### Marketing Trends: Consumer Behavior and Retail Strategies

Brands are investing in social media to drive consumer traffic and validate data for effective marketing.

### Marketing Innovations and Consumer Behavior in 2023
* 📈 This year has seen a **significant increase in marketing efforts**, with consumers focusing more on **savings than spending** despite economic challenges.
* 💡 Brands are innovating their marketing strategies across various platforms, particularly leveraging **social media to connect with consumers effectively**.
* 📱 During the Thanksgiving to Sunday period, social media emerged as the **leading source of traffic**, with TikTok and YouTube following closely behind.
* 🛒 Major retailers like Walmart and Target are successfully capturing market share by utilizing **data-driven approaches** to track **consumer behavior and sales performance**.
* 📊 Retailers are evolving into data businesses, with **80 to 90% of their margins** coming from **selling data as a service** rather than physical goods.
* 🔍 To validate their marketing investments, brands are combining **first-party data from retailers** with **third-party insights** from companies like Nielsen and Adobe.
* 💰 A notable **1% increase in conversion rates** during Black Friday weekend translated to a **$1 billion revenue increase**, highlighting the effectiveness of **data integration**.
* 🛍 Consumers are prioritizing **value and variety** this holiday season, leading them to prefer shopping at retailers like Walmart, which offers a **broad selection of merchandise**.

Feels like a big year.
I'm certainly getting hit with a lot of marketing.
Is it feeling that way for you, Rachel? It is, you know, despite what's
happening in the economy. Consumers are showing up to really save.
I want to say spend, but it's really

about savings right now.
Okay. That's interesting.
So it's more about the deal making and how all companies are managing to access
those consumers right now. What innovative ways are they using to
market across various platforms? Oh, do we have some technological
issues?

Absolutely.
You know, when we look at what happened from things.
Hello? Can you hear me?
Apologies. There's a big delay.
Rachel, do carry on. Hello?
When you look at what happened between Thanksgiving and Sunday, the majority of
traffic came from social media.

Being number one, TikTok being number
two and YouTube being number three. If we were looking at results from a
viewer, YouTube wouldn't have made the top three.
What's really clear right now is brands are recognizing that social is the third
shelf.

And wherever short video and creators
are. That's where brands are investing their
dollars and their time to gain mindshare, to then drive traffic to their Black
Friday deals. How, Rachel, are the companies that are
doing well?

The likes of Walmart, we saw really
stealing a lot of the market share and the targets.
How are they tracking it? How are they making sure that they've
got the measurements that proves that the investment is making sense for them?
Absolutely.

I mean, if you look at Amazon's earnings
or Walmart's earnings, it's very clear that these retailers are now becoming
data businesses. They're making 80 to 90% margins on
selling data as a service. And we all know they're not making those
margins on selling physical goods.

So when it comes to measurement, major
brands are first relying on retailers, first-party data, but then they have to
marry that to third-party sources because we can't all be grading our own
homework. So they're turning to companies like
Nielsen, Adobe, and Circana, which was the

merger of IRI and NPD, to really validate
what's happening between Nielsen's data and Adobe's data.
We're pretty much seeing the same thing in Nielsen.
We've seen a 1% increase in conversion rates during the Black Friday
weekend this year compared to last year.

If you extrapolate that to what Adobe
is seeing, Adobe saw an increase in $1 billion in revenue.
That 1% increase in conversion generated that $1 billion increase in
revenue. So by marrying multiple sources of
truth, we can all start to see the

picture that consumers showed up.
They were really choosy with their dollars and they turned to places like
Walmart because that's where the value is and that's also where breadth of
merchandise is this holiday season.

Consumer's Hunt for Cyber Monday Value

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Consumer Behavior and Marketing Strategies During the Holiday Season

Despite economic concerns, consumers are focused on savings and deals.

Companies are employing innovative marketing methods across various platforms to reach consumers.

Social media, particularly TikTok and YouTube, played a significant role in driving traffic during the Thanksgiving to Sunday period.

Brands are recognizing social media as a key marketing channel, particularly platforms with short videos and creators.

Brands are investing heavily in social media to gain mindshare and drive traffic to Black Friday deals.

Successful retailers like Walmart are leveraging data to understand and measure their marketing effectiveness.

Retailers are becoming data businesses, generating significant margins from data sales.

Brands rely on first-party data from retailers and third-party sources like Nielsen, Adobe, and Circana for validation.

Data shows a 1% increase in conversion rates during Black Friday weekend, translating to a $1 billion revenue increase for Adobe.

Consumers were selective with spending, favoring retailers like Walmart for value and product variety.