Holiday shopping season has begun – here’s how to keep pace

The leaves are still green but promotions for the winter holidays are already in full swing.

You wouldn’t know it from the balmy temperatures and full trees, but the "most wonderful time of the year" is already underway – at least for many Tier I retailers. Amazon and Target have both announced early October sales blockbusters for their loyalty members (early discounts are currently happening at Amazon), and Best Buy is already offering holiday shoppers perks like experiential in-store shops and the ability find gift ideas and shop Best Buy products through ChatGPT.

Other retailers would be smart to counter these early holiday promotions by the “big guys” rather than ceding ground which may prove impossible to reclaim later in what has become the extended holiday season. 

Here are a few suggestions for early holiday marketing and merchandising initiatives retailers can quickly stand up to compete with fall sales extravaganzas:

Social media

Social media campaigns offer retailers an opportunity to deliver promotional messages and offers with minimal investment of time and resources. With the early October start of the holiday shopping season, retailers looking to create and disperse marketing content in a tight timeframe can leverage existing social media accounts to post holiday promotions.

In addition, the design capabilities offered by generative AI can enable retailers to develop high-quality imagery and video at an accelerated pace with low overhead. As a bonus, generative AI has unlocked the capability for retailers to target shoppers at the regional, demographic and even individual level at a scale both achievable and manageable to a degree not available even a couple of years ago.  

Influencer

Another way to quickly and easily create awareness of a seasonal marketing campaign is to enlist influencers to help spread the word. Influencers, content creators and celebrities all represent a significant opportunity for retailers to obtain credibility, gain access to built-in fan bases, and potentially extend their commercial reach via affiliate marketing and sales. 

Consumers, especially younger Gen Z and millennial shoppers, now often look to influencers as their primary source of product discovery and purchase inspiration.

[READ MORE: Survey: Majority of social media purchases fueled by online influencers]

Teaming up with influencers doesn’t require the use of innovative technology and retailers can start getting their products and promotions in front of influencer followers with minimal effort. Retailers should also search for influencers that best align with their vertical, brand, promotional messaging and customer base.

Overstock 

While many retailers have already acquired their holiday stock, some are still in the process, and others may not have started. There is also the issue of selling too much prime holiday merchandise too soon, at too low a price.

Using an early holiday promotion to clear out overstock is a great way to maximize inventory margins while clearing space for more valuable products later in the holiday season. 

Liquidators and business-to-business resale platforms always have discounted merchandise to move, and retailers should comb their own  inventories to find products that can include Halloween and back-to-school items that are not yet fully obsolete, as well as unsold summer and spring merchandise that might otherwise sit until 2027.

Even if an item is not a traditional “holiday” product, the fact remains that many gift shoppers are also buying for themselves and might appreciate a discounted t-shirt in their size to go with the winter coat they’re purchasing for their brother-in-law.