It’s hard to believe that the 2022 holiday shopping season is practically upon us. Have your clients started preparing yet? Experian has put together a report of holiday shopping trends from the 2019–2021 seasons to help your clients make the best advertising decisions for both their digital and traditional campaign components.

What Your Client Should Know About Holiday Shopping

When Will Consumers Begin Their 2022 Holiday Shopping?

According to Experian, holiday shoppers are divided into four categories:

Early Shoppers: 15% of consumers
Traditional Shoppers: 16%
Late Shoppers: 18%
Random Shoppers: 51%

Early Shoppers do more than 45% of their holiday shopping in October. Traditional Shoppers make the same percentage of their purchases in November. And Late Shoppers wait until December to make more than 45% of their purchases. Random Shoppers are just that: random. Their shopping habits are dispersed throughout multiple months.

Overall, in the last three years, this is how holiday shopping activity has been divided over the last three months of the year:

October: 31%
November: 32.5%
December: 36.5%

To capture that all-important revenue, your client needs to start developing their 2022 holiday shopping ads ASAP!

How Consumers Will Be Shopping

While online shopping is steadily rising in popularity, consumers still prefer to do the majority of their holiday shopping in person.

According to Experian, your clients can expect about 70% of holiday shopping to be done in their brick and mortar stores this season. Of course, that percentage fluctuates a bit month-to-month:

October: About 68% of shopping is done in person while around 32% is done online
November: 69% vs. 31%
December: 74% vs. 26%

Translation: As holiday shoppers come closer to running out of time to buy their presents, they can’t afford to wait for items to be shipped to them.

So, if your client’s ads are promoting different ways to shop, they should focus more on online shopping earlier in the season before switching to brick and mortar promotions the closer we get to the end of the season.

The Types of Ad Media That Sway Holiday Shoppers

As you may have guessed, digital advertising media is the top dog when it comes to promoting holiday shopping opportunities. However, Experian says that marketers shouldn’t disregard the power of traditional ads. The most frequently consumed advertising media types by holiday shoppers are:

Digital Newspapers
Direct Mail
Email
Traditional Newspaper

So, while digital ads should definitely be a part of your client’s holiday advertising strategy, they shouldn’t be the only type used. Encourage your clients to create an omni-channel marketing campaign this holiday shopping season to better reach their target customers.

If you’re wondering what other types of advertising media your clients should be using in their holiday shopping ad campaigns, you can take a look at their target audience’s profile on AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel. There, you’ll be able to look up which types of advertising media swayed the highest percentages of each audience to take action within the last year. You can also look up more information about the demographics of each audience and what they plan on shopping for this year. For example, did you know that, this year, Suburbanites plan to shop for:

Athletic footwear
Smartphones (or smartphone upgrades)
Concert tickets
Laptop or desktop computers
Crafts and sewing supplies

If your clients are selling a wide range of products, the AudienceSCAN purchase intent data will be a good indicator of which products to feature in this year’s ads.

What are you still doing here? Your client is running out of time to get their holiday shopping ads out to the Early and Random shoppers who will begin making purchases in October! Get moving!

Photo by Andrew Te