Kicking Off Summer with Cinco De Mayo: eCommerce Alcohol Trends Your Brand Needs to Know

Cinco de Mayo is one of the largest drinking occasions of the year in the United States. Reports from IWSR suggest that Americans consume 126 million liters of tequila alone on Cinco de Mayo. For many brands, this occasion is the first to kick off the summer drinking season.

So what can Alcohol brands do to prepare for this major occasion? MikMak has analyzed consumer shopping behaviors to offer insights on planning for Cinco de Mayo and throughout the summer season. Here’s what we found.

Search is seeing the highest Purchase Intent Rates for Alcohol brands, compared to other channel types 

To measure the likelihood of conversion, MikMak looks at a metric called Purchase Intent Rate, which measures how often a consumer will click through to a retailer option. When comparing different channel types, Paid Search has led the pack in the last 90 days for Alcohol brands, driving a Purchase Intent Rate of 8.4 percent. Social follows at 6.9 percent. Following Social is Brand Websites at 2.3 percent. Audio, Display, and video (including some YouTube and programmatic ads) trail behind at 2.0, 1.6, and 0.8 percent, respectively. 

This data suggests that brands that invest in using MikMak Commerce in Paid Search might see the highest likelihood of conversion to sales. However, regarding the overall omnichannel shopping experience, reaching consumers at multiple touchpoints and channel types is the best practice to drive brand discovery, engagement, and sales.

Instagram is the top social channel for Alcohol brands right now

When looking at social channels specifically, Instagram is driving the highest Purchase Intent Rate right now for Alcohol brands at 9.4 percent. Fellow Meta channel, Facebook follows with a Purchase Intent Rate of 7.7 percent. YouTube is third at 2 percent. Pinterest and Snap drive Purchase Intent Rates of 0.6 and 0.4, respectively.

Total Wine is the preferred retailer for Alcohol Brands right now 

Once they discover a product, where are consumers checking out? Historically, Drizly has been a top retailer for Alcohol brands in the MikMak Shopping Index. However, with Drizly shutting down March 31st, this Cinco de Mayo will be an important shopping occasion to learn new retailer preferences with Alcohol shoppers.

The MikMak Shopping Index revealed that Total Wine is currently the top retailer, not including Drizly, for Alcohol brands leading up to Cinco de Mayo, driving 31.4 percent of Purchase Intent Clicks, or in-market traffic, looking at the top 5 Alcohol retailers 

Following Total Wine, Instacart drives the second most Purchase Intent clicks at 29.6 percent. After Instacart, is Walmart at 25.1 percent. Minibar and Kroger round out the top 5 retailers at 7.5 and 6.3 percent, respectively. 

Being available and in stock at all of these top five retailers can help your brand be accessible to those shopping for Alcohol products this Cinco de Mayo.

Stay close to the data, and make your brand shoppable at all touchpoints to see results this Cinco de Mayo 

With any momentous shopping occasion, including Cinco de Mayo, it’s important that consumers can buy seamlessly. Partnering with MikMak allows consumers to purchase your product with ease, from media or your brand website, from any retailer they choose.

Take Garrison Brothers Distillery, for example, who created a series of 30-second shoppable videos that showcased their products and brand story. Using MikMak, they enabled viewers to purchase products directly from the videos, increasing the chances of a successful sale. With this initiative, the brand saw 9 percent higher Purchase Intent Rates than the category average. 

Then they were able to use first-party data from these ads to optimize their marketing campaigns further.

Similarly, another leading Spirits brand utilized MikMak Audiences to create identify and target audience segments. This lead to a 34 percent increase in Purchase Intent Clicks, and a 48 percent increase in Purchase Intent Rate. Specifically, 64 percent of the brand’s Purchase Intent Clicks came from those MikMak-powered audience segments. 

To find out how your brand can see the same success, schedule a demo with MikMak today.