In the world of CPG marketing, summer means preparing for the holidays. But not the kind that include fireworks and "fun in the sun"; marketers have visions of the best strategies to drive sales during a competitive time for marketing activity dancing in their heads.
Summer is the time to start mapping out holiday retail 2024 marketing campaigns, which means creating the optimal mix of engagement strategies that will connect shoppers with the messages most relevant to them. Food and beverage categories are expected to represent 20.5% of holiday retail sales in the US in 2024, according to eMarketer; and 81% of celebrators expect to buy food for Thanksgiving, with 68% for Christmas and 72% for New Year's Eve, respectively, according to a Numerator report.
Retail media, done right, offers brands the promise of connecting with their real shoppers leveraging retailers' rich first-party data across their owned properties and the open web. And if brands can prioritize activating with retail media networks that offer SKU-level reporting, person-first identity and next-generation AI, holiday 2024 can be one for the books.
To maximize return on ad spend (ROAS) in the final months of the year, we’ll take a look at five golden strategies for how to best advertise with your retailers for holiday 2024.
You wouldn't want to give the wrong present to the wrong person—so why give the wrong message to the wrong person?
Artificial intelligence has truly helped whittle down guesswork in marketing. With the right predictive AI (that uses statistical algorithms and historical data patterns to analyze data and forecast outcomes), advertisers can plan out how to reach the same unique individual across channels, with the same message that evolves over time.
Of course, AI is only as good as the data that goes into it. Brands' retail partners offer rich first-party data that can lead to highly precise targeting within retail media campaigns—and US holiday retail sales growth is predicted to grow year-over-year for Food & Beverage by a whopping 9.4% in 2024, according to eMarketer.
Activating with retail media networks that combine the ability to create individual, shopper-level profiles (that consolidate consumers' various digital breadcrumbs) with predictive AI to make real-time decisions on what to show those shoppers (and when) is perhaps the strongest strategy brands can make for the holidays.
According to Peekage, the main reason a shopper may change their choice of food or beverage during the holiday season is if better prices or sales are available.
So, if you are focused on increasing share of voice during the busiest time of the year, one of the best things to do is promote products during your retail partners' sales or price cuts. If you're looking to acquire new customers for holiday 2024, working closely with your retailers on timing, based around their holiday deals, can help you meet shoppers' needs best. And, if you can acquire new customers during this time by meeting their pricing needs, you can further drive brand loyalty in the new year.
But again, it's important to target any of the messages you send during this time to customers who are actually in market for the products you are offering and discounting. It doesn't matter how great of a sale is on if someone doesn't have a need for that product—especially during such an expensive time of the year.
A somewhat staggering 82% of consumers say they primarily use their local grocery stores or supermarkets to purchase their holiday food or beverage items, according to Peekage, and grocery stores outpaced big box stores and online retailers for nearly every holiday's shopping in this Numerator report.
With this in mind, it's important brands are continuing their retail media activation at local grocers and supermarkets during this time.
Get in front of your shoppers ahead of the holiday season using mid- and upper-funnel tactics like social retail media and offsite retail media. Retail media networks that include offsite advertising allow you to reach your shoppers early on the open web--wherever they may be, which might not be on the retailer's site until they're closer to making decisions about what to buy and where. This keeps your brand top of mind as they prepare for the holidays and when they start to do their shopping.
You can then ramp up your onsite retail media advertising (on your retail partners' owned properties) to capitalize on traffic driven to the website from higher in the funnel. Because of third-party cookie deprecation, advertisers are increasingly shifting dollars to onsite advertising, according to Epsilon research. Onsite display advertising can be used to stay top of mind while a shopper is on the retailer's website, and sponsored product ads with the right keyword optimization strategy can help maximize conversions.
Epsilon research highlights that this year, the number of shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas is the shortest it's been since 2019. With earlier advertising built-in to the strategy, marketers can effectively meet this challenge.
How you measure your campaigns is just as important as how you activate them. Measurement needs to be comprehensive so you can use learnings to optimize future campaigns.
You'll want to get as granular as possible, so prioritizing receiving SKU-based performance metrics from your retailers are optimal. There's no need to settle for surface-level metrics; being able to dive into closed-loop measurement that drills down to the SKU level and looks at online and offline sales will help you truly understand your advertising's performance and make any necessary shifts.
The more personalized and individually targeted one's gift-giving is, the better. The same goes for brand advertising during the holiday season: Leverage AI technology and person-first identity with your retail partners to drive the best possible exchanges.