Back-To-School Brand Wars: Target vs. Walmart – TrackMaven

Back-To-School Brand Wars: Target vs. Walmart

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The necessity for new clothes and new school supplies offers a big marketing opportunity, and new research from RadiumOne suggests that back-to-school shopping behavior has taken on a life of its own online.

According to the results of RadiumOne’s survey, 78% of consumers will go back-to-school shopping this year, and nearly half (45%) will tackle the task from their smartphones, tablets, and computers rather than braving the in-store rush. And that figure is on the rise, up 8% from 2014 results!

What’s more, the rise in the online shopping experience offers opportunities is ripe with opportunity for digital marketing feedback loops. According to the results, one third of consumers share back-to-school deals and purchases online, 82% of whom post on on Facebook.

Image via RadiumOne

Image via RadiumOne

Shareable back-to-school deals also see a social lift; nearly half (47%) of consumers who share their back-to-school shopping successes online share promos and deals on Facebook.

Screen Shot 2015-08-31 at 5.04.00 PM

To take a closer look at top back-to-school marketing trends, we dialed in on the rivalry between two top retailers: Target vs. Walmart.

In 2014, both Target and Walmart cited event-based back-to-school sales as a driver of strong Q3 earnings.Target’s Q3 2014 profits rose 3.1% year-over-year to $352 million, while Walmart’s consolidated net sales increased 2.8% to $118 billion.

But from a content marketing POV, how did Target and WalMart fare in the battle for back-to-school sales?

For Walmart, Prescriptive, Passionate, Product-Focused Content Wins

Rather than appealing to parents, both brands created kid-centric content.

Target created an upbeat dance number titled “Back to School Jeans Jam” which has scored 2.4M interactions on YouTube. That one campaign generated 13 times more interactions than the brand’s average YouTube post.

Target found limited success cross-posting the same campaign to Facebook, however. In fact, Facebook saw only 4% of Target’s average Facebook engagement level, as seen below.

Target_FB

But Walmart’s own back-to-school YouTube play — which offers a more inspirational take on the end-of-summer return to school — came out on top, with 14.7M interactions!

That’s 11X more engagement than the brand’s average YouTube post! Watch the 30-second YouTube spot below, which follows a boy training for marching band tryouts with the adopted diligence of a distance runner.

On Facebook, however, Walmart employed a different but equally winning strategy: prescriptive how-to’s. The channel-specific strategy paid off; the posts below saw twice the brand’s average engagement on Facebook:

Walmart_FB_prescriptive Walmart_FB_prescriptive_2

…But Even The Cute Animal Effect Couldn’t Help Target’s Back-To-School Strategy

Interestingly, even cute animals couldn’t save Target’s back-to-school strategy. Despite the cuteness factor, these #BackToSchool posts flopped with below-average engagement across a variety of channels:

Target_hamster Target_Instagram Target_Kittens Target_MakingOf

The bottom line? From a content POV, Walmart dominated the 2015 back-to-school season. Relevant, relatable content was the cornerstone of Walmart’s success. In this edition of brand wars, cute animals simply couldn’t compete!