How to Acquire New Customers This Holiday Season

The way you showcase your product to consumers matters – a lot. Why? Because it’s what helps convince people to actually buy it.

So it’s no surprise that retailers are looking for ways to turn customer engagement into worthwhile user experiences. In fact, 59% of retailers plan to introduce new ways of presenting their products for the 2019 holiday season.

By being creative about the way you present your products, you can engage customers in a meaningful way that makes them want to purchase from your brand. Need some ideas? Here are three product-presentation strategies that can help you drive sales this holiday season.

1. Develop personalized experiences.

In the past, product presentation centered around telling consumers about product benefits and pricing. That strategy is changing: Customers are now the focal point. As Toni Akinwumi, content creator at Shopify, recently put it, “As this field of one-to-one marketing continues to evolve, it becomes less product-focused and more customer-focused as more shoppers expect engagement based on their unique needs and interests.”

With that mindset, new strategies are popping up to improve how retailers present their products. Brands are creating dynamic online ad campaigns, personalized to their customers’ browsing or purchase history.

Moreover, personalized experiences facilitate a stronger emotional connection between the shopper and the brand. Starbucks used gamification in their mobile app to tailor the customer experience, integrating customers’ purchase history and location with their reward system. The marketing initiative increased their revenue to a whopping $2.65 billion.

2. Create targeted content.

More than two-thirds of retailers will prioritize certain products or content for presentation in a digital environment as opposed to a physical one. This strategy is to direct customers’ eyeballs to the unique benefits of the products.

Food retailers are hopeful about this approach. Witnessing the consumer shift toward organic products, Trader Joe’s created a digital platform to help their conscious consumers find organic products through healthy recipes. Apparel retailers also have confidence in this new product presentation – Nike By You implemented online order customization to help consumers visualize their custom shoes before purchasing.

And of course, mobile content will play a critical role within the product presentation strategy for the 2019 holiday season. Consumers use their mobile devices to browse for products, find brand coupons, and search for product reviews. That means there’s plenty of opportunity for retailers to streamline the consumer mobile experience with in-store shopping habits.

3. Diversify advertising channels.

Many retailers are showing discontent for the steadily rising costs of advertising. Specifically, social media platforms like Facebook are becoming more expensive despite the limitations of their ad targeting features.

More than ever, retailers must discover new advertising channels that offer brand safety, scale, and performance. As the old saying goes: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. With a single advertising channel, your business becomes vulnerable to financial pressures. Instead, with a diversified advertising portfolio, you can test new channels, optimize your best ones, and reallocate your budget to increase revenue.

That’s why smart retailers are expanding into the email channel. By leveraging programmatic email advertising, brands can present their products to targeted segments with their CRM data to acquire net-new customers. ThirdLove, a bra and underwear brand, achieved campaign success with this strategy, driving 700 conversions while coming in 29% under their CPA goal.

Wondering if your product-presentation strategy needs a bit of a revamp before the holidays hit? Download the 2019 Holiday Retail Report from eTail and WBR Insights to learn more.