With Black Friday in the bag, all retailers now have their sights set on Christmas. But what are you doing to ensure that Amazon doesn’t steal sales that should be yours?
Thanks to COVID-19 and lockdowns limiting high street shopping, it looks like we’re in for a bumper year for festive online sales.
According to PwC’s Holiday Outlook, 61% of consumers are planning to shop online this holiday season. The significant uplift is partly (as you can see from the diagram below) down to an ingoing trend, but also understandably influenced by COVID-19.
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People are also being encouraged to get their shopping in early. Salesforce anticipate that parcels shipped by traditional delivery providers will exceed capacity by 5% across the globe between the week before Cyber Week and Boxing Day. And Australia Post has set a Christmas delivery deadline of just 12 December.
We’re buying more of our Christmas favourites online already
There are some product categories that are always a safe bet for Christmas shopping. These include fashion, beauty, entertainment and toys. And we’re already switching our buying habits: all four categories saw online sales accounting for 49% or more of overall spend in September.
So the likelihood of festive shoppers purchasing these products online this Christmas is high. But, and this is a BIG BUT… if your brand and products aren’t front of mind with shoppers at the right time, then you could miss out on your rightful share of this year’s bumper online Christmas shopping.
This is even more important with a reduced high street presence, and increased competition for online sales.
Don’t give your Christmas to Amazon
We also need to address the retail elephant in the room: Amazon.
The e-commerce giant has had a good 2020 so far, thanks to COVID-19. Sales were up 40% in the three months to June, and they’re planning on a busy Christmas with the announcement that they’re planning to take on 7,000 more permanent staff by the end of the year, and create 20,000 temporary roles.
They’ve also been busy opening up new fulfilment centres and seasonal pop-up warehouses.
Without the right competition, Amazon has the budget and market share to clean up the Christmas – and secure sales that could potentially have been yours. But their dominance isn’t a given. With an intelligent, full lifecycle programmatic campaign you can make sure you secure your fair share of this Christmas’ online sales.
And there’s no time to waste. With the clock ticking fast on delivery dates, you need to get your campaign up and running ASAP.
We’re ready to help. Get in touch right now and we’ll discuss how you can get your campaigns running in time to maximise your Christmas opportunities.