TOPHOLIDAYMARKETINGTRENDSfor 2014

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That’s how much US consumers spent in 2013 on winter holiday shopping. This year, consumers are forecasted to spend 8% more (Prosper Spending Score). In this new age where consumers are showrooming, webrooming, and buying directly through social, marketers need to step up their game to meet consumers where they are spending majority of their time.

Social media has reached a new level of maturity,becoming a vital tool in the marketer’s arsenal.

If you need proof, just take a look at the staggering number of consumers currently engaging on social. 1.32 billion monthly active users on Facebook. 271 million on Twitter. 200 million on Instagram. And each of these networks is growing year over year. Social media has become a mission critical element for a successful holiday marketing campaign. By developing a strong social media strategy, leveraging user-generated content, and driving social commerce, you can make this holiday season your most profitable one yet. This original research report offers the stats and trends you need to succeed this season.

$602 billion dollars.

To produce this report, we surveyed marketing professionals on their holiday social media plans and predictions, and uncovered the following results:

Driving sales and extending brand reach are top priorities for brandspg. 4

Facebook will dominate social spending this holiday seasonpg. 7

Brands are investing more in social this yearpg. 11

Instagram is the breakout social network of 2014pg. 14

Marketers are not in a rush to invest in untested networkspg. 17

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01.Driving sales andextending brand reachare top priorities for brands

Driving traffic to website

13%

Driving products/ service sales

28%

Increasing brand preference and loyalty through social engagement

6%

Extending reach/brand awareness

34%

Generatingqualified leads

19%

What will be your primary goal for using social media during the 2014 holiday season?

DATA ANALYSIS

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6 | Top Holiday Marketing Trends for 2014 Sign up for the Holiday Marketing 365 program for even more tips and tactics.

As social marketing continues to mature, marketers are increasingly focused on extending their brandreach and growing sales.

With 62% of marketers choosing this as their primary goal this holiday season, it demonstrates a stark contrast to the days when getting more fans was the main component of an effective social strategy. As the social medium continues to mature, marketers will need to better quantify their efforts and measure ROI to justify their social spend.

Marketers can achieve this in a number of ways. One tactic is to use user-generated content to spread the word about products and drive traffic and sales. 76% of marketers polled indicated they would increase their usage of UGC as a marketing tactic this year. In addition, as marketers become more savvy in the social media space, multivariate attribution models will become more prevalent in order to demonstrate the impact of social media marketing.

02.Facebook will dominatesocial spending thisholiday season

Where will you spend the bulk of your socialmarketing dollars this holiday season?

DATA ANALYSIS

Facebook Twitter Other

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92%

4% 4%

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BUT THAT COULDN’TBE FURTHER FROMTHE TRUTH.

In fact, 92% of marketers say they plan to spend the majority of their holiday social marketing budget on Facebook. When considering 71% of US adults are on Facebook (Microsoft Social Listening) it’s not like marketers have been left with much of a choice. That amount of potential buying power is impossible to ignore. With that being said, it is not the be-all-end-all it once was. 22% of marketers indicated they are planning to spend less on Facebook this holiday season, demonstrating they are increasingly diversifying their social spend across other networks.

With the recent developments like the de-cline of brands’ organic reach and the end of like-gating content, one might have thought marketers would be pulling back their holiday spending from Facebook.

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When you take into consideration Facebook ads average cost is $0.25 CPM compared to the Google AdWords cost of $2.75 CPM, the barrier to entry in this space is almost nothing for digital marketers. And as Facebookcontinues to evolve its advertising strategy, expect to see Facebook take the lion’s share of brands’ social media spend.

To counteract this, Facebook has been progressively giving fewer impressions to the organic content companies produce, and is encouraging marketers to buy targeted ads. This shift has forced marketers to put spend behind their high quality content and offers. Since Facebook ads have notoriously been an extremely cheap solution in comparison to otherdigital advertisements, the cost to get involved isfairly small.

Facebook has become an extremely crowded place, with more and more brands competing for limited space in the news feed.

03.Brands are investing morein social this year

Will your brand spend more on social during the 2014 holiday season thanlast year?

DATA ANALYSIS

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13 | Top Holiday Marketing Trends for 2014 Sign up for the Holiday Marketing 365 program for even more tips and tactics.

With more companies investing in social media marketing than ever before, we sought to find out whether the brands already engaged in social media marketing would be increasing their spend this hol-iday season. The study found that 67% of marketers polled will be increasing their social spend this holiday season, with only 4% indicating they would decrease their spend.

