Spring Into Spring: How to Get Your Campaigns in Tip Top Shape This Season

7 Min Read

It’s time to store those winter woolies back into the closet for another year, as temperatures start to climb and we retreat out of hibernation (except for our west coast readers who are blessed with mild climes year round). We’re on the cusp of spring, and thought there was no better way to kick off the season than with the first (of three) seasonal guides, starting with spring cleaning. Those two words alone might have you conjuring up images of buying a new vacuum cleaner or giving in to that all-important (and expensive) home goods purchase. To others, it might be starting on a big home renovation project. Whatever the case, spring cleaning symbolizes much more than the literal meaning of the phrase—it’s an opportunity for consumers to rethink their life goals, make changes, and implement them. Think of it like New Year’s Resolutions’ second wind.

We’ll cover:

Retail on the Rebound

Retail’s renaissance continues this year, though not at the levels of growth in 2021. However, this year’s retail industry growth forecast is still higher than pre-pandemic levels at 6.6%.

If we map out the past few years from 2018 to 2022, we’ve seen an average annual retail industry growth rate at 3.58% as total retail sales worldwide increased from nearly $25 trillion dollars in 2019, to almost $27 trillion dollars this year. Ecommerce sales haven’t floundered either—in fact, quite the opposite. Industry research company eMarketer estimates US retail ecommerce sales to grow 16.1% and reach over one trillion dollars this year.

Long story short, consumer spending has continued to increase—and so there’s no better time to get your digital marketing strategy in order.

It’s Not Only the Flowers That Are Blooming: Your Spring Forecast

While there’s no major shopping holidays in Spring, there are some industries who—with the right approach to their digital strategy—should expect an uplift in revenue and activity as the ‘Spring Cleaning’ mentality takes over.

• Tax Season: Cleaning out our closets can be cathartic, but sorting out your tax and finance affairs for the year? Not so much. Consumers are on the lookout for software, electronics and even office goods to ease the burden come tax preparation time.

• Summer in Spring: Now is the best time to swoop up deals before the Summer heat wave (and price hike) begins. Think grills, pool and sporting equipment and outdoor furniture.

• Spring Cleaning: You know the drill—think vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, home organizational purchases and kitchen appliances. Or cleaning services, for the hands-off shopper who isn’t into DIY.

• Home Improvements: Better weather means that spring is the right time to get started on renovations, whether that be sprucing up their lawns or refreshing their homes. Big box home improvement retailers usually have sales during this time of year, too.

• Sustainable Shopping: Shoppers are paying more attention to the environmental impact of their purchases—which isn’t seasonal, it’s here to stay. Overall, 48% of shoppers say that ethical conduct and sustainability are important to them; which increases to almost 55% among millennial shoppers.

Declutter Your Current Digital Strategy

While spring marks a fresh start and opportunity to simplify and streamline our lives with a “less is more” approach, we also think the “do more with less” adage rings true for advertisers during this time. MNTN Performance TV is a digital advertising channel that was built with efficiency and performance in mind,  with audience targeting, prospecting and retargeting capabilities, and customizable real-time reporting housed on a single user interface. We’ve also bolstered our service offering with our recently launched Creative as a Subscription™ and QuickFrame by MNTN acquisition, which essentially combines creative and media buying together that speeds up the creative process of getting a streaming television ad creative up and running.

Here are some tips to help you drive site visits, revenue, ROAS and more, during this season.

Targeting

Access over 80,000+ third-party, qualified and in-market audience segments thanks to our integration with LiveRamp and other data providers.

• Spring Cleaning: Your go-to for users who will be ‘celebrating’ the season, whether that be cleaning, organization and everything in between.
  • Cross Pixel > Audience Profiles > Psychographics > Spring Cleaners
  • Datalogix > DLX Seasonal > Spring Seasonal > Spring Cleaners

• Home Sweet Home: Target shoppers who will be working on home projects, whether that be indoors or the great outdoors.
  
  • Datalogix > DLX Seasonal > Spring Seasonal > Spring Home-Improvement Shoppers
  • Cuebiq > Geo-behavioral Audience > Seasonal > Spring & Home DIY Shoppers

• Tax Time: Take the stress out of tax time, by seeking out shoppers who need support, whether that be for professional services or related products.
  
  • Zipline > US Data > AmeriLINK Consumer Buying Behavior > Seasonal Audiences > Tax Season
  • Audiences by Ziff Davis > Tech – Consumer Electronics (CE) > Software > Tax Preparation
  • Affinity Answers > Events > Tax Day

• Summer Shoppers: These early-bird shoppers are seeking deals on major purchases like furniture, outdoor entertainment, sporting goods and more.
  
  • AmeribaseDigital > Seasonal Shoppers > Summer
  • ShareThis > Seasonal > Summer > Shoppers

Timing and Budget

Since MNTN Performance TV enables both prospecting and retargeting campaigns from the same platform, it’s a matter of getting your timing and budget allocation right. Think about your campaign objectives—are you looking to drive new customer acquisition and net-new growth to fuel your current and future campaigns? Or is ROAS and efficiency your key performance driver? You’ll want to set aside the majority of your ad spend on upper-funnel (prospecting) or lower-funnel (retargeting) depending on these goals. As a rule of thumb, we recommend 60-90% for prospecting, and 10-40% of your budget to be set aside for retargeting.

Timing wise, you’ll want to launch your prospecting campaigns first and a few weeks out (note, National Cleaning Week officially begins each year on the fourth Sunday in March) to widen your audience pool and drive brand awareness. Then, start your retargeting campaigns closer to the date to reach last-minute shoppers—you can even utilize our CRM upload to target your own first-party users and loyalty club members.

Creative

The days of long production times and hefty budgets are well behind us, thanks to our CaaS™ offering, which provides advertisers with custom-made TV creative on a quarterly basis, without having to invest in anything but their media goals. You’ll receive multiple targetable, A/B tested and quickly crafted commercials that you can optimize for performance. Our partnership with QuickFrame by MNTN also enables advertisers to tap into a global network of thousands of creators who can develop scalable, on-brand, platform-specific assets (including Connected TV) in a short-lead time. In addition, QuickFrame by MNTN utilizes Video Vitals technology, which dissects the elements of your ad as it relates to performance so you can continue to iterate and refine your creative for optimal results. 

While Spring might not be as big as some of the other shopping holidays of the year, it’s an advertiser’s best kept secret—and gold mine—if done right. Invest in the right techstack like MNTN Performance TV to help you hit those (full-funnel) goals this season, and year round. Watch this space over the coming weeks as we explore other big shopping moments of the season.