How ‘shoppertainment’ delivers Mega Sales Day success

These monthly sales extravaganzas play a major role in the growth of total online sales in the region, especially during the final two months of the year where there are major holidays and shopping dates including Black Friday and Christmas. These sales hit $89.67bn in 2022 and are expected to reach the $100bn mark this year, according to eMarketer.

There’s no doubt, however, that brands face headwinds in maximizing success during the Mega Sales Day season due to a crowded digital advertising space.

However, the incentives remain because consumers are still willing to spend. TikTok’s own research shows that 81% of its users said they’d shop online in this year’s Mega Sales Day season.

Anny Havercroft, head of business marketing SEA at TikTok says: “Mega Sales Days represent a crucial shopping season for all businesses, and TikTok helps advertisers to achieve success during this period by using entertainment and creativity to drive action. We often refer to this as ‘shoppertainment’ and the upside it delivers for brands.”

Hot tips and tricks

Above all, brands should look to entertain shoppers throughout the Mega Sales Day season (TikTok expresses this through the term ‘shoppertainment’). Entertaining content that triggers shoppers to add products to their cart includes reviews and limited-time offers in video, complemented by creator product demos and live streams from these creators.

Engaging consumers with entertaining creative content plays a key role in the three stages of activation through the holiday season: pre-sales, countdown and post-event.

Pre-Mega Sales Day tips

In the period before a Mega Sales Day, which is typically weeks ahead of the campaign period, it’s all about driving discovery and inspiration. TikTok audiences are constantly shopping and making active connections with the content they see and are deciding already whether or not to look forward to a brand’s sale.

Advertisers can convince them by running brand auction campaigns that drive awareness and consideration, and by identifying optimal bidding and targeting strategies. Crucially, this approach also involves high levels of quantity and diversity in sales assets.

For example, Tiket.com, one of Indonesia’s largest online travel agents, experimented with TikTok’s value-based optimization bidding strategy to guarantee scale and deliver optimum return on ad spend (ROAS) performance for its new user acquisition campaign. This drove 219% higher ROAS and a 29% lower cost per acquisition (CPA).

In terms of entertaining content, it’s best here to engage audiences through multiple storytelling elements. Brands should work with creators to improve authenticity and consideration and include a good mix of different creative formats and styles within a single campaign. This can be achieved by combining different background music, viral effects, trends and transitions. Showcasing products from different sub-categories and developing creative executions with different video lengths also works well.

Countdown to the Mega Sales Day

During the second stage, usually days before a Mega Sales Day, it’s time to drive peak sales as audiences are ready to check out and buy.

Be clear about the product offering in creatives and landing pages and use varied creative messaging to cater to different shoppers based on factors including product quality, price and variety.

Call out promotions prominently and drive urgency with interactive add-ons through in-feed ads. It’s also important that video contains a clear call to action because TikTok research reveals a 152% lift in conversion for brands that do so. Also, don’t forget to focus on the duration of content – videos between 21 and 34 seconds achieve a 280% lift in conversation.

An example is MaCorner, a customized gifts D2C brand. It used TikTok’s Video Shopping Ads together with mSite retargeting to optimize towards shoppers completing payment. Using this approach, the brand was able to target users in the last 180 days who viewed and added to cart but did not purchase. This was achieved without the need to create new custom audiences and delivered 39% higher ROAS and 29% higher average order value (AOV).

Post-event deals

Now we’re into phase three, typically one to three days after a Mega Sales Day. These are the hours in which to communicate last-minute promotions and deals through always-on campaigns. The most effective shoppertainment triggers include shout-out must-buy lists, product reviews and recommendations.

Brands can also drive urgency by maintaining a clear call to action and using popular hashtags to connect with audiences. Some of the most relevant being #TryOnHaul (7.5bn views), #BehindTheScenes (67.8bn views) and #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt (63bn views).

Bringing these tactics into play with TikTok will help brands to connect with shoppers amid a crowded Mega Sales Day ad market. Yes, consumers are more cautious about spending, but brands that optimize their strategies will win regardless.

Learn more here.