Inspiring seasonal sales year-round brings incremental gains to everyday sales. New Year’s Day brunches, the Super Bowl, and Valentine’s Day have already come and gone in 2023, but every day of the year represents an opportunity for seasonal sales. If today is not a holiday, it is a season and a day that is leading up to an event or holiday. With seasons especially, timeliness matters to optimize your marketing calendar.
Seasonal merchandising, no matter the medium, requires a proactive approach to make an impact throughout the shopper journey. Have you noticed in-store seasonal merchandising occurs earlier than you’d expect? That is because the longer lead equates to more seasonal sales. Online merchandising is no different as marketers need to capture the attention and sales opportunity around sporting seasons, events, entertaining, gifting, cooking, baking, decorating and the weather itself. Finding your seasonal opportunities and making sure your messages are positioned near the point of sale both online and in-store is the first part of the winning equation.
Why is this such a key strategy for marketers to embrace? Buying habits are different during key seasons and holidays, largely because shoppers are not just buying for themselves. This drives volume beyond everyday sales. Marketers have a wealth of retail media tools along the path to purchase to inspire seasonal sales and make incremental gains while eliminating ad waste. Features like brand pages and add-to-cart recipes can drive conversions and draw stronger correlation between brands, key seasons and holidays. In fact, a recent co-op seasonal program developed for Hy-Vee delivered over 440% ROAS. CPG brands that engage with shoppers during seasonal periods build affinity and provide simple ways for consumers to enjoy and celebrate key moments. But there is a second part of the equation that even the big marketers miss.
Omnichannel consistency is missed by many marketers and a significant factor to seasonal success. When brand marketers complement their Super Bowl spots, seasonal commercials and other campaigns with retail media—and align their marketing efforts with their retail partners—they can unlock a much larger opportunity. Brand marketers should considerleveraging retailers’ first-party data to increase relevant reach and interact with shoppers at the right time, ideally at a moment closer to the point of purchase. Brands are better served when their advertising is more closely aligned with their retail partners. Consider seasonal advertising through CTV in conjunction with a TV spot, for example.
We know viewers aren’t just tuning into their favorite shows or sporting events through cable providers or merely on televisions anymore. Data has repeatedly shown that people are often looking at multiple screens when tuning into a show or event. The digital feed for this year’s Super Bowl exceeded five million streams for the third straight year. These numbers will continue to increase and CTV ad spending will continue to rise overall,as past purchases are the best indicator of future purchases. That’s why it’s so important to expand your brand’s footprint across multiple channels during key timeframes.
Brands need to think of their media buys with the following question in mind: “How can I leverage my retail partners’ data in a consistent omnichannel fashion to reach shoppers at the right place and time for incremental seasonal gains?”
With 25+ years experience, David has been an effective leader and retail. David has served as an executive of CitrusAd since 2020 and is at the center of retailer monetization, leveraging a world-leading retail media platform with an experienced media sales and strategy team to create exciting revenue streams for retailers from the CitrusAd platform and category growth for advertisers. Prior to this, David was Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at Triad, where he spent 14 years.
