As the festive shopping season heats up, brands are vying for attention, and South Africa’s retail space is no exception.
With industry giants like Temu and Shein pouring billions into ads, the competition is fierce. But brands can stand out without a colossal budget – what they need instead is precision targeting.
Hyper-targeting digital audiences lets marketers reach the right people, at the right time. With so much advertising noise this time of year, only a highly strategic approach – like one that taps into first-party data – will produce measurable results, without wasting media budget.
With the holiday shopping season upon us, brands should note five priority audience segments to improve their ad ROI and stand out in a crowded market.
1. The deal hunters: Black Friday shoppers
South African consumers are savvy, especially around Black Friday. This segment looks for value, stocking up on essentials or splurging on luxury items at a discount. They’re planners, often researching deals in advance, which makes them receptive to early, personalised messaging that emphasises exclusive, limited-time offers.
Why target them? Deal hunters take the time and effort to price-match, and they are willing to try new brands if the savings are substantial. Winning brands need to find these bargain-driven consumers and draw them in with the right mix of urgency and savings.
2. The young and the restless: Students
Students are a high-potential audience across categories like tech, fashion, food, and fitness. They’re drawn to brands that reflect their interests and budget-consciousness. As social and lifestyle spending spikes around the holidays, targeting students with timely, relatable messages can drive lasting loyalty.
Why target them? Students are digital-first, cost-sensitive, yet brand-conscious. Smart data partnerships (for example, Flow’s with platforms like DigsConnect) can enable brands to connect with verified student audiences, enhancing campaign precision and relevance.
3. The luxury seekers: High-end buyers
Luxury buyers might be a smaller group, but they bring high returns. They seek premium experiences and exclusivity, making them less sensitive to economic shifts. For this audience, ads that highlight quality and exclusive experiences (like ‘gifting moments’) resonate well, and first-party data is crucial to identifying their preferences and behaviours.
Why target them? These consumers want to feel understood, and a data-driven approach ensures messages align with their tastes, turning ads into effective engagements. Brands selling high-end goods or services need to understand they are aiming for a small, niche set of consumers who can afford their product – all the more reason not to waste their advertising budget reaching the wrong audience.
First-party data is often required to profile and then reach high-value shoppers.
4. The bulk shoppers: Household buyers
Household shoppers are planners who prioritise value and volume, aiming to stretch festive spending across various needs.
From groceries to gifts and holiday essentials, they represent significant purchasing power. Campaigns focused on convenience, bulk savings, and reliability appeal to these consumers, as they seek to simplify holiday shopping for the whole family.
Why target them? By sourcing data from relevant partners, brands can gain unique consumer insights to help them tailor promotions that will resonate during peak family shopping times Targeting this segment is also smart because their behaviour is likely more predictable and consistent – making them high lifetime-value customers.
5. The early bird parents: Back-to-school shoppers
Parents gearing up for the back-to-school season are a valuable and proactive audience. These savvy shoppers hunt for deals on essentials like stationery, school snacks, and even laptops, aiming to beat the rush and stretch their budgets.
There lies a good opportunity for brands to reach early bird parents with targeted promotions that help them tick off their back-to-school lists while benefiting from special savings.
Why target them? Back-to-school shoppers drive significant demand, especially as parents seek quality and affordability for their families. Brands can use unique insights from first-party data to connect with parents at the peak of their buying cycle, making advertising campaigns timely, relevant, and impactful.
Making every impression count
Our case studies prove that brands don’t need a mega-budget to compete with retail giants. Instead, they can boost their ROI by directing ad spend toward precise, data-backed audience segments that cut wastage and amplify conversions.
It starts with using the tools at hand – like Flow’s AdVantage Audiences, for example, which provides advertising brands and agencies with hyper-targeted, ready-to-use audiences.
These first-party data audiences are seamlessly integrated into existing ad platforms, including Meta and Programmatic channels, and are pre-matched, so there’s no guesswork.
With the use of such tools, brands will quickly be able to see how this strategy can accelerate campaign planning and performance, ultimately ensuring that every Rand spent is spent reaching the right audience. In an ad-saturated online space, precision targeting is just what brands need to gain them the competitive edge this holiday shopping season.
Daniel Levy is co-founder and co-CEO of data-powered adtech platform Flow. The Flow Platform is a data-powered AdTech platform that enables brands to tap into exclusive, highly-targeted consumer data from Audience Partners. This helps brands tailor their ad strategies on Meta, Google, Programmatic and social platforms, with targeting based on specific consumer behaviours. For Audience Partners, retailers, marketplaces and franchise groups Flow unlocks significant new revenue opportunities from the largest digital budgets in the world, including Meta, Google, Programmatic and social platforms.
