Unwrapping the Secrets of Successful Holiday Marketing

Welcome to part 2 of this month’s edition of our Brand Breakdown series , a monthly deep dive into the trending marketing initiatives of one company through the lens of owned asset optimization (OAO), a new approach to building consumer connection.

In our part 1, we revealed that consumer interest in Black Friday has been declining since 2018 while online shopping has been increasing. Today, we’ll look at which topics are driving consumer interest around holiday gifting, and which brands are stepping up to meet consumers’ needs.

52.2 million

52 million people in the US will search for holiday gift ideas between November and December this year. These consumers have a need and they’re ready to buy, but they don’t know where to start. This presents the perfect opportunity for brands to guide them with helpful advice.?

And I don’t just mean a category page with a list of products. But truly authentic, above and beyond, surprise and delight content.

Terakeet analyzed more than 1,000 keywords representing 52 million consumer searches, and we grouped them into the following six categories:

• Generic Gift Ideas
• Gifts for Men
• Gifts for Women
• Gifts for Kids
• Gifts for Others
• Gifts for Hobbies & Interests

The most popular gifting category was “generic gift ideas” with 14.3 million searches, which includes searches for gifts that didn’t specify a recipient or a theme. “Gifts for men” and “gifts for women” were nearly tied with 10.9 million and 10.7 million searches respectively. Those categories included any searches that specified a gender, and targeted adults. “Gifts for kids” was also popular. That category included searches for boys and girls of various ages.

Although the “gifts for hobbies and interests” category is less popular, don’t ignore it. These searches are highly specific, so consumers are more likely to convert. Gifts in this group include interests like gardening, gaming, golf, crafting, foods, and careers.

Understanding the search landscape

As marketers, we often focus on quantitative metrics like market share, revenue, and traffic. But it’s just as important to understand the qualitative competitive landscape. What do consumers want, and who’s delivering the best answer?

Let’s look at a map of the top 20 websites ranked by organic search market share across all five gift categories we analyzed.

Key Takeaways From the Gifting Search Landscape

1. The generic gift ideas category is dominated by retail brand product pages.
2. The hobbies and interests category includes an eclectic mix of media brands and retailers that specialize in niche areas like food, wine, careers, and outdoor activities.
3. The gifts for men category has more media brands that publish content for men, such as GQ, Men’s Health, and Esquire. (Although it would probably make more sense to include gifts for women in a publication aimed at men).
4. The gifts for women category contains more publications aimed at women, including Oprah Daily, Glamour, Women’s Health, and Vogue. (This echoes the problem we see in the men’s category).
5. The winners in the gifts for kids category are, as expected, geared towards kids, including Teen Vogue, Wicked Uncle, and Fat Brain Toys.
6. The top three websites across all but one category are media brands that publish long-form content, indicating that consumers find more value in comprehensive content than simple product lists.

Which brands are meeting consumers' needs?

Terakeet classified each website in our analysis as either a media brand (long-form content publishers) or a retail brand (product sellers). Media brands control two thirds of the organic search market share across the entire holiday gifting space.

Looking at the top 10 websites ranked by market share for all holiday gifting topics, we see the first three positions are dominated by media brands. In fact, Good Housekeeping has nearly 3x more organic search market share than any retail brand.

Media brands outperform retailers in all but one category: generic gift ideas. In that category, brands dominate 8 out of the top 10 positions, with Teak & Twine taking the lead.

Surprisingly, Walmart only appeared in the top 20 in one category. And, although Amazon ranked in the top 20 in all five categories, its average rank was only 8.6.

In other words, this is anyone’s game to win with the right strategy.

Which retail brand will stuff consumers’ stockings next year? Target? Macy’s? Nordstrom? Or will ecommerce giants like Amazon and Etsy implement the winning strategy?

Stay tuned for those answers and more in our next edition.

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