This stat helps further demonstrate the momentum social media marketing is building, and solidifies its place among the other more traditional forms of marketing. According to a recent Duke University study, social media spend is expected to jump to over 18% of a marketer’s total budget in the next five years (Duke University). As more companies findinnovative ways to measure their return on investment,and social networks develop better ecommerce solutions, expect social spend to continue to increase.

Social media marketing has become an invaluable tactic in a marketer’s toolkit.

04.Instagram is the breakoutsocial network of 2014

In terms of importance for marketers, what do you feel is the breakout social network of 2014?

DATA ANALYSIS

73% 9%18%

Instagram

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SnapchatVine

Overwhelmingly, 73% marketers polled identified Instagram as the breakout social network of 2014, with Vine and Snapchat making up the remaining 27%.

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, con-sidering Instagram has grown from around one million users in 2011 to over 200 million active monthly users. And users aren’t just signing up, they are actively engaged: posting 1,000 comments per second, and 1.2 billion likes per day. But wait, didn’t we just say marketers are going to invest the bulk of their social budget into Facebook? Why not Instagram? Well as we mentioned earlier, marketers know to invest where people are spending.

Further Reading

Looking for further examples of how you can engage your fans and grow your social networks? Check out our Definitive Guide to Instagram Marketing eBook and our 50 Social Marketing Campaign Ideas Look Book.

And considering only 17% of US adults are using Instagram, it is easy tounderstand why there is such a large spending disparity between Instagram and Facebook (Microsoft Social Listening). However, asInstagram continues to grow its audience, attract older users andlaunch their own social commerce product to compete with Twitterand Facebook, expect marketers to ramp up investment in 2015.

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05.Marketers are not in arush to invest inuntested networks

What emerging social network do you plan to try next?

DATA ANALYSIS

48%20%

16%8% 8%

None of the above Yo SwarmWaneloSnapchat

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Consumers may be flocking to new social networks like Swarm, Snapchat, and Wanelo, but marketers are not rushing to pour marketing dollars into these untested networks. In fact, 48% of marketers do not plan on investing in any of these emerging players this holiday season. But that doesn’t mean marketers aren’t taking note. With 20% showing interest in investing in Swarm, and 16% in Snapchat, marketers are beginning to test the waters with these new networks in order toevaluate where they fit in their overall marketing plan.

Instead, marketers are evaluating new networks to ensure they will addlegitimate business value to the brand.

As the social media marketing space matures, marketers are no longer running after the new and untested simply to be the first to market.

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As social media continues to evolve and mature, so too will the ways marketers leverage it in order to increase exposure and grow sales. Although this is by no means anexhaustive list, this study has helped us uncover a few industry trends that are currently emerging.

Harnessing user-generated contentis extremely effective.User-generated content is 20% more influential than any other type of media — period. Consumers share and trust real pictures and content from users more than any other form of direct brand outreach. In fact, during last year’s holiday season, 97% of consumers expressed that they’d turn to social media for advice before making a purchase. So let your customers tell your story. Encourage users to share pictures, videos and experiences with your brand across all of your social channels. This will help you increase your brand reach and grow customer loyalty.

Social media needs to be measurable.As the social medium continues to mature, marketers willneed to better measure their return on investment from socialcampaigns. No longer will ambiguous metrics such as “likes” and“followers” be an indication of success. Rather, marketers will need to measure the revenue each campaign generates.

Social commerce is poised to explode.Brands are beginning to harness the content their users are producing — selfies, product reviews, etc. — to drive direct sales with tagged content. Additionally, with the recent rollout of “buy” buttons on both Facebook and Twitter, we can see how social marketing is evolving to drive direct product sales. Be on the lookout for other networks to launch their own social commerce offerings this holiday season and beyond.

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Forwardthinking

Get It Now!

We sought out to discover the biggestupcoming trends for the 2014 holidayseason by polling over 120 professionals on their thoughts and projections forthe social marketing industry.

Want to find out more holiday marketing tips, tricks, and trends? Sign up nowfor Holiday Marketing 365 for a yearlong marketing content series.

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Methodology

Offerpop is a digital marketing software-as-a-service platform transforming how global brands connect, engage and convert today’s mobile and social consumers into long-term loyal customers. Leading enterprises and agencies use Offerpop’s integrated platform to power campaigns, content and commerce, and provide marketers with rich consumer data for smarter marketing decisions. Offerpop is an ExactTarget Marketing Cloud partner, Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer, a Twitter Certified Product and has been highlighted as a recommended Instagram platform developer. Learn more at offerpop.com.

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