Retailers are ramping up for the post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping season but what will ultimately drive sales for your business? How do you target customers online and offline? Recent insight into habits of female shoppers this season demonstrates what drives them and how you can create a social media plan that effectively targets them.
“Social Media and the Holiday Shopper: an Infographic”
What do these stats say about the holiday shopper? That brands who combine sale notices and coupons shared via social media channels like Facebook and Twitter—combined with targeted blogger recommendations—can drive shoppers to spend more and will heavily impact their purchasing decisions.
But how can brands target these shoppers?
The bottom line is you need to create outstanding, authentic, user-generated content for your brand. You need to target the social influencers who can amplify your brand’s message to millions of female shoppers.
How? There are two ways: One, you can spend hours researching the social influencers in your market and try to target them individually. You send out your “spray and pray” pitches and hope that 5% will be interested. Or two, you can use a social media influencer network—one who is already familiar with bloggers in your niche—to distribute your message.
Whether you allocate resources in-house or contract with an influencer network, it will still cost you to conduct the outreach, but influencer networks do it faster and better, saving you time and money. And cost aside, just imagine what the results of reaching 40 million checkbook-wielding women through trusted bloggers would do for your brand and your holiday sales. Survey results show this would greatly impact your holiday bottom line.
Whatever route you take, the message is clear: social media can positively impact sales this holiday season and bloggers can help you reach your target customers. How you get to them is ultimately up to you.