Black Friday and Cyber Monday: How should brands target shoppers?

Key takeaways for digital advertisers to work with on their campaigns:

1. The retail holiday shopping season will still kick off in October, calling for retailers to have several sales, while spreading out their budget. Utilize Oracle Contextual Intelligence to surround content, like holiday gift guides, capturing consumers in the shopping mindset with a cost effective CPM.
2. While inflation is declining, the uncertain economy promotes a cost-conscious shopper. Target bargain hunters or luxury shoppers with differentiated audiences and messaging to capitalize on those looking for a deal, and those who have a larger budget to splurge with.
3. Retail sales have returned to pre-pandemic growth levels, but consumers are still leaning towards deals. Make gains possible this holiday season by understanding if  your customer would be lured by deals, delivery, or green products with Oracle OnRamp. 

The holiday season is almost upon us and with it an expected influx of retail sales. However, with continued inflation and looming unemployment, will retailers have an uphill battle in 2023? While your target market will still be out shopping, we anticipate their behavior to be as price sensitive as they were in the previous year, with eMarketer predicting steady sales growth.

With consumers keeping their eye on the economical prize, retailers must be prepared to promote Black Friday deals as early as October to compete with Prime day’s launch of holiday season sales. Let’s dive into last year’s consumer purchase behaviors and Oracle Advertising’s targeting tips to help you reach your most valuable consumers and prospects this holiday season.

Evergreen dreams in October

Want to grow your ecommerce business this holiday season? It may be wise to launch your first promotion as soon as possible. Amazon’s consumer popularity paired with stretched budgets has made Prime Day a must spend event, helping to grow October’s retail ecommerce sales to almost 10% YoY.

If your brand is not participating in Prime Day, but you’d still like to see sales increase, you’re in luck! The first half of October has become a new tentpole event, with retailers like Target and Walmart creating their own promotions around Prime’s launch date to compete with the giant online retailer.

As consumers are savvy and apt to price check, your brand needs to be shown in the best light on search. Tout free shipping along with a discount or bundle deal to sway heads in your direction. Additionally, now that the need for several sale events is cemented, you’ll want to create an always on approach between your larger sales. Utilizing a context partner, like Oracle Contextual Intelligence, will allow you to surround relevant articles like gift guides, winter look books and more at a cost-efficient CPM.

Discounts are king

Despite the predicted increase in retail sales, consumers will still be weary of buying full priced items. In 2022, aggressive discounting was the only way to win over holiday shoppers. Categories like electronics climbed from an 8% discount in 2021 to a 25% discount in 2022, and even historically cheaper items like children’s toys had to move from a 19% discount to 34% to move products off the shelf.

Additionally, consumers spent more in household “essentials”, like food, beverages, clothing, and beauty products over “self-gifted” electronics and furniture, as travel rebounded, and holiday entertaining recommenced.

For your 2023 holiday campaign, promoting the right products at the right discount will be key. When you can’t win on price alone, tout added value offers like free shipping, buy now-pay later, gift wrap or ship-to-store. To find consumers who see the value in convenience shopping, utilize Oracle’s 3^rd party audiences like subscription buyers, retail app users or grocery delivery.

Increase holiday shopper loyalty

As fall is in full swing, your current customers should already be looking to you for holiday gift inspiration. While you may be showing them items relevant to a past purchase, are you missing the mark on messaging or products their household may be interested in? With consumers valuing deals this holiday season, customer retention should be a key focus to maintain growth.

Make the most of your 1st party data by utilizing 3rd party attributes that can help upsell consumers with the right messaging, or cross-sell into new product categories. Oracle’s Data Enrichment fuels richer in-house customer analytics by appending one-to-one attributes to your CRM database, while Oracle Onramp can give you insights by customer file and kick off 1st party audience campaigns that can help retain consumer discretionary purchases throughout the season.

If your brand does not have a ton of first party data, don’t fret! The top 20% of retail buyers are responsible for over 70% of revenue, and while they tend to have fickle favorites, these buyers represent your biggest sales opportunities and are key to achieving your holiday advertising objectives. While light and medium buyers tend to be more brand loyal, heavy buyers make 4x more frequent purchases, meaning your ads will have a greater impact because they are never too far from making a purchasing decision. Fortunately, Oracle Advertising retail audiences are based in heavy buyers, so you can target your best shopper almost anywhere they engage digitally. Utilize Oracle audiences like Black Friday Power Shoppers, Heavy Clothing & Apparel Gift Card Buyers, Very High Holiday Spend Range ($3000+), Holiday Heavy Video Game Buyers and more to help achieve a higher ROI this holiday season.

***

Reach out to your Oracle Advertising team to learn more about how we can reach your target market this holiday season!

Looking for more targeting tips and tricks? Check out our other holiday blogs below:

• Adapt your CPG holiday advertising campaign with inflation in mind
• 4 ways to target Halloween audiences this season
• Behavioral vs. Contextual advertising: How to create a complementary digital strategy