4 Consumer Insights For 2021 Holiday Marketing

Written By David Bisek

Understanding key consumer insights can help you maximize your packaged food marketing plan and ensure you're connecting with your customers.

Understanding not only what consumers are doing, but digging deeper into the WHY is critical to marketing your packaged food brand.

When you look at what your customers are doing and what is driving that behavior, you can create marketing messages, tactics and strategies that deeply connect with your customers. 

There are 4 key insights I want to highlight:

Holiday shopping is starting early again this year. Consumers started shopping early last year and that's expected to continue. Given the concerns about supply chain - empty shelves or lack of products on shelves, expect your customers to be already shopping for gifts. Think about this - once your customer buys her gifts, she's done. Don't miss out on this opportunity.

  • Position your marketing around your brand as the perfect gift

  • Encourage your customers to think about your product as a gift

  • Communicate about shipping times and last minute gift delivery deadlines

  • Make it easy - think wrapped, gift boxes, personalized notes, etc

Your customers expect free shipping. A large majority of consumers (66%) expect free shipping on every purchase they make online. An even larger number (80%) expect free shipping when ordering a certain dollar amount for online products.

  • Can you find ways to adjust your costs to include free shipping?

  • Offer free shipping on multi-packs or higher dollar orders

  • Consider free shipping as a promotional bonus

There will be more holiday meal events with guests than last year. Field Agent found that 72% of respondents will host or attend a Thanksgiving meal with people outside the household (compared to 51% last year).  

  • Inspire with images of gatherings and celebrations

  • Recipes for holiday meals or appetizers for parties

  • Give tips for hosting events, checklists, etc

Consumers are enhancing their in-home experiences by taking on new skills and utilizing their home to the max. Reddit is seeing a consumer trend around higher quality entertaining, consumers upping their cooking skills and learning how to make more foods such as beer brewing, coffee roasting, smoking meats, and other more involved forms of food crafting. 

  • Emphasize the high quality of your foods - they deserve to be on your customer's shelves

  • Provide recipes and meal suggestions

  • How-to instructions for consumers that want to dig into making more of what they eat

One last tip: If you're struggling to gain visibility on social media this holiday season, consider working with other founders to cooperatively market, share your products and content. The opportunities are endless to form collaborations: ideas such as women-owned businesses, regional or local brands, similar categories, fellow small-businesses, or mutual mission-driven goals could spark ideas.

Lastly, need help developing marketing or want to talk brand development? Feel free to reach out with a free 30 minute call here. 

David Bisek