Retailers must continually test and adapt their strategies to find what resonates with consumers ahead of the holidays. An extended holiday season requires a dynamic approach to promotions, while brands aiming to reach Gen Z should use creators and video ads.
Here are three pieces of advice on a successful holiday ad campaign from Meta and two of its advertising partners, Ogee and AS Beauty.
Retailers should experiment with pricing and promotion strategies throughout the year to identify the most effective ones to use in Q4.
“We test sales and promotions throughout the year to help us figure out the best offers that resonate with our consumers,” said Scott Kramer, vice president of growth at AS Beauty.
July is an especially good time to test out offers as Amazon Prime Day and other sales events give retailers an idea of how they might perform in a competitive holiday season.
“We always do our cyber week in July sale,” said Kramer. “That's our time to try things out and see how they perform and decide if we want to do anything differently [going into the holidays].”
The holiday season has gotten longer, with Amazon’s second Prime Day event in October serving as an unofficial kickoff.
To keep consumers engaged and shopping, retailers need to keep ad campaigns and offers fresh throughout the season, said Alex Stark, co-founder and CMO of Ogee.
“You don't want to just have the same deal going on for a whole month,” he said. “Having a lot of different offers allows you to make a lot of different types of ads, which you can use to speak to different consumers across different channels.”
Even retailers that aren’t launching new product lines can mix it up by offering gifts with purchase or product bundles, said Stark.
“We used to think we had to do a whole new product to launch for the holiday,” he said. “But as we’ve gotten more mature as a brand, we’ve realized you can actually just bundle some of the products you have and talk about them differently.”
“Most of our advertising partners use creators because they’re platform masters and they understand their audience,” said Karin Tracy, Meta’s head of industry, retail, fashion, luxury.
Creators help brands connect to the cultural zeitgeist without seeming fake or forced to younger consumers.
Video ads are also crucial to reaching Gen Z consumers, said Tracy. But the shopping journey is less linear than it used to be, so brands need to be prepared that video ads may not lead to immediate conversions.
“It’s not your typical ‘see an ad, click on it’ behavior,” she said, suggesting brands need to move away from last-click attribution to a more holistic approach.
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