Holiday Shopping Success: 6 Approaches to Promotions & New Measurement Tools

A year ago, promotions were scarce even for brands and retailers that are most known for using big deals to drive customer traffic.

The reason?

Stimulus checks were combined with backed-up demand from supply chain bottlenecks (source). As a result, brands pulled back promotions and leveraged the demand to charge full price.  

But that's all changed this year. We’re entering the holiday shopping season with retailers struggling to clear out overstocked inventory, and some, like Urban Outfitters, are promising to increase promotions throughout the rest of the year (source).  

With inflation hitting its highest annual jump since the 1980s, consumers will see these promotions as a welcome relief this holiday shopping season (source). However, it creates a unique set of challenges for brands who are usually averse to deals because of the age-old question... 

Do promotions negatively impact brand value and brand equity?  

The answer is complicated, and it would vary depending on whether it’s a value, mid-tier, or premium brand. On top of that, your brand might answer this question differently this year due to any unique challenges facing your category and the reality that customers will have discounts top-of-mind as heavy promotions on overstocked items continue throughout the holiday season. 

If all those headwinds are causing your brand to consider promotions this year, here’s a list of potential calculated promotions that help position your brand for success while protecting brand value and brand equity.  

6 APPROACHES TO HOLIDAY PROMOTIONS

1) Lean into targeted promotions.  

Use Sponsored Products to focus your ads on those customers showing the highest level of intent. That way you’re not blasting a promotion for everyone to see, but you’re using it as a precision tool that can nudge them one last time to make the purchase.  

2) Use deals as a basket-building opportunity.  

Even if you don’t want to offer promotions on some products, you can use them as a chance to basket build with others to help insulate your bottom line and ensure customers are hitting a minimum cart total or revenue threshold.  

3) Create promotions that reward loyalty.  

Offer promotions to your current customers to upsell, rebuy, or set up a Subscribe and Save opportunity that solidifies loyalty and grows lifetime value. 

4) Target new-to-brand consumers with price-matching promotions.  

Depending on where you sit in the category, you could possibly create a price-matching promotion that helps new-to-brand consumers consider your brand when shopping a competitor.  

5) Leverage Amazon Live Influencers to offer limited promotions to new demographics.  

Influencer marketing was responsible for an astounding $13.8 billion in revenue throughout 2021 and is currently on track to expand beyond $16.4 billion (source). Amazon has leaned into that and created opportunities for Amazon Live Influencers to match up with brands to offer deal streams that are a limited-time deal to their audience. It’s a 1-day package during peak hours (Mon-Fri) with 60-minutes of ASIN coverage across 6 hours (10 min per hour) and a brand can select up to 4 ASINs for the influencer coverage deal. Brands receive subcategory exclusivity based on the ASINs they are promoting.  

6) Use promotions that don’t involve discounts.  

Jewelry retailer David Yurman is offering holiday wrapping and packaging as a value-add promotion. Fashion brand Michael Kors is promoting products at different price points to help shoppers who are balancing a limited budget this holiday season. Create your own version of those ideas to add value or communicate varying price points to those customers who are more price-conscious.  

Regardless of which promotion idea you run with... 

Your success is dependent on your ability to measure impact and optimize in real-time.  

This is true whether you’re running promotions or not. But for those brands who are, measuring and optimizing becomes even more critical since those promotions directly impact your bottom-line. 

If you’re not already using them, here are 2 relatively new tools to help measure the impact of your promotions and optimize accordingly: 

2 MEASUREMENT TOOLS FOR SUCCESS

Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) 

Amazon Marketing Cloud, or AMC, is a complex tool that provides a secure, privacy-safe, and dedicated cloud-based environment in which advertisers can perform analytics across multiple pseudonymized data sets to generate aggregate reports. It’s a mass of data that can be a challenge to discern. But incorporating AMC metrics as part of your broader insights can help answer key questions like: 

• How did my new STV campaign influence my overall purchase rate? 

• What ASIN is the most successful at attracting new customers?  

• How well are Sponsored Products driving new-to-brand customers?  

• How are my STV campaigns impacting conversion?  

• How do STV campaigns improve the performance of my remarketing campaigns?  

• What time of the day do I reach the most shoppers with my Sponsored Advertising campaigns?  

Omnichannel Metrics (OCM) 

Omnichannel Metrics, or OCM, is a relatively new tool with the beta currently available for CPG and grocery advertisers. Take a look at this recent post to see all details we covered about OCM. The short summary of OCM is that it can measure the lift Amazon advertising brings to off-Amazon retailers by linking ad-attributed sales to both Amazon’s marketplace and other external brick-and-mortar stores. Here are the 2 biggest wins with OCM, especially when compared to other Retail Media Market Reports: 

• Provides de-duplicate metrics combining Amazon retail signals and third-party offline transaction records.   

• Reporting is at line-item level, allowing advertisers to see the relationship between ad audiences, placements, and creatives on outcomes.   

• Metrics are reported mid-flight, allowing advertisers to change tactics or reallocate budgets to optimize business outcomes. 

IT’S GO TIME

Promotions are tough because they aren’t one-size-fits-all and you can’t just set them and forget them. Your team needs a partner that is dedicated to finding the right combination of solutions to build the promotions that fit your brand and your unique customer base. You also need a partner that is always ready to test and learn, adapt to opportunities, and pivot toward greater impact. If those resonate with you, let’s connect and see if we’re a right fit for what your brand needs this holiday season.