A shorter holiday shopping season brings higher stakes

This year consumers are facing a condensed holiday shopping season and an abundance of choice. This calls for an updated marketing approach to holiday readiness that rethinks how to win every day, not just “peak days.”

As you’re building your holiday marketing strategies, lean on the consumer mindset framework devised by our team at Google. Understanding these four mindsets—deliberate, deal-seeking, determined and devoted—will help you connect with shoppers throughout the season:

• Starting as early as May, consumers are “deliberate,” thoughtfully planning their holiday purchases and wish lists.
• Throughout the season, they’re continually “deal-seeking,” hunting for deals and prioritizing quality and value. This peaks during Cyber Week.
• In December, they become even more “determined” to complete their shopping ahead of the holidays and engage across channels.
• And through January, “devoted” consumers continue to shop past peak season and prioritize brand loyalty.

The more condensed purchase period this holiday season intensifies the need for brands and retailers to cater to early shopping mindsets, “deliberate” and “deal-seeking” ones. Brands and retailers can gain a significant edge by fostering confidence, encouraging purchases before Black Friday ushers in the holiday rush, and ensuring they stay in consumers’ consideration sets for later purchase.

Connect with deliberate shoppers now to capture hearts and wallets

This holiday season, consumers are feeling the pressure to be discerning with their purchases, with 61% of U.S. consumers saying they can’t afford to make the wrong purchase decision.¹ This could be part of the reason we’re seeing consumers getting a headstart on their shopping. In a recent study we ran with Ipsos, 34% of U.S. consumers said they already started their holiday shopping in July, up from 28% last year.²

In tandem with this deliberate mindset, we’re already starting to see some deal-seeking behaviors among consumers. These shoppers are continually on the hunt for deals, with 75% of holiday shoppers saying they keep their eyes open for promotions throughout the holiday shopping season.³ Make sure your deals and discounts are visible to shoppers across the entire season so that savvy shoppers feel confident purchasing when they’re ready.

This holiday season, connect with shoppers on a deeper level using Google's AI-powered tools. Take a holistic approach to create meaningful experiences that resonate throughout the customer journey. Capture shopper attention in real-time across Google with personalized shopping ads, and build lasting brand connections through engaging YouTube campaigns. Guide shoppers seamlessly to your online or physical stores through search, catering to their preferences for in store or online. And finally, your data and Merchant Center will be your key to monitor product performance, audience behavior, and the competitive landscape, enabling data-driven decisions to refine strategies and maximize ROI.

Help shoppers feel confident about their wishlists

Thanksgiving falls especially late this November, leaving five fewer shopping days between Cyber 5—the five days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday—and the end of the year compared with last year. Given this shorter shopping period, retailers should not only reach shoppers early while they’re building their wishlists, but also help them make assured decisions, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing returns. Building customer confidence now is critical to helping you capture attention and make connections during this limited number of holiday shopping days.

We’ve found that 60% of U.S. consumers have abandoned a purchase altogether when faced with too many options or information.⁴ But when they have the information they need to navigate these many options, shopping is more fun and rewarding, and ultimately better for your bottom line as retailers. We’ve found that purchase confidence is 3.2-times higher among shoppers who feel they found relevant information, compared with shoppers who did not feel they found relevant information.⁵ And those confident consumers go on to be 6-times more likely to want to buy again⁶ and 18 times more likely to recommend the brand to family or friends than those with low confidence.⁷

Use YouTube to reach shoppers early as they build consideration sets, to help them feel confident about their future purchases. According to a U.S. survey conducted by Material, online video shoppers are 3.9-times more likely to start on YouTube than any other platform.⁸ In that same study, we also found YouTube’s influence cuts down the average online video shopper’s journey by six days.⁹ Tap Video Reach campaigns and Video Action campaigns to reach and influence shoppers as they look to YouTube creators for inspiration.

