The holidays are right around the corner, and this year shoppers are tackling their lists earlier than ever—as early as October!¹
Even with vaccines now widely available and some returning to normalcy, COVID-19 continues to be a source of uncertainty as the holiday season approaches. That’s especially true for small businesses. So what does holiday shopping look like this year, and how should small businesses take action?
In the midst of the ambiguity, there’s news we can celebrate together: The economy is expected to see its fastest growth in more than two decades during the back-half of 2021.² With this exciting trajectory in mind, here are three ways small businesses can drive big results with digital marketing this holiday season.
1. Optimize your website for mobile to ensure a seamless shopping experience
Mobile commerce will dominate this holiday season as shoppers have officially made the jump from desktop to mobile. While this shift happened in part due to COVID-19, it has quickly become the new normal. In fact, 67% of all e-commerce sales this year will come from mobile,³ and it’s no surprise that social media users are leading the charge. That’s true especially for Snapchatters, among the savviest mobile consumers out there, who shop online 20% more than other consumers.⁴
Without a well-baked mobile strategy, your business will have difficulty effectively breaking through this holiday season.
Tip: Having a fast, responsive mobile website is key to ensuring a seamless shopping experience and driving more online conversions, especially during the holidays when website traffic is highest. Additionally, when building your digital advertising strategy, having data-gathering tools in place, like a pixel, should also be a top priority.
If you’re advertising on Snapchat, be sure to implement the Snap Pixel to help you track the actions that Snapchatters take on your website across devices. With the Snap Pixel installed, you can create highly-targeted campaigns to serve Snapchatters the exact ad to help them convert, and help you analyze the actions they’ve taken on your site, such as page views and items added to carts. It also will help build custom audiences to expand your reach and optimize your campaigns towards those Snapchatters most likely to complete a purchase on your website.
2. Advertise where people are shopping: on social media
In recent years, social media has been transformed into so much more than just a place to connect with one another. It’s now an integral part of almost every stage of the shopping journey, from finding new brands and products to building wishlists, sharing gift ideas and making purchases.
Especially during the holidays, social media plays a key role in gift discovery and recommendations between friends, family and loved ones. In fact, friendship is so highly influential during the festive shopping season that referred customers spend twice as much as the average consumer.⁵
Tip: Leverage mobile ads that are built to help you generate brand awareness, drive product sales, encourage app downloads and boost conversions. Snapchat’s full-screen mobile ads inspire action, and its free creative tools allow you to quickly create visually appealing and seasonally relevant ads that drive results.
3. Reach millennials and Gen Z beyond the big moments to maximize sales
Millennials and Gen Z are rarely without their phones and have incredible global spending power—$4.4 trillion and growing.⁶ These generations plan to spend big throughout the entire festive season. While 72% of Snapchatters plan to shop this Black Friday and Cyber Monday,⁷ their holiday purchases are not limited to these key moments and neither should your digital marketing strategy.
This is a highly influential audience that loves the holidays and feels gift-giving is an integral part of the celebration. In fact, Snapchatters will spend 1.6-times more than the average shopper throughout the entire holiday season.⁸
Tip: When building your target audience, it’s best to be as precise as possible. Targeting based on interests, behaviors, location and demographics are all important, but the more advanced targeting capabilities you have—like the ability to create custom audiences based on data that is unique to your business—the more you’ll be able to grow meaningful reach and leave impressions on people looking for products like yours.
At Snapchat, we believe small businesses play an important role in powering the holidays, which is why we work hard to empower small businesses. With these digital marketing tips, our goal is to help make sure your business sees the results you want this upcoming season, whether it’s reaching more customers or exceeding your sales goals.
For even more tips and best practices on how your business can navigate the festive shopping season and unwrap real results, download our Snapchat Advertising Holiday Playbook.
Sources:
¹ 2021 Deloitte Holiday Research Commissioned by Snap Inc. Base = Snapchatters (n=740) Q: “When do you begin thinking about holiday shopping? And when do you usually finish your holiday shopping?”
² NRF, “NRF Forecasts Retail Sales to Exceed $4.33T in 2021 as Vaccine Rollout Expands,” February 24, 2021.
³ eMarketer, “Retail MCommerce Sales Worldwide,” December 2020.
⁴ Calculated by comparing 2021 Deloitte Holiday Research Commissioned by Snap Inc. Base = Snapchatters (N=918), Non-Snapchatters (N=252) Q: “Where have you bought/plan to buy [CATEGORY] products this holiday season?” to eMarketer “Roundup: Path to Purchase Beyond the Retail Vertical.”
⁵ Annex Cloud Customer Marketing Platform Article, “42 Referral Marketing Statistics That Will Make You Want to Start a RAF Program Tomorrow.”
⁶ 2021 Global Cassandra Study commissioned by Snap Inc. | Base: Those with a monthly income N=12,710 respondents. Cumulative total of average by market. Spending power for the Snapchat Generation was calculated as follows: We obtained the average monthly income for each respondent. The sum of any expenses related to rent or mortgage, debt, insurance, medical expenses/healthcare, spending money given to others, and utilities was subtracted from this average monthly income. We then multiplied each respondent’s average monthly discretionary spending by 12 to obtain their average yearly discretionary spending and averaged these results within each country across the Snapchat Generation.
⁷ Snap Inc. survey of U.S. Snapchat users May 19 - 27, 2021. Age and location data subject to restrictions. See https://businesshelp.snapchat.com/en-US/a/audience-size-tool for details. Question “We have a few questions about Black Friday shopping. When do you start thinking about Black Friday/Cyber Monday purchases,” 614 respondents.
⁸ 2021 Deloitte Holiday Research Commissioned by Snap Inc. Q: “And how much have you spent or do you anticipate spending in each of the following categories this holiday season?”
