The leaves have just begun to change into their autumn colors, and that means that soon, stores will begin (if they haven’t already) to put up their holiday displays and certain radio stations will play Christmas music 24/7. It also means it’s time for business owners to begin to plan their holiday advertising campaigns. After all, traditionally, the fourth quarter is when many businesses earn their highest revenue.
But will this year be different because of the global pandemic?
According to new projections from Deloitte, retail sales in the U.S. will most likely grow this holiday season, despite ongoing economic uncertainty and higher unemployment that resulted from Covid-19 lockdowns.
In a statement, Deloitte suggested that e-commerce would be the driving engine of the holiday spending crowd and that we could see an increase of between 1% to 1.5% in the November through January period, with total spending predicted at around $1.5 trillion. While this can be seen as a bit of a slowdown from previous years, the fact remains that there are profits to be captured. And if you are a business owner who has been struggling to stay afloat over the past few months, then it’s more important than ever to attract the holiday shoppers.
Just Who is Going to be Spending This Season?
While big chain stores like Target, Walmart and Home Depot have faired very well during this pandemic, smaller brick and mortar retailers and mom and pop shops have been hit the hardest. With much of the country beginning to open back up, now is the time to get these people into your store. If you offer online shopping options, now’s the time to direct traffic to your e-commerce store and recoup some of your lost earnings.
But this holiday season will take some finesse to get your messaging in front of just the right group of buyers. According to the Deloitte report, the wealthy in this country are expected to splurge this holiday season. Deloitte's US retail and distribution leader Rod Sides had this to say, “We don't see many of the higher and upper middle income folks being impacted by job losses, so we think for that group holiday sales go up as much as 2 per cent to 3 per cent.”
Print Ads: The Way to Reach Affluent Consumers
According to Nielsen, affluent shoppers are 61% more likely than average to read a daily newspaper. These same people also are far more likely to read luxury magazines, both the print and online versions.
Now you may be thinking, “I don’t sell luxury products or services. I’m just a small local retailer.” Well consider the following statistics, that may surprise you:
According to research collected by ValPak, the North American direct marketing company, 81% of affluent shoppers search for coupons in print sources before shopping. 88% of these consumers use coupons received in the mail and 84% use coupons from a coupon book.
Yes, Virginia, affluent consumers use coupons, too!
The moral of this holiday advertising story is twofold:
1) This holiday season, affluent shoppers will be the ones likely spending the most.
2) If you want to get your offer in front of these consumers, focusing on print ads is the way to go. Not only are affluent consumers the ones who primarily read magazines and newspapers, they also happen to clip coupons just like you and me.
This holiday season, it’s important for small business owners to make the best possible decisions about how to allocate their marketing resources. That is, if they want to recoup some of the revenue lost during the height of the pandemic. Print ads are a media channel that will most likely bring the greatest returns, so we highly suggest you place your focus there.
If you need any help with your print ads this holiday season, please get in touch with us.
