The holiday season is back, and consumers are looking toward fashion and beauty products to bulk up their wish lists.
According to the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) Annual October Holiday Consumer Survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics, beauty and fashion products are amongst the most desired categories this holiday season.
- 53% of respondents said that they want to receive clothing and clothing accessories.
- 19% said that they want to receive personal care and beauty items.
- Over half of respondents, 55%, plan to do their holiday shopping at least partially online.
The digital space is extremely competitive over the holiday season.
If your brand is going to stand out, you’re going to need data-driven insights when it comes to targeting and budgets. Most importantly, you’re going to need knockout creatives to entice consumers to click.
This holiday season, we’ve taken a deep dive into the planning and execution of digital marketing campaigns for beauty and fashion industries.
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Building the best fashion ads is a matter of people, not products.
From video ads to sponsored content, we see images and videos of people performing best across the board.
For video campaigns, focus on specific actions, whereas for sponsored content and social media ads, expressions and colors are what’s most important for performance.
Video campaigns: keep your models moving.
Physical activity drives the best performance from video branding campaigns across the board. For beauty and fashion marketers, keep your models moving this holiday season.
We analyzed the top 2,000 video campaigns on the open web based on two key metrics—viewability and completion rate. Below we mapped actions in three categories to see where the highest opportunity for marketers is this holiday season: physical activity, vocal activity and general activity.
It’s not just about the activity, we have six quick tips to ensure your video is fully optimized:
- Keep your videos between 15 seconds and 1 minute long
- Include your logo on-screen for better brand recall
- Include subtitles if needed to optimize for sound-off
- Include and overlay for better CTR
- …Or an end card to drive traffic from people who have finished your video
- Finally, Test three video creatives for the best optimization
Sponsored content: keep it colorful and close-up.
The images that drive the highest click-through-rate (CTR) for fashion and beauty brands this holiday season are colorful, include people (not just products) and are close-up in view.
We also analyzed the top keywords to use in your sponsored content headlines and creatives. The phrase “Red Carpet,” along with the words, “Outfits” and “Dresses” can increase CTRs up to 150%.
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Targeting: consumers want fashion and beauty products on Fridays, and other interested tactics.
After you’ve built the most enticing creative possible, you’ll need to focus on meeting consumers at the best time while they’re shopping online.
We took a look at several targeting parameters to pinpoint exactly where fashion and beauty marketers have the highest opportunity for success.
Opportunity is defined at the intersection of supply and demand. We define supply as the amount marketers are spending to promote content and products, and demand as the CTR on that content.
Here’s what we found:
You’re most likely to reach fashion and beauty consumers on Fridays.
Don’t stop your marketing efforts after the holidays end.
Some final tips—try testing campaigns specifically for tablet devices, as well as promoting articles. We see high opportunity for these device and landing page types.
Finally, we’ll leave you with a little inspiration.
These brands have found success with their creative advertising campaigns on the open web—check out how Bombfell, PANDORA, eSalon and Cornerstone tackled their recent marketing campaigns.
This personal styling service for men increased their mobile conversions by 960% and web traffic by 48% with a gamified form.
The well-known jewelry brand was looking to increase brand awareness in France, but saw a 130% increase in conversion rate when they found a high-quality audience.
This custom hair color brand acquired tens of thousands of new customers with their ongoing sponsored content campaigns.
This online shaving kit subscription service saw a 2,100% increase in subscription membership when they found a high-quality audience.
As your campaigns run this holiday season, you’ll need to keep testing, reiterating, and trying new things. Keep creatives fresh and try new tactics if you start to see fatigue in your online audience.
The holiday season is a time for sharing, giving, and fun, which is exactly what you should be aiming for with your holiday campaigns—give customers and fans the chance to be a part of the action.
Download the Ultimate Holiday Marketing Playbook