Sharpening Your Holiday eCommerce Marketing Strategy With Key Toy and Games Insights

As the holiday season ramps up, the window to sharpen your eCommerce marketing strategy is closing quickly. Cashing in on toy and game trends over the next few months can redefine your company’s full-year performance.

However, shopping behaviors this holiday season are shifting away from the trends of past years, and the companies that capitalize on new buying habits fastest will see the highest returns this season. It’s why MikMak dug into the eCommerce marketing avenues that are pushing the most toy and game sales in 2022. These are the trends that are surfacing, along with ways to use the latest insights to strengthen your eCommerce marketing mix. 

How to Plan Your Holiday eCommerce Marketing Pushes for Games and Toys

When it comes to game and toy sales, planting the right messages at the right time can completely reshape your holiday sales cycle. Here are a few important eCommerce marketing tips to help you maximize game and toy sales this holiday season:

1. Understand seasonal data.

Your inventory management routine is amplified when the holiday season rolls around. After all, average purchase intent rates can more than double during the holiday season. This year, with inflation concerning consumers, they could be even more sensitive to product availability and timing. 

To capitalize on holiday season trends, it’s wise to use seasonal data to prepare for typical traffic surges. The 2022 holiday season has already begun, but there are incremental upticks in demand your brand can prepare for based on data from 2021. For instance, the MikMak shopping index uncovered buying spikes during a few critical 2021 time slots:

• Black Friday and Cyber Monday, including a full two-week runup
• Late-stage holiday shopping that peaked around December 15
• Post-holiday and New Years buys that popped up in the days following Christmas

2. Don’t budge on market share.

No matter how perfectly you think you’ve planned, you may end up seeing supplies run low. When your toys and games levels drop, it’s important that you defend your market share. By perfecting your inventory management strategy, you can make sure your consumers know when your products will be available and where they can access your toys. 

3. Keep spending steady.

If your top toys and games do end up running out, it may be tempting to throttle back media spending. However, if you slow down traffic to a retailer, it can hurt your search results. Instead, it’s smart to continue to promote your products. If a top-seller runs out, consider pushing consumers to a substitute toy or game they may be interested in on the retailer’s site.

Where to Focus the Most eCommerce Marketing Energy

Wondering where to spend your eCommerce marketing time, energy, and money this holiday season? Follow the data. Mikmak’s 2022 eCommerce Marketing Guide recently studied which marketing channels are pushing consumer habits the most. Here are a few areas in which eCommerce marketing for toys and games appears to be paying off: 

• One-stop shops: Going into the holiday season, a significant number of consumers are purchasing games and toys at the same time as grocery items—at one-stop online retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target. That means you may be able to pick off more shoppers by thinking about all of the items a consumer may have in their cart and encouraging them to complete their holiday shopping during a grocery run.  
• Social media: A surge of buyers are finding toys and games via social media. MikMak’s study found 89 percent of these purchases on the MikMak platform entered through a social media channel. Our data found that Instagram/Facebook drove the highest purchase intent (PI) rates at 30 percent, with Amazon scoring the highest share of purchase intent clicks for retailers. 
• Major online retailers: Top brand retailers are funneling heavy traffic toward toy and game sales going into the holiday season. MikMak figures saw Amazon, Target, and Walmart drive the highest percentage of purchase intent clicks for major retailers, receiving shares of 34 percent, 29 percent, and 24 percent, respectively.
  
  

Understand More Toy and Game Shopping Trends to Lift Holiday Sales

As holiday demand starts leaping, you can use this year’s eCommerce marketing data to steer toward higher ROI. And when it comes to 2022’s marketing trends, this overview just scratches the surface. Download "MikMak’s 2022 eCommerce Marketing Guide: Toys & Games Benchmarks and Insights" for a deeper look at the marketing channels that are breaking through this year.