7 Steps to maximize CPG sales this holiday season
Boost your holiday sales with these 7 essential tips for marketing performance, shoppability, and innovation in CPG retail ecommerce. Is your brand ready?
The holiday season is a golden opportunity for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands to shine. According to Adobe, online shopping for the 2024 holiday season is projected to hit a record $240.8 billion, with 53.2% expected to be mobile transactions. With nuanced consumer behavior and the continued surge in online shopping, it’s crucial to continue to refine your retail ecommerce strategy.
Follow these 7 essential steps to navigate the holiday rush & maximize your sales:
Take a moment to analyze last year's performance. Identify which media channels and retailers generated the most sales and which fell short. This data is invaluable for shaping your inventory and promotional strategies. Knowing what worked (and what didn’t) will help you allocate resources more effectively, ensuring you’re prepared to meet consumer demand year-over-year.
For example, you can build an audience of shoppers that already interacted with your brand across various channels:
Then, you can rapidly retarget before BFCM (Black Friday/Cyber Monday) with connected commerce to get the sales rolling in.
Path to Purchase Institute reports the trends in social media advertising during BFCM:
“As Black Friday approaches, fewer impressions may be generated, but they result in higher engagement, according to Emplifi. Brands can get more value from their ad spend closer to the event when consumer urgency is highest.”
Instant ad shoppability is one of the easiest ways to support consumers' sense of urgency this holiday season. Reduce friction in your paths to purchase with in-ad unit shoppability.
The holiday season can come with its own set of challenges. From distribution hiccups to supply chain delays, potential risks abound. Start by identifying these challenges and developing contingency plans to address them.
Some risks might include:
Using a dynamic inventory provider can make a huge difference in efficiently handling inventory concerns and order fulfillment. Offering omnichannel shoppability at retailers near your shoppers can also reduce potential shipping challenges. By leveraging real-time insights, you can respond promptly to changing demand and streamline operations.
As traffic surges during the holiday season, your website must be equipped to handle the influx. Review your site under the lens of a seamless user experience.
Understanding the competitive landscape is vital for crafting effective offers. Review your competitors' approach and analyze your click-level shopper insights to tailor promotions. Use this information to create a competitive custom audience for targeting via social commerce.
EMARKETER reports, “Social commerce sales are growing as buyers spend more. Gen Z are most likely to purchase holiday gifts via social commerce.”
By starting this process early, you’ll be well-positioned to create personalized campaigns that resonate with your target audience, particularly this newer segment of shoppers.
With inflation affecting many consumers, price sensitivity is at an all-time high. Emarketer’s article How retailers can navigate disruption in the 2024 holiday season, confirms that the economy isn’t stopping holiday spending, just altering it:
“…Consumers’ spending behavior tells a different story. They’re spending, but focusing on value and finding deals… US holiday retail sales will grow 4.3% this year to reach $1.353 trillion, according to EMARKETER’s forecast. Retailers will need to lean into value messaging to resonate with cautious, but active consumers.”
To attract budget-conscious shoppers, offer personalized deals and value-based promotions. Highlight the benefits of your products, such as wholesome ingredients, delicious recipes, and eco-friendly packaging. Creating value can help persuade consumers to choose your products over competitors.
Stand out by highlighting specialty products or collaborating with complementary brands. For instance, if you’re a beverage brand, consider partnering with a snack brand for a joint promotion. Such collaborations can create buzz and offer consumers exciting new ways to experience your products. Innovation not only attracts attention but also keeps your brand fresh and relevant.
To optimize your holiday marketing campaigns, leverage UTMs and pixels to gain valuable insights into shopper behavior and campaign effectiveness. By adding UTM parameters to your URLs, you can track where your traffic is coming from—social media, emails, or ads—allowing you to analyze the performance of different channels, mediums, and specific campaigns.
Additionally, Pear integrates any of your ad platforms’ tracking pixels into your shoppable tools, firing back full-funnel data on user interactions and conversions. This combined approach enables mid-campaign optimizations , empowering you to adjust your strategies dynamically for better engagement and higher sales during the holiday season.
In their 2024 Holiday Shopping Outlook infographic, Bain and Co. supports steps like these for consumer sales:
By teaming up with an omnichannel platform like Pear, CPG brands can solidify their ecommerce strategy for the holiday season. Capitalize on the holiday rush and make a lasting impression. Refine your strategy ASAP (if you haven’t already) by making all your brand assets shoppable, and set yourself up for success this holiday season! Our team wants to see you succeed.
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