All I Want for Christmas is ROAS
Social media giants on festive shopper behaviours, and how marketers can make the most of seasonal moments, and the days soon after.
For most of us, ‘tis the season to be jolly. But for marketers, it’s a major shopping moment. Shoppers can showcase a range of behaviours from deliberate, deal-seeking, determined, and devoted, as they approach the festive season.
Depending on which cohort your shopper falls in, as a marketer, you need to ensure your brand is seen in the right light, and at the right time.
Martechvibe looks at trends dominating this shopping season, and what social media platforms are saying about evolving consumer behaviours.
Holiday season shopping has moved up.
X, formerly known as Twitter, shared some data for marketers. But since Twitter has an audience that skews male, and the largest age group is between 25 and 35 years old, this was corroborated across other data sources and echoed more of the same.
For example, according to data from Rakuten Advertising, 52% of consumers begin their holiday shopping in November, with 3% starting in August.
That being said, there is a growing influence of exclusive holiday bundles and limited-time offers, which may be deemed worth the wait. This is especially true in beauty holiday-specific bundles being shared by high-impact influencers.
Brands can capitalise on the post-holiday shopping window.
According to TikTok, even after the holiday highs end, shopping interest sustains into January..
1. Extend your holiday campaign to further capitalise on sales, gift card spending and returns.
Continue running general/always-on VSA Prospecting ads.
Allocate additional budget to drive incremental sales during Q5.
Run Video Shopping Ads (for Prospecting) after last holiday ship dates.
VSA Drives
- 4% ROAS vs. non-Shopping Ads
- 15% conversions vs. non-Shopping Ads
2. Add Carousel product images to your Video Shopping Ads.
- Adding Carousel to VSA in a shared ad group drives
- 20% click-through attribution ROAS lift vs. VSA alone
3. Run Web Conversion Ads in place of Video Shopping Ads if your brand hasnʼt synced their product catalog on TikTok Ads Manager.
- TTAM Objective: Conversion + Value Based Optimisation
- KPIs: ROAS, Cost per Complete Payment
- Advertisers see 40% to 50% lower CPAs when using the Conversion objective and sharing full funnel events and Advanced Matching vs. Traffic campaigns only.
Shoppers showcase value-seeking behaviour.
According to Deloitte’s Consumer Signals, people are leaning towards experiences over products. The cost-of-living squeeze continues to weigh on the holiday shopper. This frugal behaviour is what is pushing consumers to prioritise deals over brand loyalty.
More than 75% of holiday shoppers said they keep their eyes open for promotions throughout the holiday shopping season. As per Google data, deal-seeking is an “always-on” behaviour that’s not tied to a single sales day. For them, these moments are the kick-off for future festivities.
Social media bridges the distance between loved ones.
Snapchatters see the platform as ‘the best way for me to shop with my friends even when they’re not with me.’
This trend was particularly visible during Halloween.
Shopping for Halloween is a social experience where friends and family are closely involved. According to Snapchat data, people use the platform and close personal networks heavily influence their behaviour across their purchasing journey – from inspiration to purchase and beyond.
The social media network claims that Snapchat is the go-to platform for shopping with friends and beats out all other platforms when they want to get opinions while shopping, share outfits, and get advice before making their final decision.
Take advantage of post-holiday cost efficiencies.
Snapchat is all about influence. The majority of Snapchatters agree that their most trusted advice on what to buy comes from their interactions.
- Monitor ad performance and adjust based on clicks, sales, and downloads.
- Hit pause on holiday centric messaging and tap into creative that highlights fresh beginnings and the value of your product.
- Engage lapsed customers with a retargeting campaign.
#SelfCare is a top priority post-holidays.
Brands need to focus on their Return on Creative on platforms like TikTok. Creative quality is responsible for almost half (49%) of the incremental sales driven by advertising.
Use the traffic to A/B test your AI capabilities.
If you are actively working on ad campaigns, then you would have noticed that each social platform is pushing their own AI-powered tool to ease the campaign management and optimisation process.
Meta launched Advantage+ shopping campaigns in August 2022. It works towards cutting down the manual effort—the machine learning capabilities will automatically optimise your ongoing campaigns.
X added AI capabilities to help with audience matching and ad placement. One has to simply describe the audience that you want to reach, like “users who are leaders in last-mile,” and X’s AI matching system will then provide you with an ad audience based on that description.
With the added traffic, it may be a good time for an internal exercise where you compare each social media platform’s performance in relation to your conversion data to decide on a priority list of platforms that work best for your business.
