Preparing for the 2019 Holiday Season Marketing Guide Trend Analysis + Marketing and Advertising Tips

The holiday season is one of the most magical times of year. For shoppers, the holiday season is all about finding the perfect gift for loved ones. This means that sellers must have a keen understanding of what shoppers want and use the right tools to help them achieve their goals.

The following practical holiday marketing guide will help you achieve marketing success during this holiday season!

According to Facebook IQ data, there are six major trends in global holiday shopping:

1. The size of the holiday shopping group is expanding, and the shopping spree is starting earlier (in 2018, 43% of shoppers started their holiday shopping in November or earlier; especially during Black Friday, 50% of consumers completed their shopping before December 3.)

2. Consumers are increasingly demanding shopping experiences (according to internal data from Facebook, 85% of holiday shoppers worldwide have encountered at least one problem when shopping on mobile devices. Consumers are reluctant to encounter any inconvenience or resistance during the shopping process. This is especially true during the holiday season, when 70% of consumers will easily choose channels or platforms with convenient shopping processes)

3. Snaps are becoming a new shopping window (Social media platforms are becoming new shopping windows: consumers like to find shopping inspiration and ideas here.)

4. Consumers are still keen on shopping in physical stores

Although global e-commerce sales grew 18% last year, online sales of $3 trillion represent just over 15% of the total retail market.

42% of U.S. holiday shoppers say they shop in-store to experience the holiday spirit, and 27% say they shop in-store to spend time with family.

5. Big shopping events have swept the world

The influence of promotional seasons continues to grow, and if brands only focus on one or two shopping peaks during the holiday season, they may miss out.

From the 2017-2018 holiday season, shopping volume on Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday increased by 9% and 15%, respectively. The Singles’ Day shopping festival, which originated in China, saw a 25% increase in shopping volume during the same period.

6. Messaging drives loyalty

The main reasons why global holiday shoppers are keen to use messaging to communicate with merchants are as follows: 48% of consumers want to obtain more detailed product information; 43% of consumers want to purchase products; 37% of consumers want to obtain store information. 65% of holiday shoppers said that if they can communicate with merchants through messaging, they are more likely to make a purchase.

Having introduced the six major trends of holiday shopping, let’s take a look at how sellers should prepare for holiday shopping in order to achieve great marketing results.

As sellers, we should keep major holiday dates in mind and mark holiday marketing activities and launch dates on this calendar. There are many holidays in November and December, so as a seller you must prepare in advance!

Different preparations should be made at different stages, which are mainly divided into four stages: preliminary preparation, publicity and promotion, maximizing sales, and post-holiday. Please refer to the figure below for specific preparation content.

Today, holiday season sales extend from late October to January of the following year. While it is true that competition is fierce during this time, if businesses plan well and get ahead of the curve, they can make good profits during this time. So as sellers, what should we do during the holiday season? Let’s take a look at the peak shopping period analysis and marketing strategies.

Shopping peak period analysis and marketing strategy

General Marketing Strategies During Peak Shopping Season

General marketing strategies during peak shopping season are generally divided into the following points:

1. Launch big promotions early and extend the peak period as much as possible

2. Use "limited-time offers" and other content to create a sense of urgency (Note: limited-time offers must be authentic and the discount cannot be less than 50%. For more information, click here to read Facebook's official analysis of advertising violations)

Large-scale flash sales not only boost conversions, but also increase the number of audiences you can remarket to throughout the rest of the holiday season.

Running hourly flash sales during peak shopping periods can help increase repeat customers and encourage them to continue browsing your store and explore your promotional items.

3. Promotion of discounts for purchases above a certain amount

Promotions with discounts on purchases above a certain amount can increase the average order value (AOV). Encourage customers to combine orders to enjoy greater discounts, which can help you boost sales

Offer free gifts or free shipping to boost sales. Everyone loves “free” gifts and free shipping

Offer discounts on “bundled” items. Bundle similar or complementary items together to increase average order value

4. Retail (suitable for sellers with websites and offline stores)

Use personalized advertising to highlight your retail locations and attract customers to your stores

Provide additional discounts for the "order online, pick up offline" shopping experience to reduce logistics and transportation costs

5. Improve customer loyalty

Provide early bird discounts for loyal and old customers

Use remarketing discount codes to attract Black Friday shoppers to come back to your store

Provide considerate return policies to cultivate customer loyalty

6. Marketing through Facebook Messenger Assistant

7. Comprehensively develop cross-border markets (Black Friday has become a global shopping carnival, and marketing can also enter the United States/Canada, the European Union and Asia)

8. Don’t change budgets and strategies too often. Marketing activities should be locked in one month before the launch (frequent changes to marketing activities will make consumers have negative feelings about your brand)

9. Set up promotions flexibly to ensure that they continue to perform well after the peak period

10. Discount information should be consistent across all promotional channels

11. Make sure your discounts are competitive (holidays are a time when marketing activities are very popular. If your activities are not attractive, you will waste your promotional expenses without achieving the expected results)

Advertising strategies during peak shopping season

1. Use AB testing to understand which advertising creative is more popular with consumers

2. Increase your budget. Increase your advertising budget during the holiday season so that your marketing activities can reach more potential consumers and increase conversions (carry out marketing around major shopping peaks to increase the return on advertising spending)

3. Optimize ad creatives (Does your ad use multilingual dynamically optimized ads? Is your landing page localized? If not, optimize it as soon as possible. Remember: good creatives can produce good advertising results)

Optimize advertising

Maximize flexibility (campaign budget optimization, automatic placement, placement material customization, multi-language dynamic optimization, cross-border multi-language dynamic advertising)

1. Integrate audiences in multiple languages ​​(using multilingual dynamic optimization and cross-border multilingual product information database)

Maximize efficiency by fully utilizing all listings in a competitive market

2. Try using campaign budget optimization to simplify audience targeting (easier to manage, fewer budget adjustments)

3. Include “actively engaged” audiences (Page Engagers, Instagram Engagers, Engagers, Website Visitors, Custom Audiences of Discount Users)

Bidding and Optimization

1. Change the statistical time window to "1 day after click" during the "Black Friday Week"

2. Optimize for actual business goals

3. Value optimization is very helpful in improving the return on advertising spending

4. Don’t use reach and frequency buying (auctions are cheaper and more reliable)

5. Don’t set a bidding cap, use automatic bidding

6. Test different funnel events to optimize for increased transactions (view content vs. add to cart vs. purchase)

7. Launch automated ads and conduct personalized marketing

Author: YinoLink will go overseas on Friday

Source: YinoLink will go global on Friday