CEO at Bazaarvoice, a leading provider of product reviews and user-generated content (UGC) solutions.
I’m located in Austin, Texas, where daily highs are still in the upper 90s as I write this. But even though the heat is making sure I couldn’t feel physically farther from the holiday spirit if I tried, the holiday shopping season is in full swing. According to my company’s consumer survey of 1,000 Americans, almost half (44%) of people are starting their holiday shopping in September or earlier this year.
In a perfect world, your brand would have started preparing for this season months ago. I suggest our clients start solidifying their holiday budget and mapping out an internal timeline at the beginning of spring. But the world isn’t perfect. This year has been financially difficult for many businesses, and you may have been forced to make workforce or budget reductions. You may also be leading a new or small business and don’t have the resources to make such stringent plans.
Regardless of your situation, there’s still time for your business to maximize its profit potential for this holiday season. Based on my experience of working with over 12,000 brands and retailers globally, here are some tips for the rest of 2023.
October
The weather will (hopefully, in Austin at least) start dropping during this month; people are shifting from summer vacation to holiday mode, and you should be getting ready for prime time. While people may not be pulling the trigger just yet on their holiday purchases, they’ll definitely be researching, especially to figure out what they want to snag on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
To get your website ready for an influx of shoppers and provide them with all of the information they’ll want, stock it with various levels of user-generated content (UGC) such as ratings, reviews and especially customer photos and videos for those holiday period items you expect to be in demand.
You should also be responding to customers’ reviews and questions—this provides them with more information, but it also proves that you really are listening and care.
November
Now is the time to really lean into the holiday spirit. While you’ll likely want to save your best sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, between which the average American spent $500 last year, I suggest you start running promotions ahead of that week.
Shoppers who are already researching will use the opportunity to buy some things early to space out their purchases. This is also a time to think about when a shopper adds an item to the cart: What products can you show them as add-on products and nudge them with a time-limited offer (discount) to increase cart size?
Lastly, this is not a bad time to launch sampling campaigns in order to gather ratings, reviews and customer photos and videos that will be on your product pages once post-holiday sales and holiday-gifted gift card spending starts in January. Sampling is a great way to collect UGC and get your products into the hands of consumers, who will then suggest your products to friends deciding on what holiday gifts to buy during the holiday seasons and beyond.
December
Just because Cyber Week has ended, holiday shopping isn’t over yet. There will be plenty of learnings you can take from the wins and losses you’ll have experienced on Black Friday and Cyber Monday to help you finish the holiday shopping season strong.
There are so many insights you can glean from the voice of the customer that can help you decide if you need to make any changes in marketing copy, messaging, product packaging, product formulation or even pricing.
Also, be sure that you’re continually responding to customers’ reviews and questions. This really should be a year-round venture, but be sure to be especially prompt during this time period.
Next Year
In 2024, your holiday shopping season preparations should start in March/April. As I said, use that time to solidify your budget and map out an internal timeline to decide on the resources you need. Be sure to set aside some of your budget for UGC. This is also a good time for brands to work on securing their place on retail shelves and deciding which ad campaigns to run. As spring turns into summer, start finalizing your campaigns for advertising and sampling.
As the dog days of summer begin, you can expect Prime Day to occur, which I think we can all now mark as the unofficial start of the holiday shopping season. (Disclosure: My company uses some of Amazon’s products and services.) Even if you don’t sell on Amazon, you can run sales at the same time to entice consumers who are already online and shopping and likely comparing prices across the web. This is also a great opportunity to collect reviews from all these sale shoppers, so be sure to send post-interaction emails or texts reminding them to submit UGC a few weeks after their product has shipped.
Once summer winds down, there’s still time to host a sampling campaign to collect UGC before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. However, be intentional in your approach, and be sure to prioritize products that are low on reviews and other customer content or hero products you’re really hoping to sell. If you don’t have the time or resources for sampling, a quick way to elicit and scale UGC collection is by running a social media campaign, asking your customers to post photos and videos of them using or wearing your products in exchange for a prize.
Regardless of when you start, you can set yourself up for a successful holiday shopping season by providing fresh, authentic customer content to your shoppers wherever they can be found, be it on social media, in-store or on your very own website.
Shoppers want to make their holiday gifts meaningful and memorable and are willing to take the time necessary to ensure they’re buying the right thing for their friends and family. By prioritizing UGC, you can offer them the opinions and experiences of their peers, and they can feel truly confident when pressing purchase.
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