New Year, New You: Tips to Capitalize on this Seasonal Timeframe
We know what some of you may be thinking:
Why are we talking about New Years? The holiday shopping season hasn’t even wrapped up yet.
Though things are 'merry and bright', soon we'll be talking about New Year's resolutions and improving ourselves.
Even with this year’s economic challenges for consumers, resolution-minded shoppers will be on the lookout for brands and products they can trust to help their goals become a reality in 2023. So, if your brand operates in a category that caters to personal betterment, you need to position yourself in the most optimal way to appeal to audiences during New Year, New You (NYNY). You don’t want to miss out on the massive influx in consumer traffic and one of the biggest shopping moments on Amazon beginning January 1st.
New Year, New You Benefits
Overall retail sales hit $1.75 trillion in Q1 2022. This shows the massive conversion volume that takes place during this time of year.
While many consider the Black Friday/Cyber Monday/the holiday shopping season to be the quintessential time of year for profits, Q1 2022 ecommerce sales hit $250 billion, outpacing Q4 2021 ecommerce sales by 2.4%, demonstrating how Q1’s shopping power can even outweigh holiday-time levels.
Amazingly enough, the % of overall retail sales that come from ecommerce have not come back down to pre-COVID levels. Prior to COVID-19, ecommerce sales made up 10% of overall retail sales. Mid-COVID, that percentage shot up to 17% and has now leveled off at approximately 14% of total retail sales. This illustrates that online shopping isn’t going anywhere and brands should invest in online platforms like Amazon to reach shoppers who are looking to make lifestyle changes during NYNY (source).
In addition to the overall increase in sales during NYNY, “holistic health” is a prominent resolution theme that provides an advantage to health and wellness brands. This includes shoppers who want to exercise more, eat better, and lose weight. Amazon Advertising shared some shopper stats from last year to show the opportunity for health and wellness brands during NYNY:
60% of customers are planning to buy a health and wellness product to support a New Year’s resolution.
31% of customers were willing to try a new brand at the start of 2022 as part of their resolution and there was a 13% increase in new-to-category health and wellness customers in Q1 2021 in comparison to all other quarters.
New health and wellness customers reached in Q1 2021 spent at least 2.85x more than one-time purchasers in the health and wellness categories, signaling that NYNY shoppers are more likely to become repeat buyers and brand loyal (source).
Strategies to Connect with New Year, New You Shoppers
1) Boost your organic rank prior to January 1st
Being top of search during this high-conversion seasonal event increases the likelihood that consumers will purchase your products over competitors’ products. Additionally, the more effort you put into boosting your organic rank, the more Amazon rewards you with earned media and widgets such as Amazon’s Choice badge, the Best Seller badge, the “Because you’ve shopped for similar items” widget, and the “Related to items you’ve viewed” widget.
Here are a few ways your brand can boost your organic rank before 2023:
Sponsored Products: Once you narrow in on your top keywords for NYNY (be sure to review your Search Term Reports) and align your content to those keywords, lean into Sponsored Product ads to capture consumers searching for those terms. This will lead to an increase in clicks, proving to Amazon that your brand is relevant and deserves to be top of organic search.
Promotions: Promotions entice more shoppers to visit your product detail pages and accelerate sales. The uptick in conversion caused by promotions will illustrate to Amazon that consumers are more likely to purchase your products than other products in the category. Additionally, promotions drive visibility beyond seasonal peaks, resulting in greater and sustained organic rank.
Social Media: Take advantage of your brand’s social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. to bring awareness and drive traffic to the deals you are running on Amazon for NYNY. Amazon will reward this externally driven traffic by placing your products higher in organic search.
Amazon Posts: Amazon Posts is a free Beta that can help promote your NYNY deals. The primary benefit of Posts is that they boost consumer engagement with brands’ product detail pages. If you have a Brand Store and you launch on Posts, you could potentially see a 8.2% increase in new-to-brand shoppers.
2) Utilize multiple ad solutions to reach in-aisle shoppers
59% of health & wellness shoppers said that Amazon Advertising solutions helped them discover a new brand.
Your ability to reach these new shoppers becomes even stronger if you incorporate more than one ad tool into your marketing mix. Brands that utilized both Streaming TV (STV) ads and DSP ads saw a 40% higher purchase rate than brands that used only one solution. Additionally, brands that implemented a multi-goal strategy saw…
+1.5x increase in new-to-brand shoppers,
+2.6x increase in consideration, and
+3.8x increase in conversion (source).
Just remember that your advertising tactics are only as effective as the content that NYNY shoppers find on your product listings. Make sure your detail pages are retail-ready, from fully optimized images to bullet points to A+ content, to ensure the prospective shoppers you’re working so hard to bring in convert.
3) Encourage Subscribe & Save as much as possible
This is the perfect opportunity to offer Subscribe & Save (SnS) on products that are typically purchased in a cyclical fashion by your consumer base. It is a convenient option for shoppers who want to stay dedicated to their lifestyle change but don’t want to manually purchase their health product every time they need a refill. Also, since prices are up almost everywhere, customers are leaning into programs that help them save money on items that they purchase consistently.
Implementing SnS also massively benefits your sales in the long run, helping brands’ revenue increase anywhere from 10% to 30% (source).
Unsure how to get these consumers to buy into the SnS program? Offer an additional % off with a coupon to make the subscription even more enticing.
4) Invest in influencer marketing on and off Amazon
66% of shoppers aged 18-38 trust influencers and 82% have bought or researched a brand after hearing about it from an influencer.
Consider partnering with an influencer, either through Amazon Live or an off-Amazon platform, to give your brand greater credibility and connect with new consumers during this shopping season. You can even provide your influencer partner with an Amazon Attribution Tag to track how effective your performance was.
Need ideas for how to work with influencers? Check out this post:
Amazon Live Influencer Trisha Hershberger’s Tips for How Brands Can Work with Content Creators
IT'S GO TIME
Work with our GO team to craft tailored strategies that will be the perfect fit for your brand as you kick off the New Year in 2023.