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Anwar Jappie has over 18 years of experience understanding how brands become a success with consumers. As the head of industry for retail and FMCG for Google sub-Saharan Africa, Anwar is focused on how brands and retailers can combine performance, branding, and creativity to achieve growth and ROI.
South Africa’s silly season is just a couple of potholes away, revealing a summer of shopping, festive season revelry, and a holiday state of mind. Last year, retail sales hit R169 billion in the month of December alone — showing just how powerful the annual peak season can be for brands and retailers who get it right.
Using the latest Google data on consumer behaviour, we’ve formulated three marketing must-do’s for brands and retailers looking to maximise sales, increase ROAS, and create a long-term peak season strategy:
Must-do: Use consumer behaviour to inform your Black Friday campaigns
Google Search behaviour around Black Friday purchases reveal that the typical Black Friday campaign that pushes steep discounts en masse misses important cues about consumer behaviour.1
Black Friday is mostly about making direct sales and this often leads to campaigns with a one-to-many approach that blankets people together. However, Search behaviour shows that more South African shoppers choose a functional reason for their purchase (31%) than a financial one (18%).2
This shows that marketers need to approach Black Friday with more nuance. Here’s how:
- Focus your creatives: Ads that blast large discounts as its main message will miss potential shoppers looking for items to fulfil a function. Promote big ticket items with messaging that speaks to fulfilling a function, such as a new washing machine to replace a broken one or summer clothing for the warmer months.
- Curate your audience: Using custom segments in Google Ads, you can reach people searching with specific keywords and URLs. This allows you to find those who shop with intention.
Must-do: Maximise a shopper’s research phase to increase offline and online sales
South Africans are showing a stronger need for reassurance that they’re making the right purchases.3 During last year’s peak season, search interest for phrases including the word “reviews” across all consumer retail categories increased by 30%, while search interest for those with the word “reviews” in the apparel category increased by 40% alone.4
“This shows that South African shoppers are strong researchers,” says Ricky Hendricks, Google South Africa’s industry manager for retail. “And, since 75% of them use three or more channels for both shopping and research,5 this is particularly helpful for omnichannel brands”
He continues: “Retailers should take notes from Makro, a grocery and electronics retailer, who knew that optimising a shopper’s online research could yield sales, both online and at their stores. Using Local Inventory Ads, an ad feature that shows real-time stock availability on Google at nearby stores, Makro saw a 10% higher online conversion rate. It also saw its gross merchandise value increase by 15%.”
Must-do: Connect and cross-promote each retail moment
For retailers and e-commerce players, treating specific shopping moments as silos is shortsighted. Instead, marketers should create one, holistic marketing calendar from October to the end of January. This acts as a roadmap for consumers, all season long, to make use of the pre-event browsing and shopping we know consumers do.
Your retail marketing roadmap for peak season 2025-2026:
October: Building anticipation and long-term customer loyalty
Focus on creating pre-event hype by using DemandGen to build a VIP email and WhatsApp database that has first access to discounts 48 hours before Black Friday. The larger goals of this database are two-fold: to establish exclusivity and to build a long-term customer acquisition strategy focused on peak season shopping.
November: Cross-promoting Christmas and capturing early Black Friday sales
Initiate small (but not insignificant) discounts across product categories for your VIP members. To increase urgency, advertise the most popular items in these categories to encourage database sign-ups and early sales for eager shoppers.
Running separately but parallel to this is your pre-Christmas shopping campaign, which will focus on cross-promoting Black Friday as the go-to event for early Christmas gifting.
This phase of your roadmap allows you to observe and action the purchasing and browsing behaviour of this group and will help you shape your audience segments, messaging and bid strategies.
Black Friday weekend: Driving sales and final cross-focus for Christmas
Launch your Black Friday weekend campaign through Performance Max, focusing on high-volume sales and clearing stock.
Your campaign should be geared towards three types of shoppers:
- Those looking for specific items to fulfil a function
- Shoppers simply hunting for the largest discounts
- People who are using Black Friday for their Christmas gifting
After a purchase, email all customers with a voucher that’s valid until 25 December only, encouraging further Christmas sales.
This phase achieves three goals: Black Friday is fully taken advantage of, early Christmas sales are ensured, and your peak season database continues to grow.
December and January: Christmas sales, clearing stock, and final customer acquisition
Your Christmas campaign is less about price and more about emotion. This is best achieved through a full-funnel campaign featuring sentimental meals, family scenes, and summer holiday cheer. Focus on quality moments with quality food, gifts, and people.
Begin bidding on New Year’s resolution keywords in mid-December, such as “fitness tracker” or “home storage ideas”. At the same time, advertise that VIP members will get first access to New Year’s resolution bundles, such as school supplies or pilates equipment from 26 December (Boxing Day) to 1 January.
Finally, throughout January, implement your new year’s themed campaign for three audiences: lifestyle fanatics keen on fitness and health, home improvement enthusiasts, and parents shopping for back-to-school.
This staged approach ensures your customer lifetime value has been extended over several months and effectively frames you as the best value provider for the whole season.
