Catalina Boneo, partner manager, Adaptly
Location-based targeting across social platforms aimed at users in beach towns or vacation destinations can help advertisers get summer shoppers into stores.
Many retailers kick off the summer season with Memorial Day Weekend sales; a good idea since 14% of Americans are likely to take advantage of holiday weekend sales and promotions, expecting to see discounts from 20% to 90%.
Beyond the unofficial kickoff to summer, consumers will be on the hunt for warm weather staples like sunglasses, sandals, bathing suits, and more all season long.
Here are some recommendations from social tech company Adaptly on how retailers can use Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Twitter as part of their overall marketing strategy to attract and convert summertime buyers.
- Instagram’s new shopping capabilitiesmake it easier than ever for brands to showcase products in their posts. After uploading a product catalog, retailers are able to tag products in photos in the same way users can tag people to help consumers learn more about featured products.
- Use Facebook dynamic ads to automatically promote products to users who have expressed interest on your website, in your app, or elsewhere on the internet. Upload your product catalogand set up your campaign once, and it will continue working for you — finding the right people for each product—for as long as you want, always using up-to-date pricing and availability.
- Target shoppers: Show people products that are tailored to their interests, whether or not they’ve been to your site or app.
- Retarget shoppers to complete the sale: Remind your website or mobile app shoppers of the items they viewed but didn’t buy.
- Contact people across devices: Reconnect with shoppers on mobile or desktop, no matter where they originally shopped.
- Pinterest is the perfect platform to reach and engage with shoppers. 55% percent of users shop on Pinterest. Pinterest also guides users through the path of purchase:
- Inspire: people start planning purchases on Pinterest three months before other platforms
- Discover: 88% of Pinners discover new ideas on Pinterest
- Evaluate: 70% of Pinners search, save or click, rather than just browsing
- Act: 87% of Pinners made a purchase after seeing something on Pinterest
- Teens and millennials account for most of the interest in swimwear on Pinterest: 29% is from 18- to 24-year-olds and 22% is from 13- to 17-year-olds. Target your swimwear Pins towards these younger demographics, especially since younger millennials will be out of school and thus have the most time to spend in bathing suits.
- According to Pinterest, 32% of Pinners aged 25 to 34 already have household incomes of $100K or more. As their salaries increase, millennials Pinners are showing more interest in upscale categories. When millennials start thinking about making big purchases, they often do extensive research, so now’s the time for aspirational brands to win millennials’ loyalty.
- On Facebook, the store visits objective bridges the gap between the online and offline worlds, helping businesses drive customers into stores. This objective is for multi-location businesses with Locations enabled and works well for businesses in retail. It can be particularly useful for vacation destination locations.
- 73% of shoppers on Twitter follow businesses to find special deals, and 43% of Twitter shoppers are likely to visit a store after seeing a deal on Twitter. Make sure you entice shoppers on Twitter by sharing deals and coupons through your brand’s Twitter account.
- 16 to 21 year-olds are nearly three times as likely to use Snapchat while shoppingin a physical store, and running promoted geo-filters at store locations will add value to their shopping experiences. Snapchat’s Fashion & Style Lifestyle Category can help brands reach those millennial users.
- Leverage Snapchat’s ephemerality to showcase behind-the-scenes moments or showcase limited-time summer sales around Memorial or Labor Day weekends.
Vacation-goers are more likely to go shopping, and often consider shopping an important aspect of being on vacation. Using location-based targeting across social platforms to reach users in beach towns or vacation destinations can help advertisers get summer shoppers into stores. And since consumers will most likely not be tied to their desktop computers over the summer, going mobile-first and prioritizing social advertising is the best strategy for converting seasonal shoppers.
Adaptly is a social media marketing agency.
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