A considerable number of students join the school each year, and around 50 million Americans benefit from Back to School sales. This creates a significant market and potentially makes back-to-school shopping the 2nd biggest retail event after holiday shopping.
Are you one of the parents or students getting ready for the first day of school? Or are you a marketer or a business owner ready to maximize back-to-school turnover in 2022-2023? Stay tuned cause we will go through a couple of key elements and tips to make the most out of the back-to-school shopping season!
What to Expect in 2022-2023 Back to School Shopping?
To give you more insight on what to expect this year, we took a closer look at Deloitte’s 15th annual back-to-school survey. According to the report, the war, climate issues, the post-pandemic era, and increasing inflation will have a significant effect on back-to-school shopping behaviors. Since back-to-school (BTS) spending is the second biggest spent after holidays, more than half of the parents said that they were concerned about the BTS prices.
Parents heavily invested in education technology such as virtual learning during the pandemic, but now it’s about time for them to purchase traditional items as well. Apparel makes its way up to the top of this list since grown-ups are back in the offices and students are in the schools. It seems like the home-centric shopping behaviors are slowly fading away as well. This particular shift in families’ behavior slowed down the digital acceleration of last years. However, digital usage is still more than in the pre-pandemic era, so online shopping is not going anywhere, anytime soon.
Secondly, BTS shoppers seem to be highly influenced by another global trend; sustainability. Consumers are in the phase of leaving a better mark on the planet when shopping. Half of the BTS shoppers stated exactly that; they plan to shop what’s more sustainable. It looks like environmental goods and packages would be a critical factor in decision-making for parents on the market. Nevertheless, only one in four top retailers have set a carbon emission lowering goal. Could it be time to act since BTS shoppers are willing to spend 22 percent more on sustainable goods and services?
Perhaps the most interesting takeaway is that there has been a 24 percent growth since 2019 in the BTS market. Somehow the retail industry with its consumers turned out to be resilient. Undoubtedly, the upcoming school season shopping will raise the bar in total spending.
Back to School Shopping – 3 Essential Tips for Parents
Now that we covered some background information, it’s time to give you quick tips on how to make the most out of BTS shopping in the upcoming 2022-2023 season. We have three suggestions for parents, but we will also look at things from a marketer’s perspective.
1- Check Out Your At Home Inventory & Make a New Shopping List
Like every shopping, BTS shopping starts with making a shopping list. Depending on the student’s grade, the needs will vary. There will be standard items plus the individual needs of your children. To make a back-to-school shopping list, your home is your best place to start. To make an efficient list, you must first find out what you have. So, go ahead and check out your home inventory and list them. Next up, you can check out a few of these ready shopping lists for all grades. In the end, consider the individual needs that your child can have, and you are pretty much good to go back-to-school shopping.
2- Spread Out Purchases & Bulk Buy with Other Parents
Now that you have got the shopping list ready, it’s about time to buy the items you need and get ready for the first day of school. When doing so, it might be tempting to go ahead and buy all the shopping lists at once. But that’s often not the most budget-friendly way. If you spread your purchases, you can save up to 20-30 percent. So instead of buying everything at once, you wait for significant discounts on each item. Once you find it, you make your purchase. Using this strategy from June to September, you can gather all you need step by step in a much more budget-friendly way. Also, when you are out in the market, you can seek bulk items such as papers and pens. You can save up to 50 percent when you bulk buy. Later you can split the bill with other parents.
3- Combine Online & In-Store Shopping To Save More
Combining online and in-store shopping for BTS is another uncovered tactic to make the most out of your budget. Online shopping is often cheaper than in-store due to low maintenance costs. Besides, digital marketers are engineering their sites and deals for each shopping season. So check out these best places for back-to-school shopping to get an overall idea. You can always search online and buy offline, and online stores are much more convenient for market research.
On the other hand, physical stores are arranging their deals due to their stock availability. So sometimes, they bulk buy from a supplier to put down the prices on individual items. That’s why it’s best to keep an eye on the shopping malls and grocery stores. Combining online and in-store shopping always works in your favor for BTS shopping.
Back to School Tips for Digital Marketers
We covered a couple of essential back-to-school tips for parents, but since we are a marketing agency, let’s go through a couple of essentials for marketers or business owners as well.
As we are talking about a seasonal deal, the first effective digital marketing channel to use would be obviously digital ads. You can set a revenue goal and an ad budget to reach there. The rest is testing different audiences and businesses as usual. On Facebook and Google, it’s possible to laser target parents. Combine that with your location, and you can start generating leads.
Once you have active ads, it would also make sense to get proactive on social media. Scattering back to school-related posts in your social channels and potentially reaching out to influencers could be a game changer for businesses. If you want to take things to the next level, you can start a back-to-school version of your social media. Yes, we are talking about a new page or an account designated for BTS. This page can become a real deal in a couple of years, and you can outrank your competition.
If you want to invest in SEO, having a back-to-school landing page and building relevant backlinks towards it would be your best bet in the organic channel. But as the BTS theme might change every year, don’t forget to update your on-page SEO items such as SEO title and H1 heading to the corresponding year such as “Back to School Deals 2023”. You can then feed this main page with blog posts about back-to-school shopping.
