5 Marketing Tips to Position Your Brand for Success in 2023

Total Retail recently published its Top 50 Tips of 2022 report. This annual feature includes advice on how to run a more efficient and profitable retail business, and covers multiple functions for doing so, including marketing. Below are five tips designed for retail marketers that will help them position their brands for success in 2023 and beyond:

1. Test and learn with your marketing strategies for three-quarters of the year starting in January, finding out what works and later scaling and leveraging that information for the holiday season. At the same time, take the 70/20/10 rule into account with your budget. When testing ahead of the holidays, 70 percent of your budget should go toward tried-and-true marketing efforts. Then, 20 percent should be used on existing channels you know well but can tweak in different ways (e.g., targeting a new audience) to get new results. The last 10 percent should be used for off-the-wall strategies that you’ve never done before. Create a hypothesis and take intelligent, calculated risks. The 70/20/10 rule is incredibly productive because it allows you to scale into what works leading up to the holiday season and pull away from what doesn’t. — Adam Ortman, Media + Analytics, “The Best Time to Start Preparing for the 2022 Holiday Season Was Yesterday,” Aug. 15
2. Inflation has sent prices soaring, and necessities are outweighing wants. It’s time to shift your own focus from brand marketing to accentuating the value you provide. Focus on things like the quality of your products, the pricing compared to competitors, or customer testimonials. There’s a great chance you can acquire new customers if the price/value equation is spot on. You can create a model using your CRM file as a seed to find other users that look like your audience profiles. You can split your audience into full-priced buyers vs. those who are just bargain-hunting so you can continue marketing both your popular branded products and your more generic products to value-oriented or price-conscious shoppers. — Melissa Tatoris, Zeta Global, “4 Tips for Holiday Planning Based on Back-to-School Trends,” Aug 31
3. To attract the zillennial [oldest members of Gen Z] buyer, brands need to communicate the issues they stand for across a number of channels, from social media to TikTok to SMS. Short videos or graphical posts that feature real people, not celebrities or influencers, work best with this cohort. — Laura Apel, Mitto, “3 Ways to Attract and Retain ‘Zillennial’ Customers,” Oct. 31
4. To learn more about your customers directly, without relying on third-party platforms, you can ethically and transparently gather zero-party data from your shoppers directly via polls; quizzes; customer preference centers; forms; and surveys. Once you gather these insights, you can use the information you collect to personalize your in-app and in-browser messaging, emails, SMS campaigns, push notifications, and other customer messaging channels. — Sharon Panelo, Braze, “How to Solve Retailers’ Top Customer Engagement Challenges,” Nov. 16
5. Deliver post-purchase messages and promotions during early holiday. Consumers shop for themselves while checking off their gifting list. Give a little extra incentive to your early holiday shoppers with a post-purchase offer (e.g., 15 percent off your next purchase in the next 30 days) through text message or email. This way, they’re more than likely to come back quickly. — Calla Murphy, Belardi Wong, “How Not to Feel the Pinch From the Digital Grinch This Holiday Season,” Nov. 17

For more tips like these, which will kick-start your 2023 planning, download the Top 50 Tips of 2022 report today.