By John McNerney, managing director of Yahoo AUSEA
As economic pressures weigh heavily on shoppers this holiday season, retailers are bracing for lower spending and increased competition. But not all hope is lost – John McNerney, managing director AUSEA at Yahoo, shares some insights into how omnichannel tactics can help marketers reach consumers across multiple touchpoints.
It’s been a tough year for Australian retailers and consumers as a cost of living crisis and high interest rates has led to a prolonged period of belt-tightening. But this year’s holiday season could be more like Santa Claus than Ebenezer Scrooge if marketers choose to adopt an omnichannel marketing approach and consider these trends to drive success.
As we head into the festive season, retailers are already adapting to market conditions by lowering prices, focusing on affordable and value-driven products, creating better in-store experiences and embracing innovation to attract new customers.
And for good reason: per capita retail spending has gone down for seven of the past eight quarters and Aussie consumers are still a pessimistic bunch compared with their peers in the UK and US, according to Deloitte’s annual Retail Holiday Report. Only half of retailers (51%) expect sales to increase, which is a decrease from 57% last year, while a third of shoppers plan to spend less.
A separate study by CPM Australia and Retail Safari, which dived deeper into Christmas shopping trends, paints a slightly more optimistic picture with 76% of consumers planning to spend as much or more on gifts to an average of around $660 per consumer, which is up 10% on last year.
Interestingly, it is younger demos that plan to spend more on gifts, while baby boomers are the only demographic that will cut down their Christmas spend.
Nonetheless, it is shaping up to be another year of frugal festivities with most shoppers concerned about price and promotions ahead of quality of product and the brands they trust when choosing a gift.
This makes it critical for marketers to consider holiday shopping trends, including how to craft an effective omnichannel strategy, leveraging audience insights and embracing innovative effective ways to reach consumers – all with the added benefit of a wide variety of inventory options like CTV, DOOH and high-impact placements at unprecedented prices.
Holiday Magic For ‘Gen Now’
The festive season is still, by some distance, the most important sales period for retailers. But what has rapidly changed is when shoppers are buying their presents, where they are going to buy them and how to effectively reach them.
Per the CPM Australia study, nearly two-thirds (63%) of Aussies plan to do their Christmas shop in November, stretching out the more traditional Christmas shopping period. This is largely due to high profile sales events; 60% are seeking out Black Friday (29 November) and 30% Cyber Monday (2 December) as the key dates to do a lot of the heavy lifting.
Online marketplaces (69%) and physical department stores (59%) are the two most popular places to buy gifts, while there is a growing preference to visit e-commerce sites of retailers. But the key is that more shoppers this year (89%) are prepared to look online and instore to fill up their Christmas trees and stockings with gifts.
Last year Aussies spent more than $107 billion in retail during the fourth quarter, with Black Friday alone seeing nearly $9 billion in sales, up 22% from 2022.
This year, focusing on the longer game of a festive period can be the difference between a festive feast or frugality.
On the latter point, when it comes to Christmas lunch and entertainment, 95% of shoppers are actively looking for deals and discounts to cut their grocery bills, while 87% are opting to stay at home, per Deloitte. This gives retailers an opportunity to entice customers with little luxuries that embrace the ‘staycation’ trend, but timing and channel are key.
Tap into a C ‘Christmas’ TV moment
Marketers need to finely tune their omnichannel game by targeting shoppers with key messages ahead of peak dates and across a mix of offline and online channels.
Although linear TV has long been the bastion of Christmas TV advertising, its audience reach and advertising spend is in structural decline, which means only an omnichannel approach will be able to create plenty of Christmas cheer for marketers looking to supercharge their ROI. This involves a cohesive and fully integrated strategy across mobile, desktop, connected TV and digital out of home.
Connected TV (CTV) is one area where marketers can get more bang for their buck. Seven’s recent AFL Grand Final broke several audience records, reaching a record number of fans via streaming on 7plus (655,000) while Nine’s coverage of the State of Origin and NRL grand final also broke new ground.
We have seen a huge migration of eyeballs onto streaming platforms and CTV needs to be at the heart of an omnichannel media mix to have real impact in reaching holiday shoppers.
A recent study by LG even found CTV ads increased awareness, with 69% of CTV viewers remembering holiday shopping ads, while 72 percent would scan a QR code for a discount.
It’s not just size that matters
Adding innovative ad units, such as QR codes to existing video assets, can drive more engagement across screens, and encourage shoppers to purchase with special holiday deals and offers. So, too, can dynamic creative optimisation tools that personalise ads at scale.
Last Christmas, Woolworths delivered one of the most memorable Christmas ads, ‘Celebrate the Little Things That Make Christmas Special’, which dressed kids up as different foods to perform in the festive season school plays.
It then ran smaller iterations promoting products such as Christmas hams across multiple digital channels including digital out of home, mobile, desktop and in-store. The campaign received a market-leading Ad Awareness score of 61.1%, and Woolies’ Christmas sales soared.
Rival Coles, and an army of elves, built on the success of its ‘Great Lengths for Quality’ campaign deploying creative to hundreds of touchpoints across in-store, owned, paid and earned media, focussing on the quality and price of key Christmas food items like Triple Smoked Christmas Hams, responsibly sourced seafood and desserts.
Connecting the dots
Complementing captivating creative with an omnichannel marketing approach are tools that connect all of the dots in an efficient and effective way.
This year, Yahoo rolled out two solutions to help supercharge such an approach: Yahoo Connect ID for better targeting and measurement across CTV and other addressable and non-addressable channels and a new partnership with Afterpay which uses first-party data to reach shoppers across the web and in-store.
The result is that brands can deliver personalised ads, track sales, measure closed-loop campaign performance, and gain insights to refine their mixed media model strategies in a much more insightful manner – while keeping customer identities private.
For retailers to win the holiday shopping season, they need to understand evolving shopper trends and follow a few simple rules:
• Focus on the festive long game and get ahead of peak shopping events such as Black Friday.
• Understand what shoppers need on price, promotion and value, and show up where shoppers will be across multiple touchpoints, including CTV, mobile, desktop, digital OOH, retail media networks and in store.
• Create powerful Christmas creative with tailored messaging across multiple touchpoints on the consumer journey.
• Supercharge campaigns with smart tools that deliver cohesion, efficiency and effectiveness across the marketing funnel.
Those that achieve the above should turn a season of festive frugalities into a Christmas feast.
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Top image: John McNerney