The holiday shopping season is a marathon for marketers as they plan, deploy, and optimize strategy to secure a piece of consumers’ spend–revenue that is projected to reach nearly $1.6 trillion this year. While many advertisers prepare, coordinate, and communicate their holiday promotional strategy in advance, even the best-laid plans may require course correction during this year’s unique circumstances.
In addition to considering key shopping holidays, data-driven budget allocation, and right-fit placement opportunities during the holiday season, marketers must anticipate how macroeconomic and cultural shifts will affect their strategy, including:
Unpredictable consumer spend. This year’s holiday shopping season forecasts are varied due to complex macroeconomic factors that leave leading market research projections several percentage points apart when it comes to their forecasts–3.3% increase vs. 4.8% growth year-over-year from Deloitte and eMarketer, respectively. Without a reliable spend prediction, smart budget allocation and inventory management becomes challenging.
Inflation. While inflation is decreasing, the impact it made on product pricing as a result of 2022’s 40-year high continues. For example, groceries are 25% more expensive now than they were prior to the pandemic. Higher inflation paired with increased cost of living lends to a year-over-year surge of nearly 11% in credit card debt–a $111B increase. As consumers shoulder increased financial stress, there is an added layer of complexity for marketers attempting to incent transactions.
The US Dock Worker Strike. US dockworkers’ from Maine to Texas began their strike in early October following contract expiration between the International Longshoremen’s Association and the U.S. Maritime Alliance. As a result, 36 ports are inoperable, threatening Americans’ ability to receive imported products. With a single day of striking resulting in five days of backlog, advertisers may be faced with supply chain challenges for fulfilling consumer purchases in time for the holidays depending on the timeline for resolution. Further, an extended strike could alter shipping routes, increasing costs to be absorbed by the brand and/or consumer on an already tight budget. While the strike has since been postponed to early 2025, the imminent disorder that will unfold only delays the chaos marketers must prepare for.
The upcoming US presidential election. Post-election holiday spend has demonstrated significant growth in presidential election years with this year’s high-stakes post-election spend to surpass $12 billion. Beyond the election’s influence on consumer confidence, advertisers are competing for ad inventory in channels that are inundated with political advertisements in election crunch time–competition that drives up the cost of reaching and engaging with audiences in primary sales and marketing channels.
Partnerize provides marketers with the tools and flexibility necessary to plan for and adapt to changing consumer behavior as well as economic shifts during the holiday season and beyond. Maximize the benefits of the risk-insulated partnerships channel with these pro tips:
- Promote gift cards, subscriptions and services. Prepare for looming supply chain issues by messaging gift cards, subscriptions and services for gift ideas. Incent partners to promote these items with dynamic commissioning structures to ensure they are equitably rewarded for sharing these easily-delivered gift options with their target audiences.
- Implement dynamic reward structures. Control return on marketing spend while incenting partners to promote your brand with automated dynamic payment structures that enable you to commission on unlimited data points, products, flight paths, conversion attributions or events.
- Confirm that your product feed is error-free. A thorough product feed enables your partners to easily access product-specific content for their posts. Ensure that your product feed isn’t producing any errors within the platform, and resolve any issues as soon as possible to keep the most up-to-date inventory data available to your key partners.
- Partner with buy now, pay later partners. Providing a no-to-low interest alternative to credit cards, buy now pay later (BNPL) partners give consumers purchasing power, spreading payments over time and protecting their credit score. Easily find and work with BNPL partnerships via Discover, the platform’s recruitment and activation engine.
- Cater your promotional calendar accordingly. As consumer buying power remains uncertain, develop a promotional calendar that gets your most aggressive offers in front of your target audience on key shopping holidays when they expect offers to be the most enticing. Additionally, keep your promotional calendar nimble to adapt to economic shifts that may have an effect on consumer sentiment as well as their ability to spend.
Learn more about how Partnerize supports marketers during the holiday season and beyond by getting in touch with our team.