And be sure to pair your YouTube Ads with ads on search through Performance Max campaigns. Based on retailer MMM analysis conducted by TransUnion, on average the retailer brands that reduced their Q4 share of wallet for paid search and/or YouTube from 2021 to 2022 could have seen a nearly $83 million increase in revenue had they held their paid search and YouTube share of wallet constant year over year.¹⁰

How one brand turned holiday gains into year-round customer growth

Best-in-class retailers like Athletic Propulsion Labs (APL), a luxury performance footwear brand, have been using AI to connect with shoppers throughout the season.

During the 2023 holiday season, APL wanted more ways to increase overall sales and grow their customer community by finding new buyers. First, they generated leads with short-term sales during Cyber 5. Then, they used AI to follow up as part of a year-long strategy.

AI-powered solutions like Performance Max helped them take the guesswork out of how and when to connect customers with tailored messaging, optimizing engagement across Google platforms and automatically matching ads to individual customer preferences like comfort, style, performance or a combination thereof. Through this approach, APL drove 20% new customer growth and 23% revenue growth during the 2023 holiday season.

APL stayed in touch with its Google team throughout the holiday weekend to further optimize bids and budgets when performance spiked. This kind of agile approach is critical to driving new customer growth. 

APL, along with other retailers like Ace Hardware, Adidas, Veronica Beard and Movado, will be joining us at Think Retail on Aug. 27 to share how they’re putting Google AI to work to maximize their holiday results. Tune in digitally to get more Google and YouTube holiday insights and access to our product experts.

This article is part of The Insighter, Google's new monthly brief that pairs fresh marketing insights with an action plan for growth. Each issue explores a new topic related to our research. Subscribe to Think with Google to get these delivered to the top of your inbox each month.
 

Sources

1.  Google/Ipsos, The Relevance Factor, U.S., n=1000 online shoppers 18+, March 2024.

2.  Google-commissioned Ipsos Consumer Continuous, U.S., n=1000 online consumers 18+ per year, July 1–5, 2024 vs. July 3–7, 2023.

3.  Google-commissioned Ipsos Consumer Continuous, AU, BR, CA, CN, FR, DE, IN, IT, JP, MX, ZA, KR, ES, U.K., U.S., ~n=300–750 online consumers 18+ per market who plan to shop for the holidays, Aug. 7–10, 2023.

4.  Google/Ipsos, The Relevance Factor, U.S., n=1000 online shoppers 18+, March 2024.

5.  Google/Ipsos, AU, BR, CA, FR, DE, IN, IT, JP, MX, NL, SG, KR, ES, TW, TH, U.K., U.S., VN, The Relevance Factor, found very relevant information (n=4,589), did not find relevant information (B2B) (n=2,903) online shoppers 18+, March 2024.

6.  Google/Ipsos, AU, BR, CA, FR, DE, IN, IT, JP, MX, NL, SG, KR, ES, TW, TH, U.K., U.S., VN, The Relevance Factor, found very relevant information (n=4,589), did not find relevant information (B2B) (n=2,903) online shoppers 18+, March 2024.

7.  Google/Ipsos, AU, BR, CA, FR, DE, IN, IT, JP, MX, NL, SG, KR, ES, TW, TH, U.K., U.S., VN, The Relevance Factor, high confidence at purchase (n=6,499), low confidence at purchase (n=3,587) online shoppers 18+, March 2024.

8. Google/Material, Role of Video in Shopper Journey, U.S., 2023, N=2,420 Online survey, Americans 18+ who shopped using an online video platform, Aug.–Sept. 2023.

9.  Google/Material, Role of Video in Shopping Journey, U.S., 2023, N=2,420 Online survey, Americans 18+ who used an online video platform to shop, Aug.–Sept. 2023.

10.  Google/TransUnion, Holiday Retailer MMM Meta Analysis, US, 10 Retailer Brands, Q4 2021 SOW on Q4 2022 Budget. SOW Simulation = Simulated Q4’21 weekly share of wallet for Search and YouTube on Q4’22 spend; dollars were reallocated from channels ranked in the bottom third by marginal ROAS