It impacts our mood, our productivity levels and our spending habits. As a marketer, it’s your job to first understand the influence the weather has on consumers as a whole. Secondly it’s key to apply this thinking to your individual consumer base, and thirdly tailor your advertising around it.
Remember, the more relevant your ad, the better the performance.
How online retail sales are affected by the weather
Every year, we hear how the warm weather affects online sales. For example a heatwave in Britain or traditional cold US state hits online retailers that didn’t get ahead of the game and get their spring/summer lines in early. Too many people are outside and enjoying the weather to bother scrolling online.
A study by Japanese retailer Rakuten illustrated that with poor weather and rainy days comes increased time spent online and more sales for retailers. On the other hand, a poor summer in Europe, can also hit clothing retailers hard for sales of their summer collections.
While there are likely to be other factors at play, it can be fairly straightforward to draw a correlation between the weather and online activity and spend.
Weather specific products – a no-brainer
It really is a no-brainer, that weather specific products will see a spike when the weather matches their use. It’s simple market forces.
A hot bank holiday in the UK will see sales of BBQs, kids paddling pools and beer increase. Just look what the combination of a heatwave and a successful football World Cup did for alcohol sales in England during the summer of 2018.
The weather’s impact on a consumer’s mindset
The weather is so intrinsically connected to how we feel, that it’s reasonable to assume that these feelings will impact our purchase decisions. It’s no surprise that the beginning of the year is the peak time for travel sales – the weather is cold, and Christmas is over so there’s nothing to look forward to. People need to book a holiday to lift their mood in the January blues.
Hot weather also impacts the desire for a holiday, with sunny days at home prompting consumers to get a foreign holiday booked as well as look for options closer to home.
If you can understand your consumer’s mindset and serve them with ads that tap into their frame of mind you’re on to a winner.
Getting your advertising right
There are a couple of tactics you can use to get your advertising strategy right in line with the weather.
1. Use your budget wisely
If you know that the desire for your type of products will increase with a change in the weather, or your consumers will be spending longer browsing online when it’s raining for example, this should be a key focus for your business.
Let’s say you receive an average of 25% more conversions when the weather is bad; ensure you put more spend behind your ads at this time. This means more ads will be shown to engaged customers ensuring you get higher quality website clicks with a higher chance of converting to a sale.
2.Tailor your ads for the change in weather
When your sales data illustrates that certain products will be in demand when the weather is warm, make sure that these are the products that your consumers see in your ads.
If you know that low temperatures, snow, or rain creates a certain mindset amongst your potential customers, tailor your messaging to tie in with this.
What’s the best call to action to get holidaymakers booking a holiday when the sun is out? It will likely be very different to when it’s snowing, but potentially just as effective if you get it right.
3.Dynamic Ads with Fluid Ads
Through dynamic ads and dynamic creative, you can ensure your digital display ad changes based on external data and factors, including the weather.
The content of your ad, the image, promotion, sales message or call to action will be automatically adapted to be relevant to that user in line with what the weather is doing in their location.
All ads will be created using the Fluid Ads Ad Builder, before key data points are incorporated, with certain rules set up and ad variants created in line with these rules.
All creative variations are driven from just one tag, with the right creative automatically shown to the right person at the right time.
The more relevant the ad, the better the click through rate, and the stronger the performance of your campaign.
Contact us today to get your dynamic ad campaigns up and running so we can help you make the best use of the weather and revolutionise your digital advertising strategy.