

1 Black Friday Weekend Isn’t Just for Retailers

You don’t have to be a shopping expert to see how big Black Friday weekend has become. On Black Friday, if you happened to be doing a Google search, you would have noticed a message on Google’s home page inviting you to check out deals on the Google Store online – and on Monday Google was back at it hawking deals on Pixel phones, the Nest Learning Thermostat, the Nest Hub Max, and a host of other Google products. Everyone seemed to be offering a deal – a Hulu Black Friday streaming deal, a discount for Helium 10 software, $700 off tickets to attend a CB Insights Conference, a Cyber Monday sale from the Rockettes . . . the list goes on and on. Many businesses relied heavily on email to serve up deals, resulting in a flood of offers that were difficult to tell apart (judging from their email headers).

The challenge for retailers: it’s getting harder and harder to stand out with online offers as nonretailers compete for your customers’ attention spans. Retailers are under more pressure to create compelling ads with stunning visual imagery, compelling calls to action, and effective use of targeting to reach the high-value customers who are more likely to see and respond to your offer.

2 You Have to Invest Early to Win

Earlier in November, I blogged about how the big bellwether retailers were promoting Black Friday deals weeks before the big weekend. This is the reality of winning shoppers on Black Friday weekend: you can’t wait until the run-up to Black Friday to win audiences unless you want your efforts to get lost in a sea of promotions that I just described above. You have to start weeks, even months, in advance to develop a comprehensive strategy that encompasses online advertising and organic content.

As we have blogged, we recommend a phased approach that includes building brand awareness well before the holiday shopping season begins to kick in, then promoting more specific deals as the holidays approach. Meanwhile, prepping your website to prepare for an expected increase in traffic is crucial. The masters of this approach, such as Amazon, Target, and Walmart, create special landing pages where they showcase their deals (naturally optimized for search) as part of integrated advertising roll-outs. But you don’t have to be a big-spending retail giant to succeed. Any retailer can do these things by using advertising tools such as Google’s Black Friday promotion extensions.

The challenge for retailers: winning during the holidays means spending earlier – and smarter.

3 Go Mobile or Go Home

Mobile has been becoming a bigger part of the Black Friday weekend for the past few years. In 2019, mobile was the story. As reported in Retail Dive (citing Salesforce data), mobile orders increased 35 percent on Black Friday in 2019; 65 percent of all e-commerce went through a mobile device. And smart phones continued to drive revenue into the weekend.

So what’s going on here? Well, the uptick reflects people simply getting more comfortable using their phones to make complex purchases. But in addition, offline retailers are making it easier for people to order on their phones and pick up in the store. As Retail Dive reported:

One out of every five online purchases will be picked up in the store, according to The NPD Group’s Holiday Purchase Intentions Survey. That’s good news for retailers that have rapidly scaled their in-store pickup options for online purchases, because many of those customers buy even more when they get there, according to NPD chief industry advisor Marshal Cohen.

The challenge for retailers: this development is not necessarily a good one for online merchants. If you have no brick-and-mortar store to act as a fulfillment center for click-and-collect orders, you’ll need to find better ways to compete. Winning now means offering deals well before the weekend with liberal expedited shipping policies to make shoppers reconsider click-and-collect.

Contact True Interactive

Black Friday weekend is the centerpiece of the holiday shopping season. But there are many days left for you to attract shoppers. Contact us. We can help you succeed with online advertising.

Photo by Justin Lim on Unsplash

Online Holiday Shopping Season Hits $126 Billion

Online Holiday Shopping Season Hits $126 Billion

Retail

Winning the hearts and minds of consumers during the holidays increasingly means having a digital strategy to attract and convert them. According to Adobe Analytics, consumers spent $126 billion online during the 2018 holiday season, an increase of 16.5 percent year over year. For the first time ever, smart phones drove half the traffic, amounting 31 percent of revenue (34 percent growth year over year).

The numbers do not surprise me. By early December, the holiday season was already well on its way to achieving strong results. The final numbers suggest a number of lessons for retailers:

1 Start Early to Win Online

Our own clients were working with us to start raising awareness online for their holiday sales long before the holiday shopping season began. Businesses that began building awareness for their holiday inventory via online advertising were best positioned to attract the surging traffic from shoppers going online looking for deals.

2 Respect the Power of Thanksgiving Weekend

Reports of Black Friday’s demise are exaggerated. Black Friday achieved a 23.6 percent increase in online traffic. But Black Friday is now part of a bigger five-day Thanksgiving weekend shopping extravaganza. The period between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday generated 19.2 percent of all online holiday spend. In particular, Cyber Monday saw a surge of buying. A four-hour time block on Cyber Monday (7:00 pm to 11 p.m. PST) was the most active period of the year. These four hours recorded more than $2 billion in sales. Conversion rose sharply through the evening, as consumers rushed to take advantage of deals. Businesses that invested in a strong Thanksgiving Weekend digital media spend were in the driver’s seat to win, especially if they capitalized on Cyber Monday by spending on ads with strong calls to action during the waning moments of Cyber Monday.

Go Mobile

The increase in smartphone traffic clearly shows that businesses need strong mobile-centric advertising strategies, including investments across mobile display networks. But going mobile means more than having a mobile presence. Going mobile means:

  • Promoting your app effectively. Mobile apps are now driving more revenue than ever. Having a strategy to promote your app is more important than ever.
  • Formatting content for mobile viewing and including an easy conversion path on mobile.

At the same time, it’s important to ensure that your messaging on mobile is consistent with your messaging on other channels.

Start Succeeding Now

You don’t need to wait another year to apply these lessons. They hold true with other major events that attract a surge of shopping and advertising, such as Presidents Day and Memorial Day. True Interactive can help you prepare. Contact us.

Image source: https://pixabay.com/en/holiday-shopping-smartphone-phone-1921658/