DTC Companies Plan Aggressive Marketing For This Winter Season

The award-winning DTC marketing agency Belardi Wong asked their clients to share their views about this fall and Christmas promotional environment. I conclude that the environment will be more promotional.

Clients were asked “Looking ahead to the 2022 holiday season, how will your promotional strategy change compared to holiday 2021. The response was as follows: 29% said we will be more promotional; 5% said we will be less promotional, 55% said we will have the same level of promotions.

The second question was “What channel will they spend their money compared to last year?” and the respondents were asked to select all that apply. Here are the answers:

1. 74% said Direct Mail/Catalogues

2. 69% said GoogleGOOG

3. 57% said Texting/SMS

4. 42% said Meta (mainly Facebook)

5. 29% said Micro-Influencer Marketing

6. 26% said Tik Tok

7. 23% said Connected TV

8. 20% said You Tube

9. 14% said Podcasts

10.6% said Out of Home

11.None are increasing spend in Snapchat.

The Belardi Wong survey also asked clients about their trend of business in June. 61% of the client reported that sales were above last year compared to 78% that reported increases in May. Of the 61% that reported 29% said that their sales were above plan, compared to 27% that reported sales to be above plan in May. 37% of Belardi Wong’s clients saw an increase in total sales in June compared to May.

While current sales in DTC companies have not changed much and everybody seems to be confident of generating good sales right now, I sense that the high cost of energy, especially gasoline, high cost of food and apparel will slow purchases very quickly and we will have a very promotional selling period this Christmas season. Some stores are overstocked and are now trying to dispose of some of the wares during ”Black Friday in June” sales. Quaint – but it does not convince shoppers.

POSTSCRIPT: For many companies “direct to consumer” sales have risen rapidly during the pandemic. For these companies this is often plus business. It has cut into the department store and specialty store business and is growing by leaps and bounds. Companies like NikeNKE
now have a closer relationship with their customers.